Morning journal and courier., 1883-08-13
Human Destiny.
This Interesting Subject Discussed by
 Rev. Charles w. Park.

This Interesting Subject Discussed by
 Rev. Charles w. Park.
 The Howard avenue Congregational
 church was filled with large congregation
 yesterday morning. The pastor announced
 his text to be from the first epistle of John,
 rd::ehapter and second verse : Behold,
 now we are the sons of God and it doth not
 yet appear what we shall be but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." The ser mon was in substance an attempt to show that in no way will the great. absorbing problem of human destiny be solved except as all the faculties of mans being are in fuenced and illuminated by the light and power of God. We are always conscious of certain movements in human society. Nations are not stationary; they never have been, they never will be. Astronomers find that even in the apparently fixed stars there is 8 change of position, star drift, which is continually but slowly moving the great cen- ters of attraction in the solar system. So the historian or the careful observer notes great and far-reaching changes in powerful nations, until he finally begins to wonder whence it is all tending, what is the final destiny of man. That question has never been finally answered. At the time when John wrote the words of the text there had been great civilizations, great men had arisen great works had been accomplished, ! the influence of which had penetrated even the remote corners of the then civilized world. The Egyptian, the Persian, the Bab- ylonian, the Grecian and the Roman civiliza- tions had arisen and passed away. Poets, orators, philosophers, sculptors, whose inn mortal works had wrought wonderful things, had lived and left their precious legacies which to this day are care fa1Iu o1 Tn fha Grecian city of Ephesus, surrounded by all the wilderness of that great civilization, John wrote these words: 'tIt doth not yet appear what we shall be-" And we to day can say, sIt has not yet appeared what we shall be-" All the great achievements, the great geniuses, the glorius deeds of history have not shown us what we are capable of becoming. There is still in humanity germ of future power which the past has not discovered. We ex- pect brighter day than has yet dawned
 All the past is only beginning. So we look forward and long to know what we shall appear.
 The civilizations of the past were failures,
 they perished because they were incomplete. They did not call into activity and culture all the powers that God has given
 us. The intellect only was trained, not the
 heart. History shows that very. high de-
 gree of merely intellectual culture is always joined with low degree of morality. In Rome and Athens at the time of their highest achievements in act and philosophy, vices which must not now be named were practised commonly and open Iy. The moral virtues were well nigh forgot ten. Wheu the ultimate civilization comes it shall train every faculty, beginning with the
 heart. The beginning of the answer to the
 question of human destiny as pointed out to us by Christ is that we shall be like God. We shall not be like him in power or in
 majesty, but purity of heart and 3 certain di- vine excellence. While other systems fail Christianity comes in to make men like God. Yet we should not stop by saying that in heart we are to be made like God. The heart
 is the center of the whole being. If that is bad the streams of life, activity and inf1u- ence are poisoned. The intellect and all the other faculties that cluster around the heart are regenerated by the power of the heart made after the image of God. We are to be made like him by the continued unfolding of himself to us, by the continued revelation of the divine life to the human life. When we see God as he is we shall draw the inspiration we need and not go to work out the destiny to which we are ap-
 pointed as the children of God. A young
 man starting out with life all before him
 wonders what his destiny will be. No mat
 ter in what pursuit be engage he will utterly
 fail to solve the problem until he is brought
 into the family of God and sees him as he is.
 We must seek him as he is, or failure and
 disappointment will be ours Only as we
 are like God, only as we seek the truth as it
 is revealed in him, only we have his power
 in us can we solve the problem of our desti-