Religion, the Sole Solution 161
the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and
the pride of life, passeth away, but he that doeth the will
of God abideth forever.” Fitzgerald caught that ominous
thought from the lines of the old Persian, Omar, and
phrased it:
The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes—or it prospers; and anon,
Like Snow upon the Desert’s dusty Face
Lighting a little Hour or two—is gone.
You young men and young women are going forth into
a world that is troubled and sore-distressed. Knowing
something of the character of the men who teach at the
Rice Institute, and the love of letters and art and science
that actuates them, I know that whilst they have spent
themselves to endow your intellects, they have through
the teaching of discipline and self-control given you a
knowledge of self, have tried to promote morality and re-
finement and lead you to see that the only permanent con-
tent is to be obtained, not in the valleys of sense, but by
continual striving toward the high peaks of reason.
You are to be leaders in the world’s work; and the work
needs men of highly developed intellect, fine sensibility,
wide and penetrating vision, a passion for clean living, a
consciousness of the eternal force of charity, honor, and
the love of God.
The greatest question that confronts the American
people to-day is whether we shall go forward by preserving
the American principles and traditions that have served us
so well, or whether we shall abandon these principles and
traditions and substitute for them a state built, not upon
the civil liberty of the individual, but upon the plenary
power of organized government. Speaking in the name
of the historic Church that has spanned the centuries and