The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1896-07-07

Following is a verbatim report Of a
very able sermon preached by Rev. II
w. Peck of the First NJ. e. Church to
the graduating class of 1896, Oahu Col
Iege, at Central Union Church.
You will find my text in Timothy,
l., H., ): There is one God, and one
Mediator between God and man, the
man Christ Jesus" l wish to call spe-
ciaI attention to the words, the man
Christ Jesus" | look into your young
faces tonight and l am reminded that
you are on life's threshold. From the
sheltering influences of college life you
are about to pass out into life's real bat
tie In you / see youth, strength, yigor
and high courage; yet let me remind
YOU that it is not within my nor any
mortal's ability to tell you what awaits
you in the coming days. Some OF you
will have long lives, full of all that
comes to us on the shores OF time.
Some of you will almost certainly reach
the end of this life quickly and the
tale of your years be brief. Tonight,
recognizing these facts, and that | am
speaking to immortal souls, in whose
hands God has, in a large sense, placed
the shaping of their own destiny, l
would hold up before you high ideal,
a lofty standard of living. My heart is
strangely stirred lest | should fail to
bring you the right message, to give
the right counsel upon this day which
will always be a milestone in your
life. | have chosen for my text the
man Christ Jesus" because rightly I'M
derstood he is the beginning. the course
o. of oil that ic
sible for man, both ideally and really
/ have no hesitation in telling you that
in as far as you follow him will you at
tain to the highest possibilities of your
manhood The world today is filled
with shallow, foolish conceptions of
man and of his surroundings. If your
idea of manhood be low, your life will
be ruined before it has really begun
am anxious that you should make no
mistake at this point. This line of
thought which / shall follow tonight
was largely suggested to me by the
closing remarks of an able address to
which you recently listened. In it you
were told to fearlessly push your inves-
LEGATIONS and not to shrink from &C
cepting any legitimate conclusions at
which you might arrive.
Your President, in reply, said that
you were accustomed to do so. AS
Christian and a minister of the Gospel
Of the Lord Jesus Christ, 1 wish to en-
dorse the thought that your safety lies
in following that suggestion. Let me
say right here that nine-tenths of the
indifference, irreligion. agnosticism and
infidelity in the world today is due to
two causes. The first is the acceptance
by man of shallow conclusions instead
IF fhnr0,10h1x-s in
fundamentals of this state of existence,
and especially those relating to mans
physical and spiritual life. The second
cause is that many men do not wish to
push their Investigations far enough
to find the bare white truth lest in
so doing they should find that which
would be a continuous reproach to
their life of wrong doing and selfish
ness.
Two great solutions of life are con-
tending today for the mastery of mans
mind There have been many others
suggested, but they have either perish
ed or are in state of decay.
Sir William Dawson, one of the great
est of living biologists, indicated the
two rival solutions of today when he
said, Either man is an Independent
gence, acting directly or through the
laws and materials of his own institu-
ton and production, or he has been
produced by an unconscious evolution
from lower things" We have "Materi-
alism," which knows no God, in sharp
conflict with Christianity" By Chris
tianity [ mean Christ. Christ is Chris
uanity in all that is vital to it. He
who knows no personal Christ has no
right to call himself a Christian ex-
cept in very limited sense.
Let us ask, then, of Materialism and
Christianity: Whence am I? What am
/? Whittier bound? And not stop short
of the legitimate conclusion,
Materialism asks us to believe that
the matter of which this universe
(man's present home) is composed is
eternal, self-exiStent; although matter
on every hand shows that it has limita-
tions, is subject to change and hence
cannot be eternal. We are asked to
believe that all matter is in state of
ceaseless evolution; that it can vary in
definitely, but that by some unknown
inevitable and yet senseless necessity
the changes have been in the main from
the simple to the complex, from the
lower to the higher. We are asked by
materialistic science to overlook, or at
least give little weight, to the fact that
great CULTS yawn in the theory and
thus destroy it. The first of these great
chasms is that which lies between civ
ing and non-living matter" On this
point Mr.. Huxley says: ''The present
state of knowledge furnishes us with
no link between the living and the not
living" Let me remind you here that
"a chain is 10 stronger than it's weak
est link" What shall be said, then,
when this master of the materialists adj
mits that the chain is altogether broken