RELIGIOUS ACTIVITY.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1166, 17 June 1911, Page 9

RELIGIOUS ACTIVITY.

0 PROFESSOR HARNACK ON CHRISTIANITY. HIS OWN EXPERIENCE. Those who may liavo known Professor Harnack chiolly as one of f)io giant minds of German scholarship will do well to read tho words with which ho concluded tho course of lectures that, make his volume entitled "What is Christianity ';" Tlie.v form a mcmornblo commentary not only upon tho insuliicioncy of learning to meet tho needs of life, but also upon tho entire compatibility of great learning and child-like faith. These wore his words;

"Gentlemen, it is religion, the love of God and neighbour, which gives life a meaning; knowledge cannot do it., Lot me, if yott please, speak of my own experience, as ono who for thirty years has taken an earnest interest in these things. Pure knowledge is a glorious tiling, and woo to the man who holds it light or blunts his sense for it. But to tho question: Whence, whether, and to what purpose?- it gives an answer to-day as little as it did two or three thousand years ago. It docs, indeed, instruct us in facts; in detects inconsistencies; it links phenomena; it corrects the deceptions of sense and idea. But where and how the utivo of the world and tho curve of our own life begin—that curve of which it shows us only a section —and. whither this curve leads, knowledge does not tell us. But if with a steady will we affirm tho forces and the standards which on tho summits of our inner life shine out as our highest good, nay, as our real self; if wo are earnest and courageous enough to accept them as the great Reality and direct our lives by them; and if we then look at the course of mankind's history, follow its upward development, and search in strenuous and patient service, for the communion of minds in it, we shall not faint in weariness and despair, but become certain of God, of the God whom Jesus Christ called His Father, and who is also our Father."