_Knowledge_.
The new Century will be marked by a universal demand for knowledge.
One of the most remarkable features of the present time is the
extraordinary thirst for knowledge in every quarter of the world. It is
not confined to this continent or that. It is not peculiar to any special
class or age. It is universal. One aspect of it, and a very significant
one, is the desire for knowledge about life and its origin, about the
beginning of things, about the earth and its creation, about the work
which we say God did, which He alone could do.
Oh, how men search and explore! How they read and think! How they talk and
listen! Where one book was read a generation ago, a hundred, I should
think, are read now; and for one newspaper then read, there are now,
probably, a thousand. Every man is an inquiry agent, seeking news,
information, or instruction; seeking to know what will make life longer
for him and his; and, above all, what can make it happier.
And here, again, I say that _Jesus is The Man for the new Century_.
He has knowledge to give which none other can provide. I do not doubt that
universities, and schools, and governments, and a great press, can, and
will, do much to impart knowledge of all sorts to the world. But when it
comes to knowledge that can serve the great end for which the very power
to acquire knowledge was created--namely, _the true happiness of
man_--then, I say, that JESUS is the source of that knowledge; that
without Him it cannot be found or imparted; and that with Him it comes in
its liberating and enlightening glory.
Oh, be sure _you have that_! No amount of learning will stand you in
its stead. No matter how you may have stored your mind with the riches of
the past, or tutored it to grapple with the mysteries of the present,
_unless you know Him, it will all amount to nothing_. But if you know
Him who is life, that is life eternal. Knowledge without God is like a man
learned in all the great mysteries of light and heat who has never seen
the sun. He may understand perfectly the laws which govern them, the
results which follow them, the secrets which control their action on each
other--all that is possible, and yet he will be _in the dark_.
So, too, knowledge, learning, human education and wisdom are all possible
to man; he may even excel in them so as to be a wonder to his fellows by
reason of his vast stores of knowledge, and yet know nothing of that light
within the mind by which he apprehends them. Nay, more! he may even be a
marvellous adept in the theory of religion, and yet, alas! alas! may never
have seen its SUN--may still be in the blackness of gross darkness,
because he knows not Jesus, the Light of the world, whom to know is life
eternal.