The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-12-10
OUR RELIGION PROVINCIAL
CHURCH NEEDS HELD OF LARG r
 ACTIVITIES.


 siOns in Broadening Religious
 ThOught-Confnemen of Religious
 Interest to Our Own Country Means
 Contraction of Our Spiritual Thought.
 The following is the substance of an interesting and emphatic mission ser mon preached at St. Paul's church yes
 terday morning by the rector, Rev
 James De Wolf Perry, jr.
 St. Luke, 282: "A light to tighten
 the Gentiles, and the glory of thy peo-
 pie Israel"
 There is a wealth of romance in this i passag But there is more than TO- nance here. The words describe the summit of prophecy as well as poetry
 They set forth tWo-fold principle that ] pervades the history of all the ages
 The light that was destined to Tighten the Gentiles and to be the glory of Is
 rael concerned far more than Jews an
 GentiIes. It described the laws of spir 1 ituaI progress then and there, now anJ here, always and everywhere.
 Every force that makes for knoWl 1 edge and righteousness must be prove by these two everlasting laws, declar ed on the threshold of Christian his tory in our Nunc Dimittis. Let us stat them:
 CD. The test of truth is its power reach and to save every region of life As the function of light is to dispell th l darkness surrounding it, so truth, ii ! eternal and real must overleap confines of distance an1 difference, to transform the races awaiting 1t. Call them Gen tiles, barbarians, heather, it is these that put truth to the test The only | truth that can live is the light that can tighten them. That is the first law; the second is simply the other side of the same statement. The glory of any people is gained, not by the light that shines upon it, but from beyond it. Now these laws which apply to all truth in general must be proved in the spread of Christian influence, Christian en- 1 hghtenment and Christian civilization The power of the gospel is proved by transforming those who receive it, but the glory of the gospel is shown by transfiguring those who impart it. which is but another form of Simeon's words "A light to tighten the Gentiles and to be the glory of Israel"
 Now let us pass from this general statement to find how these principles work in the Christian life of to-day The first of these laws, which describes the transforming influence of the Chris i tian religion, has been presented to us l recently from two points of view Four weeks ago, a story was told by MT. Littel from HankoW, which those who heard will never forget, of the light which has come through the gospel to the oldest government known. A month earlier, we were told by the Bishop of Porto Rico of the influence of the Christian church in the newest, the al- most experimental government that our United states have established The first of these shows what has been done by the gospel of Christ in one genera tion to set free a people from the bond age of ancient tyranny. In the account of Porto Rico, Bishop Knight explain- cd that religion alone, and only that form of religion revealed in Christian ity, can lay foundation for true lib- erty
 We could, if we wished, pass from these to find in the case of each nation where the Christian church is at work, how the gospel is solving for every people its own particular problem. In Japan, it has offered an educational system which has begun to appease the insatiate hunger for knowledge among those people whose intellect awoke at the call of Christ but a short half cen- tury since. In the Philippines it is holding out to a people suffering from oppressive cruelty the hand of benevo- lence and brotherly sympathy And so in our own land, each section Is find ing in the ideals of the Christian church the response to its own individual need the West, a spiritual aim to material prosperity; the South, a force which alone can unite two widely different races in the bonds of Christian broth erhood. All these, and countless more, are the proofs that the Christian gos- pei has given of the light transform 1 ing the Gentles, the world.
 But to-day I wish to turn from this to the other aspect of what we call Emissions; from the light with which the Christian religion is Tightening the world to the glory that rests on a peo- pie engaged in this work It was but a short century ago, and little more, | (only day in the sweep of the earth's i history) since America changed from mission field to a base of missionary la- | bors. Three hundred years ago next | summer. with the settlement of James, | town and the building there of the first Episcopal church it was pioneer [ ground, the farthest and willest ad- | venture of foreign missions, cen- | tury more, in 1706 the wilderness of [ Connecticut was reached in the jealous | campaign of the church. Another cen- < tury passed, the church like the nation, r wrote it's own constitution, to become the source, not the object of Christian in fuence. For a hundred years past the American church has been placed on trial-Whether the work of the ages will continue through us, or, now that our land has received the blessing, we shall allow 1t to rest and become a non-conductor of Christian civilization. |
 Let us remember that the issue is more than the good we can do It is | our glory that we have at stake in the spread of Christian enlightenment. The light that Iightens the Gentiles is to be no less the splendor of America now than if was of Israel when tba o,ot