Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 3.djvu/67

 thoughtful persons towards zeal for learning and eagerness for self-improvement. It evidences how you are the objects of the tenderest solicitude from all quarters. It discloses the nature and scope of that fellowship, transcending faculties and professions, which a University seeks to establish. It aims at awakening in your minds and hearts a lively sense of your responsibility to augment the stores of your own knowledge and experience by incessant industry and to dedicate your powers and opportunities to the welfare of your fellow-beings. It commemorates your reception into a vast academic brotherhood of noble aims, generous sympathies and devoted services. It celebrates your initiation into that second—the higher and holier—life of the Spirit in Wisdom, Goodness and Grace.—My first word of counsel to you, therefore, is that, you value your degree at its intrinsic worth which is unquestionably high. Tour degree is your testimonial that you embody in yourself a respectable measure of talent and capacity, of perseverance and industry, of self-control and self-denial. It is the witness unto your possession of a