(soft hymnal music) (choir singing) 

- If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. Therefore, let us offer unto God, a prayer of confession. Let us pray. Eternal Father, who art not only all mighty, but all holy, we cannot praise Thy glorious name without remembering that we are sinners. Yet we want to forget that we are supposed to think Thy thoughts after Thee, that we ought to behave as members of my family, that we are looked upon by Thee, and by our fellows, as Thy representatives on Earth. We find the strain of living the Godly life too much. We're baffled and disappointed by the contrast between what we're meant to be and what we are. But we come back ashamed of our performance, yet aware that we are not ourselves, when we stay away from Thee. We ask in humble confidence for forgiveness, for more than forgiveness. On this Whit Sunday, we ask for Thy Spirit within us. That our own self-centered lives may be displaced by Thy presence to the end that we may behave like men and women whom thou has made Thy known, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. And hear these words of assurance from the New Testament that He is a God who forgives sin. Who is like unto God, who pardons iniquity and passes over transgression. He does not retain His anger forever because He delights in steadfast love. He will again have compassion upon us. He will tread our iniquities underfoot. He will cast all our sins in the depths of the sea. Jesus said, "Him who comes to me, I will not cast out." Our sins are forgiven for His sake. Therefore be of good courage. And so let us offer unto God, a unison prayer of Thanksgiving. For all the things for which we have never given You thanks oh Lord, we humbly bow our hearts. For common things of Earth, which sustain our bodies in health and strength, though we pay scant attention to them, we thank You. For far off things in the ages passed, or in lands distant from us, which enlarge our heritage and expand our horizons, we give You thanks. For invisible things of Heaven and Earth which sweeten life with beauty and grace, we express our thanks. For things of the Spirit, which disclose to us the beauty of Your holiness and sanctify the passing time with eternal meaning, we give You thanks. For things bought with a great price given to us without cost, by which we are deepened and heightened to the measure of Christ Our Lord, we give You thanks. Though there be no end to Your gifts, help us to remember them as they are revealed to us day by day. Amen. (soft hymnal music) 

- The scripture lesson is taken today from Isaiah 6:1-8, 1 John 1:5-10. "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up and His train filled the temple. Above Him stood the Seraphim. Each had six wings with two, He covered his face, and with two He covered his feet. And with two He flew. And one called to another and said, 'Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole world is full of His glory.' And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of Him who called and the house was filled with smoke. And I said, 'Woe is me for I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.' Then flew one of the Seraphim to me having in his hand a burning coal which he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said, 'Behold, this has touched your lips. Your guilt is taken away and your sin is forgiven.' And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, 'Whom shall I send and who will go with us?' Then I said, 'Here I am, send me.'" "The light shines in darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came for testimony to bear witness to the light that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness to the light. The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world. He was in the world and the world was made through Him yet the world knew Him not." (choir singing a hymnal song) 

- The Lord be with you. 

- And also with you. 

- Let us pray. Let us offer a prayer of intercession for all conditions of men. Loving and Holy Spirit of God, we pray that we and all men may increasingly work together. That Thy will may be done on the Earth. That the resources of the Earth may be gathered, distributed and used with unselfish motives and scientific skill for the benefit of all. That beauty may be given to our towns and left to our countryside. That children may be finally bred and finally trained that there may be open ways and peace and freedom from end to end of all the Earth. That all men may learn goodwill through keeping Thy company, through love for Jesus Christ, our Lord. And let us offer a prayer of intercession for national unity. Remember oh Lord the nation to which we belong that in righteousness and truth, we may be established. Extend for Thy mercy's sake, Thy blessing to this our land. That within this realm of different races, peace may rain and prosperity with love of right and justice. Help us better to understand and love those who are of a different race or color from ourselves. Remembering that we are all members of the one family. Overcome in us, any want of charity, any manner of prejudice. By Thy more abounding goodness and loving kindness, may our agreements be greater than our differences and may our unity in Thee sanctify all our natural diversities of opinion. Grant that there may be open ways and peace and freedom from end to end of the nation. And let us offer a prayer of supplication for all who worship with us in these chapel services. Almighty God whose house this is, we ask Thy blessing for many people as we come toward the last Lord's Day of another regular academic year. On those who with diligence and preparation have led us in the ministry of the word, spoken and preached, on those who have led us in the ministry of music our choir, our director, our organist, our calender. All of whom have helped us make a joyful noise unto Thee. On those who have guided us in the ministry of the liturgy, bringing out of their treasures prayers, old and new, corporate and individual, to comfort and to shock, but always to glorify Thee. On those who have occupied the pews, the ministry of the pew, and have made our worship corporate, by prayer and praise and listening. From the university community, from the town, from far places, strangers in our midst, who are well known to Thee, and those who have carried out the ministry of service, ushers and collectors, chapel guides and chapel monitors and chapel hostesses, secretaries and janitors and maids whose work is so necessary for our wellbeing and Thy glory. Bless them all oh Lord. Bless them, everyone that has offered a special prayer of supplication on this Whit Sunday, send we beseech Thee all Mighty God Thy Holy Spirit into our hearts, that He may direct and rule us according to Thy will, comfort us in all our affections, defend us from error and lead us into truth through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with Thee and the same Holy Spirit liveth and reignth one God, we're old without Him. And now as our savior Christ has taught us we humbly pray together saying our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil for Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen. 

