BISHOP KEANE ON REVEALED RELIGION.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 15, 9 January 1891, Page 25

BISHOP KEANE ON REVEALED RELIGION.

On the evening «f Thursday, October 23. the Mo3t Rev. John J. Keane. D.D , rector of the American Catholic University, Washington, D.G., delivered the third in the rovivsd Dadleian Lecture Cmrsein i he chapel of Harvard University. Cambridge, Mass. His subj'ft was " Revealed Keligion." Bishop Keano appeared in the Harvird pnlp't in the costume he would have worn in the pulpit of his own University chapel — the lace rochet over tne purple cassock. He is a man of attractive presence and fine delivery. The students' choir was in attendance. After the brief organ prelude, Bishop Keano read from Solomon's Prayer for Wisdom. Th n he asked the choir and congregation to ying the well-kuown hymn, " Ne<rer, mv God, ;to Tnee." Tn<>n thanking Harvard, America's oldest University, for the honour done, in his person, to its youngest, he gave the following lecture : — Uod, who at sundry times and divers manners spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, laat of all in these days hath spoken to us by his B>n, wnom He hath appointed heir of all things hv whom also He made the world; who, being the brightness of His giory, and the fi ure of His substance, and upholding all things by the word of His power, making purgation of sin 9, eitteth on the right hand of the Majesty on high. — Heb, i., 1-3. " God hath spoken to us," declares the great Apostle as the exordium of his sublime teaching. " God hath np >ken to us," echoes bick the Hebrew race whom ho addresses — the race of the patriarchs and prophets, chosen organs of the Divine Word. " Ycm, God hath spoken to us," exclaim all the tribes and tongues of mankind, wanderers indeed from the old central home where the human family once held God's word as its joint heir 100m — wanderers, too, mayhap, from the simple purity in which the Divine teaching was primitively possessed, yet even in imperfect memories and distorted form cherishing it, pondering it, transmitting it from sire to son, from sage and seer to 'listening and wondering disciples. What Cicero said two thousand years ago concerning the universal belief in God, can equally be said of the universal belief in Revelation :—: — "Youm-iy find," said he, '• tribes of men who know not what sirt of a God to believe in ; but you will find none who do not believe iv God." S>, too. we may fiud tribes of men who can give no reasonable account of what the Creator has tanght his creatures ; but a people holding that Go 1 had never spoken we should seek in vain. Juat as there ha 9 never bten a nation of atheists, so there never has been a nation of dc'sts. Atheists and deists there have always been ; but they have been exceptions, anomalies, mere discords in the great harmony of mankind. Thus Divine Revelation is a fact vouched for by the veracity and the intelligence of all the ages. And if we a-k : Why hath God spoken 1 the answer comes from all . Because tie is our Father, and because wa need that He should teach us. Thu Faiher's Ijve and the children's noed are reasons enough. We all have had some personal experience ; and we have looked into history, which is ihe experience of the race. What does experience show us / Theio aiv certain great questions which in our best moments sound forth Ir m the depths of our nature and demand an answer. Wbat am I / Whence have. 1 come / Wnithor am I goi'ig? What is above me .' What is before me ! What is expected of me / What have I to expect ? What, is the way, what the means to its attainment / These are the questions which, in ;i thousand tones, ring out in the minds and the hearts of men. And once they have been heard they keep echoi"g on through all our life, haunting us with their whisper or their shout, whenever a lull in the busy hum around us permits us to listen ; and tLey will not be s ill till they are answered an 1 n ason is satisfied. Tuus it is with us. Thus it has been, a3 history with all the generations before us. These questions an i the attempts to answer them are the meaning of all toe pailosophies that have ever existed. Back in the very dawn of history we behold our Aryan ancestors, preeminently the thinkers of tueir day, wrestling with these great problems of the soul, seeking their solu ion with an earnestness, a vehemence, perhaps never t quailed in later times. Their intellect rec 'gnises the Ir.riaite, the Eternal, as the beginiaiog and tbe end of all things; and their heart yearns for nearness to Him, am n with Him, absjrp'iou in Him, with an impatient, restless