The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1896-06-02
Baccalaureate Sermon at the
University Sunday.
ABOUT COMING TO CHRIST
Culture without Conscience
is Naught.
ATHLETICS AND CHRISTIANITY
Manv Visitors Have Already Arrived
and the Prospects For Good Com
mencement are Exception
ally Bright.


Yesterday in the Chapel BISHOP
Rondthaler, of the Moravian church OF
Salem. delivered the baccalaureate ser
mon before the graduating class. 1t
was pronounced the finest effort that
has ever been made on such an occasion
for a number of years.
Heretofore the annual sermon,
which opens the commencement
exercises has been alternately deliver
ed by either a Methodist, Baptist, Epls-
copalian or Presbyterian. This year
Rishop Rondthaler, of the Moravian
church, delivered the sermon to the
graduating class. There being sew
eral Moravians in the class, and 1T be-
ing the University's aim to recognize
all, this is a wise diversion. Bishop
Rondtha1er's sermon was as follows:
Text: Lord to whom shall we go?
thou hast the words of eternal life"
John 6: 6S.
You remember in tom Browns
School DAYS. how the old captain of
the eleven came to Rugby, walked the
campus, looking at the buildings, threw
himself down on the turf, the scene
of many a splendid game, and broke
the quiet peace of the chapel, with ITS
illuminated windows? 1t was all
dreary to him and empty and dead
because the great man who had been
the soul of the whole place, Dr. Ar
mold, was gone.
Ever so it is with religion, with its
gracious form and with its wise regn-
lations and with its distinctive offices.
1t is dreary and empty and dead when,
for any reason, the living personal
Christ is gone out of it. In fact re-
.p.o SC n fhfnns iS
real, living, present. 1t is no bundle
of rules, no finely drawn system. no
scheme of government. 1t is the good
Shepherd, the loving Saviour, the bless
ed Son of God, actually present in the
lives of those whom He came to save, OF
him let us speak according to the
text: Lord to whom shall we go?
thou hast the words of eternal life"
John g.: 6S.
1. For the sake of peace of our con-
science we go to Christ. You will
sometimes come across a fellow who
is bright, plausible, agreeable, but in
whom there is something decidedly
lacking. He would, as you gradually
find out, as soon steal an essay as
himself write it; as soon cheat in an
examination paper as make it out in
honest competition; tangle up a half
dozen good men with differencing re-
ports of the same thing because it
happens to be handler than to tell the
true case. The longer you know him
the less you want of him in Your
fraternity or out side of it. The fact
is, the fellow has no conscience, and
all gifts and graces go for naught in
the face of that great lack.
There is another man who has de-
asI Id e. H. lxa Fnl 4
once, perhaps deeply. But there is
this about him, his own conscience
witnesses against him. Nothing that
) friends or even enemies can say about
his sin cuts as deeply as does his in
ward testimony against himself. In
putting such case, we are, after all,
/ hope, only putting our own. The
faults may be more grievous or less
so, they may be sins which society
counts as such, or to which IL is blind;
but the sting of the sin is there, and
the soul alone knows the society of
its bitter remorse, and it is for such
souls that Jesus Christ came. He was
not picking out low class Of people,
as compared with a higher one, but
He was selecting me and you when he
said: II came not to call the righteous,
but sinners to repentance" Many a
man is hindered by the remembrance
of a guilty past from reaching toward
a nobler future. His evils have been
scorched and blackened by the fires
of former sins. He utterly distrusts
himself and goes about with the
thought: II have made my bed and
must lie in it." 1t is just for these
men, repentant and willing to be in
wardly helped that Jesus Christ has
a word of life.
1t is the same word which reached
the conscience of an adulturous David
and of disappearing Saul of Tarsus.
1t is word which has gained its value
from the atoning blood of the cross.
1t is word which gives to man a
sure, strong backing while he fights
the battle that lies before him. ''Son thy
sins are forgiven thee: go in peace"
2. For the sake of a vigorous body,
with all its powers balanced and sus-
tanned for the work of as many years
as God may give, we come to Jesus.
1t has been supposed that christian
ity has nothing to do with an athletic
body. 1t has been thought that a star
we'd, slumped, mortified body was the
fittest smouldering altar on which to
make the sacrifice of an immortal
soul to God Tt is mistake. 1t has
not come from the Bible, save out of
neutrality-suspicious. and misunderstand-
ings, as when Saul is made to speak
phil. 3: 21) of 'vile" body, which
is thing he never said about the
glorious, God-made, human frame. lie
said that it had been humbled, that
is, under the death sentence. He never
said it was vile. The Bible was not
written by hermits and anchor
ties. Their error came into the
ancient church through orienta
dreamings about matter being essen
TALLY evil, while spirit was supposed
to be necessarily good, according II
the Bible, the body is wonderful.
fashioned 1T is intended to become tn
very example of the Holy Ghost.
has been glorified as the dwellin;
place Of the incarnate Son of God
Every nerve and muscle and sinew ha
is value with the Creator and Re
deemer, who means to raise it up agail
even from the dead.
We. of the older generations, still
feel the athletic thrill; our hands sti