Gravity, stress, strain, weight, tension, sag, cohesion,—­a few mathematical formulas, and a knowledge of the primary laws of physics,—­upon such principles as these, the world is rapidly changing form and use.

The Engineer, in a strange and subtle way, stands near to God.  His work is done hand-in-hand with God.  He takes the forces of nature and the laws of the material world, and bends them to the needs and use of man.  Sky and sea or desert may be about him.  He knows the arctic cold, the tropic heat; the forest and the plain; the mountain and the marsh; the brook and river; the peak and the precipice; the glacier and the tempest in their course.  Out of the very elements he is daily building new paths for man to tread.  Soon he, too, must pass; laid after death, it may be, beside some mighty water that his handiwork has spanned.

In loneliness and silence does he not often think, I wonder, of the God with whom he deals?  It is God who provides the river and the sea; God who through endless ages has piled stone on stone, crust on crust, and has crumpled the strata of the earth as tissue in His hand.  It is God who has bound every mote to the earth-centre; who has sent magnetic currents coursing through the globe, and has made tides and sea-changes, and the trade-winds to blow.  It is the God of the Gulf Stream, the Caribbean Sea, the God of the Appalachians, the God of the Himalayas, the God of the Cordilleras, of the Amazon, the Yukon, the Yang-tse-Kiang with which he really deals.

The endless ages pass and go, but God abides.  Little, daring man lifts here and there a hand to mould the world which God has made—­pricks the earth for gold or silver, iron or coal—­but GOD is everywhere immanent and shines through every hour of change.  Hence the March of Engineers is the march of men whom God has trained; in a special sense His master-workmen, craftsmen whom He loves.  It is theirs to say, We are the Kings of Works:  the Master-builders of the Most High!

5.  There are Kings of Academic Thought, men who lead in professions and in collegiate careers.  The wise man is the true aristocrat.  His court may not be in a palace, but within its precincts are received and entertained the leaders of the race.  To be provost, to be college president or university professor, is to be seated on an intellectual throne.

The problem of academic rule is not to attract a large number of students, to put up imposing buildings, to have endowments, and fill chairs with learned specialists; to grant many degrees, and to keep the hum of a teaching staff and of a student body alive in the ears of a community, marking the college group by flags and colors, cap and gown, processions and occasions.  These things are right, but are mainly accessory.  We have not all of a university when we have men and buildings, money, students, brains.  Back of a university there lies its foundation-idea, that of academic control.