them. Yet he was not despondent; he looked, even in the darkness of this decade, for a New Columbus to descend out of heaven from God. In that benignat message which he uttered at the banquet given to him on his seventieth birthday he put together these questions and answers:

"What is the outlook, do you ask, at the end of threescore years and ten, as to the conditions of society? How do the prospects of humanity appear? I am glad to testify that the outlook with me is on the whole hopeful and inspiring. I feel sure that the pathway of man is still ascending. He is certainly coming to wider vision and wider control of nature. Here, in our time and place, it would be ostrich-like stupidity, it would be worse than Christian Science, to deny the existence of evils that assail and threaten the social state. But I feel confident that the coming generation will grapple with all these dangers and difficulties with manly courage, and that every one of them wili yield at last to a fair just and considerate treatment."

How much sounder, how much truer is this clear-eyed confidence than that half-despairing note with which Ruskin's message closed or the rueful pessimism of Tennyson's second Locksley Hall!

And now, as I draw still closer to my theme, and seek to unveil the hidden sources of this personality, a sense of its sacredness makes me loth to speak lest something extravagant or unworthy should be said.

Let me give you first a few words of testimony from those who knew him long ago. Dr. Thomas S. Hastings of New York City, an honored and well-beloved Presbyterian pastor, for a long time the President of Union Theological Seminary, writes me thus:

'You ask me to write you concerning the college life of my classmate the late Professor Edward Orton, LL. D.

"He entered the class of 1848 at the beginning of our Sophomore year. He was singularly modest retiring and reserved, but we soon discovered his marked ability. As a scholar he went at once to the front and maintained his position to the end of the course as the finest scholar in the class. He seemed to me a serious, deeply earnest and sincere man. He did not min

gle in college sports or college politics, and yet he commanded the respect and confidence of all. Two years ago, at the fiftieth anniversary of our graduation, Dr. Orton was the "class annalist," and his kindly and discriminating review of the characters and careers of our classmates, showed the keenness of his perceptions and the charming sweetness of his nature. I have followed his public career with affectionate interest, and though I could not always agree with the published opinions I have always believed in him and loved him as a profoundly good man."

Dr. John Bascom, who knew him a little later, sends me this testimony:

"I met Professor Orton first in Andover Theological Seminary. We spent one year, 1845-together there, though not in the same class. We were drawn to each other by an incipient freedom of religious belief, and by the pleasure we took in outdoor excursions. For fifteen or twenty years after we left the Seminary I saw nothing of him and hardly heard from him Later we became regular correspondents and interchanged visits.

"Dr. Orton had a diligent, penetrative and comprehensive mind. He did what his hand found to do, and the world lay open to his hand on many sides. He took as constant and warm an interest in all the questions pertaining to our spiritual life as any man I have ever known. The consequence was that few religious beliefs satisfied him, and he was ever anxious to lay better foundations of faith. New National History of the Christian religion' by William Mackintosh was a book to which he attached the highest value. It is remarkable for the tenacity of its faith, and at the same time for the breadth and thoroughness of its criticism. I have felt that the reason of Dr. Orton's attachment to me lay chiefly in the fact that having given myself less to physical inquiries, and never having been victimized by empirical philosophy, I was able to bring more confidence to spiritual truths and increase his courage in this direction. No change of belief with Dr. Orton was the result of indolence or indifference. He first brought to my attention 'The Religion of Israel' by Ruenen, a bock fitted to greatly modify one's interpretation of Scripture.

"As a friend Dr. Orton was very considerate and selfsacrificing. His inimitable courtesy and sweetness of voice opened a path before him like sunshine. Few men are found so uniformly fitted to do good and to avoid the evils of billigerency as was he. His usefulness and his success lay almost exclusively in his own personal endowments."

The perfect courtesy to which Dr. Bascom has referred was something more than manners, it was character. We beheld in it the natural expression of a just, benignant, gracious personality. It was never effusive; it was dignified, it was a little stately, but the stateliness was not to display himself but to honor you. And how much there was of considerate and helpful kindness in his life; how many things that he thought of saying and doing which brought strength and courage and consolation in the hours when he needed them most. All who wrought to relieve suffering and minister to human need found in him a helper; to the end of his life he was actively interested in all kinds of philanthropic work.

