The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1895-07-22
REVEREND RYAN.
SERMON BEFORE THE CATHOLIC
SUMMER SCHOOL.
as the Kingdom of God on Earth
as FOretoId in the Prophecies.

PLATTSBURG, N. Y, July 21-St.
doors. The sermon was delivered by
Right Rev. P. J. Ryan, archbishop of
Philadelphia, and every member of the
Catholic summer school was present.
Archbishop Ryan said in part:
Whilst praising highly the truths of
the natural order and realizing that
knowledge is powerful and that the
more luminous and enlarged the intel
lect becomes the more 1t resembles it's
divine original, the Omniscient God,
you forget not the still greater truths
revealed by that God concerning His
own nature and our relations to Him.
He is the fountain of all truth; natural
and supernatural science reveals truth,
but God is truth itself 1t is my place
to speak to you of the institution of
the church, which was to preserve all
the revelations primitive and Jewish
and TO proclaim the newer and greater
ones made manifest by Jesus himself
and to be the kingdom on earth proph-
eSied by Daniel.
There are important analogies be-
tween the Jewish and Christian
churches, which enable us to under
stand more perfectly the latter. The
Jewish church was no mere human in
stitution, no mere fortuitous collection
of men Who might happen to agree in
their Interpretation of certain truths
of revelation. No, it was living or
ganism with a divinely constituted
head, who was the representative of
God on this eaTth-namely the Jewish
high priest who spoke with authority.
But the same power that eStab-
lished it declared that it's missions and
functions were to be but temporary.
The very date of their termination was
placed by Almighty God and declared
by the Prophet Daniel This ter1nfna-
tion took place only when Christ
proved that He was the Messiah, and
the great high priest of the new law.
The Jewish church was succeeded by
Christ himself and the laWgiver, judge
and ruler"
Archbishop Ryan then developed the
nature and mission of the church as
the kingdom of God on earth as fore
told in the prophecies, described in
parallels and openly announced by
our divine Lord. He dwelt especially
upon the great mark which Christ
himself gave of the divinity of his
mission when he prayed that his fol-
lowers might be one.
This mark of unity is today" he
said, 1.-The most striking evidence of
the divine character of Christ and of
his church
He continued to develop his great
subject of the institution of the church
and it's character as a knowledge, and
closed his sermon thus:
Now, this great institution, founded
by Christ and blessed with such mar
velous unity and stability, IS precisely
what is needed in our age and country
in order to give religious unity to
many diverse denominations and per-
manent stability to the state itself Let
US, then, go forth from this summer
school with increased knowledge, both
sacred and profane, but ABOVE all
things with a profound conviction that
we have in this institution Of the
church what the age and nation re-
quires. And let us prove by orr indi-
vidual lives that the practical infu-
ence of that institution is governing
and sanctifying the individual and
therefore with power to influence the
whole nation for good, and thus pre-
serve it,