El Paso daily herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1881-1901, 1899-03-20
RaDtjSt Church.

Rev. W. o. Millican preached in the
! First Baptist church last evening from
the text. "Grow in grace and in the
knowledge of our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christi II Pc. III:1S. He
spoke in part as follows:
There is beautiful similarity be-
tween physical and spiritual life.
Every human being, in the world came
by birth. Every human being in the
spiritusl world came there, by u spirit
ual birth. Iu each case, if the natural
powers of the child are developed there
will be growth resulting finally into
q we'll rounded manhood. Any failure
of this result in physical life, brings
the keenest disRppoint ment to the
parent and friends of the child. Ii
disease cuts off the physical growth OF
the child, we lament that 1t Is q dwarf:
if the mind refuses togrOw to M sturity,
we lament that idiocy mas set in. l re-
call some very painful incidents of this
kind. But in each case disease over
which neither parent nor child had
control had done the work. But sup
pose this failure to grow were the fault
of the father or the mother OF the
child itself; how awful the
crime. And yet this is just what is
spiritual life. Paul found it in the
Corinthian church. The writer to the
Hebrews found it among these people.
And in each case scathing rebuke
was administered. "And l, Brethren,
could not speak unto you as unto spi-
ritual, but as unto carnal, even as un-
to babes in Christ. 1 have fed you
with milk and not with meat, for
hitherto ye were not able to bear it,
q Cor 81, p 'For when for
the time We ought to be
teachers, ye have need that
one teach you again which be the first
principles of the oracles OF God
Heb. SIS How many of our church,
es are in the same condition today?
How many who are ten, twenty and
thirty years of age in the Christian
life, but who are still babes in point
fulness? Ask yourself yourself the
question, Gam I stronger in ex-
perience faith and knowledge and SER
vice of the christian life to day than. 1
was when I was only year old in this
life or not? If not, pray God that
these words of the holy apostles may
"stir up your pure minds" to a
brance of the fact that God has
given you the power of growth: that
your usefulness on earth, and your
position in heaven depends on your daily
And now let us note some of the
things necessary to growth. First, 1t
takes time to grow. In physical life,
this growth is without consecutive OBJ
servation, and sometimes very slow.
When boy, my growth was so slow,
1 was not growing at all. But
finally [ came to see that The marks Ga
the wall did not ell fall in the same
line, but grew thicker and thicker;
and that the last one was just little
higher than the others. Yes, [ was
growing. And so it is with many of
Gods small children: they grow i'm
patient on account OF the
apparent slOwness of their
growth. They want to attain
to great statures in day. And some
christians are fooling enough to lead
them to believe that this is possible.
But mark you this, every child of God
is born a baby, and while here the
growth may not be so slow as in ply
steal life, the process is largely the
same: it takes a much longer time to
reach maturity: perhaps more than is