William R. Cannon - "The Future of the University" (December 13, 1970)

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-	Almighty God, whose mercy is over all thy works,	0:05
	we praise thee for the blessings	0:10
	which have been brought to mankind	0:12
	by thy holy church throughout the world.	0:14
	We bless thee for the grace of thy sacraments,	0:17
	for our fellowship in Christ with thee and with one another,	0:21
	for the teaching of the scriptures,	0:25
	for the preaching of thy word.	0:28
	We thank thee for the holy example	0:30
	of thy saints in all ages,	0:33
	for thy servants departed this life in thy faith and fears,	0:35
	for the memory and example of all that has been true	0:40
	and good in their lives.	0:44
	And we humbly beseech thee that we may be numbered with them	0:46
	in the great company of the redeemed in heaven,	0:50
	through Jesus Christ our Lord.	0:53
	Amen.	0:56
	Now, as our savior Christ has taught us, we pray.	0:57
	Our Father who art in heaven, halloweth be thy name.	1:01
	Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth	1:06
	as it is in heaven.	1:09
	Give us this day our daily bread,	1:11
	and forgive us our trespasses	1:14
	as we forgive those who trespass against us.	1:16
	Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.	1:20
	For thine is the kingdom, and the power,	1:24
	and the glory, forever.	1:27
	Amen.	1:29
-	Unless the Lord builds the house,	2:32
	those who build it labor in vain.	2:35
	Unless the Lord watches over the city,	2:38
	the watchman stays awake in vain.	2:41
	It's in vain that you rise up early to go late to rest,	2:45
	eating the bread of the anxious toil.	2:49
	For he gives to his beloved sleep.	2:52
	Behold sons are a heritage from the Lord,	2:55
	the fruit of the womb a reward.	2:58
	Like arrows of the hands of a warrior	3:00
	are the sons of one's youth.	3:02
	Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them.	3:05
	He shall not be put to shame	3:08
	when he speaks with his enemies at the gate.	3:10
	And now from the seventh gospel of Matthew,	3:17
	beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing	3:21
	but inwardly are ravenous wolves.	3:26
	You will know them by their fruit.	3:29
	Are grapes gathered from thorns or figs from thistles?	3:33
	So every sound tree bears good fruit,	3:38
	but the bad trees bears evil fruit.	3:41
	The sound tree cannot bear evil fruit,	3:45
	nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.	3:48
	Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down	3:51
	and thrown into the fire.	3:54
	Thus, you will know them by their fruit.	3:56
	Not everyone who says to me,	4:00
	"Lord, Lord," shall enter the kingdom of heaven,	4:02
	but he who does the will of my father, who is in heaven.	4:05
	On that day, many will say to me,	4:10
	"Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name,	4:12
	and cast out demons in your name	4:16
	and do many mighty works in your name?"	4:18
	Then I will declare to them,	4:22
	"I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers."	4:24
	Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them	4:30
	will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock,	4:35
	and the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew	4:40
	and beat upon the house,	4:43
	but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock.	4:45
	Everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them	4:51
	will be like a foolish man	4:56
	who built his house upon the sand.	4:57
	The rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew	5:01
	and beat against the house and it fell.	5:04
	And great was the fall of it.	5:08
	And when Jesus finished these sayings,	5:11
	the crowd was astounded and speechless.	5:15
	For he taught them as one who had authority	5:18
	and not as their scribes.	5:21
	(religious liturgical music)	5:25
	The Lord be with you. Let us pray.	11:34
	Let us offer unto God our litany of commemoration.	11:46
	Almighty and eternal God, whom our fathers trusted,	11:53
	we thou children on this day of remembrance	12:00
	offer unto thee our commemoration	12:04
	for the men and women of this state,	12:11
	Methodist and Quakers, farmers and merchant,	12:15
	teachers and administrators who believed in education	12:19
	and made their belief to prevail	12:25
