THE YALE BICENTENNIAL CELEBRATION.

The two hundredth anniversary of the founding of the institution now known as Yale University was celebrated October 20-23, 1901, with appropriate ceremonies, exercises, and entertainments. The chief features of the programme are here given, together with extracts from the commemorative oration of Mr. Justice Brewer and from the address of President Northrop, of the University of Minnesota.

PROGRAMME.

Sunday, October 20.

I. Public worship in the Battell chapel; sermon by the Rev. Joseph Hopkins Twichell, senior fellow of the corporation. (10.30 a. m.)

II. Services in the churches of New Haven, with sermons special to the occasion. (10.30 a. m.)

III. Services in the Battell chapel; address on Yale in its Relation to Christian Theology and Missions, by Rev. George Park Fisher, professor of ecclesiastical history. (3 p. m.)

IV. Organ recital in the Battell chapel. (8 p. m.)

Monday, October 21,

I. Dedication of the gateway erected by the class of 1896 in memory of Ward Cheney and Gerard Merrick Ives, who gave their lives in the service of their country. (9.30 a. m.)

II. Address on Yale in its Relation to Law, by Thomas Thacher, of the New York bar. (10.30 a. m.)

III. Address on Yale in its Relation to Medicine, by William Henry Welch, professor of pathology in Johns Hopkins University. (11.30 a. m.)

IV. Address of welcome, by Arthur Twining Hadley, president of the University. Responses by Hon. Anthony Higgins (for the graduates); the mayor of New Haven; the governor of Connecticut; United States Senator Platt of Connecticut; James Williams, D. C. L., Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford (for the universities of Great Britain and Ireland); Fiodor Fiodorovitch Martens, LL. D., professor in the University of St. Petersburg (for the universities of continental Europe); President Dabney, of the University of Tennessee (for the universities of the South); President Harper, of the University of Chicago (for the universities of the West); President Eliot, of Harvard (for the universities of the East). (3 p. m.)

V. Reception of delegates, guests, and representatives of the alumni by the president of the University. (5 p. m.)

VI. Torchlight procession of students and graduates (about 5,000, in characteristic costumes), starting from the campus at p. m. The procession was led by the State military, and 25 bands were interspersed at intervals.

Tuesday, October 22.

I. Address by Cyrus Northrop, president of the University of Minnesota, on Yale in its Relation to the Development of the Country. (10.30 a. m.).

II. Address by Daniel Coit Gilman, president of Johns Hopkins University, on Yale in its Relation to Science and Letters. (11.30 a. m.)

III. University football game. (2 p. m.)

IV. Choral performance of Hora Novissima by the Gounod Society at the Hyperion Theater. Conductor, Horatio Parker, professor of the theory of music and composer of the oratorio. (4.30 p. m.)

V. Student dramatic performance on the campus, with singing of college songs. Scenes from the history of the college, presented under the auspices of the Yale Dramatic Association. Illumination of the campus. Singing by graduates with student chorus (600 voices), under the leadership of Samuel Simons Sanford, professor of applied music.

Wednesday, October 23.

I. Precession of guests and graduates on the college campus and the city green, headed by the President of the United States and the president of the university. (10 a. m.)

II. Commemoration exercises, Hyperion Theater: Poem by Edmund Clarence Stedman. Greek festival hymn, composed by Thomas Dwight Goodell, professor of the Greek language and literature. Address on Yale's Relation to the Public Service, by Hon. David Josiah Brewer, Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Conferring of honorary degrees. (10.30 a. m.) III. Concert by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Hyperion Theater. (2.30 p. m.) IV. Dedication of Woodbridge Hall. (4 p. m.)

V. Farewell reception by the president of the university and Mrs. Hadley. (5 p. m.)

SPECIAL EXHIBITIONS.

In connection with the celebration there were several special bicentennial exhibitions, as follows:

I. Exhibition of paintings in the south gallery of the School of the Fine Arts, the centers of interest being the 110 works of John Trumbull and the collection of portraits by Prof. Samuel F. B. Morse.

II. In the Peabody Museum there were four special exhibits prepared for the celebration: A dinosaurian reptile, a skeleton of an ancestor of the dog family, a model in papier-maché of a dinoceras, and the Newton collection of meteorites.

III. In the university library was an exhibition of documents, books, and views, illustrating the early history of the college.

IV. A considerable part of the Morris Steinert collection of keyed and string musical instruments, recently given to the university, was exhibited in the foyer of the Hyperion Theater.

BICENTENNIAL PUBLICATIONS.

With the approval of the president and fellows of the university a series of volumes was prepared by a number of the professors and instructors, and issued in connection with the celebration as a partial indication of the character of the studies in which the university teachers are engaged. The series includes 25 titles.

RELATION OF YALE TO THE PUBLIC SERVICE.

