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The Spirit of The Century

THIS

A MODERN PRAYER

HIS spirit of truth-seeking with the open mind which is so strikingly the note of these days of changing convention, this spirit of patient, humble searching for what is real in the chaos of discarded old ideas and untried new ones which surrounds us, has not been more nobly exemplified than in the prayer with which Dr. Francis Landey Patton opened the recent dedication ceremonies of the new Princeton Graduate College. It will be recalled that Dr. Patton preceded Woodrow Wilson as President of Princeton University, and, until recently, occu

pied an important chair in that stronghold

of conservative Presbyterianism, Princeton Theological Seminary. prayer was in part.

the

His

"ALMIGHTY and Eternal God, we come into Thy presence in acknowledgment of our dependence upon Thee, and bring to Thee the grateful homage of our hearts for all Thy goodness. Thou hast made us in Thine image, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth us understanding. We know in part, but our partial knowledge presupposes Thee. Thou art infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in Thy being and in Thine attributes of wisdom and goodness, and our measurements of good and evil are dependent upon our belief in Thee. When we think of the true, the beautiful, and the good, we think of Thee, and when we lose Thee as the superlative of our reason, we are left in doubt respecting the reality of knowledge. and the worth of goodness. We pray Thee to keep alive in our hearts the thought of the living God by the indwelling presence of Thy holy spirit. When we feel that knowledge is uncertain, unstable, and contingent, when we are prone to doubt our intellectual integrity, and to challenge the trustworthiness of truth it

self, help us, O God, to find a sure anchorage in Thee. When we search in vain for truth in the heights, when we fail to find it in the depths, let us know that it is nigh us, even in our hearts. For there, in the secret places of the soul, Thou hast set the thought of the perfect being, than which a greater cannot be conceived.

*

"Have mercy, Lord, on those who have lost their faith in Thee; pity those who have forsaken Thee, the fountain of living waters, and are trying to quench their thirst at cisterns of their own making,

only to find that they are broken cisterns that can hold no water. Help them, as they look upon their own disjointed and unstable opinions and feel uncertain even of the criteria of knowledge; and show them, Lord, that in Thee alone can they find support for truth or goodness. Turn their attention away from the things which the eye can see and the hands can handle, and take them up to the high levbrightness of Thy face. Show us, O Lord, els of thought where Thou dost reveal the that at bottom our reason is religious; touch our thoughts with emotion, and turn our intellectual activities into channels of feeling. So shall reflection rise up into reverence, and our rational necessities shall minister to devotion; so shall we no longer wander in the dark valley of doubt, but we will lift up our eyes to the hills from whence cometh our help, and know that our safety cometh from the Lord. So shall we learn that we live and move and have our being in Thee, and that Thou art not far from any one of us.

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"Vouchsafe, O Lord, to take this college under Thy gracious care; guide and direct all those to whom is committed the management of its affairs, to the end that all which is taught here, all books which

are written here, all worthy purposes which are formed here, all high ideals of life which find their inspiration here, may promote Thy glory and serve the highest and best interests of mankind.

"Give to those who teach a sincere love of truth. May their zeal for it be seen alike in conserving the treasures of the past, and in the search for fresh discoveries. Be with those who, in a special sense, will be the custodians of the treasured wisdom of the ages, and give them power so to teach that the lessons of the past may be applied to the needs of the present, to the end that the nation may be warned by the mistakes and profited by the wisdom of the generations that have gone before.

May those who are called

to deal with the profound problems of human duty know well the solemn obligations of their office, so that superficial views of social phenomena shall not be taken as sound philosophy, nor symptoms of social change as the signs of a new evangel. Make clear to them the basal truths of moral obligation that underlie all sound thinking in social, economic, juristic, and political morality; and may

they crown their labors in the philosophy of conduct by presenting to the young men committed to their charge, as part of the program of their life, the words of Thy holy apostle: 'Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.' And we pray that Thou wilt so bless the labors of Thy servants that at the last they may be numbered among those who, having turned many unto righteousness, shall shine as the stars forever and ever.

