THE SIGNIFICANCE TO CHRISTIANITY OF THE DISCOVERY AND THE HISTORY OF AMERICA.

OPENING ADDRESS, SUNDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 8, 1893.

BY PRESIDENT MERRILL EDWARDS GATES, LL.D., AMHERST COLLEGE.

IN these days, when by the help of electricity we divide our seconds into fractions, if we would get such a theme as that for this evening fairly before us, we shall do well to throw aside, as far as we may, the conditions of time. We need a larger unit of measurement than the year. The poets help us to get such a unit; and a Russian author, Ivan Tourguéneff, in a little prose poem has left us this dialogue:

"The Alpine summits—a complete chain of steep precipices, right in the heart of the Alps. Over the mountains is a pale green, clear, silent sky. Hard, biting frost; firm, sparkling snow; dark, weather-beaten, ice-bound crags rise from beneath the snow. Two colossi, two giant mountains, rise from the horizon on either side, the Jungfrau and the Finster-Aarhorn. The Jungfrau

asks her neighbor, 'What is the news? You can see better; what is going on down there below?'

"Thousands of years pass by,—as one moment. And FinsterAarhorn thunders back the answer, 'Impenetrable clouds veil the earth. . . . Wait!'

"Again thousands of years pass,—as one moment.

"Well, what now?' asks the Jungfrau. 'Now, see,-everything there is changed, confused, and petty. Blue water, dark woods, heaped-up masses of gray stone, with those little insects running all about, you know,-the two-legged ones, which have never yet ventured to intrude upon your summit or mine.''Men?''Yes, men.'

"Again thousands of years pass by as a moment. "Well, what now?' asks the Jungfrau.

"It seems to me as if fewer of those little insects are to be seen,' thunders Finster-Aarhorn. It is getting clearer down there. The waters are narrower, the woods are thinner.'

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Again thousands of years pass by,-like one moment.

"What do you see now?' asks the Jungfrau.

"Round about us, near by, it seems to have got clearer,' answers Finster-Aarhorn; 'but down there in the distance, in the valleys, there are still some spots and something moving.'

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And now?' asks the Jungfrau, after thousands of years more, a mere moment.

"Now, all is well!' answers Finster-Aarhorn;-'clear and shining everywhere, pure white wherever you look... Our snow everywhere; nothing but snow and ice. All is frozen. All is calm and peaceful.'

“Yes, now it is well!' answers the Jungfrau. 'But we have talked enough, old friend; let us sleep awhile.'

"They sleep, the giant mountains. The clear green sky, too, sleeps above the ever-silent earth."

And so the history of our race is summed up between question. and answer, as these mighty snow-clad ones watch over the chilled globe where the nations have had their day!

If we are to understand what the discovery of a new continent means, if we are to appreciate the import, to the race, of that new-world life which becomes an element in the history of mankind from the date of the discovery which we celebrate, we must take a large, cosmic view of the life of mankind.

GOD IS IN THE LIFE OF MEN.

"We believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth." We begin with the postulate that God is, and that God is in history. We believe in God. We believe in "Immanuel, God with us." The existence of God does not depend upon the last bright thought of the latest popular essayist. God IS. This is the central fact of the universe, and the most significant truth known to the human mind. The thought of God is a power in the life of men, not because men think it, but because God is, because he has willed that the thought of himself, rising upon the life of men, shall sway them as the sun sways the planets,

shall make life fruitful, as the sun's heat brings on the spring and draws life from the dead earth. God IS; and God is with men to bless them. God is like men, since He made man in his own image. The goodness and the virtues of man, we say it reverently, are the goodness and the virtues of God. The incarnation of the Son of God has made it forever impossible for a man to attain to a true knowledge of God while he despises or fails to love his fellow-men who are made in God's image.

God the Father is in intimate relations with men, with the children of men whom he calls to be the children of God. All the phenomena of growing life are God's will in action. All life is directly from him; and everywhere, the life that God gives is a life that grows and unfolds. Christ's own law is "first the blade," but infolded in the blade are all the potentialities of the hundred-fold fruitage, as the ordered life of the blade unfolds.

GOD IS IN THE LIFE-HISTORY OF NATIONS.

