Bulletin of Catholic University of Peking

32 BULLETIN NUMBER FOUR

honest men, if it is to emerge triumphant from its present crisis and advance toward the goal of a prosperous regeneration. But capable and honest men are not produced amid the fanfares of futile student-demonstrations, but solely by iron discipline of intellect and will.

Those of you who are truly patriotic, will recollect themselves in laborious silence, and will seek by means of constant study to acquire the know]edge and ability that will enable them to offer to their country the service of their minds and hands. But avoid as something virulent thoseanti-social doctrines which are being imported into China from without, and which promise not life but death and destruction.

Man, who is an immortal spirit, has duties not only towards himself and others, but also towards God, Who is our Creator, Redeemer, and Remunerator. Our Catholic young men know their duties towards God. Those, too, who are not Catholics, are aware of a moral law engraved in their hearts, which is one and the same for all men, and in which God reveals Himself to His rational creatures. They behold His continual operation in the mystery of life; they behold in the universe a reflection of His infinite beauty, the effect of a creative, regulative, and providential will.

Materialistic science imagined that it had extinguished the stars of heaven insofar as these might be said to reveal the splendor of an Infinite Being Who governs the universe. But, as a great statesman of our times puts it: “Though we are rightly proud of the conquests of science, and honor the

greatness of human thought, nevertheless, after we have summed up all the stupendous discoveries of science, we come at last to the limit of our light, to a wall impenetrable to our gaze, and upon this dark rampart is inscribed the mysterious name of GOD!”

If you wish to read this idea more clearly, you have but to open the pages of the Gospel, that is, of Revealed Truth.

In this Institution you shall have the opportunity, as in all the great Universities of the world, of studying the great spiritual or religious preblems of life, death, and destiny. But in all this, as a matter of set principle, your spiritual liberty of conscience will be scrupulously respected. There will be no coercion exerted, even remotely or indirectly, there will be no interference with inviolate spiritual liberty.

The Catholic students will find in the good Benedictine Fathers not only learned teachers, but examples to follow in the practice of the Christian virtues.

Among students of different creeds, a spirit of reciprocal respect should prevail, a relation of fraternal charity, an interchange of those acts of courtesy which are the noble heritage of Chinese manners.

In this way we trust that this Institution may stand out like a lighthouse amid the stormy billows of life's vicissitudes, showing to youth by means of the light of the intellect and the light of the soul, the straight course towards the haven which is the science of life, the knowledge which is comprised in the philosophical maxim: “KNOW THYSELF!”