eagerness which has a fascination for us even now. To him their philosophic thought, ihar poetic fancy, in all their protean forms, are preeminently consecrated, liow prof)undly interesting, but also how unutterably Fad, their varying answers to the problem of existence ! Gra^pirjg at the truth wi'h all t'eir might, they seize it but by half ; and so their philosophy, their religion, their civilisation, drift farther and farther from sound methods and conclusions till they cease to be a power in the life of mankind. Ages further on, we behold the Greeks occupying without dispute the domain of mtelkctual supremacy. Wage after sage discourses to multitudes of enthusiastic disciples on the nature, the origin, the destiny, of all things, and on the duties of man. They are aided in th^u meditations by all the wisdom that has preceded them, in Ca»ldea, in Persia, in India, in China, iv Egypt. To the charm of the nullity problems is added the charm of ihe matchless langu ige in which they are treated. And what is the result I We see Socrates at last struggling almost single-handed with a sc fling generation of sensuil sophists and sceptics, ami coodem ie i t> drink hemlock beciuse he persists in telling them of spirituality and im« mortality a<ul uinal duty ; we hear Piato crying oat m me despair of his tT'orious yeuius "It 18 not possible tor morals to know anything certain about these things"; and when all the trcasiro-j of Greek thought have bctu paw od through the alembic oi UymiiH

analysis and criticism, Cicero exclaims, as the last word of the ancient i philosophy : " It would take a god to tell us whic'j of these systems is true." m All through the course of modern history we find that same i swam of anxious thought run aim? almost uninterruptedly. Amid i the multitude of th^se whose thinking found i's answers in their Faith, there have always been found some who, starting from nescience or from doubt, have sought to sjlve the problems of tbe ages by tbe unaided pjwer of intellect. Mr. Lewes has given us the < result in his "History of Philosophy," and onsidering the oftrepea'ed oscillation from idealism to materialism, from pantheism to positivism, he draws the conclusion that philosophy is impossible, that scepticism is the normal attitude of the reason tb!e mind. His division of alternatives is incomplete, and therefore bis conclusion is unwarranted. But still his review of hutnaa thought teaches m this grea* lessoa : That tbe intellect of the best part of mankind has ever been engaged with the great problems which are the basis both of philosophy and of religi >n ; thtt it has recognised these problems to be of so tremeadous importance that an answer to them it needs must have, or man's life-journey is left without peace and without security ; but also, that, as long as it has sought for their solution by the light of unaided reason, it has sought in vain, has attained to c inclusions so imperfect, so varying, so uncertain, that they could give no satisfaction to eager minds and to anxious hearts. From these facts, two conclusions follow with inexorable logic. The first is, that since the human mind so universally, so imperiously, with yearning and need beyond aught else, demands an answer to these problems, an answer there must be within its reach. The second is, that since unaided reason does not suffice for its attainment, man's Creator must have given him, for that end, some aias to reason, some additional light, some helpful information, — in a word, what is usually called Divine Revelation. Let us look at these two conclusions, and see whether there is any reasonable escape from them. The universality of law, the general harmony and fitness of things, forbids us to suppose that man is the one exception whose beiog is a contradiction. His whole nature cries out that it la not self-sufficing, and that the things around it are powerless to fill the abysses of its cravings and its aspirations. Whenever it is not consciously thoughtless or foolish, it reaches outward and upward by the very necessity of its being. Reason shows us why this is so. Herbert Spencer, among others, has demonstrated that the finite, the transient, the conditioned, not only could not exist, but is lnconvitvable, unless there existed the Infinite, the Eternal, and Absolute. His writings ihow that, like those of whim Cicero wrote, be knows not what manner of God to have; bui he has at any rate mide it perfectly clear that there must be aGo I. This being so, it requires no great stretch of reasoning to see that He must be both the Author and the Object of our nature's aspirations. But