The morning call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1878-1895, 1894-02-19
"The Age of Skepticism
Will Pass Away.
-
CHRlST'S CHURCH TRIUMPH
And the Worship of God Be
Re-establiShed."
A SERMON BY BISHOP KEANE.
Some Important Declarations as to
the Course and Faith of the
Catholic Church.

To a congre cation which packed st. Mary's
Cathedral to the outer doors and crowded
the standing and seating room TO the point
of discomfort he spoke upon 1.-THE Future
Of Religion"
Choosing a text from the seventeenth
chapter of St. JOnn, the prayer of Jesus
that the children of God might all be as
firmly bound in unity with the Father as
the Son and Father were in their eternal
likeness, Bishop Keape followed through
the history of the past to show the futility
land instability of all attempts to create
I. substitutes for religion, gave philosOphic
reasons for an assertion that nothing but
religion could preserve organic social unity
among men, and at the close reegated to
the judgment of God the decree that in the
end all humanity must be made like Christ,
one with the Father.
The periodicals OF the day." said the
Bishop, "are filled with articles cropping
blindly about for the solution of the Ques-
ton, What OF the future? and building
from their own imaginations graphic con-
ceptlons to compensate their ignorance.
But the fact that the consideration of the
subject is so universal indicates that there
Is no tiippaney in the spirit that asks the
question. Il is a serious matter worthy of
our consideration, and in answering the
u
work or theoriziDg.
Facts speak louder than words, and
the facts OF the past speak so loudly of
what the future is to be that all one needs
is TO understand what these historical
facts mean in order to determine what
the future will be.
The first fact history demonstrates is
that religion is an absolutely universal
and essential element in human nature.
In all ages men have believed in God 60
watch over their destiny. Hence scien-
tltlc men in studying and analyZing the
nature of man agree that man can be de-
fined as religious being. as well as
rational being.
The second fact is that religion has
been The maker OF all forms of civiliZa-
ton. Of all forms of social organization.
For 1t has taken three elements TO make
up civilization. First, individual charac-
ter; second, social relation ship, and civil
organization. And 1t is only religion that
can make individual character permanent
and strong; that can harmOniZe men in
social union that can esta blish the stand
ards OF law ana morality. without which
civil organization cannot exist.
he third fact is that in proportion as
civilization advances religion also adj
Yances ia It's ideals and practices. In the
old days when mans conception of God
was crude. religion was also crude. In
proportion as man advances further ia
enlightenment he recognizes over and
above the almighty power OF God. his
wondrous Intelligence and wondIous love.
And thus all religion reaches its final stage
and climax in the teachings of Jesus,
which give tue link that unite man to God.
strangely, man now asserts that this
last phase of religion IS the most unworthy
and the least called for as humanity al
vances. People are anxious to put re-
ligion out Of theway:aDd to substitute phil
OSophy for it. But philosophy can never
stand TO be the light and life OF men, for it
goes bark itself tn the first cause, the self
existent being. from whom all eXiStences
must have their being. Men have tried TO
put the PHILOSOPHERS of the Buddhas, of
Confucius, of Aristotle, of Plato and OF
hundreds of other great thinkers upon US,
but all have failed. Even Ed win Arnold,
after writing his Light of ASIA had to
bring Buddha to the feet of Jesus in his
Light Of the World
Attempts are made to substitute science
for religion and in its younger days the
study bcasted of its ability 10 accomplish
this. The cosmic theory and spontaneous
generation were the first ideas set forth,
but even such man as Virchow acknowl-
edges that between mere molecular action
and spiritual sensations there is a chasm
which science never can bridge over.
Then was pronounced the derivation of
man from the lower animals, but be-
tween the highest type of these
and the lowest type of man science
The more study is made Of the animal
instinct the more evident does it become
that it is essentially different from the
mind OF man. Huxley has said that the
cosmc philosophy is wrong because it
does not include in it the ethical element
because there is no place in 1t for morality
1t holds to the theory Of the survival of
the ftteSt, which means the dominance of
the strongest and most enduring. not the
most pure and the most vir.uous. 1t leaves
no ground for the as piration for the best
and nobest
Social and economic substitutes have
been advanced for the substitution, but
what does the great historian of political
economy, Professor Ingraham, say? The
only permanent and successful adjuster of
human relations Is religion. Nothing else
can succeed.
History thus answers the question
What is the future Of religion? History
thus demonstrates that just In proportion
as civilization advan es, as men get en-
lightenment, does religion show forth the
highest and pureSt and best thing for hu
= manity.
"HistOry says the golden age was that
of Augustus. In that age was Jesus born
When civilization again became glorious
in the fourth century then was Leo the
2. Great leader of the church of Christ. In
the time of the barbarian ascendency was
the day of Thomas Aquinas and st.
Buonaventure. After the degradation of
the fourteenth. fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries. when came, be il for veal or
for woe, the rehabilitation of the powers
of organized government. then also was
the hour of religions triumph In saints
like Ignatius Loyola.
Then came the age of darkness of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
upon which Carlyle pOurs forth the venom
OF his spleen-these TO lead the way to the
grandeur of the nineteenth century. And
what now is tile position of religion when
civilization is at the highest pitch of de-
yeloDment in all its history? Paul Bour-
get says that the intelligence of France,
after having been led astray by Rousseau
and the materialists of his time and of
later years. is now turning back again.
disappointed. sick at heart, crying for
light. seeking for purity and nobleness.
He calls il the dawn or a new era. The
nineteenth century has found out that
naterialism and all its kin are a degrade
ton of mind. The extreme of skepticism
has been reached. 1t has wrought its
own ruin. The, only alternative is the
religion of our Lord Jesus Christ and the
old church. which he placed in the world