	for the embodiment of their dreams, private school, academy,	12:30
	college, university, founded in hope,	12:38
	continued with perseverance,	12:43
	growing in outreach, established in assurance,	12:46
	for educators whose vision was matched by their courage,	12:54
	whose patience was tempered by their reputation,	13:00
	whose idealism was moderated by their awareness of sin,	13:05
	for the new family, father, sons, and their wives,	13:13
	grandchildren in continuing generations	13:19
	who with wonder and surprise, bewilderment and tenacity,	13:24
	made a good foundation, built a worthy school,	13:30
	and provided for exciting growth beyond their pain	13:35
	in years unseen.	13:39
	For the continuance of good ideas,	13:44
	the union of truth and relevance,	13:48
	the freedom of responsible academic thought	13:52
	and the right to public service,	13:55
	the joint pair of the body and spirit,	13:58
	the linking of science and humanities,	14:03
	the realization that the old border changes,	14:06
	for the future of our university,	14:14
	established to thy glory and for the relief of mans estate,	14:18
	for the consecration of the discontent of the young,	14:23
	for wisdom in the conservatism of the middle age,	14:28
	for resiliency in the obstinacy of the old,	14:32
	for understanding, cooperation,	14:37
	a sense of your world within our community.	14:41
	And today, we shall ascribe as is most due of praise	14:47
	and glory, world without end.	14:52
	Amen.	14:56
	(liturgical music)	16:53
	(liturgical music)	20:08
	(liturgical music)	22:51
	(faint prayer)	24:10
-	This is the third Sunday in Advent,	25:10
	and also the occasion for the celebration	25:15
	of the founding of this great university.	25:19
	It's a happy coincidence that the establishment of Jesus	25:24
	took place in this holy season.	25:30
	We give thanks to God for all these years.	25:33
	And next to the church herself,	25:38
	no institutional gift quite matches that of the university.	25:43
	Hear now the reading of the word of God.	25:50
	Except the Lord build a house,	25:55
	they labor in vain that build it.	26:00
	Except the Lord keep the city,	26:04
	the watchmen stay awake in vain.	26:07
	Andre Marose, who was minister of culture	26:13
	and the (indistinct) administration,	26:17
	said at Charles the (indistinct)	26:20
	that he was a man of the day before yesterday	26:23
	and of the day after tomorrow.	26:27
	That's the way we Americans feel about the university.	26:30
	The university was an institution in the land	26:37
	before our nation was conceived.	26:43
	Although the declaration of independence	26:47
	was the graduate of William and mayor	26:51
	and the chief protagonist of the American revolution,	26:55
	the gangster that stung alum bringing indecisive people	27:02
	into a new nation was an alumnus of heart.	27:09
	University has grown in this country	27:16
	with the country itself.	27:19
	And today, we think of the university in America	27:22
	as having reached the pace of university development	27:31
	all over the world.	27:37
	Our grandfathers who had the resources to do so,	27:40
	gutted medicine and surgery in them,	27:47
	and our father felt	27:52
	that they could not get a good theological education	27:54
	outside the university of German	27:59
	and German speaking Switzer.	28:02
	But today, people come to the United States	28:07
	from all over the world to study everything.	28:13
	And the advancement of science and technology	28:18
	in this country is comparable in the modern world.	28:22
	What the pyramid of Egypt, the hanging gardens of Bethlehem,	28:31
	and the glasses of rose were damn picky.	28:39
	The amazement and the super function of all mankind.	28:44
	But we are proud of this university,	28:50
	Quakers and domestic who founded this little college	28:55
	which was (indistinct).	28:59
	Trinity college which grew up here in Durham	29:03
	and which was transformed	29:07
	and expanded in the Duke University	29:09
	give all of us pride and satisfaction.	29:14
	The people who built it	29:20
	honestly believed that this institution would last	29:24
	as long as the people establish first.	29:29
	We feel about the same way.	29:35
	That's why this day in the celebration	29:38
	we are proud of what's here,	29:42