to suppose that He so fashioned our nature, only that it mijjrht writhe helplessly ia self- | torture, that our mind and our heart a iould forever, like Tantalus, agonise for thi- true aad the good, and never reich it, — .hn would be to imagine Him the most impossible of monster?. The leaving advoc ite of unoelief n our country has dra^vn a picture of mvi's condition as he understands it, whicu is to tha purpose. Man, he says, sunds upon the bleak piunacleof exis ence. between the two dark abysses of tbe past and of the future, knowing Dot whence he comt-s nur whither he goes ; and if, in his agony, he asks Wnence .' or WhitLer .' he is only mocked by the echo of his own ' cry 1 This is honible. It, tramples on the order ani harmony of things, and throws intellect, the highest realm of nature into chaos, i Nature, intellect, all things, cry out .I- is nut true. Hunan Laure j is not, cannot be, au illusion, h mockery, an anomaly and contradiction in the symmetry of thiutrs. its li nes-es have their purpose ; its aspirations t aye their oo r n<-ct . its q lt-stions h<tv<» their answer. And if, tor the attainment of this, the uuauied powers ot human nature do not suffice, it is because, noble though nature is it is made for sonr - i thing nobler than l ' self, for relations wrh the Infinite Creator which I only He can make Lowd to it, to wh >se attainment oolv He can help H up. This is not to the disparagement of nature, bit to i s honour. It is uo hurt of hindrance put upon reason, out help and elevation bestowed upon it. 'lhus the testimouy of reason, of human nature, in ourselves ani in all history, proves with the unimpeach tbie lo^ic of facts that there must have bctn ma le, that there must exist somewhere in the world, a Kevelation by the Creator, of those things wbich the creature efasentially needs io Know, a I'.ght to guiJe us to our destiny. Turn we tien to the domain ot facts, and ask : Where is this Revelati<>D, and wha- does it teach us I Where i* this so gieatly needed Light of tbe Worid ? With the aid of historical rematch and caticism, the auswer to this momentous question is, to any intelligent acd impartial mind, not harJ to discover. The religions of the patt have given up to us their sacred treasures. We are able to trace ihem trom their origin to our times. Kach of them shns: "God hath spoken." Each points back to a better time wbeu the great Father taught his CDi.dien what it behooved them to kuow. Tbe oldest utterance of each is a memory of that primitive teaching about Qod au.l raan aad tae relations between them. These utterances vary in to'ind, and according to their variations they may be diviuei into two classes, t c Semitic and the Gentile. T.e Gentile traditions are remembranc s more or le p faublul ( f that distant past. la their varieties aid changes we can mark the vicissitudes of ttieir Latioual fortunes, can see the mould of their national chai acter, can trace tbe progress, upward or downward, of their nttion<tl genius iq its var.oas forms puuos >phical or poetical, of (*hdsoment ss or gloom, of eievatioj to tna Infinite, or of absorption in the ihings of sense. In each of them there is a critical p'rioi — usually a period of lowest cob in. spin ual thought aud aspiration— aud lv that period we behold arise some provid.ntial man to remind his people of forKotttn truths, and to point out to them tbe neglected path of duty. (Several o f them are honoured with divine worship after death, and

their sayings have been preserved for the admiration of succeeding generations. Pc letratiog through the mists of romance, we now are able to scan each of them in his true character and in his real measure. We can see how much honour each deserves as a moral, social, and religious reformer. We can see how far their teachings square with the principles of enlisrbteopd reason, and how far they were warped by the prevalent notions of their race. Wa can see how far they sue* ceeded in lifting tbeir people to purer truth and j aster conduct, and how fur their en leavours failed to attain their purpose. Oae thing is perfectly clear in them all, from their lives, from their utterances, from the result* wbicb they wrought or occasi >nel ; — they were mortal men, yearning and striving for the truth concerning the great problems of buman existence, imparting to their generation such rays of the light as they could catch, and mourning in the twilight gloom that they could see so poorly. Thus eacn of the sages of Pagan antiquity, rising high above the low level of his generation, caught sinn r»ys of the far-off light, and gave to his fellows some