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UNIVERSITY TOPICS.

THE MATHEMATICAL CLUB OF YALE UNIVERSITY.

Tuesday, April 10.

Professor Gibbs read a paper comparing the elastic and the electrical theories of light with respect to the law of double refraction and the dispersion of colors. (This has since appeared in the American Journal of Science, June number).

Tuesday, May 1.

Capt. Chas. H. Townshend exhibited a new doubly-reflecting circle, and explained its use.

Professor Newton described a stereographic projection of the sphere (in two hemispheres) which he had had printed for use in plotting and reducing observations upon meteors. He also presented some relations which he had found to hold true between the former orbits of those meteorites which are in our collections and which have been seen to fall and the earth's orbit about the These are summed up in the following propositions.

sun.

1. The meteorites which we have in our cabinets and which were seen to fall were originally (as a class and with a very small number of exceptions) moving about the Sun in orbits that had inclinations less than 90°, that is, their motions were direct not retrograde.

2. The reason why we have only this class of stones in our collections is not one wholly or even mainly dependent on the habits of men ;-nor on the times when men are out of doors; nor on the places where men live; nor on any other principle of selection acting at or after the arrival of the stones at the ground. Either the stones which are moving in the solar system across the earth's orbit move in general in direct orbits; or else for some reason the stones which move in retrograde orbits do not in general come through the air to the ground in solid form.

3. The perihelion distances of nearly all the orbits in which these stones moved were not less than 0.5, nor more than 1.0, the earth's radius vector being unity.

THE POLITICAL SCIENCE CLUB.

May 25. Mr. F. D. Pavey read a paper on Trusts.

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The agitation over the question of trusts was defined as a new phase of a conflict between the theory of competition and the constant expansion of the scale of industrial enterprise. The distinction was noted between commercial competition and industrial competition, the former being embodied in the legal maxim that "competition is the life of trade." The inapplicability of this form of competition to modern industrial production conducted by means of a large permanent investment in plant was pointed out, as well as the influence of unrestricted competition upon the recurrence of periods of commercial inflation and depression. Two principal conclusions were reached.

1. The widespread existence of combinations of some character for regulating production and controlling prices in almost every industry.

2. Their cause is the real and not fancied evils of unrestricted competition.

The paper closed with the prediction of the probable futility of attempts to remove trusts by means of direct prohibitory legislation or indirect tariff legislation, and with the suggestion that in regulative legislation, based upon unbiased investigation and having for its object the prevention of discrimination either in transportation or prices, might be found the solution of the difficulty.

THE PHILOSOPHICAL CLUB.

April 11. Professor A. Jay DuBois read a paper on "Science and Miracle."

April 24. Mr. W. L. Cross presented a paper on Lessing's "Laokoon." The essay consisted mainly of an exposition of Lessing's theory of poetry.

A discussion followed on Wordsworth's poetry, and Matthew Arnold's conceptions of the nature and purpose of poetic art.

May 8. Dr. William T. Harris of Concord read a paper on "Philosophy its problem and method." Dr. Harris gave an introductory sketch of speculative thought, and then proceeded to elaborate his own views and to set forth clearly his philosophical position. At the close of the reading, Dr. Harris responded to a number of questions with regard to philosophical subjects.

ADDRESS AT THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE YALE DIVINITY SCHOOL, MAY 16TH, 1888.

Gentlemen of this Divinity School:

Instructors and Scholars :

THE line of thought I shall follow on this occasion is suggested by the words of the Master to be found in the fourth chapter of Mark's gospel, the twenty-eighth verse, as follows: "First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear."

These are wonderfully simple words with which to set forth the grandest of all processes and events-the coming of the kingdom of God. Yet these are the words which He who knew most about that kingdom's nature and growth chose to employ, to tell men how it is to come.