"We pray Thee, O God, to guide the researches of those who are in quest of new truth, and may this college hold an honorable place among the institutions of the world which make valuable additions to the sum of human knowledge. Save those who seek truth from the prejudice and mental bias that would pervert their judgment, darken their understanding, and make them inhospitable to the evidence that claims to accredit the revelation of Thyself in nature and in history."

U

NOTE ABOUT MR. MACKAYE'S BIRD MASQUE NDER the patronage of Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, "Sanctuary," the bird masque by Percy MacKaye, printed in this issue, was performed last September by artists of the Cornish colony, to dedicate Mr. Ernest Harold Bayne's now famous bird sanctuary at Meriden, New Hampshire. For the occasion, President Wilson came from Washington to witness the performance of his daughter, Miss Eleanor, as Ornis, the Bird-spirit.

Mrs. Museum, the Audubon Society, the Meriden Bird Club, and other societies, there will be held, in direct connection with the masque, a unique conference of artists of the theater and naturalists to discuss an address by Mr. MacKaye on "The Relation of Dramatic Art to Nature Conservation," one aspect of which the acted masque will illustrate. Many notable members of the world of art and society are preparing to participate, with symbolic bird-costumes, in the spectacle, which will conclude with a festival dance. One whole day will be devoted to the conference and the masque. The masque is also to be produced in London by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, to influence the pending plumage bill in Parliament, and for a like purpose, in translation, at Budapest. The International Cause of Bird Conservation is thus for the first time being served by the art of the theater as a vital civic influence.

In New York, at the end of this month, on the Hotel Astor ball-room stage, the masque will be acted again, under Mrs. Wilson's patronage, by most of the original cast, including Miss Eleanor Wilson, Juliet Barrett Rublee, Percy MacKaye, Joseph Linden Smith, and Ernest Harold Baynes. Charles Douville Coburn will enact the Plume-hunter.

Under auspices of the League for Political Education, the Natural History

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A

A PHILHARMONIC CONCERT, ULTRA-MODERN

BY SIMEON STRUNSKY

Author of "Through the Outlooking Glass," etc.

SNAP and rattle of short-arm, white kid-glove musketry. Through a little door at one side of the stage the conductor enters. Frock-coat, tall, slender; beaked nose, pointed chin, a dandy captain of Imperial Uhlans, you would say, or eminent author of contributions to the history of the passive verb in Sanskrit.

The conductor mounts his little pulpit. Diminutive pulpit about three feet by three, a dizzy perch. Some day a temperamental conductor, taking coda of Tschaikovsky's Sixth at high speed, will lose his balance and fall off to the moaning of the cellos. Expectation of such an event is always one of the elements of suspense in symphonic music.

The conductor mounts his pulpit. He bows forward like a Parsee adoring the sun, then forty-five degrees to the right, then forty-five degrees to the left, and his smoldering eyes fall on piled-up waves of feminine millinery on the orchestra floor. The conductor apparently wonders whether the feminine waves will sweep over the stage and wash away the gallant little Spartan band of first violins, second violins, trombonists, etc., upholding the oriflamme of the male sex. He evidently makes up his mind there

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is no danger.
rap of baton on desk!
horn lets out a blare
serried female ranks.
all! The challenge is reinforced by tim-
pani and kettledrums breathing defiance,
scorn, vituperation, contempt, war of the
sexes, and then pity, as the violins begin
to sing the sorrow of it all.

About face! Rap, rap,
Ready? Go! A
of defiance at the
Come one, come

At the first sound of the bugle the torrent of babbling sound in the audience, quite like the waters over the precipice at Lover's Leap, is hushed to the murmur of brook over beds of pebbles, and so to silence. Simultaneously the flutter of millinery simmers down to gentle undulation, and so to immobility. The violins sing on their Weltschmerz. I am fearfully lonely. In the same row, F, only thirty seats away, there is another man, and there are two men back in the shadow of the balcony, present either by mistake or by compulsion, gentle or other. A wireless S. O. S. of sympathy flashes through ether among us four lonely survivals of a sex. The sense of loneliness increases, probably due to the violins reciting in the minor key of the Little Russians.

Most extraordinary plumage in the world is the plumage on ladies' bonnets.

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