utterances of the distant and all bat forgotten tru h. They were like the famous statue of Memnon, hieh uplifted on the plain of Thebes, wbicb, wnen the rays of *be rising sun touched its brow, gave forth a sound of music to proclaim the day. Each of them was a witness to the light— but none of them, nor all of them, coala be the Light of the World, any more than the mountain peaks, gleaming in the sunbeams, could take the place of the orb of day. Meanwhile, among the sons of Bern, the primitive truth was preserved in its purity. While the descendants of Cham and Japaet wandered away to ever more distant climes, the descendants of Sem remained near the old home and handed down the old tradition — the tradition concerning Him who was to bring redemption and light and peace and grace to a fallen and benighted world. And God, who thus had fitted them to be the custodians of the promise and the hope, renewed the memory of the sacred deposit to patriarch after patriarch, and raised up, age after age, the Providential men of Israel to be the types and figures and prophets of the Light of the World. leaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel proclaimed the glorious news of His nearer and nearer approach, and from the mountain height of prophetic vision foresaw and foretold ever mole and more plainly the time and the manner of His coming, His life, His work, Hit kingdom. The minor prophets filled in the details of the gre»t pictare. And thus the aurora grew brighter and brighter as the day drew ne.tr. Tacitus tells us that, even in far-distant Rome, the pulsaiions of the coming light were felt, and there was a general expectation, he siys, that ooe was about to appear in the JCast who mould be the ruler of the world. At last the fulness of time came, the Light of the World arose. The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among üb. Tad Light which eolighteneth every man that cometh into the world shone for h upon the face of the ear b amid all the myriads that sat in darkness and I in the sbalow of dea'h, and proclaimed — " I am the Light of the World. He that follow eth Me walke h not in darkness, but shall have the light of Life." And as we g«ze on Him, we sea how He is indeed the Light of the World ; how all the light that had ever shoae upon tbe earth came from Him, was only rays from His effulgence, and centres in Him as the focus of it all. The sages of Israel cluster arouni Him and do Him homage, as did Moses and Eliaa in the Transfiguration on Thibor. Every finger points to Htn, every type and prop lecy is rea i9ed in Him. He indeed "fu filled the law and the propb.es." He is the key to the i history of the chosen people from the beginning, and we see that all I the lignt that ever shone in Israel beamed forth from Him alone. To Him, a'so, point all the sages of tha Pagan nations, as the One who answers all their questions, ihe One who possesses, in its fulness, that ideal truth, thai spiritual beamy, that moral power, of which they dreamed so imperfectly and after which they strove so weakly. ! Ana as we glance at them and at Him, we see how all the truth they I ever taught was but scattered rays from the plentituda of His light. Buddha had taugnt the equality and brotherhood of men— but an equality in misery only, a brotherhood based on the common possession of an existence that is only a curse, and on the common struggle towatds the extinction of self in the oblivion of Nirvana. Jesus Carist taught tb- tq lality an I brotherhood of men as equally the offspring of His Father's love, and equally sharers m th« hope of a blessel bereafter in our Father's Home, in which they shall find, njt annihilation, but that hliss which "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, njr hath it eate-ed the heait of man to conceive." 2>roaster had tried, with but poor success, to teach his people lof the origin of evil and how to overcome it. Christ Our Lord laid His finger on the origin of evil and th t means of correcting it when be saii : " Deny thyself," showing a'l the mystery of evil to be in the perve-sity of the creature's f es wnl. Cunfucius has reminded his couatry of the usefulness and obligation of morality. Christ Our Lori called to holiness, and pointed out the pathway of perfection, which, like Jacob's ladder, leads from earth up to the very bosom ot God. All the moralising of antiquity dwindles and bides its he id before th*t sub.ime exhortation: "Be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven i* perfect." Plato, loathing the se lsuality around him, had aspired after the ideal and the lufiaite : out he neither recognised