The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1900-02-05
AT FLETCHER-PLACE CHURCH.
Rev. G. w. Tinsley breaches to a
Large Audience.

c. W. Tinsley, pastor of Fletcher-place
M. e. Church, preached to a large congre-
cation last evening from the following
text: Isaiah TX, H. For brass will bring
gold. and for iron will bring silver and
for wood brass, and for stones iron." He
said in part -
This seems like a rash promise, yet 1t
was made by the one who gathers into
the clouds millions of tons of water, and,
Harvesting the wind to them, pours it out
on the thirsty land without diminishing the
source of supply. Gods endeavor through
the ages has been to get man to exchange
worse for better. Mans life is given for
development 1t is true of his physical life.
How ii differs. In one full, Astounding,
every step joy, every breath delight.
In others weak and low. Physical life is
to be cultivated to the fullest. The body
Of man is the grandest temple of earth. 1t
is Gods ideal-part of myself and will
ever be. 1t is a sin to desecrate 1t. Abuse
makes of ii an enemy when ii should be
a friend. The greatest physical perfection
is yet in the future.
Men differ just as much in their men,
tality-some meager; others tower up like
peaks among the Alps. Our minds are
given us to develop. The possibilities Of
w
man has been any man may be. The
latent capacity lies undeveloped in each
man to be what Handel was in music, or
Raphael in art, or Newton in thought, or
was John in spiritual vision. No man can
reach his highest possibilities without
Christ any more than can flowers without
the sunlight Men differ even more widely
in their emotional natures. Some are stolid,
unfeeling as a stone; nothing moves them
like the earth worm which leaves sunshine
and crawls into its cold and narrow grave.
Others have emotions which make life
fresh as the morning, sweet as spring.
They bubble over at sight of q rose or an
innocent child. God desires to refine the
emotional life-gold for the baser things.
There is also a wide variety of spiritual
life. In some merely dull sense Of pain,
imperfection, disharmony which never
breaks into Joy or bursts into beauty.
Others have a fountain head of spiritual
life in the skies. The fountain plays over
its pearls in the sunshine warm with
spiritual life. Paul knew something of
this There are greater spiritual expert
ences for each of US than we allow.
Now what God wants is for us to give
ourselves to Him for development. He
wants us to be greater, grander than He
alone can make. 1t takes God and man
together to make companion fit for God
He is in the business of building charac-
ter that shall endure where
1.-The sun is old
And the stars are cold.'
rake ADranam. COQ wanted a man Tor
His mission. The obedience of Abraham
gave God a chance, and through years of
trial and triumph he came to be the
friend of God His character looms
above the ages of antiquity more lustrous
with the passing centuries. So with
moses, another example of Gods effort to
bring man to His ideal. He had to go to
school for forty years in the Wilderness
How God enriched him, developed him.
Even Christ was made perfect through
suffering not i'm the sense of sinless but
in the development of power and SYM
pathy. The rough block of marble is per-
fect-no flaw, but another sort of perfec-
ton comes with the chiseiing of the artist
Oh, beloved, do not shrink back from
Gods claim. He alone can give you value.
Ruskin's Modern Painters tells us that
the common mud of London streets has
four things in it-clay, soot sand and
water, the elements from which come the
sapphire. the opal and the diamond. Thus
God transforms character, transmitting the
baser things af our lives into the gold of
glorious character and destil...'