St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1895-07-22
MISSION OF THE CHURCH.
Archbishop Ryan Discourses sat
the Catholic Chautauuua,


PLATTSBURG, N. Y, July 21.-
st. Johns church was crowded to the
doors today. The sermon was deliv-
cred by Rt. Rev. P. J. Ryan, arch
bishop 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 power and that
the more luminous and enlarged
intellect becomes, the more it re-
sembles its divine original, the On
niscient 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 super
natural; science reveals truth, but
God is truth itself. It 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 Christ Himself, and to be the
kingdom of God on earth, prophesied
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
institution, no mere fortuitous col
lection of men who might happen to
agree in their Interpretation of GER
tain truths of revelation. No, it was
living organism with a divinely
constituted head, who was the rep
resentative of God on this earth
namely, the Jewish high priest who
spoke with authority. But the same
power that established it declared
that it's mission and functions were
to be but temporary. The very
date of their termination was fixed
the prophet Daniel. This termina-
ton took place only when Christ
had proved that He was the Messiah
and the great High Priest of the
new law. The Jewish church was
succeeded by Christ Himself as a
law giver, 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 prophecies, described in para
bles and openly announced by our Di-
vine Lord. He dwelt especially upon
the great mark which Christ Himself
of no itr Of cin
when He prayed that His followers
might be one. This mark of unity is
today, he said, the most striking evil
dence of the divine character of Cha
and of His church.
He continued to develop his great
subject of the institution of the church
and it's character as a kingdom, 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
divers denominations and permanent
stability to the state itself.
Let US, then, go forth from this
summer school with increased knowl-
edge both sacred and profane, but
| above all things with profound con-
viction that we have in the institu-
| ton of the church what the age and
nation requires. And let US prove by
our individual lives the practical in
| f1uence of that institution in govern
ing and sanctifying the individual, and
| therefore with power to influence
the whole nation for God and thus
preserve it,