trie value of the in hvulual fi .ite soul, nor the use of this transitory life, nor tne means by which union wrh the infi ate could be attained to, Jdsus Christ has taught us that one human soul is worth more than the whole m iterial universe, is worth all the wonders of the life and death of the lucarna c »;n of God. Ha has not only told us of, but has bestowed upon us, divine grace, which lifts the sml to a union with Gid, such as PUto never dreamed of ; and ha has condensed more sublimity iuto ihe L ird'd Prayer thin v f juad in all the soarings of the great philosopher. Thus all the light of the past centres in him and radiates from , Him. " From His fulness all have received." All tbe questions that the human soul has ever asked are answered by Him, All the pro-

blema that have ever racked and puzzle 1 philosophy find in Him th-ir solution. Truly He is the Light of the World, and they t hat fol,J^Him need no longer walk in the darkness and in the shadow of death. Here then, and nowhere else, is what we have been in search of. Amid all the religious traditions of the human race, this ia the only one that can stand tbe test of hi9tory and of logic, the only one that can show reasonable claim to be the Bevelation of God, that Revelation which, we have seen, must exist somewhere in the order of facts. Here, and here alone, is the Divine Light and aid granted by the Creator to His crea'ureß, that they may reach the destined end which alone can satisfy them. Here, and here alone, is the fulfilment of what the great Apostle of the Qentiies has written : " God, who, at sundry times and in divers manners, spoke in times past to the fktheis by the prophets, last uf all, in these days, hath spoken to us by His Bon." During His sojourn on earth, the Diviue Master poured His blessed light abroad for all times and peoples for every human soul. Into the words He spokp, He condensed the light to enlighten the minds of men with wisdom forever. Into the life He led, Ho condensed the light that was to eu de the step 9of men in all the'high ways and the low ways, in al! the sra ioth ways and the rough ways of hum m life forever. Aid into His cross He has condensed the light 10 illumine the mysteries of nature and grace, of sin and repentance and reconciliation, and to lead all generous souls to victory over all spiritual enemies, as it was to lead Cocstantine to victory over his own enemies and the enemies of Christ. Waving thus stored up for us tbe treasnres of His fight, He fen sent forth His Church to be the dispenser of the treasures to all nations and all generations. "Ye are the light of the world," He Ba>s to the first ministers of His Church. •' As My Fither hath' sent Me, so I send you." Forth, then, they went imo the wb >le world, and Christ went with them in invisible presence, gu irding and guiding and giving increase Tney ctrned 'he b'e-s d light fira' to the neighb urn g na ions of Asia, «nd then to Egyp- an i to Greece, and •westward to Rome, thecmtie of the world. Here it was that Christ intended that the locus of the light shoul ib» \n\ it is easy to see tbe reason of this Providential purpose. Jerusalem bad been the focus of the light during the ages of waiting and preparation, when the light, still feb c, had to be hedged in and guar led Irom being extinguished by thy r>!a«ts of P.gani-m which swep' over tbe whole world. Bat now, preparation bens over, tbe fuln S3 of the reanty having comn, and tha light sbiaing forth iv conquering splendour, it was no mjie to be kept guarded and hidden but to be plac-d where it might tesee iof all men. And an its foe s was put in Home, then the centre of the civilised world, that from thence, as from a great candlestick, it might whine un o the whole earth Its first great work was the c evation of t .c G, re -o- Rom an civilisation. It breathed into the old civilisaiion the s >ul for which P ato had sighed, but which he was p jwerles-, to impart. Even in the .ges of bitter peisecution it did us work, forming sain 1 s and sages like. DionysiuN, tbe Areopagite, and Clement of Alexandria, Justin and Origeo, Itenaeua fmd Ambrose and Augustine. Like the lump of leaven spoken ot by Our Lor), it pervaded ti,r Empire, and piepued it for the glories c f the .ige ol Cunstantm '. But a s ill greater work of Christianity was to be the fc.rma'ion of a new civilisation. All the old civilisa ions bad failed, b cause based on a onesided and deusive view of ruman nature and duties. Thus the civilisation of ihe Hindoos had been so pre-occupied %\ith me Ii fiui c and the hereafter as to become obliviousof ihe ri ute and tbe present ; and bo