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Caption: Book - John Milton Gregory Memorial Convocation (1898)
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24 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS. moral development, and made plain the duty of the State to teach her children how to live. My father said to me: " W h e n you are old enough, you will go to the University/' 'I oday, I can see the man lifting the people around him to higher ideals. It is the only incident of the fair that I can recall. Its deep impression has never left me. After many years I came here, and at once felt acquainted with that friend of y o u n g men H e is the only man to whom I ever went to school that I felt was a great teacher. No single thing in my college days so deeply impressed me as Dr. Gregory's chapel talks. Politics, religion, social conditions, were his t h e m e s . H e would take some living question of the day and present it in a m a n n e r so attractive and forceful t h a t it b e c a m e a possession of the hearer. T h i s very place, this hall, this desk by which he stood recall the many scenes with surprising vividness. Here I heard him declare t h a t every man's life is like some great wheel in the factory, a segment of which is at one time down in the foundation; then again that same segment sweeps upward to its highest arc until it catches t h e full sunlight. Again he said: "It makes little difference what a man thinks provided he will be sincere and think long enough. If he does this he will think to a right conclusion." Once, rising to the occasion of his speech, with silver tongue, he proclaimed truth and justice God's two vicegerents upon earth, and t h a t it was man's duty to manifest t h e one and strive after the other. In his closing years he was at work upon a book on Sociology in which he labored to set men in right relations and bring justice to their affairs. At a n o t h e r time in a burst of eloquence, he said: "Some men build of blocks of marble; o t h e r s t h e r e are who build in immortal thought." H e was an o r a t o r in e v e n sense of the word, and easily held and convinced men by the pure diction of his thought and eloquence. H e was a leader of men and was naturally first in a distinguished company. Sincerity of purpose was his chief characteristic. W e must judge of a man after he is gone. I le is so n ir to us when living, that there is no perspective to reveal his true relation. W h a t any man is, must be d e t e r m i n e d by what he did while it was yet day. Doctor G r e g o r y founded a great university- T h e very fact thai his work outlives him, and will live
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