The leader., 1889-11-16

lows lt Is shutting up the catechisms
OF doubt, and the unrolling of
information. Instead of standing at
the foot of the ladder and looking up, it is
standing at the top of the ladder and looking
down. 1t is the last mystery taken out of
botany and geology and astronomy and
theology: Oh, will it not be grand to have
all questions answered? The perpetually re-
curing interrogation point changed for the
mark OF exclamation. All riddles solved.
Who will fear to go out on that discovery.
when all the questions are to be decided
which we have been discussing all
our lives? Who shall not clap his hands in
the anticipation of that blessed country, if
it be no better than through holy curiosity?
AS this Paul of my text did not suppress his
curiosity, we need not suppress ours. Yes,
l have an unlimited curiosity about all relig-
lous things, and as this city of Rome was so
intimately connected with apostolic times,
the incidents which emphasize and explain
and augment the Christian religion, you will
not take it as an evidence of prying spirit
but as the outbursting of Christian curios-
lty when say must also see Rome.
Our desire to visit this city is also intensi-
lied by the fact that we want to be confirmed
in the feeling that human life is brief, but
its work lasts for centuries inded for ever.
Therefore show us the antiquities of old
Rome, about which we have been reading
for lifetime. but never seen In onr be-
loved America, we have no antiquities. A
church eighty years old overawes us with its
age. We have in America some cathedrals
hundreds and thousands of years old, but
they are in Yellowstone park, or Californian
canon, and their architecture and masonry
were by the omnipotent God. We want to
see the buildings, or ruins of old buildings
that were erected hundreds and thousands of
years ago by human hands They lived forty
or seventy years, but the arches they lifted
the paintings they penciled the sculpture
they chiseled the roads they laid out. | un-
derstand, are yet to be seen, and we want you
to show them to us. l can hardly wait until
Monday morning. l must also see Rome
We want to be impressed with the fact that
what men do on small scale or large scale
lasts a thousand years, lasts forever, that we
build for eternity and that we do so in a very
short space of time. God is the only old liV-
ing presence But it is an old age Without
anv OF the infrmities or limitations of
old age There is passage of Scrip
ture which speaks of the birth of the
mountains for there a time when
the Andes were horn, and the Pyrenees were
born, and the Sierra Nevadas were born, but
before the birth of those mountains the Bible
tells us, God was born, aye, was never born
at all, because He always existed. Psalm
xc., 2: Before the mountains were brought
FORTH or ever Thou hadst formed the earth
and the world even from everlasting 10 ever
lasting, Thou art God" How short is human
life, what antiquity attaches to its worth!
How everlasting is God! Show us the antiq-
uities, the things that were old when Amer
lea was discovered, old when Paul went up
and down these streets sight seeing, old when
Christ was born. | must / must also see
Romel
Another reason Ior our visit to this CITY Is
that we want to see the places where the
mightiest intellects and the greatest natures
Inf
been told in America by some people of
swollen heads that the Christian religion is a
pusillanimous thing good for children under
years of age and small Drained people, but
not for the intelligent and swarthy minded
We have heard of your Constantine the
mighty, who pointed his army to the cross,
saying: "By this conquer" If there be
anything here connected with his reign or
his military history, show it to US. The
mlghtleSt intellect of the ages was the au-
thor of my text and, if for the Christian
religion he was willing to labor and suffer
and die there must be something exalted
and sublime and tremendous in it, and show
me every place he visited, and show me if
you can where he was tried, and which of
your roads leads out to Osta that | may
see where he went out to die We expect
before we finish this journey to see Lake
Galilee and the places where Simon Peter
and Andrew fished, and perhaps we
may drop a net or a hook and line into
those waters ourselves, but when fol-
ties l will learn quite another lesson I
want while in this city of Rome to study the
religion of the brainiest of the apostles. l
want to follow, as far as we can trace it, the
track of this great intellect of my text who
wanted to see Rome also. He was a logi-
clan, he was a metaphysician, he was an all
conquering orator, he was a poet of the
highest type. He had a nature that could
swamp the leading men of his own day, and
hurled against the Sanhedrim, he made it
tremble He learned all he could get in the
school of his native village then he had gone
to higher school, and there had mastered
the Greek and the Hebrew and per-
fected himself in bellies lettres, until in af-
ter years, he astounded the Cretans, and
the Corinthians and the Athenians, by quo
tations from their own authors. I have
never found anything in Carlyle, or Goethe,
or Herbert Spencer that could compare in
strength or beauty with Paups epistles. do
not think there is anything in the writings
of Sir William Hamilton that show such
mental discipline as you find in Pauls argu-
ment about justification and resurrection. I
have not found anything in Milton finer in
the way of imagination than / can find
in Paups illustrations drawn from the
amphitheatre There was nothing in
Robert Emmett pleading for bis life,
or in Edmund Burke arraigning Warren
Hastings in Westminster Hall, that COM
pared with the scene in the court room when,
before robed officials, Paul bowed and began
his speech, saying Il think myself happy,
King Agrippa, because shall answer for
myself this day" Irepeat, that religion
that can capture man like that must have
some power in it. 1t is time our wiseacres
stopped talking as though all the brains of
the world were opposed to Christianity.
Where Paul leads we can afford to follow. 1
am glad to know that Christ has in the diff
ferent ages of the world, had in
His discipleship q Mozart and Han
del in music; Raphael and
Reynolds in painting; an Angelo and q
Canova in sculpture; Rush and Harvey
in medicine; a Grotius and Washington in
statesrn anship; Blackstone, a Marshall and
Kent in the law; and the time will come