I have spoken of the change in his religious opinions. It must not be supposed that this change involved any loosening of his hold on the fundamental verities of religion. I have been reading.in manuscript a few of Dr. Orton's sermons, written and preached after he went to Yellow Springs, and I am sure that there is nothing in any of them that would not be welcomed as good gospel in any church in Columbus today. There is a sermon from the text, "Be not weary in well doing, for in due season ye shall reap if ye faint not," which lays down in the cicarest manner the great laws of the spiritual life, insisting that the true well-doing involves obedience to both the great commandments. "Men frequently argue," he says, "that the sustaining of right relations to each other is all that is, required, that no charge can stand against that life which fulfills the demands of what is commonly called morality. In opposition to all such half-truths the commandment comes, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart.' We cannot love our fellow-men as ourselves aright without loving God first and supremely. We can never set a right estimate upon human nature in ourselves or others, only as we have had a vision of its divine original.

There is no well-doing possible that leaves God out of the account."

There is a noble sermon on the text "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness." Very impressive is his enforcement of the truth that the deepest craving in man is this hunger for soundness and perfection of character, and that the way to find it is the way of Jesus. "With the spirit of the great Master in our hearts," he closes, "we cannot miss the real object of our lives. That such a spirit has entered into this world is the best pledge that we have of another.

"Here is righteousness-to live in the spirit and temple of Jesus of Nazareth:

"And Him evermore I behold

Walking in Galilee,

Through the cornfield's waving gold,
In hamlet, in wood and in wold

By the shores of the beautiful sea.
He toucheth the sightless eyes,
The demons before Him flee;

To the dead He sayeth, Arise

To the living, Follow me!'"

Still another sermon from these last words, "Follow me and I will make you fishers of men," which was first preached as the baccalaureate sermon to the graduating class in this church in 1880, and which was repeated in the college chapel in March, 1888, is broadly and deeply and grandly Christian from beginning to end.

In his ways of stating some of the Christian truths Dr. Orton would have differed from many who call themselves Christians. The miraculous elements in Christianity were not so significant to him as they are to some of us. Yet even concerning these he said in his last great address on "Man's Place in Nature," "For myself I have no objection to miracles, in themselves considered, so that they are properly supported. As far as our present knowledge goes the entrance of life into the world was a miraculous event."

His faith in a personal God was clear and unwavering. "If," he says, "life, personality, reason, conscience, imagination

come from nature, then nature has in it a supreme, personal, rational, moral element. In other words, God is in nature. Personality cannot spring from anything less than, lower than itself the stream cannot rise higher than the fountain, from which it flows."

His belief in Jesus Christ he might not have chosen to put into your words or mine. Let us not ask him to do any such thing. Let us permit him to express it in his own way. In his address at Hamilton College eleven years ago he said: "Beyond the final and all comprehending law of reason and righteousness which was laid down by Jesus of Nazareth it is impossible to go. The whole was uttered then, and any other statement is but a repetition."

In the noble speech on "Man's Place In Nature," he speaks of the great forces of good will and kindness which are changing the character of our modern civilization, saying, "This view of life and man has, I need not say, a historic source. There was a date when it was first announced, a point on the face of the earth from which as a center the message worked its way outward. We follow it back with absolute certainty to Jesus of Nazareth. He taught the new doctrine in words, he taught it still more impressively by his life and by his death. The Christian ideal of character can be traced as definitely to this source as the Declaration of Independence to Jefferson or Magna Charta to the barons. This ideal is bound to interest the earth. It is the noblest conception of man and the universe that the mind has ever reached."

And again in the baccalaureate sermon, quoting the bold words of the Fisherman of Galilee who calls to us: "Follow me!" he asks whether, after all the lapse of years and the growth of art, and the spread of science and the triumphs of civilization, there may not now be some one who could more worthily utter these words, and his answer is: "No, no. This art the Nazarene has inspired. Science has grown only along the pathways he has trod, and all that is most characteristic and permanent in modern civilization has its origin in him. He stands today further in advance of our highest, thought and