e powerful currents, which insidiously
operate to deflect her from her course. Materialism, which denies or
ignores the supernatural, and concentrates its heed on ameliorating the
outward conditions of human life; criticism, which is clever at
analysis and dissection, but cannot construct a foundation on which the
religious faculty may build and rest; and a fine literary taste, which
has greatly developed of late, and is disposed to judge of power by
force of words or by delicacy of expression.

To all of these we have but one reply. And that is, not a system, a
creed, a church, but the living Christ, who was dead, but is alive
forevermore, and has the keys to unlock all perplexities, problems, and
failures. Though society could be {xi} reconstituted, and material
necessities be more evenly supplied, discontent would break out again
in some other form, unless the heart were satisfied with his love. The
truth which he reveals to the soul, and which is ensphered in him, is
alone able to appease the consuming hunger of the mind for data on
which to construct its answer to the questions of life and destiny and
God, which are ever knocking at its door for solution. And men have
yet to learn that the highest power is not in words or metaphors or
bursts of eloquence, but in the indwelling and out-working of the Word,
who is the wisdom and the power of God, and who deals with regions
below those where the mind vainly labors.

Jesus Christ, the ever-living Son of God, is the one supreme answer to
the restlessness and travail of our day. But he cannot, he will not
reveal himself. Each person in the Holy Trinity reveals another. The
Son reveals the Father, but his own revelation awaits the testimony of
the Holy Ghost, which, though often given directly, is largely through
the church. What we need then, and what the world is waiting for, is
the Son of God, borne witness to and revealed in all his radiant {xii}
beauty of the ministry of the Holy Spirit, as he energizes with and
through the saints that make up the holy and mystical body, the church.

It is needful to emphasize this distinction. In some quarters it seems
to be supposed that the Holy Spirit himself is the solution of the
perplexities of our time. Now what we may witness in some coming age
we know not, but in this it is clear that God in the person of Christ
is the one only and divine answer. Here is God's yea and amen, the
Alpha and Omega, sight for the b