Kansas University Weekly.
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do with principalities and powers, with political or social forms, with monarchies or republics, with any merely outward and forcible restraints. And when Jesus told his disciples that the truth should make them free, he had little thought of telling them how to throw off from Palestine the strong hand of the Roman State. But I am not going to preach a sermon on liberty. I do not want to entangle the word with any theological of even religious confusion. I want to take it for granted that you bring to mind, what you certainly know, that there are two liberties, one of form and one of reality. This is by no means, and you know this too, a conception of religion and religionists only; the English poet, singing in his prison, knew that "stone walls do not a prison make," and that he might laugh at bolts and bars and fetters if he only "in his soul is free." Taking for granted that you have this in mind, I want to bring it home to our college life and ask you how much of it is shadow and how much substance, how much mere lack of restraint and rule, how much is real independance of character, self-direction, fearless integrity, and whatever else makes up the reality of freedom for a man or woman. Perhaps some of you may remember that last fall I said here that in my opinion the most characteristic and striking thing about our college life, for those who are new-comers to it, is its freedom, its lack of restriction, of the anxious watching, constant guidance and loving reproof of home; the sense that comes to most here for the first time that you can at last do just as you please. Now what you feel in this way is of course only outward and formal freedom; and while I tried then to point out some of the conspicuous dangers that lurk in it for your characters, still mainly in the gristle period, but fast hardening into bone, I do not mean at all to lament it or decry it. For merely outward and formal though it be, it is still precious as the condition under which real and subtantial freedom is developed. I am going to point out some signs that to me seem to mean that this real and substantial liberty is being missed in certain
directions and by some students This real and substantial freedom means intelligent independence and wise self-direction, self-control, not the independence of the mule, not the self-direction of the savage. It means the control of one's developed and perfected powers, their emancipation from prejudice or appetite or passion. Now there is no worse tyranny over our powers than that of indolence. That is why Dr. Boynton the other morning urged you to study the things that you find particularly hard. In proportion to your effort will be the development of your powers and faculties. The signs that this fact is not borne in mind as much as one might wish are, the exceeding popularity of extra holidays, the extent of the practice of skipping classes, the eager search by some for easy studies—snaps, as you call them—, and the greater desire to get a credit than to do work. I ask you to consider whether, if you yield to these things, you do not do so at the sacrifice of that real freedom which it is one of the highest aims of your college course to give you?
ASSOCIATIONDuring the storm last Wednesday, I was in a class which met in a room on the third floor. We had an opportunity to feel as frightened as we pleased. One of the students told me afterwards how she felt during the hour. She lives in the city and is never agitated during a storm, and she accounted for her fright Wednesday in this way: Eight years ago, while visiting in southern Kansas, she lived in a two-story stone house. The house was on a hill where no protection was afforded. A storm as violent as the one Wednesday, passed over the hill, damaging the house and frightening the occupants. She had not experienced the feelings she had during that storm until last week and she attributed it entirely to the fact that this was the first time in the eight years that, during a storm, she had been in a situation which recalled so vividly the occurrences in the stone house on the hill-top. M. J. O.