- Provide you with the scriptural basis of what I undertake to say this morning. I read from Philippians 4: 8-9. "Finally brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honorable, 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 the things which ye both learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do. And the God of peace shall be with you." If I mistake not the nation is deeply troubled, these days. Some universities are in partial disarray, many seas with unrest, academic life is disturbed, studies are in jeopardy, students are aroused and profoundly stirred, teachers are disquieted, administrators alternate between hope and despair. The fact is that Cambodia touched off the smoldering pile of young adult resentment. To our day protracted war that had already amassed appalling records for debauchery, atrocity and futility. The pattern of turbulence and of closed universities of Southern Europe may in fact, lie ahead of us. Mass education adds to the problem by geometric progression. Not only does it provide arenas for massive ferment, but mass education itself is potentially a reservoir of vast political power for ill or for good. In the face of these realities, it is perhaps already too late. Too late in the day, to hope for a constructive answer to the question, what is the role of the university in today's society? In some ways, the events of the past three years make the answer at all too apparent. For the New Left, the decision has already been made. It holds that the university is a cheap instrument for social revolution. It is just this, that a stooped conservative reactionaries perceive. And it is this which many teachers and scholars pursuing their researchers, with time honored a non-judgemental objectivity have been slow to take in. All decent people inside and outside the universities are aghast over the desperate events at Kent State. And now, at Jackson state. They are also, I believe, bewildered and shocked by recent calculated student indecencies at Princeton in March. These plainly violated standards of academic process and scholarly restraint. Ordinary people do not comprehend disruption of the university when disruption is planned and then justified as an instrument of social protest. They have not up till now, understood that the university is, at all the chief instrument of societal change. They are perhaps still thinking of the university in the manner of John Henry Newman's idea of it. Namely as the place of liberal learning, where knowledge as he said, is capable of being its own inn. Knowledge is capable of being its own inn. In his "Idea of a University," Newman spoke of university education as a comprehensive view of truth in all its branches. This liberal education he taught in genders the philosophic temper, it instills a habit of mind serene and compose, which fosters, as he said, throughout life the personal attributes of freedom, equitableness, calmness, moderation and wisdom. For such conceptions of university education, the platform of the New Left is on the face of it, unintelligible. From the Newman perspective, that of the 19th century, the eloquent defense of Princeton graduate student, Michael Teitelman, on behalf of his fellows, charged with disruption and insubordination must seem incredible and outrageous. He says this, "This is a political trial. And that's what we want everyone to understand. We are not on trial here. What's on trial is the ruling class. It's racism and imperialism. We have said that the real explanation of all that we do in this trial is to be found in the unhuman unfree, repressive social reality about us. We do not deny that we organized the demonstration against Mr. Hickle. We explained why we did so and why we thought he had right to do so. It is not necessary here to enlarge upon the bill of particulars with which Mr. Teitelman indicts the established orders of society, including the university." It suffices to observe two or three things. The first is, that by asserting the political character of the hearing for students charged with violating the university code, Mr. Teitelman means to exempt the defendants from the standards appertaining to their membership in the university community. He does so on grounds of the rightness of their political views. Secondly, and behind this is the premise that the really sufficient reason for continuing university membership, is political enlightenment in liberating social action. Thirdly, that disruption of university practice and academic protocol is nonsensurable if it is politically justifiable. The end justifies the means. Our ends are right. Therefore our behavior, however obnoxious, is justified. But beyond these, is the underlying premise about the nature of the university that justifies this logic of expediency with immunity. It is that the university is at least a staging for perhaps even an instrument of social revolution. Certainly the New Left is not about using the university as such under the guidance of ends taken to be as Teitelman says right. So right indeed. So valid, is the end in view. That even means which denature the university are not deterrents to the apostles of social reform urged on as they are by what they believe to be a justifiable revulsion. Where the oppressive established orders. Both inside and outside the university. The agony of the present day university then, is something like this, it is caught in the pincers of a societal revolution surrounding it. While at the same time, the university is itself disturbed and disrupted from within, by morally defensible outrage against maladies without. It is caught in the middle between societal inaction on the one side, and leftist reaction within. Meanwhile, often as at Princeton, the leftist reactors within, claim