The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1900-04-30
ETERNITY, HARVEST OF TIME.
REV. DIR. LANDRUMs SERMON AT
FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH.

Nnturai-Heaven and He'll the Nat
uraI Consequences of Faith and
Unfaith-Dr. Landrum to Preach
During the Week.
Rev. Dr. w. w. Landrtim of the First
Rev DIR. Jordan of the First Baptist
Church yesterday morning. His subject
was, Eternity, the Harvest of Time"
being based upon the text, Galatians,
WIS: "Be not deceived, God is not
Knocked, for whatsoever man soweth,
that shall he also reap. For he that
soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap
corruption; but he that soweth to the
spirit shall of the spirit reap life ever
lasting
The visiting minister, in his introduce
tion, expressed his pleasure on being in
Savannah, his boyhood's home, where,
decHed in all the glories of the early
springtime, and when, naturally enough,
the minds of the people would be d.
rected TO the sowing Of the seed, from
which the harvest of the autumn is to be
reaped.
His treatment of his subject
three propositions. The first of these
was that seed-sowing implies unwaver-
ing confidence in the coming of a har-
vest No man more than the farmer be-
lieyes in the cons aney, uniformity and
inyiolability of natures laws. Success is
based upon conformity to these laws;
disaster follows disobedience. Nature is
only a hemisphere of Gods revelation,
needing to be supplemented by Ghe hem
isphere of the Bible, in order to have the
good round globe of Gods perfect dis
closure. These two. Gods word
and Gods world, emanating from
the same Being, teach the same
doctrines. HaryesIs are reaped in the
world spiritual just as they are in the
world natural Sow a thought and you
reap a word; SOW a word and you reap a
deed; SOW deed and you reap a habit;
sow a habit and you reap a character;
SOW a charac ter and you reap destiny.
The boy is the father of the man, just as
the acorn is the parent of the oak. Youth
is the harvest of childhood, manhood of
youth, old age of manhood, eternity of old
age. Heaven and hell are not fixed by the
arbitrary enactments of an arbitrary
Gcd, but are the natural consequences of
faith and unfaith, or of love or hate, of
hope or despair of obedience or disobed-
fence. Character, while due to the re-
generating power of the holy spirit, is
conditioned upon personal repentance and
pc sonel faith, showing itself in personal
rsforma ion and growing similarity to the
character of Christ, who was holy. harm
less, indebted and separate from sinners.
Cha acter persists; the man who dies a
Lazarus viii be in the other world Laza
rus, calm and serene in his harvest of
blessedness; the man who dies Dives,
will continue to be in the great beyond a
Dives, tortured by his memory and con-
stantiy castigateG by the scorpion lash of
an accusing conscience.
The second division OF the discourse was
a discussion of the proposition that there
will be a sameness in kind, but
not in amount, between what
. man sows and what he
reaps in eternity. In the vegetable king
dom some seeds yield thirty-fold, some
sxty-fo,d and some a hundred-fold. In
the animal kingdom. the power of repro
duction is something marvellous. So it is
with human influence and human charac-
ter. One bad man like. Joseph Smith CT
Nauvoo. was the seed whence sprang the
ubiquitous harvest of Morronism with its
holt million of deluded or demonized
adherents. All of the outrages of this
corrupt system ieveled against God and
against man, against the home and
against the state, against the church and
against civilization, were once an embryo
6ebauched character.
On the other hand good character null
tiples itself The Christianizatfon of Eu-
rope began with one woman, and she a
self-supporting working woman, Lydia of
Phiippi. All the millions of evangelical
believers must rise UP and proclaim her
the mother of us all The electing eye of
God sweeping over q continent, rich in
scholars and statesmen, in various and
sceptered rulers of their fellows, chose
This solitary woman to be the seed of a
redeemed and regenerated Western civil
ization.
Harry fIorehouse, the Irish evangelist
once sold to u. J.. Moody: '~rhe world
has yet to see what one man can do
wholly given up to God" Personal pow
er in saving men is Gods power appro-
priated and utilized by a saved and con-
sccrated soul.
The third proposition the minister elab-
Grated, was that there are two fields in
which The soul may sow for
ON eternal harvest. One of these
he called the fed Of the flesh
and the other the field Of the spirit The
field of the flesh" said DR.. Landrum, lis
the sphere of animalism and SensuOls
qualification. and he who sows to the
flesh must of the flesh reap corruption. Sin
resides in the will. Our characters are
made up of nature, circumstances ard will.
For our circumstances weSmay be respol-
sble or we may not he responsible, &C
cording as God produced them or we our
selves. But for our wills we are wholly
responsible, for whether we be abe to car
ry out what we will or not when we will
we disclose precisely what we are, AMI
are judged accordingly. He'll is will out
of harmony with the viii CT God. Sinners
who prefer their own will TO that of a molly,
righteous and loving God are the enem es
of themselves, the enemies CT their fel oWs,
and foes to the Supreme Being as we'll be-
Jog nothing less than atheists and anarch-
lists seeking to subvert and destroy an or
derby and benefcent universe. SIN and
suffering are bound together by the law OF
cause and effect So long as we will 10
sin we must expect the consequences #
sin, and those consequences, on every
principle OF justice must be bitter and
grievous enough to meet the conditions Of
an adequate penalty. If a man Wills TO
sin eternally there is no reason why ne
should not suffer eternally, and God be
absolutely free from all completely in his
awful fate. Hell, 50 far as understand IT,
Is a state of soul produced by the sinner
himself and for which no being in the uni
verse Is responsible but himself.
Heaven. likewise, is a state of the soul