A Baccalaureate Sermon 209
logical faculty and the imagination is the personality, the
personal self; and it is the personal self which uses the
various faculties for the ends it has in view. The human
person holds relation to the Divine Personal Being and
to other finite persons; and education is the development of
the personality so that it may hold right relations. The
end of education is a social end; the development of the
finite personal being so that he may fulfill duties to God
and to men.
The standard of duty is a social standard, not a standard
individualistic and selfish, and it is the genius of Christianity
which must inspire and promote educational ideals and
plans, because Christ and the Gospel of Christ alone really
transcend local and racial conceptions of duty, and really
expand the soul into love of the Universal Divine Father
and universal love of man. Man is born for citizenship
on earth and in heaven; born to deny himself and seek a
universal welfare and a universal salvation. Let us pray,
therefore, that the world over educational systems will turn
more and more to Christ, more and more accept his lead-
ership, to the end that men may not substitute brain or bread
for conscience and heart; to the end that men may find in
the government of God through Christ the true fraternity
for one another of which they have dreamed.
Returning to considerations in the direction suggested at
the outset—I want to press upon the young men and women
gathered here the reasonableness of Christianity, the cer-
tainty of such knowledge of God as will enable the love
which is commanded, the peace which Christ the Divine
Revealer and Redeemer can bestow as fulfilling the deepest
needs and hopes of humanity. The fundamental truths and
facts of the historic Christian religion, as summarized in
the Nicene Creed, are not contrary to reason; but reason