Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/552

Rh that has enabled you to occupy that position you are in to-day expects it. The fair name and honor of your Alma Mater demand the culture and moral training you have received will impel you towards it. And great as is your responsibility, no less great will be your reward, if, as highly influential members of this great people, you are enabled to carry joy and gladness into a million homes, and become a potent means in helping on the regeneration of your country. Then it may be, that that dawn of a better day for India which, is already gilding the hilltops of time shall, as the ages roll on, brighten into a glorious noon, when the Aryan of the West reunited with the Aryan of the East in a common brotherhood, with common high hopes and lofty aspirations, with truth, righteousness and peace as their watchwords shall carry their own life, and light and liberty into the remotest and darkest regions of the earth.  

My Lord Chancellor and Gentlemen,—The bye-laws governing the procedure at Convocation require that a Fellow of the Senate should make an address to those who have been admitted to the Degrees of the University, exhorting them to conduct themselves in a manner suitable to the academical position gained by them. This responsible duty has, on this occasion, been assigned to me by His Excellency the Chancellor, and while I owe it to him to say that I feel thankful to him for the honor he has conferred on me, I owe it to myself to add that I am keenly sensible of the difficulty of the task I have undertaken. Gentlemen, you who have just received degrees. You have this day been admitted into the honorable body of the Graduates of the University of Madras. Your admission was preceded by a period of probation during which you were subjected to a severe discipline. At the close of this period, you were examined by a body of experts who have declared that you have been weighed in the balance and that you have not been found wanting. And the University, before setting the seal of its approval on you, has wisely obtained from you solemn promises that you will so conduct yourselves in every relation of life as to be an honour to the University, and a blessing to the country that gave you birth. By taking these promises from you, and by deputing a member of the Senate to impress on you their full meaning and significance, the University wishes you to understand that it attaches no less importance to the social and political virtues; to character and conduct,—