	and we look forward to along and even more wonderful things.	29:45
	We think that universities are in this structure.	29:52
	They've contributed so much to civilization.	30:00
	They've given us our culture. They'll always lie.	30:05
	The university was here the day before yesterday,	30:10
	and the university will be here the day after tomorrow.	30:16
	That's a splendid assumption,	30:22
	but I wonder if it's really well found.	30:25
	There's no guarantee of immortality	30:31
	to any human institution.	30:33
	So many of them, like man who has faith them,	30:37
	do not survive for long their creation.	30:43
	Our mortality tends to rub on all that we made.	30:49
	We say the university is of the day before yesterday.	31:01
	Then that's true.	31:05
	But today before yesterday is not a long period of time.	31:08
	Relative to the duration of human history,	31:14
	the existence of the university is short indeed.	31:18
	The university is the product of medieval civilization	31:23
	in the west.	31:30
	The university came into existence in the 12	31:33
	and in the 13th saints.	31:36
	Egypt on the Nile, and Syria and Babylon in the U18 valley,	31:40
	Asia in the (indistinct), and China north,	31:49
	all achieve great civilization	31:55
	without even the samples of the university.	31:57
	The glory that was (indistinct)	32:01
	and the grand that was rolled	32:05
	were achieved in the absence of the university.	32:08
	Whether the university will be here	32:15
	the day after tomorrow, it's problematic.	32:17
	I got the report of the president university	32:26
	to the Yale Corporation, President Kingman Bruce,	32:31
	that said in that report, "Everybody associated with jail,	32:36
	hates jail's assistance for grants."	32:41
	I did too when I was invited 10 years ago	32:47
	to meet the president, principal provost,	32:51
	seven years ago when I became his successor.	32:56
	But he said, "Now I'm not sure about jail's future.	33:03
	Jail's future is in question. It may even be endowed."	33:12
	The event of the past year jail have called into question	33:19
	jails communities and jail prison.	33:25
	Whether the university lasts or not	33:31
	depends on what the university become.	33:34
	Whether the university survives,	33:38
	depends on what the university is able to do.	33:41
	Even this great university, this place that we love	33:46
	and the buildings and people means so very much to us,	33:53
	this university in its view,	34:03
	depend more than we'll ever realize on what we do here	34:09
	now in the present.	34:14
	The text from the scripture	34:19
	was a statement made about The Jewish people	34:23
	in a time of their own critical history.	34:30
	The family was the concern of the Thomas,	34:38
	but the family relative to its contribution	34:42
	to all the people.	34:46
	What the Psalmist has said, then can be repeated	34:49
	with four (indistinct) and four (indistinct).	34:52
	Except the Lord filled the house,	34:57
	they labor in vain that build it.	35:00
	Except the Lord keep the city,	35:04
	the watchmen waketh but in vain.	35:08
	What happens to the university	35:14
	depends upon the university contribution	35:18
	to the welfare of all the people.	35:23
	That contribution cannot been measured in material money.	35:27
	It was measured in terms of the creativity of the human mind	35:33
	and the enabling of the human spirit.	35:39
	What happens depends on what we do to people.	35:45
	Make people realize their relationship to God.	35:50
	The basic purpose of the university is to enable us	35:55
	to thank God's (indistinct).	36:02
	Unfortunately, students themselves	36:06
	have designed a great deal of what God is, superficial,	36:08
	weak in contemporary time.	36:15
	They made their expressions known.	36:19
	They looked on us and they've sense out	36:25
	the occupation with technology,	36:28
	the rage of nature by over industrialization,	36:35
	the competition of ideology, social and economic,	36:42
	political and even religious ideology,	36:49
	though there's no peace on earth.	36:53
	The almost constant war back	36:57
	on the soil of undeveloped nation,	37:00
	the injustices that take place right here at home.	37:05
	This has cause the students to become restless	37:10
	and introduce the firm in the society of youth.	37:14
	The older generations not always understood	37:21
