Los Angeles herald., 1907-11-29

believeth and is baptized, shall be saved
| he that believeth not, shall be con
demned.' Redemption through Jesus
| Christ is to depend upon belief in hin
and In his doctrine and In the practices
Of the obligations imposed by him upor
redeemed mankind. Is there any free
dom of choice?. Does he leave it as q
matter of Indifference what man has te
believe? Certainly not.
IF a man is to profit by redemption
it must be under the penalty of satisfy
ing the conditions laid down by Christ.
If there is one thing more than another
that stands out boldly in the life of
Christ after the crucifxion on Calvary, ii
is the fact that he came as teacher and
that he established visible, teaching
body, to which He gave the commission
to go forth to all the nations and to
make His truth known to all mankind
Subject OF Commission
"The subject matter of the commits
sion was the deposit of faith which
Christ gave the apostles. The command
was to teach whatsoever He had COM
manded them; the reward of obedience
was union with Christ, the penalty of
disobedience was separation from Christ.
Religion was to bind men to God and re-
demption was the perfection of religion.
God, in His providence, chose men and
not angels to be the instruments of re-
demption, and Christ invested the
apostles and, through them, those whom
they might choose to be the teachers of
religion, the judges of conscience, and
the priests of his sacrifice. The creden-
tials for their authority were clearly de-
fined in the words of Christ to them and
clearly recorded in the New Testament.
Thus did Christ establish His church as
a visible organization, composed of men
and commissioned to bear the same ono
message of true religion to all men until
the end of time.
Thus did Christianity establish itself
in the world.
'It brought it's message to Greek and
Roman, to Jew and Gentle, to freeman
and TO slave; 1t came as the great
teacher of redemption, with the truth
which alone could fully satisfy human
intelligence and with love which alone
could fill the human heart; it came in
the name of God and with His authority
to preach the truth which had been de-
posted in 1t by the eternal Son of God.
at has gone through the world for 20
centuries redeeming, uplifting, ennoblng
humanity; it has never ceased teaching
men the selfsame truths; it has stood
for the old traditions it has defended
the old truths; it has no novelties in re-
ligion nor has it been subject to the
fads and fancies of builders of new
tangled systems of religion. 1t has
Christianized Greek philosophy and Ro-
man law; it has civilized the barbarian
nations and laid the foundations of Chris
tian Europe; 1t has revolutionized the
moral life of the world, sunk as it was
in the degradation of paganism; it has
emancipated/ the home, made sacred the
marriage tie, defended the people from
tyranny, made possible the liberty of the
ut has been for the centuries the great
educator of the people, building schools
and universities.
Like Good Samaritan
'It has gone through the world like
q good Samaritan. healing the ills Of hui
pouring oil and wine into the
wounds made by sin. 1t has been the
good shepherd of mems souls, the light
Of the world and the salt Of the earth
Whatever there is of humaneness in the
world of today, whatever of spiritual
Joy and eternal hope, of the faith in
Gods love, and of the consciousness of
is largely due to the infiu-
ence of the centuries of Christianity.
"The faith of that Christianity has
come to you and to me through the old
Catholic church, in whose name and by
virtue of whose authority, this beautiful
church OF st. Agnes is dedicated to God
today. We never shall know until we
stand before the great throne of God how
good God has been to us in the gift of