The Master was speaking under the blue canopy of a Syrian sky. He was seated in a little boat moored just off the strand of the sweet lake of Galilee. The hearers of the speaker's words were a great multitude, gathered along the water-side within sound of the gentle-voiced prophet of Nazareth. Standing, or, in many instances, sitting or lying on the ground -for many of them had come from far-they listened to his lessons; simple in language as the grass which grew about them; picturesque with colors caught from the passing moment and the present scene. Behind them stretched and rose the slopes of cultured hills; before them spread the quiet waters of the lake. The whole scene is summer-like. The speaker's words are summer-like no less. For every parable which Mark records as uttered there-and there are several of them-is of the sowing or the growth of seeds. They might have been borrowed, every one, from objects before the speaker's eye.

The preacher's subject was the coming of the kingdom of God. The coming, that is, of the time when the Divine light, and love, and will, shall thoroughly fill the world. The time when all that he elsewhere defines true religion to be-love to God and love to man, piety and brotherhood-shall be the possession of all mankind.

And how was that coming to be? Nay how had its progress hitherto been, for from of old this kingdom had been in progress. It was no new thing the preacher was telling about. God from the world's very beginning had been working at this enterprise.

"So is the kingdom of God," he says, "First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear."

Here before your eyes-in effect he declares-in these green fields about you, you have a symbol of that process which is to bring in the final paradise. This stalk of wheat typifies it. First the blade, then the ear. The light from of old has been shining in the world. And still and with increasing brightness this light shines. And the darkness will comprehend it more and more. For the manifestation of that God whom no man hath at any time seen is as the growth of a seed. The knowledge of him in the world is like leaven working in the measure of meal. The love of him grows like the reaching forth into the wider air of the branches that shelter the birds of heaven. For there is first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.

I wish now, my friends, to call your attention to three things. I wish you to notice a little more definitely the symbol itself which Christ employs. Then I wish you to glance with me at some rapid illustrations of the truthfulness of this symbol as manifested in religious history hitherto. And then I want you to cooperate with me in gaining some instruction for present and future benefit suggested by it.

First, then, the symbol itself-the growing of a grain of wheat. The learning of all ages cannot explain its mystery. Art never contrived a secret so close as that hid in that little brown seed dropped, almost invisible, into the ground. But look what happens! Out of the inanimate clay comes up the pale and timorous blade; a little scarce-seen thread on the damp spring soil; yet it holds within it that inscrutable power which no research can discover-the principle of life. Life! The word is easy to speak, but what it is we know not. God lives we say. Man lives, and, as we say, dies too. A tree is But what it is which lives in grass blade or the

alive or dead.

soul of man is

alike unknown. But anyway the wheat-plant

lives. Summer lifts it to freer air. Summer lengthens and joints the growing stalk; unfolds to the wind the waving blade; crowns the whole with the bearded ear prophetic of harvest to come.

It is in the close-wrapped folds of that bristling ear that all the purpose of the plant is hid. Autumn shows this at last. The tiny, embryonic point hidden in the ear swells and rounds and hardens to the seed. The little, formless thing for which the plant had lived becomes the perfect grain; holding in itself the mystery of reproductive life, and able to hand on that mystery of re-vivifying being to a thousand generations to

come.

This little grain, then, is the true object of the plant. The blade reached upward for it. The ear folded itself close to shelter it. When it was perfected, stalk and ear decayed. They were but its servants. They the less; it the greater. They the means; it the end.

Yet very likely a superficial eye might have thought otherwise. The blade and the ear seemed more beautiful and perhaps more important. They were attractive in themselves. They had a loveliness of their own. They seemed for awhile, more than the grain, to be the object of the plant. But the mute confession of the decaying blade, and stalk, and ear is that they live but for the grain. The lesser passes, while the greater abides. The relative drops away; the essential endures. The means are obsolete when the end is secured.

"So is the kingdom of God." There, too-said the preacher by the green fields of the lake-there too holds the same law. First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.

So much for the simple but wonderful symbol itself. I invite you now to notice how truly these words do illustrate the unfolding hitherto of that kingdom of God which has been growing in the world. See, for one moment, how they illustrate that feature of the kingdom's growth, found in a better knowledge of the Being of God himself.

The seed of the knowledge of God was planted in Eden. That was a good soil, and had the plant grown to its ripeness there, how great might have been the harvest! But when it was cast forth into the wilderness, it found but a rocky and barren ground. Still there was life in it.

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