The herald., 1898-02-14
A Song and Missionary
Service
THE UNIVERSAL HERITAGE
REV. B. L. HoWARD'S SERMON
ON PAUL OF TARSUs
Gan Unequal Conflict" the Text at the
Church of Christ-"Walking
With God' by Rev. Jones

At the First Presbyterian church yes
terday morning the Rev. Bert Estes
Howard preached on "The Universal
Heritage" from l. Cor, iii:21-3: For
all things are yours things pres
ent, or things to come, all are yours. and
you are Christ's, and Christ is Gods" In
part Mr.. Howard said: Judged by any
legitimate standard, Paul of Tarsus is
the mightest of the mighty; yet few men
have been more misunderstood or more
misinterpreted.
"It is the misfortune of greatness that
little men ever try to compress 1t into the
limits of their own little capacities.
Snatching shred of his thought that
seemed to correspond to their own petty
schemes. our dogmatists have often
woven their systems out of it and in
sisted on baptizing them with his name.
They have tried to crowd the sea into
their little thimble-theologies or to di-
vert the flood into their narrow mill
races, and make it grind their apologetic
grist.
"Paul was not devotee of cult. lie
was great hearted, broad minded, COM
prehensive thinker. His greatness was
the greatness of free moral manhood.
His majestic mind refused to be turned
by anything less than the largest truth.
And because he sought the whole truth
and not a fragment of it, he stood alone.
In the heart of the Arabian desert, where
for three lone years the spirit of this man
stood face to face with the spirit of the
Almighty he found his message.
when, in passionate devotion tn the
truth, he came forth as it's apostle to the
world, he thrust into their thinking the
keen blade of intense conviction, heated
white in the furnace of his glowing SOUL
and forged at the anvil of a resistless
logic Paul was no sectarian; he was the
Catholic apostle of righteousness eager
to make men conscious of God and of
their own divine manhood. His religion
was a universal religion and his aim
was to make men-not proselytes.
paul draws his figure of the Christian
with free hand and on a large canvas;
and in looking upon the picture we find
no suggestion of the ecclesiastic, no hint
and peevish moral dyspeptic soured to
the greater part of life, but broad and
noble manhood standing in the very
Of his dignity and his divine destiny,
and, because he is a son Of God, sharing
in all that God has created.
"His Christian is not an emasculated
pietist cheeping and chirping in useless
ecstacy before the altar, but man Wig
orous, high-minded, full of moral and
spiritual might, working grandly in the
midst of the worlds problems. In the
thought of Paul, life was thing of
divine proportions. He had no thought
of leading a host of forlorn, discouraged
and debilitated failures in a weak and
cowardly retreat from lifes activities.
He stood up in the midst of the world
and trumpeted his message. 1t was
mighty summons into lifes business
and heat and struggle and joy, not out
of it. 1t was a ringing call to be men
not something less than men.
'To be Christian is not to shut ones
self out from life, not to abandon the
world, but to possess it, to master life
and make it all divine. Every multiform
phase of life is to be redeemed into its
divine quality and function. Art, edu-
cation, industry, government are not to
be forsaken in monastic disgust or NOR
bid pessimism, but dignified and glori-
fled. 1t is not the earth, it is earthliness
that we are to put away from our hearts.
God has made nothing through which
his love cannot be breathed upon us,
through which our gratitude cannot be
breathed back to him."