it had degenerated into an enervating torpor. On the contiary, the Greek civiliaauon bad been so engrossed with the humarj. the m«;enal, »nu ihe present, as to be unmindful of the divine, the sv intual, aucl the ltnniorUl : and, therpfore.it bad degenerated into sensualism, fcfVDtieiHm, and cynicism. Christianity combined both 6ides in just measures*, the infinite and tne tinne, the spiritual and the material, and insisted on tbe right useof the present as the means for obtaining bliss in the hereafter, and, theteiore.it contained all the elements for the formation of a perfect civilisation. God gave Christianity this great woik to do alter the downfall of the Roman Empire. Like a rotun c illos-us, the mighty structure of Pa»an power and Pagan civilisation crumbkd to pieces when the shock of barbarian invasion burst upon it. Cbaos coy, re 1 the face of Europe, and out of that chaos ChriHtianty had to form a i,ew a- d bettt r order of things. Ihe material for th« threat *ork was only the shattered debris of th« old empire and the wild nordes ot the barbarians. Yet into that rude mass she breahed the spirit of the Lord, and the result was Chiistendom. Take the history of Chnseudom, from the days of Alfred and Char emagne down to our own times, and we find that whatever there has been of glorious and noble and useful, nas come from fidelity to ibe spnit of Chmtianity, from tbe guidance of the Light of the World. And we rind, too, mat all its defects and all Us partial failures have been owing to resistance to the spirit of Christianity and unwillingness to be gu:ded by the LUht of the World. Glance now over mankmd »s it is, and see if the blessed Light of the World is not the source of ah that is true and beautiful on earth. Christ our Lird Is the litrht of philnponhy He te^s n?, and He alone tells us clearly and Burtly, 'whence we come, what 'is"mati'B nature, whence its weakne-sea and evils, whither it must tend, wh a are our relations with God and our fellow-men, what our duties to Him, and our nuaus of attaining Him. And this is what makis up philosophy. y He is the light of history. Ho alone gives the meaning of all the timta»tuat preceded Him, and He alone is the explanation of all the ages i hat h»ve followed Him. Without Him history is an insoluble pjzzle. But put Him iv its centre, as the Keystone in the arch, and hittory btcomes a systematical and consistent record of all the ways ana fortunes of mm, and tf all the dealings of God with His creatures. He is the light of civil society. He alone has given the world a true civilisation, and He alone can maintain it. The stream must ever fluw from its source. No system of laws or of government can

tend to true civilisation that does not keep Him in view and take counsel with him. Just co far will legislators and rulers conduce to the real welfare and progress of nations, by how far they are euided by the Lig t of the World. He is the light of home— sanctifying the marriage ties sanctifying- relations between pan nts and children, ana breatbiDg into every truly Christian hjme the spirit of his home at Bethlehem or Nazueih. He is the light of every mind. It may be the intellect of a St. Paul or a St. Augustine, or a St. Thomas Aquinas ; or it may be the mind of an illiterate man or woman, or of a little child just able to speak understanding^ the nam3 of ihe dear Jesus ; but whatever be the grade of intellect, the blessed Light of the World illumines them al 1 , is their sure guide, and gives to all thtir sweetest and noblest theme for thought. And even outside i he pale of Christianity, today as in ancient times, whatever light they have in reason or in the old mutilated traditions, that leads them towards God, it sbines from Him who was the light of the patriarchs, the prophets, and the heahen world, who is " the Light which enlighteneth every man wno cometh into the world." He is the light of hearts. No heart so crushed that He cannot henl it ; none so bowel with sorrow or weighed down with care that He cannot comfort and strengthen it ; no heart so sin-stained that He cannot cleanse it ; none so burning with passion that He cannot tame, subdue and eanctify it ; none so vast in its power of love that it cannot ba filled to overflowing with the love of Jesua. Painters have given us many a lovely landscape of hill and dale and waving fores', and every form of 'ife, bathed in the beautiful light of heaven. But never was there so beautiful or so wonderful a picture as that which is pres nted by the myriids in every class and condition of human life, in every clime and every a»e, all turning towards .he blessed