all the immunities of the academy while exhibiting the behavior of fanatics. The resulting internal conflict is insupportable. But of all civilized institutions, the university committed as it is to rational inquiry, persuasion and the honor code of the gentlemen. Is most vulnerable to disorder. The discipline of the university is and remain mainly, self discipline. When the university however, becomes the focus of infectious ills of the environing society, it is the first casualty of the prevailing cultural disorder. Liberal education is incompatible with the illiberal spirit. When the latter waxes the former wins. But this special vulnerability is not all that imperils the university. In addition, by its very nature, the university tends to invite however unintentionally, the disorders with which it is presently surely afflicted. For the university is as the medieval school man understood, a microcosm of the world. It is a microcosm of the surrounding culture. In so far as there is reasonable working harmony between the ends or goals of a society and its institutional support of them there is stability. In such a case, there is also stability enough for the peculiar role and function of the university. When the contrary prevails, that is when there is contrariety between new emerging goals and the institutional vehicles for their realization. Then the resulting ferment and strife in the surrounding culture first comes to articulate consciousness in the university, as the microcosm of the macrocosm. To be more explicit. It is the nature of the academy from the time of Plato, that it should proceed on the Socratic premise that the unexamined life is not worth living. And that therefore, the purpose of the academy is just exactly to examine life as it is being lived to the end of its progressive betterment. In a sense, the academy has always stood then in the role of critic of the established or prevailing culture. That is why, the gown and the town have frequently experienced some measure of estrangement and some need of reconciliation. But in times of vast cultural revision, when the nicest of history moves toward the renovation of cultural forms in the interest of squaring the practices of society with a larger human good. This need, frequently has its initial acknowledgement in the university. Here, the inequality or contrariety between the things that are, and the things that ought to be, comes first to disquieting awareness. And in our time of immense societal distortion, stubbornly resistant it seems, to humane solutions by way of present modes of political and institutional response, the university tends to become the home of radical solutions to societal ills. All this obtained while the ailing society is laggard, either frankly to acknowledge its sickness or to seek a cure. So, the university spawns social activists, students and faculty with varying degrees of revolutionary commitment. Among these, the most zealous like those at Princeton lately, are not above turning the academy into an instrument of social revolution. Even disrupting the educational process itself in the interest of radical renovation of the political order and its economic phase. Their strength lamentably, is that they have too good a case against society. But at the same time, they denature the function of the academy by using it as a political tool. So it has come to pass that the currently ascendant idea of the university is that of the New Left. They hold that the university is properly an agent of societal change, at times they act and speak as if the university should become the church. It cannot be denied that in some part they represent a rebirth of conscience of which the church should always be the promoter. But prompted by great righteous indignation, these apostles of social reform have their residents in the academy. Yet the academy is not the church. And unlike the church, the academy has not required that its members be regenerate. But apostles of righteousness who are not regenerate may easily become fanatics. New Left does I think, however, follow in some part, the admonition of St. John, in his first epistle. It comprehends, what in fact, the academy has characteristically been slow to acknowledge, perhaps almost by function. This namely, that the truth is not something to be known only or always to be being sought after, but rather that the truth is something to be done, and now. The New Left in part then seems to hear what church men ought always to hear. "If we say that we have fellowship with Him," says St. John, "And walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth." It is the New Testament and the church which always say that the truth is for doing. The New Left is urging that there is no more needed pedagogy among us. And no Christian can quite deny it. The fact is that the truth for doing as St. Paul declared is just exactly the trinity of faith, hope and love. And the exasperating thing, is that the New Left concurs with St. James, that faith without works is dead. Nevertheless, the academic apostles of social righteousness are mainly blind or perhaps just uninformed, respecting Isaiah's authentic apostolic calling. They are unaware that just because he was a man of unclean lips dwelling among a people of unclean lips, Isaiah could not be trusted with mission until he had acknowledged his complicity in the sin and guilt of his own people. He could not be trusted with mission until he had been cleansed for mission. He was not sent until he had received the grace of a divinal forgiveness, which preserves righteous indignation from supercilious fanaticism. From the Princeton Weekly, nothing is playing or respecting the academic apostles or some of them, the academic apostles of righteousness and is declared