Never have I more earnestly craved the gift of eloquence than on occasions like this, when young men are about to leave the halls in which and the men with whom they have grown into man's estate, in order to assume the solemn and weighty responsibilities not only of their own lives but those as well of others. The day upon which you are thus released from duties of one kind to assume those of another, welcome and joyous though it may be, should nevertheless be interspersed with some serious and earnest thoughts and resolutions. Old Yale sets now her stamp upon you. It will prove a passport to many homes, but must never be abused. It will entitle you to the society of the cultivated and to the respect of scholars everywhere. It will admit you to the ranks of the learned and cause you to be treated with respect and equality by some of the profoundest and most scholarly thinkers the world has even known. Yale has now furnished you with that which her ripe experience has shown to be requisite for young men commencing professional careers. As contrasted with the total of human knowledge its aggregate is not large, but it has not for centuries been the custom for men to grow gray in studies before undertaking to practice medicine, and when your own qualifications are compared with those which we of the passing generation possessed at the corresponding period of our lives, the comparison will furnish at the same time the most startling illustration of the rapid advance of medicine in the past twenty-five years. Yale has always been eminent for the versatility and originality of her teachers. Her medical history has been so well told during the past year by one of her most honored sons, Dr. Welch, that it is not necessary nor wise to go now into such historical details. The trend of science to-day is along the lines of comparative investigation, and the Bible is by no means the only literary collection which to-day is being subjected to the "higher criticism." The inspiration claimed for the contributors to that great ancient Collection is denied to the writers of great modern works, where, nevertheless, fundamental truth is as requisite for the welfare of the body as in the other for that of the soul. Only by painstaking research, laboriously repeated, do we clear the old paths of the rubbish of centuries or discover totally new ones. Pathfinders of this description have always abounded in this great institution, drawn by common impulses or attracted by some centripetal force. And though it were perhaps invidious to mention names, I nevertheless must select two of Yale's great teachers whose names are still green in the memory of all men, and ask you to note how the examples they have set and the work they have done may furnish the line of thought in which I wish you to follow me for a little while.