as with one bound. Specimens of natural history almost innumerable have been added to your collection for the museum yet to be. In all the departments work faithfully done has made the name of Alma College honorable in our land. That this is largely due to the untiring labors, to the energy directed by consummate skill, of your first president, Dr. George F. Hunting, not even envy could deny. It is my pleasure to proclaim it this day. Let me venture to hope that our march shall still be forward. Let us believe that other departments shall yet spring into being, until we shall have here a great school of varied knowledge. And if in the providence of God there shall come to us schools of medicine and theology, of business and law, let us accept them from the same hand-His hand, who has given us what we now have. Let us solemnly dedicate them to the glory of God and the welfare of man. Nor is this improbable. When we consider that this institution is without a competitor among a million of people; no similar college for seventy miles to the south, for two hundred miles to the west, for three thousand miles to the north, for over two hundred miles to the east; why may we not hope for great things in the coming time? As yet the central and northern parts of our State are inhabited largely by poor people. The farms are not yet cleared. The mortgages are not yet paid. But they will not always continue. The forests will bow before the woodman's axe, the hillsides and valleys will proudly bear the wheat and the corn. The change of a few years is wonderful. The pioneer of yesterday who fought the wild beast and the wilderness, is the well-to-do farmer of to-day, who asks where his children may find the advantages of an education which were beyond his own reach in youth. It is our privi lege to point the questioner to Alma College. These inquiries will become more and more numerous in the coming years. The result will be that our classes will grow larger; departments of instruction will be added; buildings will rise on college hill; friends and helpers will be multiplied, and the channels of usefulness for this institution will widen and deepen through the coming generations. I believe this, and therefore I accept the struggles of the present time. A great center of learning will remain here when you and I shall have passed into the other country. Thousands and thousands of youth will quench their thirst for knowledge here and go forth to bless mankind, when "the places that now know us will know us no more forever." Our sufficient reward will be that we did what we could at the beginnings. And now I commit this institution into the hands of God. May that Spirit who inspired men of faith to found this enterprise, hover over it through all time! May the blessing of God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost rest upon and abide upon all who shall gather here! I commit Alma College to the care of that church whose history is beautiful, because of its love of liberty and learning, of its soundness of doctrine and rectitude of conduct. May the eyes of that church be ever open toward this place! May the hearts of its people be quick to respond to every call and need! I commit this college to the care of the good citizens of this community. I beg you to open Christian homes to the young people who shall gather here. I beg you to be fathers and mothers unto them, shielding them from temptation, protecting them from evil, guiding them in paths of righteousness and holiness. I commit Alma College into the hands of those honored and venerable men who are its board of trustees. O ye fathers and brethren, what labors, what duties are these which God and the church have put upon you! Who is sufficient for them? May your "sufficiency be of God!" May you be sustained by the consciousness that thousands of Christian hearts are daily bearing you to the throne of divine grace and wisdom! In behalf of the faculty and students may I leave this final word: "Friends and brethren, pray for us." CONCEALMENT AND REVELATION OF GOD. BY REV. W. D. SEXTON,* * Pastor Bethany Presbyterian Church, Detroit. Text: "The secret things belong unto the Lord our God; but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law." Deut. 29: 29. Concealment and Revelation. These are distinc- tions which exist in the divine nature itself. recorded revelation of God there is an element of concealment. Self-limitation is always an accompaniment, we may say indeed a necessary antecedent of revelation. For example, when God appeared to the patriarchs, he always appeared under the limitation of human or angelic form. Later in the progress of revelation, he concealed himself in connection with his manifestation in cloud, or wind, or fire. To Moses in the desert of Midian, he concealed and revealed himself in the burning bush. At the giving of the law on Mount Sinai, he concealed * Rev. Wilson D. Sexton was born at Poland, Ohio, May 30, 1853. Prepared for college at Poland Union Seminary. Graduated at Western Reserve College (now Adelbert College of Western Reserve University) in 1877. Union Theological Seminary, New York City, 1881. Licensed by Presbytery of Manoning, 1879. Ordained at Saybrook, Conn., August 3, 1881. Pastor, Saybrook, Conn., 1881-1884. Salem, Ohio, 1884-1888. Hillsdale, Mich., 1888-1891. Bethany Church, Detroit, Mich., 1891– Permanent clerk of Synod of Michigan, 1889-1896. Stated clerk of Synod, 1896——. Stated clerk of Presbytery of Detroit, |