	the behavior of youths.	37:24
	The older generation bend the will disappointed,	37:27
	be angry, frustrated, has known what to do with	37:31
	in the light of what's happening.	37:36
	But part of what's happening has been prompted	37:39
	by here ideally that some of the righteous indignation	37:41
	of the old Testament prop.	37:47
	There is the (indistinct),	37:51
	let justice roll down as waters,	37:56
	and righteousness as an ever flowing stream.	37:59
	There is the cynical pessimism of the Jeremiah,	38:03
	"Oh for a house in the wilderness that I might go there	38:08
	and leave this people."	38:13
	There is a desire for affirmation	38:16
	and rectification of an Isaiah.	38:18
	His owner of the (indistinct) at his prayer,	38:23
	but my people does not know Israel does not exist.	38:26
	"Come now and live together," says the Lord,	38:32
	"Though your sin is Scarlet,	38:35
	they shall be white as snow go.	38:37
	Though they be red like crimson,	38:39
	they shall become as wool."	38:42
	But students have always invested	38:45
	and they've always been activist.	38:47
	That's been true wherever they had to,	38:50
	wherever at university.	38:53
	Please, if you will,	38:56
	some of the records of universities in the middle age,	38:58
	the schools in Northern Italy, Bologna, for example,	39:04
	were founded and managed by the students.	39:08
	Well, they are reading some of those records.	39:13
	They, excuse me, sent certain founders for the back.	39:19
	Man for the full teacher, they had cut his salary.	39:26
	If he was absent too much from his classes,	39:32
	they arranged give him a whipping, actual lash.	39:35
	And then in the end,	39:41
	they had the power to dispose of him in power.	39:43
	That is the power.	39:46
	It was the organization of the faculty,	39:48
	the guilds of the middle ages,	39:51
	the praise union that enabled the faculty members	39:52
	to protect themselves.	39:58
	Always been rested.	40:01
	You read college life in the old style, the hazing,	40:03
	the running through the scrap line after me.	40:08
	I remember when I was pastor of a small church	40:17
	just off of college town,	40:20
	I can never understand how the students did it,	40:23
	but they managed to get one of the professors towels	40:26
	up at the top of the bell,	40:29
	and none of us knew how to get the towel down again.	40:32
	But the difference is that students	40:37
	were preoccupied today with ignorance, some of them gradish.	40:40
	And we can admire the idealism that came,	40:46
	the principles that pulled their behavior.	40:51
	And that's one part, but that's not the whole of it.	40:55
	Sometimes students go too far in one direction	41:03
	before they have explored halfway	41:08
	all the amenities in the other direction that they left.	41:11
	Students turn abruptly about faith,	41:16
	but they have not assessed all the values	41:21
	they've turned away from,	41:25
	neither have they fully realized the important news	41:28
	for which they turn.	41:33
	I was in Europe when the student unrest broke out in parish	41:35
	during the Dal administration.	41:41
	You remember down in the red, one of the leads,	41:44
	they got him out of France	41:47
	and then he couldn't get back in again.	41:49
	And he came to London	41:52
	and they arranged an interview with him on TVC.	41:54
	I listened on the television to that interview.	41:59
	The correspondence that asked him the question,	42:04
	put and pointed and direct question to him.	42:07
	And then he said, what is the purpose behind the right?	42:13
	Boy said, "It's overturned the institution to modern time.	42:18
	We wanna pull them down. We want to shadow them to death."	42:24
	Then the correspondence said, "Well, so if you do it,	42:30
	what would you put in their place?"	42:36
	Then I realized the immaturity of the leadership	42:41
	in that particular movement.	42:46
	The boy said, "It's not our business	42:49
	to think about what comes in the future.	42:53
	All we want do is have what we found."	42:56
	Remember, (indistinct) poem, (indistinct) on an envelope,	43:04
	God, into a full ball (indistinct).	43:07
	But there's a second stanza to that poem.	43:16
	The second stanza is (indistinct), the whole	43:20
	the mighty garden, the (indistinct) flavor for the guests.	43:28
