Morning journal and courier., 1885-06-22

your life They sharply and distinctly ternainate the past, and as positively hide the future. As you look over the boundary Ehat divides the two, looking backward, you see a distinct picture crowded with well- remembered events, gay and bright on the one hand. dark and sombre on the other, briobt with hilarity and hope, or gloomy with sorrow and disappointment, but in all it's changes glowing with an in tense and energetic individual and social life As you look forward to the future it is hid den from your view by curtain beneath which and through which you cannot look. In vain do you attempt even to draw in out line the scenes that await you, to forecast
 the employments, the friends, the loves, the
 sorrows, the joys, the successes and disap-'
 pointments that are to make up your life
 You can discern nothing, you can foretell
 nothing.
 But you can control the purpose that shall
 characterize that life and in so far can deter
 mine the life itself in it's essential features
 and it's final destiny. Shall it be a life of
 strong, distinct and fervent faith in the
 Christ who is accepted by all noble souls as
 the ideal of human excellence, by faith in
 whom, as the living and real Christ, all
 Christendom is now moving forward to
 higher achievements and nobler aims and
 entsrprisess Shall your faith be so you shall be transformed into his likeness more and more consciously to yourselves and become more and more distinctly a power among your fel1ow-men in every form of Christian activity and usefulness?
 You have been taught that such is emi nently reasonable service that in what you are summoned to believe you are not only justified by reason but commanded by req son to rise to faith. You have also been taught that faith is no mechanical and isolat- ed activity of the spirit, but that it is the spring and root of the spiritual life, compre- hending all the virtues and graces which elevate man and adorn human life. You have also learned that as the Christian life is better understood and more perfectly exemplifed the wider and more varied will be the field for it's illustration and the higher and more blessed will be it's earthly joys. You have also learned to look forward into the life which is immortal, which seems so far and yet is in fact so near, which
 seems so unlike and yet is so simi- lar in it's springs of good to the earthly life. You have been trained to think of the present an anticipation and discipline for the joys and activities of perfected future, that 8 life of active and ! trusting service on earth is discipline for joys that are none the less human because they are satisfying and immortal.
 Be not weakened in your faith or courage because of the credulity or fippancy of ram pant unbelief or the slownass or uncertainty of honest doubt. Hold fast to whatever faith you have and give it all the nourish- ment which you can, not for your own strength but for the well being of others. Remember that the solemn responsibilities of duty extend to what a man believes as truly as to what he is or does, that in propor- ton to the readiness with which skeptical suggestions are entertained and yielded to in the same measure is the believer bound to be
 assured of his faith and to assert and defend
 it. Keep in mind the fact that however hard
 it Is to believe the spiritual verities on which Christianity stands it IS difficult to reject
 and deny thenl-that if the advance of sci
 ence and the discoveries of criticism require
 new theories and interpretations it is also
 true that the convictions of honest men rest
 more solidly than ever Jon the verities which
 concern God and duty and the immortal life and Christ and love and self-denial and
 prayers and that increase of faith is to come
 with greater energy of the believing life, and that consequently the skepticism which alarms and dispirits ought rather to arouse to greater energy of faith and consistency in Christian living.
 Let your faith and conduct be thoroughly manly and intelligent In your faith supply virtue and in. virtue knowledge. In under standing be ye men. Dismiss at once for ever the impression that the meekness or simplicity of the Christian spirit has any af finity with either ignorance or weakness or that the humility of the gospel involves any savor of loss of self-respect. Let no man J J oO respect to the grounds of your faith or the reasons for duty. The service of Christ is reasonable service and our first and constant duty is to make it appear reasonable to ourselves and our fellow-men. Unless our faith has this strong root by which it holds it cannot be fruitful in it's growth or in it's produtes. In these days for a thinking man not to think about his re ligious life, is to commit a mortal sin against his Christian life.
 Remember that fruitfulness of life in any form depends on the energy of individual faith, and that faith depends upon the fdel- ity with which the convictions are obeyed. Remember above all that the present life in it's main features is prolonged and perpetual ed in the future, that intelligent and courageous and useful and prayerful and un- selfish and patient and forgiving life on earth, which is fed from living spring by living faith, opens wide the gates of entrance into the kingdom which cannot be moved. That each one of you may from this hour make sure of such life for himself is my sincere wish and prayer as bid you fare well