is the only real sacredness they can have. The man who goes to such records as to an oracle—as men used to go to some cave or temple where for a price some priest or hermit would assume to answer all his questions—gains nothing whatever from his search. These records are not oracles. There are no oracles. No man or group of men, no being human or divine, ever lived on this earth who possessed the ability to solve in advance and for all time the problems of society.
I am going to ask you to think with me now for a moment of a certain period of the past and of some light which it has to throw on the present. The particular period of which I am thinking lies at the beginning of what we call the Christian era. Whenever we date a letter or any other document we tacitly recognize the fact that something occurred or was supposed to have occurred 1900 years ago of sufficient consequence to have an influence in changing the world's calendar. To be sure, the calendar was not actually changed until seven or eight centuries after the event from which the new era dates. But, slow as men were to recognize the fact, a new era had dawned upon the world. Perhaps it is true that other eras have opened since the beginning of the Christian era which are of equal or greater importance. There is the era of the Great Reformation, the era of the Renaissance in Europe, the era of invention and
