Morning journal and courier., 1892-02-01
AND THE KINGDOM.

AND THE KINGDOM. | Rev. J. Lee Mitchelr's Able Discourse at the Grand Avenue Congresa. t1onal Church Yesterday Morning.
 Rev. J. Lee Mitchell preached one of his characteristic sermons yesterday morn ing at the Grand avenue Congregational church. A large audience was present and was strongly impressed with the pas tors able and interesting discourse. The subject of the sermon was Optimism and the Kingdom. The discourse in full is as follows:
 Optimism is properly, suppose, the doc urine that everything which is and which happens is for the best, but it has come to man that hopeful outlook on the future which believes that better times are com ing, at least even the best and perfect. It is opposed to pessimism, which sees only the dominance of evil in everything and believes the race grows no better: if not positively worse. Pessimism finds it ex- pressive in tirades against the corruption, extravaganza and selfshness of our times, especially in disadvantageous comparisons of our age with other ages. Admitting tho force of these comparisons, not closing their eyes to the enormities of the time, but still believing in the progress of good, some of the boldest optimists have sweep ingly condemned our whole social system, others look for a work of grace in the hearts of individuals, others believe in the gradual victory of good without exactly knowing whence they expect it to come.
 was asked last Sunday how I recon oiled the view which was then taken of the mixed, divided. and worried growth oE %ha Li,, ofG GoI lur ri he time with my belief in the complete suc- cess of a reorganized social life.
 Now, if you will pardon the personal reference, I will say that worse pessimist than three or four years ago never was. It seemed to me that God had hard work to keep his hand in the world at all; that history was repetition of the same old story, pastoral or patriotic beginning in virtue and righteousness, then power, wealth, selfshness, op- pression, corruption, decline, annihilation, with the comparative happiness of the toiling people growing ever less with each salvation played, simply this-the word of life made it's way into the hearts of what individuals it could and so without affecting or attempting to affect political or social life God added to the Kingdom daily from out the world such as shonld be saved. The government a man lived under, king or parliament, his social state high or low, sick or poor, his domestic condition, comfortable or wretched, all conditions alike furnished an opportunity for the discipline of life and the one essen tial thing, the accepting or rejecting of the call of Christ.
 cannot tell just why or when it be- came my conviction that Jesus Christ meant to win, had no more idea of abon- doning the government of the world to the devil than he had of abandoning an individual soul to the devil, that though he could save the soul of 8 poor man, 8 serf, just as easily in that condi- tion as he could in just and comfortable one, still he had no more idea of abandoning that man | to that condition than he had of sending away the 5000 hungry. Tyranny and op- pression and injustice may. be able to ex- haust and bribe and pander the people till they can make treaties with them, but | they can never make any treaties with Christ, nothing short of an optimism will ever content him. The American Knights | of Labor, the German socialists, the Eng 1 fish liberals, the Bulgarian patriots would | all of them pull down their flag to-day be- fore fJesus would pull down his. And | like one enormous portent in the sky which men cannot reach, stands the fact that on every field fought for truth and | liberty and improvement of the people from which the people themselves have re- 1 tired discouraged, Jesus has remained i'm movable, the people fall back for whole generations. Three centuries the French | went back once, but Jesus stays there till the people fight up to him again. Nine 1 teen centuries of war upon it have never l phased his doctrine of life. And the more | we struggle toward it the more satisfied we become that with all it's intense optim- \ ism it is practical and possible of achieve ment. The standard of God is intensely hopeful beyond question.
 | That man has progressed toward that
 standard materially is not so evident, al least by duelling on one side of his situation
 he may be made to appear to have actually l lost ground. There have existed in the world always for short times and limited
 area better conditions of human life than
 ours. I cannot stop to discuss them, some l of them were conscious attempts at better
 life, some of them due merely to fortuitouf
 combination of circumstances but as popu-
 lation increased contact with the great ma jority of the unimproved about them they
 developed some of the weaknesses that have
 proved fatal and fell to pieces. In genera it might be said that they failed because l they were so small the unredeemed world
 swallowed them. A success must be world 1 wide to be success. You can't long keeI
 a perfect apple in barrel of rotten ones 1 These arcades can't be said to be failures
 of mankind; they never were successes o1
 mankind. And should America itself fai
 it won't be failure of mankind but fail
 ure of the American attempt. America ever
 not having been large enough to swallow the | 1ao khn
 And when you compare individuals the
 result is much the same. Six thousand
 years have not produced better man thar
 Abraham or a man that knew more thar l Moses; but they were isolated cases. The
 Greek in his sunny palace by the Egear
 enjoyed life more perhaps than we do, but
 that same Egean foated hundred thou
 sand galley slaves William the Conquero1
 and his great barons were housed perhaps
 as we'll as you are, but his people were not
 as we'll of as your horse, and didn't know
 much more. David B. Hill is miles be
 meath the Roman Cato, but a comparison
 favor Nothing can be learned from com
 parisons of this sort, but the general trutf
 is that a larger part of the world is civil
 ized than ever before, the number of meI
 who know and think incomparably in
 creased, and society as a whole never st
 ready for better things as it is to-day.
 And for the future every indication ii
 that the dogged determination of million
 of men able to know and think fo
 themselves rallying up again to the unre
 treating standard of the worlds hero Jesu
 the prince, shall in time turn ove
 human society once more for better.
 Now, I am asked how to reconcil
 such belief with the interpretation giver
 last Sabbath to the parables, telling u
 what the kingdom of heaven was like un
 tos q should hate to be the defender o
 an idea which needed any reconciliation.
 Why, easily enough. was not aware o
 any room for discrepancy. Those para bles describe the character and condition
 of the gradual growth of the kingdom dur . ing a certain period, our own struggling
 buffeted, now advancing, now retreatin
 age. Just when we think we have it thel , we haven't it. We grow largest of al growing religions and poperty comes an settles on our branches. We start owe ], again only to find that worldliness , creeping in and threatening to leven tn , whole lump. But what is the final out