1879.] -151- [Chase. 



Our children, with all the natural curiosity of youth, fascinated by the 

 wonderful rapidity of discovery and the charms of novelty, may easily be 

 led to confound hypotheses with facts, unless we provide some means for 

 their proper enlightenment. They may also be easily led to see that all 

 truth is harmonious ; that there are different kinds of truth, adapted to 

 different spiritual requirements ; that the existence, the appreciation, and 

 the authority of truth, are all due to spiritual existence ; that spirit is 

 superior to matter ; that only through faith in the inspiration of the Al- 

 mighty is any exercise of our reasoning powers or any attainment of 

 knowledge possible ; that faith is, therefore, higher than reason, and it is 

 important that our faith should have the foundation of God, which 

 standeth sure. 



Let us not hope or desire to banish either bigotry or radicalism. As 

 long as men differ in taste and ability, they will also differ in their lean- 

 ings towards opposite extremes of thought. Men of one idea fill a useful 

 place in the economy of culture, for their very extravagance may serve 

 as a warning ; their devotion, as an example ; their leadership, as an in- 

 spiration ; their antagonism, as a needful restraint. Few walk so safely 

 in the golden mean, that they are never misled by the mists of error ; few 

 can be awakened to a knowledge of their own mistakes, so quickly and 

 so thoroughly, as by wrestling with counter mistakes. He who seeks for 

 a symmetrical growth in truth, should first seek to know himself. If his 

 intellectual vigor is so great as to make him haughty and headstrong, he 

 needs to learn the helplessness of reason and the power of faith ; to see 

 that all our boasted intellectual triumphs are limited to the acceptance of 

 conclusions, which rest upon simple faith in propositions that cannot be 

 proved. If his faith in his creed, his teachers or his companions, degene- 

 rates into the credulity of ignorance, he needs to learn that faith was 

 given us only as a helper, not as a tyrant ; that moral and religious growth 

 should be accompanied by intellectual growth ; that worldly probation 

 was designed for the proper exercise and training of all our powers, in or- 

 der that we may come "unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of 

 Christ ;" that a reasonable faith should always be accompanied by a faith- 

 ful reason. 



It is with nations and with ages as with individuals. Each community 

 and each period, represents a certain stage of progress, a certain capacity 

 of development, a certain want of guidance. Although history often seems 

 to repeat itself, each apparent repetition is shaped by new conditions. 

 Old questions are continually coming up, but they are continually answered 

 under new phases of experience. The thoughts of Socrates and Plato 

 have left an impress upon humanity which can never be obliterated ; the 

 great religions of antiquity prepared the way for Christianity ; the claims 

 of Christianity, as a final and culminating revelation "in the dispensation 

 of the fulness of times," rest on its completeness and on its adaptation to 

 the wants, not of a single age or of many ages, but of all ages. The tri- 

 umphs of reason, when guided by faith in the intimations of truth which 



