learned and well-grounded in it, not in some special and narrow part of it, but in the whole science, critical, doctrinal, historical, practical, is the object of an education here. This institution keeps a high standard of theological learning, as understanding its relations to a strong ministry, to the growth and power of the Church, to sound theology and practical godliness. Well has it fulfilled its noble trust. From the course of thought we have been following for the hour, I think it will be seen that Theology does not stand alone. Supreme as it is in the studies of this place, and as it is to be in your future studies, there are also literary studies, which substituted for it would be for mischief, but which joined with it as ancillary may add to its value. Theology and Literature may be friends and allies; they need not be hostile. The reconciling, mediating office belongs especially to all ministers of the Word who study Theology in order to preach it, and who will preach it most effectively as they are able to mix the truth it gives them with a spiritual experience of its power, and the literary culture by which they give it large and worthy and acceptable utterance. This, Christian brethren, is your privilege, and a part of your high calling, to possess yourselves of a sound, an intelligent, a thorough Theology, and to join with it whatever will make it useful, practical, effectual, faithful to your Master, Christ Jesus, and an instrument of salvation and of intellectual and spiritual enlightenment to all who hear it. ADDRESSES AND SERMONS. LITERATURE IN ACCOUNT WITH LIFE.1 PRESIDENT ANGELL, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN : THE day which calls together the sons of a college to celebrate the privilege of their calling as scholars is bright beyond most other days in the calendar. It is sacred to thought, to reason, to inquiry, to good learning, to liberal culture, to one of the first interests of life. It is the birthday of a new generation of students, who fill the vacancies which the years leave. It calls back the students of other days, many of them perhaps remembering studies which more exacting pursuits long ago brought to an end, but while mourning the disappointment of their young dream, feeling for a day at least that they were once scholars, and have a name and a place in the goodly fellowship. It brings here the guardians, the authorities, the graduates, the students, the friends of this great university, to exchange congratulations, to auspicate the future, to praise the scholar's calling and work. Eis Athenas was the choral strain of the Thracian maids. Up to Athens we come, to find under these oaks of Michigan a philosophy as genuine and as high as under the olives of the Academy; to drink again the old inspiration; to renew the sweet communion which belongs to every spot where study and learning find a home. And if many come who have served other gods than the classic 1 An address delivered at the Annual Commencement of the University of Michigan, June 25, 1885. ones to which they made their young vows; who have found less room than they expected for the liberal culture which was their early aspiration; who to-day confess that they know more of life than of letters, that affairs have displaced studies, that they have denied to scholarship what has been given to more tempting or more urgent pursuits, surely they belong here by birthright as by sympathy, and come up to Athens to pay, at least, the tribute which every good citizen owes to academic institutions and culture. Life has taken some flavor and charm from early studies, even where it has limited or closed them. Life has been making use of academic training in the midst of demands hostile to its continuance. And every student who has been drawn into the most practical and unclassic pursuits has at least his memory of earlier and dearer things, and in his departure may take shelter, at all events, under the authority of Lord Bacon. "That," he says, "will indeed dignify and exalt knowledge, if contemplation and action may be more nearly and strongly conjoined and united together than they have been,— a conjunction like unto that of the highest planets, Saturn, the planet of rest and contemplation, and Jupiter, the planet of civil liberty and action." So, at least, life and literature seem to come together here and face each other to-day; and called as I am by the partiality of an old friendship to be the voice of this literary festival, and obliged by an unwritten law of the occasion to speak of some interest of literature, what more natural than to examine the account between the two, and especially to calculate how much, after all, literature owes to life! The other course appears to be more natural, perhaps suitable. One who has the ear of such an assembly seems to owe it to his calling and the occasion to plead the claim of letters as against all comers. In a University, and on its great holiday, it may seem an offense against the genius of the place and the hour to do anything but |