I am reminded of the touching words spoken by an early president of the university in the remembrance of a loss not unlike our own.  It was at the commencement exercises of the year 1678 that the Reverend President Urian Oakes thus mourned for his friend Thomas Shepard, the minister of Charlestown, an overseer of the college:  “Dici non potest quam me perorantem, in comitiis, conspectus ejus, multo jucundissimus, recrearit et refecerit.  At non comparet hodie Shepardus in his comitiis; oculos huc illuc torqueo; quocumque tamen inciderint, Platonem meum intanta virorum illustrium frequentia requirunt; nusquam amicum et pernecessarium meum in hac solenni panegyric, inter nosce Reverendos Theologos, Academiae Curatores, reperire aut oculis vestigare possum.”  Almost two hundred years have gone by since these words were uttered by the fourth president of the college, which I repeat as no unfitting tribute to the memory of the twentieth, the rare and fully ripened scholar who was suddenly ravished from us as some richly freighted argosy that just reaches her harbor and sinks under a cloudless sky with all her precious treasures.

But the great conflict through which we are passing has made sorrow too frequent a guest for us to linger on an occasion like this over every beloved name which the day recalls to our memory.  Many of the children whom our mother had trained to arts have given the freshness of their youth or the strength of their manhood to arms.  How strangely frequent in our recent record is the sign interpreted by the words “E vivis cesserunt stelligeri!” It seems as if the red war-planet had replaced the peaceful star, and these pages blushed like a rubric with the long list of the martyr-children of our university.  I can not speak their eulogy, for there are no phrases in my vocabulary fit to enshrine the memory of the Christian warrior,—­of him—­

     “Who, doomed to go in company with Pain
     And Fear and Bloodshed, miserable train,
     Turns his necessity to glorious gain—­”

     “Who, whether praise of him must walk the earth
     Forever, and to noble deeds give birth,
     Or he must fall, to sleep without his fame,
     And leave a dead, unprofitable name,
     Finds comfort in himself and in his cause;
     And while the mortal mist is gathering, draws
     His breath in confidence of Heaven’s applause.”

Yet again, O brothers! this is not the hour for sorrow.  Month after month until the months became years we have cried to those who stood upon our walls:  “Watchmen, what of the night?” They have answered again and again, “The dawn is breaking,—­it will soon be day.”  But the night has gathered round us darker than before.  At last—­glory be to God in the highest!—­at last we ask no more tidings of the watchmen, for over both horizons east and west bursts forth in one overflowing tide of radiance the ruddy light of victory!