From age to age the human mind busies itself over the deep questions of philosophy and the discoveries of science. From generation to generation men seek to solve the great problems of life by the force of reason; but revelation alone can adequately disclose the "things hidden from the foundation of the world," and without its divine light and guidance mankind must ever remain liable to sink into darkness and doubt. How widely different is the state of the mind established in the settled convictions of faith from that where there is nothing but the theories and opinions of human knowledge! In the one there is the repose of certainty, security, and peace; in the other there are many puzzles unsolved, promptings unsatisfied, disquiet, and unrest. One short lesson learned in the school of divine faith will give more light and bring more comfort to the soul than all the knowledge that can be acquired in a life-time in the schools of human learning. Great stress is laid nowadays on secular education. And we are told that what the country needs, what the world needs, are intelligent and cultivated men and women; and certainly education is an excellent thing, and most desirable for all. But why make so much of a knowledge that concerns only the petty things of earth and the fleeting course of time, and ignore a knowledge that relates to the Infinite God in heaven and a life that is everlasting? What will it profit us on our death-bed to have learned the facts in the world's history, to have been familiar with the teachings of philosophy and the discoveries of science, to have studied the writings and mastered the thoughts of men, if we know nothing of our Creator and our relation to him and the course of our destiny; nothing of the preparation we should make beforehand and the thoughts that should animate us as we stand on the brink of eternity? {118} Here is the great contrast between the knowledge that God imparts to us and all human science--the one imparts to us the truths of eternity, the other teaches us the truths of time; and the difference between them is just as great as that between time and eternity. And if, as is generally the case, we estimate the value of a thing by its importance and permanence, there is surely no term of comparison here. The little child who has learned the first page of the Catholic Catechism has already acquired a knowledge which forty centuries of human speculation have never reached, and the simplest believer in Jesus Christ and his church is possessed of a wisdom far higher, far holier, than was ever conceived of by the greatest sages of old. Let us realize, then, that faith is the highest knowledge, that it discloses to us "things hidden from the foundation of the world," and makes us sharers in the knowledge of God himself, and therefore elevates and crowns our reason. ------------------- Sermon XXXIV. Good Example As A Means Of Making Converts.