	We have gone to the second stanza.	43:33
	Sometimes we forget what the university is.	43:38
	What an idea the university was established to be.	43:44
	Oh, I know the nature of our time and I'm (indistinct)	43:50
	and direction and the dissatisfaction of our people.	43:56
	In the university, there be no more than a mirror	44:01
	to reflect all that's going on about the university about.	44:07
	Is the university a tiny microcosm,	44:14
	a little sample of everything else there is?	44:18
	Is that all the university is?	44:24
	People will not support the university survive.	44:28
	If that's all the university is,	44:33
	then there's no hope to mankind, no creative direction	44:37
	which the people must be pointed to go to.	44:48
	This summer, I was enlightened in German.	44:59
	I went down in the rest yellow of the rock house,	45:04
	solving traditional time, the little (indistinct)	45:09
	where (indistinct) starting the journey may (indistinct).	45:15
	You see, (indistinct) offer sound knowledge,	45:26
	the knowledge of (indistinct).	45:34
	But that technology could not give sound wisdom.	45:38
	Knowledge come but wisdom linger,	45:46
	then it's widely spread experience of human nature.	45:49
	(indistinct) reflections on his long study	45:54
	of the history of civilization.	46:06
	(indistinct) made was the observation that	46:09
	many the change, he said, most of the changes	46:15
	affected in the name of prosper,	46:21
	really left the people after (indistinct).	46:25
	(indistinct).	46:30
	I'm not here to support bad people,	46:37
	but I'm here to support the glory of university.	46:40
	It conserved the good in the past,	46:44
	so that one age doesn't forget everything	46:49
	that the previous ages did.	46:51
	And on the basis of the conservation of what noble	46:54
	and the brave in the past.	46:59
	Then the university moved	47:01
	to help people build a better, greater future.	47:04
	Now, with all of our technological advance,	47:12
	all of our knowledge, we don't know what we do with it.	47:16
	Our use of nature may be disruptive.	47:20
	Then one is to be the guiding friend	47:25
	around with all in universe.	47:29
	The speaker yesterday at the alumni lunch	47:34
	referred to that at the close of his feet, not just special.	47:38
	one little segment of knowledge in advance here	47:44
	and advance there, that's not it.	47:47
	But what is the totality of it all	47:51
	in what it does to people,	47:56
	what it enables people to do themselves.	48:00
	Our process is a process in mind.	48:04
	Men resemble God who need.	48:09
	The university in order properly, the tutor,	48:15
	others must be tutored by a greater teacher,	48:17
	and no wisdom can come to her from a course	48:23
	that she cannot always solve.	48:28
	As (indistinct) of the gospel,	48:34
	I message to you on this date, this the message we take,	48:37
	we seek values that (indistinct)	48:47
	of life for humanity, that all than him.	48:53
	We must seek the directed grace of almighty God.	48:58
	Except the Lord build this university,	49:04
	then we labor in vain.	49:07
	Except the Lord direct, we will become (indistinct).	49:10
	Let us pray.	49:19
	Oh, God, our brave God, (indistinct).	49:23
	Give us the grace,	49:41
	that our lives may be expanded by great ideas.	49:43
	(indistinct)	49:50
	In Jesus, amen.	49:58
	(contemporary Catholic liturgical music)	50:07
	The grace of our lord Jesus Christ be with us all.	54:34
	(contemporary Catholic liturgical music)	54:46
	(people chattering)	56:29

Item Info

Title:

William R. Cannon - "The Future of the University" (December 13, 1970)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r48p60b3n

Date:

December 13, 1970

Speaker:

Cannon, William Ragsdale, 1916-

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0550
ref6303_qz6
uachapelsermaud
duke:628134
dcrau002539
ark:/87924/r48p60b3n
24171d26-6992-4f41-a69e-8f1f47b9b5e0

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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English

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United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

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The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

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