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the boasting of riches brought us? All these things are passed away like a shadow, and like a post that runneth on. . . Man and his theories, "like the grass of the field, groweth in the morning, . . . and withereth away, but the truth of God remaineth forever."

II. REVELATION

"God, who, at sundry times and in divers manners, spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all, in these days hath spoken to us by His Son." - Hebr. i, 1-2.

Were we to find, among the outcasts in the slums of one of our great cities, a boy of good make and mind, whose appearance and manners and speech betoken refinement, cast thus upon the world, without recollection of whence he came, ignorant of his birthplace and family connections, should we not conclude that there was something mysterious about his history? That he was one of whom his parents were ashamed? How else should we be able to account for the strange contrast between the promise and the condition of his being? And should it be that his parents knew of their boy's depraved condition and desired to reclaim him, is it not most probable that they would send and reveal to the child the mystery of his being and the desire of his parents to receive him again under the paternal roof? And supposing that now and then a wandering thought had crossed the boy's mind that he was of a family superior to those of the uncouth waifs with whom he lived, would he not readily hail the message of good tidings from his unknown home?

When we look into this wondrous world and find, among its multifarious beings, one endowed with intelligence and freedom, who has something about him that betokens powers of a spiritual nature, and we see him busily exerting these strange

powers upon material things, only now and then, at rare intervals, realizing his superiority over other earthly beings and in his better moments giving ear to a mysterious voice within him that speaks of an unseen One who has a claim upon his fear and reverence and love, for having offended whom he is filled with terror and overwhelmed with sorrow and confusion, in whose smile of pardon he is light-hearted and glad; and we see this most marvellous of beings of the world, which we call man, passing the few years of his earthly life in toil and pain till his material parts are worn and wasted with age and, with his wondrous spiritual faculties still vigorous and keen, a change comes over him and he turns cold and dead the spirit departing, whither we know not. When we consider all this, must we not think that man was destined for an existence to which he has failed to attain, that his present distressing condition is the result of some terrible aboriginal calamity? And now, supposing it were the loving will of the Creator to reclaim His wayward creature, is it not most likely that He would, in some manner worthy of His divinity, make known to fallen man the will of His God to redeem him? And when those "good tidings of great joy" were brought to man, expectant as he is of some more definite knowledge of the God of his conscience, would he not welcome the revelation?

Thus I might go on to prove the giving of a divine revelation from man's anticipation of it on the one hand, and from God's goodness and mercy on the other. But it would be idle to weary you with proof of what you already believe. It is of more moment to dwell upon the meaning of revelation and what is revelation. Revelation means an unveiling, a lifting off of the veil which shuts out from our mortal eyes the vision of God and of the mysteriousness of our being and present condition. And in the sense in which we are using the

word it means that God has revealed these mysteries to man and their meaning.

All the long story of man's creation and elevation out of a state of pure nature into a state of supernatural grace, his fall by sin, his pardon through the foreseen merits of a promised Redeemer, his temptations and struggles and sanctification and the attainment of his final destiny-all this is mystery, yet man needs to know all this; he cannot know it of himself, but he knows it by revelation.

At last we come to the question which has, perhaps all along, been uppermost in your minds, namely: Just where are we to find revelation and how can we know when we have found it? A short answer might be: The Bible is revelation. But this would be very inaccurate, for all that is in the Bible is inspired, but not necessarily revealed; and although the Bible contains a great deal of revelation, it does not explicitly contain all. Hence a more complete answer to the question would be that the sources of revelation are two, the Bible and divine tradition; or, in other words, revelation written down under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost and revelation handed down by word of mouth under the special care and guidance of the Holy Ghost. Let us first consider the Bible, on account of its excellence.

I. The Bible

is a collection of books which were written under the supernatural influence of the Holy Ghost, which we call inspiration. And we mean by inspiration that divine influence which so possessed the sacred writer that he was not only preserved from error in his writing, but that he wrote precisely all and only that which God influenced him to write; so that while the book was a human production, it was the inspired Word of God.

Rationalistic writers of nowadays, intruding boldly where angels fear to tread, and taking in profane hands the sacred Scriptures, and without any spiritual preparation scrutinizing and criticising the word of God, have, as might have been expected, not only lost all reverence for the Bible, but have, unasked, given to the world their pestiferous opinion that the Bible is but a product of human genius and, like all works of man, subject to criticism and correction. And it must indeed be painful to devout Protestants of the old school to hear and read what the Protestant pulpit and press of to-day think of that sacred volume which was once an object of reverence and love in the Protestant home.

There was a time in England and in America when the devout Protestant father and mother and children would gather at the close of day for their evening Scripture reading; there was a time when observant Protestants would not let a year roll its seasons away till they had read their Bible from Genesis to Revelation. But alas! that day's sun is setting. Take up any late Protestant treatise on the Bible, read what the modern Protestant thinks of the inspiration, authority, and correctness of sacred Scripture, and if your heart still throbs with the devotion and reverence of the Protestants of long ago, you will be overwhelmed with horror. And yet this condition of Protestantism is but the true and legitimate development of its first principles, and that devout reverence and unswerving faith of Protestants of yore was not a gift of the Reformation, but a legacy inherited from Catholic ancestors. That love and respect for the Word of God was planted and grew in the garden of the Catholic Church, and amid the arid wastes of Protestantism it has withered away and died, or has begun to realize that it is a flower plucked from a foreign bed and longs to regain its native air. The sincere, devout Protestant

needs but to realize his position, and he sees that he is out of his element; he needs but to look into his Bible and look at the teaching of the Protestant communions of to-day, and he awakes to the startling truth that he is not a Protestant at all, but a Catholic at heart, and his entrance into the Catholic communion is not so much a conversion or change as a return to his father's home. In the Catholic Church he is at home again. There he finds that what he has so long dreamed ofreverence for and unwavering faith in the Bible - is the true and simple teaching of the Church of God. She does not preach to him an eloquent sermon, couched in such uncertain language that he is still undecided and left to himself to form an opinion as to whether there really be any such thing as an inspired Bible. She tells him just what he reads in his Bible: "We have the more firm prophetical word; whereunto you do well to attend, as to a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the daystar arise in your hearts; understanding this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is made by private interpretation. For prophecy came not by the will of man at any time, but the holy men of God spoke, inspired by the Holy Ghost." Nor does she leave him to find out for himself, at the risk of error, which are the inspired writings. She has gathered them and put them together in one little book centuries ago, and gives them to him and bids him "Search the Scriptures . . . for they give testimony of me." And indeed, did she not do so, we should strive in vain to separate the inspired writings from among the piles of literary productions of the past thousands of years. When we take up our Bible and read it in our own mother tongue, how little do we suspect what a task it was to bring it to its present form.

Small as it seems, it contains no less than seventy-two dis

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