DEDICATION AND INAUGURATION. THE HE Dedication and Inauguration Exercises of the VAN- At ten o'clock on Sunday morning, October 3, the Chapel of the University being filled, the Dedication exercises opened with a voluntary by the Choir-followed by Hymn 77 (tune, Lenox): Young men and maidens, raise Your tuneful voices high: Old men and children, praise The Lord of earth and sky: Him Three in One, and One in Three, The universal King Let all the world proclaim; Let every creature sing His attributes and name! Him Three in One, and One in Three, Extol to all eternity. In his great name alone All excellences meet, Who sits upon the throne, And shall forever sit: Him Three in One, and One in Three, Extol to all eternity. Glory to God belongs: Glory to God be given, Above the noblest songs Of all in earth and heaven: Him Three in One, and One in Three, Prayer was offered by Bishop McTYEIRE, and the Lessons were read by Bishop DOGGETT. Hymn 155 (tune, Coronation) was sung: All hail the power of Jesus' name! Let angels prostrate fall: And crown him Lord of all. Ye chosen seed of Israel's race A remnant weak and small- Ye Gentile sinners, ne'er forget Let every kindred, every tribe O that, with yonder sacred throng, And crown him Lord of all. Then followed the Sermon by Bishop DOGGETT: THE DYNAMICS OF CHRISTIANITY; OR, ITS SYSTEM OF MORAL FORCES. "The powers of the world to come." Heb. vi. 5. In the economy of God, we stand in intimate relations to two worlds at the same time: the world of sense and the world of faith-the world temporal and the world spiritual -the world present and "the world to come." The object of Christianity is to aggrandize our natures, to elevate us above the pressure of the world of sense, to make us acquainted with the spiritual and eternal world, and to bring us into contact and conformity with it. It possesses a perfect capacity to accomplish this object. Our text announces its capacity, in speaking of "the powers of the world to come." I propose to discourse to-day, by the help of God, upon what I may call the dynamics of Christianity: in other words, upon the moral forces which it employs in order to accomplish its object-the laws by which its grand economy is regulated. Let us, however, contemplate, I. The wonderful dispensation of which the text speaks -the new order of things to which it refers-in the phrase, "the world to come." It is not, in any absolute or exclusive sense, the future state which is spoken of, as commonly understood, and as apparently indicated in the terms themselves. We have a strictly parallel allusion in the fifth verse of the second chapter of this Epistle, decisive of this interpretation, in which the author says: "For unto the angels hath he not put in subjection the world to come, whereof we speak?" It is manifest that he had not been speaking directly or exclusively of the future state at all. Of what, then, had he spoken? and of what does he speak in the language of the text? Unquestionably, of the Christian dispensation-the kingdom of heaven-the world of redemption, established by Christ in the midst of the present world. This dispensation is a special, divine organization, instituted for the purpose of introducing into our world a system of restorative agencies, to reach and to rectify our ruin. We pause a moment to delineate, in some sort, this extraordinary department of the divine administration-to set forth several of its distinctive features. One of them is its intrinsic character. In this respect it is purely spiritual, as contradistinguished from every form of temporal government. It is spiritual in its genius, in its subjects, and in its methods of operation. Said Jesus Christ, "My kingdom is not of this world." It is distinguished by peculiar external exhibitions. It embodies itself, of necessity, in such visible forms as are expressly declarative of its existence and results-such as evince its true and living realization amongst men. So much it assumes, and no more. It is denoted by its comprehensive range. It includes within its appropriate scope the present life, with all its interests; the invisible world, with all its population; and the future state, with all its issues. What an empire, therefore, is "the world to come" in its extent! Its designation is remarkable. Why is it described as "the world to come?" Evidently, in part, in respect to prophecy, the fulfillment of which the author was showing in its establishment. He was writing, from the prophetic point of view, to those who held and reverenced the prophecies. It was the coming age of the prophets-the coming kingdom to which they all referred. It is so called in respect, also, to the settled expectation of the Jewish nation previously to, and at the time of, writing. However mistaken they were as to the character of the Messiah's reign, the great national idea was the establishment of his future kingdom in the world. It was, in fact, "the world to come" to them-the world which had actually begun to the apostle-the transition period from the old to the new. At the same time, it was literally and really "the world to come" in respect to its development and perpetuity, viewed especially from its then incipient stage. It was, truly, the coming world—a world ever to come, and never to end. "The world to come," thus defined, is essentially and intensely present at all times. It is all around us; we are in the midst of it; it interpenetrates the world of sense and sin in which we live. Withal, it is real and permanent. Nothing is so real; nothing is so permanent. All else is a comparative illusion. In reference to it St. Paul says: "We look not at the things which are seen, but the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." They alone abide. The visible world is the shadow of the invisible. It is the curtain which hangs between the spectator and eternity. Presently the curtain will rise; the wondrous scene will burst upon us, and we shall find ourselves in a contracted theater, environed with the startling realities of an unchangeable existence. The visible world is the scaffoldthe temporary substructure-upon which we now stand. The pending catastrophe shall dissolve it; but we shall survive, and be transferred to the imperishable foundations of "the world to come." We proceed now to consider more particularly what we have taken occasion to denominate, : II. The dynamics of Christianity. The term is not chimerical it is the literal rendering of duvdpsis, the word employed in the original text. Christianity has its dynamics as well as natural science, and in advance of it. It signifies powers, forces, active agencies, energetic influ ences. Christianity, as a system, is replete with moral forceswith active agencies-with which it effects its benign purposes. It is not a negative, inert organization, consisting of a faultless but impotent ideal of conceivable excellence. It is infinitely potential. It possesses the inherent capacity of self-subsistence, of victorious aggression, and of indefinite reproduction. We speak habitually of the laws of nature-of the forces by which its vast and varied machinery is regulated-of the vital energies by which it performs its functions; and |