Baccalaureate Sermon.

Rev. W. T. Rainsford D. D. preached the baccalaureate sermon to the senior class in Appleton Chapel yesterday afternoon. The Chapel was crowded long before four o'clock, when the seniors, marched in two by two, and took seats in the body of the house.

The sermon was a powerful appeal. The preacher made no attempt to deliver a polished oration; he made all in the audience feel that he had something of highest importance to make clear to them, and he held his hearers in closest attention. The address was full of rugged strength; it brought home specific points with telling effect, and bespoke the hearty, honest nature of the man who delivered it.

His text was Philippians 2:4 "Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others." This he said is an epitome of Paul's teaching, - not to consider self so much as others. The question he wanted to ask and answer was, whether this teaching was practical today. Men feel that there is a great gap between the great men of history and the common men that makes it impossible for the common men to follow in their footsteps. Is that true?

College men would be inclined to answer at once that it is impracticable, that to follow such a rule would have wrecked their college course. And yet, now that the four years are over, doesn't every man realize that there was something in college far better than the competition; isn't he dissatisfied at last with nothing but a game of grab?

And does not every college man who looks ahead to wife and children realize that it is possible for men to be willing, - yes, eager to forego for themselves in order that others may enjoy?

But, turning from personal experiences, he compared the spirit of different ages, the ancient, the mediaeval, and the modern. The one thing that makes each succeeding age better is simply that men have grown more and more to think of others rather than themselves. In the middle ages a banquet-hall might be built over a dungeon by the best men of the time, but now the world has out-grown that.

Futhermore, he said, a most striking proof that the law of unselfishness was the law of the universe is seen from the discoveries made of late years in the field of physics. Men, turning from the contemplation of their own souls to the study of nature find that there the law of involuntary sacrifice ever holds. The death of the lower form gives birth to higher. But in man, the sacrifice is no longer involuntary; he must himself will it, and poor is the man who refuses to live out in his own life those laws that have produced him.

Thus we see that the principle of unselfishness is not merely something taught in a book called the Bible, or the myth of some philosophy, but is the principle that underlies the department of the universe. This is why Christ is exalted. Men always have felt that they must have heroes, representative men, who were honored not so much for what they did themselves as for the principles they represented for which the masses also had worked; and in this way Christ stands for the highest thought of man, is its best representative and therefore receives our homage. The nature of Christ is the final law of the universe.

He closed with a few simple, pointed words to the seniors, appealing to them to fulfil well the responsibility of choice that rested upon them; to remember that only one type of life can survive, and that, the highest type of all life. Work, and that only, will end in becoming a torture; pleasure, and that only, will finally sicken; the study of men and the knowledge of God which it brings is the only thing fit to occupy a man's life.

The choir, assisted by Master Newton Wilcox of St. Paul's, Boston sang the following anthems: "I Waited for the Lord" from Hymn of Praise, Mendelssohn; "Lovely Appear Over the Mountain" and "From Thy Love as a Father" from the Redemption, Gounod.