Light of the Wo-ld, to glorify Him, to drink in His radiance and His power ; all the minds tha a' e illumined by Him, all the heart a that are purified and perfected by loving Him, all the lives that are beautified and ennobled by imitating Him, all the souls that are consecrate and devoted to Hin, all the aipirations that are satiat-d in Him. Surely He is for our age, as for all preceding ages, the Light of the World ; the truest and subhmest enlightenment of intellect, the eafjst *ni nnst bdanteous type of all culture ; and th- y that walk in darkness, or lead defoimed lives, do so btcause they do tot follow Him. i't.ia is the conclusion to which we are lei by all the history of religion, by all tbe facts that make up the life ot all the ages. Ami now, in exclusion, what are men trying to do with the Light of tbe World? Alas 1 there are still too many of whom Our Lord's words are true : " The Light haih come into the world, and men have loved d irkness rather than the L'ght." In every departmem of human life some are trying to shut cut the Light of tha World. They are tiying to shut Htm out of Rig pUce in history, His shrine in the very heart of humanity. Sam) writers of our times have endeavoured and are still endeavouring to accomplish it, by represrn'iMg »>nr Lord at* atinding on tbe same level wj.h the Pagan HHsftsof ant (j.ity, or by pre ending to substitute one or another of them lor Him, as it now seems thu some would like to substitute the L K hi of Asia, as th-y call Buddha, for t-e Li^ht of the World. But the attempt is one which no oae would be capable of who did not utterly ignore the f tcts of history. History has preserved the record of their lives and their woik as well as of His. We have glanced to-night at the greatest junong them. We have seen that each of them protested against som<; popular evils and gave the world some admirable axioms of truth and duty, but also each of them failed to give a complete or consistent system ; each of th>m failed to accomplish th» results he aimed at, or to exert a bjn.ficial mfl.ence. on posterity, aud each of them acknowledged that he was far from b-ing himself the truth or the light, but only a poor groper af er the trulu aud the light, Plato sigbc i : "W. uld that one would come from heaven to teach us th* truth I" Confucius and Zjroaster weteonly philosophers sjekine to impress on their followers some maxims of morality ; and Buddha declared that he, like all around him, Wdsonly one groaning under the curse of tx'stence, and sighing tor the Nirvaua in which existence would be ended. Jesus • hnst alone proclaims : ■■ lam the Light of the World. He that tolloweth M.: walketh not in darkness." Jesus Christ alone declared • "I am the Way and the Tnnh and the Life." He alone declared that He was to be the teacher of all nations and every creature all days till the en lof the world. He alone has ever ventured to say aupat like this, aud He had said it, and has .renfifd it in the results of all the ages that have since elapsed. And He alone, now, in all the wide world, is trulj light and life, to the mi ms and hearts of men. As the great Napoleon said . " He stands amid all tbe great ones of all history incomparable and unapproachable." None but sophists or dreamers, who close their eyes to facts, could seek another in His place, or pretend to give Him a parallel Statesmen, too, are trying to drive him out of civilisation aud social systems. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the li^aissance brought ba* k to Europe, not only Pagan ideals in litera- ... - --- i --• •..*.« a. <. KUU ui»4iuin iv le^ismuuu aim politics, wmcu the Light of the World had oanished. Caesar's absolute suprem icy . »yen over conscience, was reasserted then, and is advocated now, as in 'he days of Nero and Domitian ; and our own days have beheld thousan 1- groan under persecution because they wou d noi acknowledge thatLa'-iar can make no law to which Gid and the conscience ire not bound to confirm. This is a reversal of the principles of Christian civilisation ; it is to ignore all the tacts ol Christia-j history and roll back the wheels of human progress for centuries. And we tee the results in the standing armies of millions upon millions of msn, under which Europe is groaning, and in the impendu g conflict between the one extreme of abeo ute Ca'sarism and the other extreme of absolute Communism, which momentarily threatens tbe entire social fabric with destruction. It the facts of history, past and present, prove anything, they surely demonstrate that the ouly hope of society and of civilisation is in a return of legislators and govern-