[From the commemorative oration of Hon. DAVID JOSIAH BREWER.]

* In the general thought of education all colleges and universities are alike. As human faces have general features in common, so have educational institutions, and yet there is always something which individualizes each. “One star differeth from another star in glory." If Yale has had a generous curriculum, so have other institutions. If she has had learned and distinguished instructors, so have they. If she has had graduates who have done grand work in life, so have they.

I turn from those forces and facts in which Yale's life has been common with the lives of other educational institutions to some matters of difference--things which individualize her.

Note the declared purpose with which she began life, and the spirit in which that purpose has been carried into effect. That purpose was, as expressed in her charter, now two hundred years old, to fit young men for public employment both in church and civil state."

* *

*

She was the first educational institution in the world to make the fitting for public service the expressed and dominant purpose of her educational work. In this country the two earlier colleges were Harvard, in Massachusetts, and William and Mary, in Virginia. In neither of their charters is there any recognition of public service as the purpose of their lives or training. Even if similar language be found in the charters of educational institutions across the waters prior to that time, it must be remembered that public service there meant service of the monarch. So it may fairly be claimed that Yale was the first educational institution in the world to make training for service of the public the supreme object of her life and work.

What a noble, inspiring purpose! True service of the public is not mere office seeking or office holding, for either of them may go with the poorest kind of service and with constant thought of private gain or personal ambition. It is a striving to promote the interests of the great body of the people; a seeking of the general welfare; an effort to make the lives of all sweeter, purer, nobler; it is service of the public and for the public.

All the true education is a blessing. It is an honor to any institution to be able to say, "I have educated this distinguished scientist, this wise philosopher, this learned historian, this great professor;" but it is a far higher honor for an institution in these United States of America to be able to say, "I have trained my graduates to good citizenship."

That was the expressed purpose of Yale's life, and as a dominant purpose always molds and controls one's activities it is not strange that her sons should be conspicuous for their devotion to the public welfare. This is said in no disparagement to other colleges and universities, for it is a fact redounding to the honor of all that the educated men of America have furnished most shining example of pure, unselfish devotion to the public interests. Every such institution can point to conspicuous examples among her sons--many conspicuous in the present day (thank God, there have always been in this country college men ready to recognize a true Washington, whether his first name were George or Booker), but I do make bold to say that the lives of the great body of her graduates bear witness to Yale's constant loyalty to her expressed purpose. * 營 *

The overshadowing political fact of the last four centuries is the evolution of the problem of government of, by, and for the people. To him who believes that the world's life is not a mere succession of accidents, but a movement of forces along the lines of an infinite purpose, it is not strange that many things were contemporaneous with and helpful to the solution of this problem. It was a day of great mental and moral upheaval, unrest, and activity. The invention of printing, the unchaining of the Bible; the spirit of chivalry, outgrowth of the Crusades and feudal life; the birth of international law, founded on moral obligations; the opening of a new continent to the civilized world--all these things gathered about and tended to the successful working of the great political problem. On the virgin soil of this new continent the most vigorous spirits of the most virile races sought homes far from the overshadowing influences of monarchical systems; and here began, at first in a feeble way but with constantly gathering strength, the inauguration into the life of the world of the thought that every man is free and every man a ruler. It was at such a time, on such a continent, and during the evolution of this great problem that Yale came into being and has lived her life. What a magnificent opportunity! How great the need of such an institution! Popular government was not fashioned in an hour or born

in a day. Its relations to society and social order were not established by a single act or accomplished by colonial charters, the Declaration of Independence or the Federal Constitution. Slowly the structure of popular government was to rise— did rise--and skillful must be its architects, patient and faithful its toilers. And to the work of educating its architects and training its toilers Yale devoted her life. Ignorance would have wrecked the movement; ambition and selfishness would have stayed its growth. In fullest sympathy with the thought which underlies the problem, Yale strove to give her students the best of education and to fill them with the spirit of public service. Is it strange that her sons have ever been faithful workers on the great structure? Is it strange that the common people heard her gladly and sent their sons to receive her training?

* * *

Another significant feature of Yale's life is her relation to religion. Public employment in church was one of the avowed purposes of her creation. The first rule prescribed by the founders at their first session after the granting of the charter directed the rector to “instruct and ground them (the students) well in theoretical divinity." The first formal professorship in the institution, created nearly three-quarters of a century before the establishment of a separate theological department, was a professorship of divinity. During the first hundred years 40 per cent of her graduates entered the ministry.

