The Portland daily press., 1889-10-07
PULPIT AND PLATFORM.
PLYMOUTH CHURCH.


Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of
the settlement over this church as pastor, of
Rev. j. Nj. Lowden, and the event was duly
observed at the church. The platform on
which the desk stands was ornamented with
large punches of asparagus and red berries,
with asters and other late flowers, while on
the desk itself were baskets of flowers. Mr..
Lowden preached an interesting sermon
from philippians iii, Is. Forgetting those
things which are behind, and reaching forth
unto those things which are before" He
said:
writer has said high hearts are never long
without hearing new call. Such high hearts do
good, only TO see better and see better only to
image from which Il was drawn. that Of The foot e
racer in the old Greek games. who seeing he
goal ahead Of him, looked forward to it and Reach
ed out after 1t with all his strength. AS thus
seen it applies both to individuals and churches
we often see how the future of individuals is
lection Of the success Of the. past, for having
reached certain measure of success the man
ceases TO stretch ferward to distant goal and is
content TO lie back and back In his past attain
ments. As 1t is with individuals SO with Churches.
They begin poor in this worlds good, but rich in
along until they attain to certain degree of
prosperity when they relax their efforts and per-
mt their past record as live church to carry
shattered by chasing after side-issues. young
man starting In life fixes his ideal and up to cer7
tain point pursues il. Then comes in friend and
switches him of, so to speak after something and
his standard has slipped. He may follow the new
phantom successfully, but it will not be the sue
cess which he started out to achieve and his life
Is In certain sense failure. Again. this state
OF things has aparallel In churches, and we often
see melancholy results coming from such a
course Then again future prosperity is often
times imperilled by past failures Everybody
knows OF men who ale perhaps the slaves Of ter
rible habits and who try again and again to re-
form only to end in ignominous failure, and who
In time become discouraged and instead of maxi
ing one more supreme effort toward success, give
upand call themselves beaten. Again, we have
the parallel of the church that is always poor al
ways without pastor, and always in trouble
and which by and by gives up trying to better it.
sell. There IS no good ground for discourage
ment and inactivity. Men who resolve and re-
resolve to reform and fail, do so because they do
Christ No matter what mans past has been,
Il he puts himself in the right relations with
Christ, all will be forgotten and he can reach
forth into the things which are before. 1t is as
much divine command to forget as It is to re-
member. God himself says / will forget your
sins and will no more remember them, Mr. Low
den then referred to some of the events of the
past ten years touching briefly upon many Of the
changes. He thought that the church had no
particular reason to be obvious of its part but
none the less should it press Oh to higher and
better things In the future.
In the afternoon the communion was held
and several new members were received.