day, because he believed what Feuerbach denied. And I said, if this is the last outcome and highest thought of the nineteenth century, and Feuerbach has said the last and best word it has to utter, let us go back three centuries to Albert Dürer. Be sure of this, that no great art, no solid and durable thing, ever sprung out of the creed of Feuerbach. There may be great knowledge, great philosophy which destroys, but it is faith, it is love which creates, which endures, which is remembered here, and has an inheritance elsewhere.

The vanishing and disappearing of knowledge belongs to the very nature of life as progressive. The Apostle compares it to the childish things which man leaves behind as he passes from infancy. So is all our life, here and hereafter. The knowledge which is sufficient for one stage is not for another, in fact disappears and is lost in the increase of light. But love never faileth.

What a dreary prospect for one who has only knowledge, in old age, in the inevitable decay which comes with increase of years! Knowledge fades away, forgotten, and power goes. But love is within the heart, a secret and perpetual well-spring, a perennial source of beauty to the ripening life. Disaster cannot touch it. Trouble only increases it. And then in dying! Knowledge, indeed, we may carry with us, our heritage for the future, our discipline for celestial service. But how much of it may be useless, abandoned as only an incumbrance, or superseded and swallowed up, as stars go out in the brightness of the eternal day! And all of it will be unavailing- that is, to any true need of your immortality—to meet its dread exigencies, its spiritual judgments, unless you can carry it with a heart made right, and ready to be made perfect in love. The vision of God, to see the King in his beauty, belongs only to love, to the pure in heart. Says that deep-hearted Christian, Frederick Robertson: "I can conceive of no dying hour more awful than that of one who

has aspired to know instead of to love, and finds himself at last amidst a world of barren fact and lifeless theories, loving none and adoring nothing." Love never fails, but even when the narrow life here stops and the infinite future opens, and the great life of immortality begins, love is sufficient for that, and finds its true home and endless satisfaction there.

What, now, have I undertaken? To maintain, in the presence of a school established in the interest of good learning, a thesis which Paul states, on which Christianity stands; namely, the superiority of the spiritual to the intellectual, of goodness to genius, of love to knowledge. I have shown that the two are not oppugnant, and may be united; that love helps knowledge and quickens intellectual growth; that knowledge needs the restraints as well as the inspirations of love; that the end of life is not in what we know, but in what we love; and, finally, that love is the one imperishable thing remaining when powers decay and life ends.

And to what conclusion does this come? Is it that knowledge is worthless, that study is to stop, and the college to be closed? Is it to condemn education, and cast dishonor on our founder, and discourage the very work so many young and aspiring souls came here to do? Is it that religion and science are enemies, and cannot be friends? And, therefore, that inquiry must stop, and in the interest of religion science be shortened in its range and predetermined in its conclusions? Rather it is that schools, that education, must be Christian; that religion must have its place, as knowledge has its place; that with a free, alert, acquisitive intellect, there must be fresh affections, and generous charity, and a devout spirit, and the consecrations and hopes of a life with God.

To you, my friends, who out of this cloister of study are now going into the life of the world without, these words come for your advice and your benediction. It is

for you to reconcile and join, in the life which now opens to you, these two, knowledge and love. This is not always. easy, to keep the heart tender while knowledge grows; to love God with a great, holy love; to sympathize with all that is pure, good, humane, divine, with Christ's great love for man; while remitting nothing in the love of study, of knowledge, in the privilege and the power and the progress, in the tastes and pursuits, which belong to you as educated women. Learn the danger there is on both sides; especially that you have a heart to keep with all diligence, because that out of it are the issues of life; that meekness and reverence and charity must go with knowledge, or it is poisoned; that no gifts, no acquisitions, can be wholly good or useful with a proud, selfish, restless heart. Covet all gifts; intermeddle with all knowledge; preserve the studiousness, the scholarly tastes, the comprehensive culture, which have begun here. But remember always that love is the most excellent of gifts, and the consecration of them all; that it is possible to win all intellectual prizes, and lose the soul; that you may know much, all things, and yet be ignorant of that secret of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom, which is the only eternal life.

66

THE HEAVENLY VISION.1

'Whereupon, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision."— ACTS xxvi. 19.

HERE is a man who has a sudden vision, and for thirty years or more, to the very end of life, he follows it, and allows it to have supreme influence over him. In the pursuit of it, under the impulse of it, he faces all peril, and denies himself all indulgence, and dies for it at last. Such a man is called a visionary, and to his reproach. He follows the dreams of his mind rather than the sight of his eyes. He does not see what he thinks he sees. He sees visions, and dreams dreams, and takes them for facts. He lets his fancy, his imagination, his illusions, lead him, and gives the unreal, the imaginary, such power as belongs only to reality. Such a person may be amiable, but people pity him for his delusion, and let him pass. They give him little heed, and say, like Joseph's brothers, "Behold this dreamer cometh."

And indeed there is not much to be said for the mere dreamer. It is the infirmity of some minds that they fly so much in the air, and rarely touch the solid earth. They waste their power and accomplish little because they mistake shadows for realities. Visionary speculations in philosophy, in business, unsettle men's heads, and come to little good. One purpose of your education here is to prevent or correct the mistakes into which fancy and dreaming lead. I have to warn you against idle dreaming, if it takes the place of earnest action.

And yet there are visions and visionaries which justly 1 Baccalaureate Sermon, at Vassar College, June 22, 1880.

bear no such reproach. There are visionaries who lead the world, and come to the end and height of their vision because they see so far, and believe in what they see. St. Paul was not disobedient to the heavenly vision which fell upon him, and that made a mighty difference in his life. That henceforth changed, empowered, immortalized him. From the touch of Ananias upon his blinded eyes at Damascus, even on to the stroke of the headsman's axe upon his neck at Rome, he kept seeing more and more in that vision, and it would not let him go, as he would not let it go. It was not the transient glimpse of a wonderful hour, but became the permanent force of every day. It inspired him, and gave him support. It realized itself to him as no dream of his fancy, but the supreme fact of existence. And without it, with all his genius and practical energy, he would have failed. His life would have dropped down into tame conformity, and the most unspiritual aim. It would have been emptied of the divine aspiration and uplifting faith by which he endured and conquered.

Something, then, is to be said for visions, and it is my business to-day to tell you how important it is that you should have them, and be true to them. Indeed, I want to speak of the relations of Vision and Action, and to tell you what you do in life will depend very much, and perhaps first of all, upon what you see. Obedience to the highest and best thing you see is the word for this parting hour.

Seeing the unseen,- this is the paradox of religion; this is the mystery of faith, as it is the perplexity of unbelief. But it is the very thing which divides men, and which is the crowning excellence of human nature. It is the first gift of religion, as it is the highest attainment of life. It is second sight, a clearer and farther vision, a longer and ampler range, an annexed realm of knowledge, that "precious seeing to the eye" which love adds, that