The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1908-03-30

Bishop Restariek gave the third lee
ture of the course which he is deliver
ing on THE Principles of the Christian
Religion" He briefly referred to tn,
argument in the first two lectures Of
the human soul and its relation to God
and of One who came and spoke witr
authority revealing man to himself and
God to man. in Jesus Christ he said:
no truth held on any system is denied
or destroyed, all the truths of the ages
are gathered up in Him, the Truth
He continued, II speak OF the world
before the individual because it is cas-
Ter to see the diffused power of Chris
| tianity than TO note it in the individ-
ual The light of the sun in its diff
| fusive power is readily seen and rec
| ognized. The receptivity of plant or
| animal life to the rays of the sun, and
the influence of these on life and its
| functions. is a different matter.
| People often say: give US the SIM
pie gospel and not theology If you
speak of light in a general way it is
simple. but apply it to the individual,
consider the action of the luminous,
the actinic, the caloric rays or con-
slider reflection, refraction, dispersion,
polarization. then the subject is seen
to be complex and to demand the best
powers of the mind to understand and
to use.
So with Christ in His relation to the
individual. AS men think out the APP
plication of the truth of Christ to the
individual in his complex needs, the
science of theology Of necessity springs
up Like all our sciences it needs con-
tinually to be revised in it's statements,
while the truth itself remains I'M
touched and Interchangeable.
No intelligent man today doubts that
Jesus Christ has been a mighty factor
in the development of the social life
of man in the past nineteen centuries.
This power of Christ has not wholly
depended upon the number of units
in society which have consciously re-
ceived Him as Truth and Light. This
is due to the fact that as years have
come and gone the units who have
been in close touch with Christ have
left in social life, in laws, in customs
much of what they gained.
Among enlightened nations the So
cial atmosphere is full of the diffused
light of Jesus Christ. No one in coun-
tries nominaliy Christian can get out
of this light. Laws, literature, Gus
toms, restraining influences, all tend
ing to make life itself really worth
living, are saturated with Christ.
1t has been forcibly brought before
us in this day that this diffused power
may nightly affect the conduct of a
4
lance of Christ by large numbers of
individuals, as shown in Japan in it's
conduct of war.
When we study history we are often
made sad by the slow progress made,
and by the many evils existing in the
present. but every we'll informed per-
son admits that there has been a mar
velous growth all along the line in
moral and humanitarian ideas and
practises.
Many people as they enjoy these
blessings of progress look upon them
as the result of a general advance due
to education and knowledge, entirely
the fact that all the privil-
eyes which we enjoy of liberty, of a
wider conception of human rights, of
a larger sense of responsibility for
cleaner, healthier and happier, all go
back for roots to Jesus Christ and are
all results of His leavening power
They did not exist before He came
and you cannot find the conditions, nor
anything like them, where He is not
preached. The substance Of words Of
ten ascribed to Lowell are apt: "Show
me a place on the earth's surface ten
miles square, where childhood is re-
spected. manhood respected, woman
hood honored, where purity is the
ideal. where human brotherhood is be-
lieved in, where humanitarian helpful
ness is carried into effect. where Christ
has not gone in and cleared the way,
and laid the foundations OF all this
Kidd in his social Evolution" says:
Although a large proportion is quite
of it, their conception of
their rights and duties. and of their
to each other, their ideas
of liberty and even of government and
of the fundamental principles of So
ciety have been largely shaped by reli-
gion." He devotes several chapters to
prove that the source of what we know
as modern progress Is not intellectual
but religious
/ spoke in my former lectures of the
Greek mind and the Won
derful exhibitions of it's powers in
art literature and archi-
lecture. What was the conception of
man and of morality? George Henry
Lewes. certainly an impartial witness,
says that as for any conception of duty
or responsibility to others outside of
the community it did not exist. Moral !
ity among the Greeks was of the mar
rowed and most egotistical kind. It
never embraced any conception of hu-
manity. No Greek ever attained to the
sublimity of such a point of view"
Take a few points. What is the idea
of government in Christian lands? It
is the greatest good to the whole. It's
aim is humanitarian. Take the Greeks
again as an Illustration. There was
no idea not the most remote of men
as such possessing any rights. Athens
was called q Democracy but the great
body of Athenians were slaves of their
own race upon whom the few looked
down as upon a vulgar herd. The
freeman could never become citizen,
nor could any one of foreign race
though born in Athens.
1t was the same in the Roman En-
pire, an immense proportion of the
rIo oh 4afx