The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-08-05
WAS LISTENED TO BY MANY.
LARGE CONGREGATION ATTENDED SERVlCES AT FIRST M. E. OH URCH.

Preached Very Able Sermon on Eternal
 Life, and the Text Was Taken From the
 Work of St. John.
 At the morning services at Trinity M, E, church yesterday Rev, F. Watson Hannah, pastor of the First M E. church of Meriden, preached on the subject, Eternal Life" the text being from St. John, IT, 3,
 And this Is life eternal that they might know Thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent"
 MT. Hannan's sermon was substan- tially as follows:
 The condition of eternal life is to know God. This is an agnostic age, and timid people are very much afraid as to its outcome and effect upon re- ligion. There Is no need to fear as to its effect upon religion, for where az nosticism and rationahsm have done their work they will leave faith strong CT and more rational than ever before, If God can not be known then eternal life is impossible, and Jesus becomes a divine tantalus, holding out to us the best and only desirable tGing in the world, but putting its attainment out of our reach.
 Men say God cannot be known. That is true if to know anything about God means to know everything about God We can know nothing fn its entirety without knowing its relations. To know one thing in it's entirety, there fore is to know everything. The very logic that would make God unknowable because we cannot know Him in His entirety would make all knowledge inn possible. Men say that it is the super natural that cannot be known. The supernatural is but the natural removed one step farther back. The budding of a seed is as supernatural as the sane tification of a soul. Life, mind and mat ter, the things with which we have much to do in their last analysis, are as mysterious as God. If we say God then space and time cannot be known for the same reason.
 l The man, Jesus Christ, said He knew | God, and His whole mission was to re- veal God to man. Our deepest knowl- edge of God is not known by formal logic, but by consciousness. Our deep | est knowledge of self is not known by physiology, or psychology or his,Iry of consciousness of selfhee-n Jesus was not agnostic. To Him God was the most evident fact in the universe He never offered an argument for the ex- | istence of God. He deemed it not more necessary than a geologist would to prove the existence of the earth, or than an astronomer would to prove there were heavenly bodies, or than a historian would to prove there was a human race. God is known in Jesus Christ. The whole trend of the new testament asserts the knowableness of | God to men. In the second place. What A eternal life as to ic5 content? Men | have made this greatest gift of God l the subject of idle speculation. They 1 have made 1t dry and profitless by con- ceiving of eternal life as the only eter- nal duration. Jesus found life wear 1 jed, empty thing. He charged 1t with ethical potentialities of infinite progress and raised our conception of eternal l life from that of duration to that of power.
 He gave it it's ethical dynamic. The body wears out, but the soul progresses. If it expresses itself feebly in old ago l 1t is because the body, which is the medium of it's expression, is worn out. Eternal life in God is not one thing, and in us another. Our eternal life is Gods life in us. What dormant powers l lie potentially in a babe. A few years
 of growth will enoble the babe, who was
 once but suggestion of humanity, to subdue the earth, control the ocean,
 and bring the lightning trembling messenger to his feet. But soul power does not stop here. When freed from the limitation of this mortal body it
 will sweep on in it's progress until it masters more knowledge than Is now contained in the libraries and museums of the world. If travel for a few years upon this orb we call earth expands ou1
 knowledge and imagination, what will
 it be when we sweep through celestial galaxies, one flash of which will re-
 veal to us more than JOnn coulQ nave
 seen on Potmos in thousand years
 What will it be when the slightest
 stroke of the weakest mind could pro.
 duce a Hamlet, or Paradise Lost. The
 soul in expanding it's capacities vii
 forever by approximating God Himself
 Now what of him, who refuses thi: life. Will he expand or continue forever
 as he is? Not at all. The power O life that expands the one, will contrac
 the other. We many liken the two to buds on a tree. The one develop!
 into branch having leaf and fowel
 and fruit like the tree, the other a trophy, becomes harder and smaller, ant
 at last is a thorm So the soul tha
 refuses life becomes narrower and hard
 CT, at last thorn on the tree of lift by the law that life tends toward {
 fixety of character. If such are thu possibilities of the soul under the powe
 of eternal life, then the price paid 1T
 redemption to develop the one soul int
 fruit bearing branch, and to proven
 the other soul from acrophying to {
 thorn was none too great. It is saic