p. 15 | Good Common Sense

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Oct 3, 1906

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 32, No. 38.

Good Common Sense

Good Common Sense.—President Hopkins, of Williams College, at the last commencement in that institution, delivered the baccalaureate sermon. He condemned bigotry, but says that our danger is not so much from bigotry and intolerance as from easy-going indifference to all truth. He declares: "Better give a diploma to Mr. Feeble Mind than to Mr. Fickle Mind, to Mr. Narrow Mind rather than to Mr. Double Mind. There is more hope for them. Better a bigot in a professor's chair, all aflame with one good thought, one high purpose, than a broad-minded, fickle philosopher wandering entertainingly and aimlessly around the border lines of all fields of thought, murmuring his speculations of maliferous, unintelligible phrases, but arriving nowhere and building no strong structure of truth on any living rock. This is he of whom the Scriptures speak, 'the blind leading the blind.'" And he declares truly that such a man is not a bold discoverer, but a drifting derelict. It may be needful to throw away our charts of discarded channels, but it is never safe to ignore the north star.