The founders were Congregational ministers, robust in theology, as became a minister in those days. While they only dimly saw and faintly felt the higher truth, love the fulfilling of the law, they believed in righteousness and judgment; they knew the line and plummet. Committing the control of the new college to their own denomination, they wisely bound it to no creed, fastened it to no dogma. Doubtless, as Judge Baldwin said, "The religious liberty for which the Puritans crossed the sea was simply liberty to make their form of religion the law of a new community." Yet Yale was always broadly catholic. In the volume issued by President Clap, in 1765, concerning the history of the college and its rules of life, he says: "Persons of all denominations of Christians are allowed the advantage of an education here, and no inquiry has been made, at their admission or afterwards, about their particular sentiments in religion." From the very beginning Yale has stood with an open door toward all true religion. Early she transferred the urim and thummim on the breastplate of Aaron into the motto of her life, "Lux et veritas" and ever has she walked, guided by that motto in her training of the young for public employment in church and civil state. She anticipated Goethe's dying call for "mehr Licht;" Cardinal Newman's "Lead, kindly Light; * Lead thou me on;" and ever has she, ignoring its sneer, sought the answer to Pilate's immortal question, "What is Truth?"

*

*

So much for the past; that at least, as Webster said, is secure. And now for the present and future. It is the law of life, at least of that which appears in material forms, that there is growth, maturity, then decay and death. We have seen that Yale has grown. She stands to-day a marvelous institution. Is this only the ripening, to be followed by decay and death? Has she, like the great multitude of human institutions, outlived her usefulness with nothing before her but the sad processes downward to dissolution and death?

I turn again to her relations to the great work of fitting for public service, and find an answer in the need of such work for the preservation and perpetuation of popular government and her fidelity to her declared purpose in respect thereto. The conditions of life, social and political, are not as they were. We stand in a wondrous hour. It is the time of marvelous achievements, the day of magnitudes and magnificences. The great army of civilization is marching from victory to victory. Yet now, as in the days of Patrick Henry, amid the shouts of joy and triumph are notes of discord, the cry of the modern John Hooks, hoarsely bawling, "Beef!" "Beef!" "Beef!"

The structure of popular government in this Republic towers above the horizon of the world great and strong, and yet the question of its permanence is not settled. Its possibilities of good are greater than ever before, yet it lives under new conditions and faces new dangers.

New occasions teach new duties; time makes ancient good uncouth;

They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.

Consider these things which are rapidly changing all conditions of life, especially those in this country. From the beginning of time till within the last century there was no substantial improvement in the means of travel or communication. The only motive power was the wind of animal strength. And during all these unnumbered centuries the camel and horse grew no swifter, the ox no stronger. The caravan moved with the same slow pace at the beginning of the nineteenth century as when Abraham went out from his father's house to become the founder of a new race. The wind now blows no more strongly or swiftly than when Paul's vessel was driven about the Mediterranean by the tempestuous Euroclydon. The post-office and telegraph were things unknown. But with the introduction of steam and electricity, transportation, travel, and communication have wonderfully changed. Time and distance are almost annihilated, and each year is adding speed, capacity, and comfort. We talk around the globe in a minute; every morning the events of the world are spread before us in the daily press. The post-office takes the letter from our doors and speedily delivers it anywhere in the land. We travel around the world in a month. Vessels larger than the ark in which Noah floated all the undestroyed animal life of the world and carrying in their immense capacity a multitude greater than that which fought for liberty at Bunker Hill cross the Atlantic in less time than it took John Adams to go from Boston to Philadelphia to sign the Declaration of Independence. The most distant islands of the sea are brought near to our shores. The divergence, isolation, and animosity of races and people, typified by the story of the dispersion at the Tower of Babel, are yielding to the unifying influences of steam and electricity. The steam engine and the telegraph are laying the foundations of a new tower which shall pierce the blue heavens, within whose temple walls a united humanity shall worship the Infinite Ruler. The forces of life are centripetal and not centrifugal. Union and unity are the potent words. Neighbor has become a recognized term in the vocabulary of nations. Our recent war with Spain for the deliverance of Cuba, with its resulting acquisition of Porto Rico and the Philippines, was but one act in the great drama whose far distant prelude was ignorance, oppression, and hate, and whose final song shall be the angel anthem first heard by Judea's shepherds on Bethlehem's plains, and yet to rise from every human lip, earth's glad reply to heaven's prophetic message.

Add to this the other recent products of inventive skill, and the many wondrous machines of relieving the hand, and by which all work is done with unexampled exactness and rapidity, as well as on a scale of constantly increasing magnitude; add, also, the wonderful increase in our population, the thronging multitudes coming out of every people and race on the face of the earth, with different habits of thought, different notions of government, and different degrees of intelligence, and we have some of the elements which are changing the conditions of the great problem of popular government.

These various causes are operating in our midst to produce wealth, consolidation, centralization. The rapidity and multitude of mercantile transactions is seen in colossal fortunes, in gigantic undertakings, in enormous financial consolidations and corresponding organizations of labor. Local self-control is giving way before the pressure for centralized power. The town meeting is supplanted by the State legislature, while the latter in its turn is yielding to the expanding power of Congress. Political parties are largely under the management of