With the individual and with the nation, life is from God. In the simple truth that God wills a life for a man or a nation,—that the life-impulse has been given, the life-giving touch from that outstretched hand of God which is never far removed from us,in this simple truth are infolded all the possibilities of that life for the individual, for the nation, which in the given environment and in the given measure of time shall unfold itself in accordance with the plan of Him who "sees the end from the beginning." In the lives of Christian men and the Christian nations, God embodies his own truth, and exhibits his own thought of what is essential for the life of those sons of God who are the sons of men.

NO BLANK PAGES IN GOD'S HISTORY OF THE RACE. Since we as Christians hold these convictions concerning the existence of God and his loving interest in the life of our race, we expect to find significance in the opening of a new continent to the life of civilized man. God is not a meaningless writer. There are no blank pages in his volumes of history. And when he lays open, before that pen of destiny which writes the record of the race, the broad fair pages of a new continent, and in the burst of new light that heralds a fresh morning for the race, that pen of destiny, held in a Father's hand, proceeds to write the

record of a new volume in the life of mankind, we may feel assured that a fresh interest will attach to the record. The new environment provided, the new social forces called into play, mean a broader, a deeper, a higher revelation, of the thought and purpose of God toward the race of man, whom he is fitting for that higher and more perfect life which is life eternal.

For the religious life of the race, there is a supreme significance then in the opening of the new world. Over the weltering waste of waters that surrounded this western world, the Spirit of the living God was brooding. Out of chaos was to come a new social creation, a fresh revelation of the spirit of Christ in the lives of

men.

"The sea that fast hath locked in his loose flow

All secrets of Atlantis' drowned woe

Lay bound about with night on every hand,
Save down the eastern brink a shining band
Of day made out a little way from land.
Then from that shore the wind upbore a cry:
'Thou sea, thou sea of darkness! why, oh why,
Dost waste thy West in unthrift mystery?'
But ever the idiot sea-mouths foam and fill,
And never a wave doth good for man, or ill,
And Blank is king, and Nothing hath his will."

-Lanier.

MEANING OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS'S DISCOVERY.

But brooding over this waste, God the Spirit was preparing to summon forth new life; and it is suggestive and like the condensed, all-inclusive phrases in which Holy Scripture conveys truths about natural science fuller and more significant than the minds of the writers could comprehend, that the name of the hero who 400 years ago discovered America, is typical of God's purpose in the discovery and peopling of this new continent. Christopher means "the Christ-bearer"; Columbus, "the dove."

Of time and change and mortal grief and shame.
Columbus, word celestial! Evermore

The Dove of Peace, serene and spirit-bright,
Shall wing his way from us to every shore,
Sure-poised for his pacific, world-wide flight.
Significance supreme and splendor o'er

Our land be poured by thee, great name of Light."
-Mrs. Merrill E. Gates.

In this opening of the portals to the rising sun of eastern civilization, to the Sun of Righteousness, what was done for the Christian world, for the kingdom of God? Now that four centuries have passed, can we see something of the meaning of the opening up of this new world?

It was hard to see the true significance of this new continent, when Spaniards, in the name of Christ, were hunting down with blood-hounds the defenceless inhabitants of Peru; or when the oppressive despotism of Louis XIV. threatened to fix itself as the dominant power upon the continent; or when the accursed spread of human slavery, in our own land, shamed our alleged devotion to freedom and blasted the growing life of the nation. Are the shadows lifting, and can we now see a larger meaning than could have been discerned fifty years ago?

There is a meaning in this large, new life for the race. God challenges our thought. He would have us will to know His purposes. Reverently, in the light of facts which are "divine things," can we see something of God's meaning?

A NEW LIFE REQUIRES A NEW ENVIRONMENT.

If God had been preparing for the race a new, a fuller revelation and development of Christian life,-following the plan on which He has uniformly worked in history, what would be needful in order that this larger thought of God might become embodied in the life of man?

Every organism requires for its life an environment, a "pou sto." It must have ground, room for growth, air and light, and nourishment suited to its need.

Every germinal organism, if it is to grow, demands a nourishing plasma-a material in which it can freely lay hold, which it can appropriate and build up into its own tissue after its own type.

The larger, fuller, richer conception of the Christian life