ments to the guidance of tbe Light of the World. They are endearouring to shnt the Light of the World out of Education. In some European countries where tbe Providence of God has permitted tbe avowed enemies of Christ to gain temporary sway, that they might practically work out their own refutation and condemnation, they have driven the Light of the World out of the State schools through hatred of religion. They have shown themselves determine I, as far as they could accomplish it, to train up a generation that shall know nothing of the Light of the World. In our country, too, men have been shutting tne Light of the World out of the school-room, not through enmity to Him, but through a mistaken theory as to the best system of education. A distinguished lecturer, not lung since, discoursed on this topic in various parts of the country. He began by proving that the prosperity of our country depends on its Christianity, and thus far he was right. He n zt showed taat the CnnstUnity of oar country depends upon elucation; and here again he was MgLt. He concluded that, therefore, the prosperity of our country depend* on a Bystem of State schools, equally fitted for the children of infidels, Jews or Christi ns, and in which, therefore, it wouid not even be allowable to teach thit Jesus Christ is the Light of the World ; and here he is manifestly wrong. Surely the man who could advocate a conclusion sopalpablv opposed to his premise?, has either forgotten bis logic, or has sacrificed it to a tbeury. No ; throw wide open the windows of the school-room that the Light of tbe World may shine full in upon the scholars, and that they may live and bask and move in it all the time, if you wish them to grow up good Christians or good factors in true civilisation. Shut the Light of the World out of the school-room and you will raise generations of men and women who will soon shut Him out of their hearts and their lives. Men ire trying to drive the Light of the World out of the pulpit by excluding dogmatic teachings and dwelling only ou the morals of Christianity. Read the pulpit reports any Monday morning in the great papers of New York and London, in which you feel the pulse of the New World and the Old, and you cannot but see the systematic c ffort to get rid of dogmatic Christianity. But Christ i s what He is, and Christianity is what He has male made it and given it, and all attempts at elimination or compromise must be wrong. They who attempt, whether in school or in pulpit, to teach ethics divorced from Christian truth, are trying again what was tried in the schools of Athens and Sparta, and must fail as they did. Let them succeed in shutting tbe Light of the World out of tbe pulpit, and soon the souls of men will again bs groping in the darkness of the shadow of death. Men, in fine, are trying to shut out the Light of ths World from our genera ion, by a propagandism of popular infi le ity. And what do they offer in exebar ge for the Light of the World ? To what would they bring our generation 1 They that are ambitious enough to give their system a name call it Agnosticism, that is literally, the art of not knowing — the BCience of knowing-nothing about the gr^at truths of humanity — a system of mere doubt and darkness, which is an insult to reason as well as to the Author of reason. It is said that when Goethe, the great unbelieving genius, was dying, he suddenly exclaimed: "Let the light enter." Was it not the dying acknowledgment of that great but erring mind, that all his life he had been in the dark ? Extremes correct themselves. Many in our age have run far into an extreme of doubt, of scepticism, of materialism, like to that of ancient Greece. Too many minds and hearts are consequently groping and groaning in tbe (iark. and society and all its members and functions are suffering from it. May the re^ctim soon come and bring an age of faith, brighter and more glorious than any the world has ever beheld 1 Unbeliefers tnemselves, like Matthew Arno d, have seen its Bigns and have borne witness to its approach. May its day be hastened, may our eyes behold it. may it be given us to aid in the diffu&ion of itp radiance 1 And any every lover of the lignt, and every victim of the darkness unite in the prayer . O God, let the light enter ! Bishop Keane was heard throughout with the keenest attention. His own earnestness communicated itself to every one of his hearers ; and there was evident in everj countenance open-minded and respectful interest. Aftei his lecture he announced the hymn. " Rock of Ages," and when it had been suog, gave his blessing to the assemblage.