in Proverbs. "This is a generation that curse their father and bless not their mother, this is a generation that are pure in their own eyes and yet are not washed from their filthiness." Now the biblical view of man does not indulge such an interpretation of the generation gap as were distinguished between one generation and its successor by the sinfulness of the former and the righteousness of the latter. Nevertheless, only invincible ignorance would deny that the young adult generation are warranted in some very grave indictments they bring against contemporary American society. What happened at Kent State and perhaps at Jackson, is a frightening disclosure I fear of the moral sickness of our culture. Surely it is a time of peril for any nation when agents of government charged with maintaining the peace resort to overwhelming force against an indiscriminate body of unarmed citizenry, especially youthful ones. Such official excess, is probable evidence, as was stated by John W. Gardener this week in the New York Times, that "We are," says he, "Dealing with this integrative forces that threaten our survival as a society." As for the universities, and I speak after nearly 30 years experience in three such institutions, the universities, as microcosms, cannot sustain much longer the inner turmoil engendered by the unresolved ills of the larger society. After nearly three years of internal divisiveness, the universities are becoming disfunctional. It is true as Mr. John Gardner, also is reported to have said, that today's divisiveness is not confined to one issue. "There are multiple points of conflict," he said, "The war, race, the economy, political ideology. There are multiple risks," he said, "Between the old and the young, between the regions between social classes." This is all true. Yet I suspect, so far as the universities are concerned, it is much as I wrote to the Divinity School alumni a year ago, namely this, that until the futility of Vietnam is retired with its violation of conscience, the skepticism of youth toward the wisdom of their elders and the propriety of established orders will not receive. Vietnam is the scandalous symbol of the bankruptcy of capitalistic democracies way of meeting the future or dealing with human destiny by stereotyped and outworn patterns of response. More than anything, and I still believe it, it epitomizes the frustration of the young with the shear inertia of the established. And I would affirm again what I then declared that unless creativity replaces inertia, Vietnam may turn out to be the fatal nemesis of the American way of life, it's dissolution of confidence. This past week, Mr. Gardener declared that "A crisis of confidence is indeed upon him." He said, "We must move vigorously to solve our most crucial problems and we must seek a healing of the spirit of the nation." He is right. And it was in commentary upon these words that the Times noted this, that almost two years ago, the National Commission on Causes and Prevention of Violence warned that the greatest threat to American survival was not from without, but from within. Therefore, we might begin to see, however be late it be, that the real enemies are as the scripture says, those of our own household, including us. And it is this unblankable fact I believe, that simply renders obsolete the premises and consequent policies that seem to justify Vietnam in the first place. Certainly they are now discredited for any further extension of the wall. And that is the scandal of Cambodia. It not only offends against the decent opinion of mankind, to use the words of Jefferson, but flies in the face of reason itself, too many. There's one student from Pfeiffer this week rightly wrote, "It seems an invitation to societal suicide." What if there is to be, as Gardener has urged, a healing of the spirit of the nation. Then surely there must be in addition to acknowledgement of our moral blame as a people, may recovery of moral integrity and above all a recovery of vision. If as Proverbs puts it, "Without a vision, the people throw off constraint and perish." The question before us is whether as a people we will give ye now at length to our foundations. Brethren, therefore, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honorable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are of good report, think on these things. So, counsel St. Paul, but more emphatically he enjoins us. Thus, these things do and the peace of God shall be with you. Brethren, our jeopardy as a nation, the threat of our dissolution as a people and as a society, is that we cannot continue longer to exist in defiance of the moral universe. At last, and in escape of that, the truth is for doing. But it is the nation and individuals who compose it that must do the truth, including us. The universities cannot in this substitute for society. Neither can they safely assume the apostolate of the church. Only this week, student activism has resorted to the legitimate avenues of democratic legislative process. Brethren, this may be a turn of the tie. I pray God, the legislators may hear. Amen, and amen. (soft instrumental music) (choir singing a hymnal song) (soft instrumental music) (choir singing a hymnal song) (instrumental music) (choir sings another hymnal song) 

- Oh God in whom we live and move and have our being, here we offer and present unto Thee, our silver and our gold, the symbol of ourselves to be a reasonable, holy and living sacrifice unto Thee through Jesus Christ, our Lord. May the blessing of God, come upon you abundantly. May it keep you strong and tranquil in the truth of His promises. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. ♪ Amen ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ ♪ Amen ♪ (instrumental music) (music ends)