The Fulton County news. [volume] (McConnellsburg, Pa.) 1899-current, 1903-03-26

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our power to articulate, these, too it i,
foolish and stupid in us to treat as less
trustworthy and infallible than are the
quieter appetences of the intelligence or
the coarser instincts of the body. There is
no safe creed that does not start in with
confession of faith in ones own superb
self-superb in the sense of being gifted
with powers that put him in direct 'rela.
ton with the rocks under him, the air
about him, the great God overhead, and
the eternal realm OF Spirit, human and di.
vine. And that gives a man something to
go upon. 1t at once makes the farthest
star in the heavens proper object OF in.
! quiry, and lays out before him highway
into the heart and centre Of the kingdom
spiritual.
But the highway into the heart and cen.
ire OF the kingdom spiritual is not road
that is being numerously Travelled. We are
| about as far along on that road as Colum-
bus was on the way to the Western Cont
nent when he was still heaving anchor in
the harbor of Palos. But the road is as
feasible and passable as the waterway Of
the Atlantic. And the world is going to
get there; The religious impulse, the pas.
sion Of the divine is in us for a purpose
God is movable and He is going to be
known. Spiritual things are disceruible
and they are going to be discerned. There
is such thing as the life eternal and there
is such thing as having a realization of
that life, having it here, too, as a matter
OF clear and definite. experience. We are
not saying anything just now as to the ma
ture Of the highway that leads into the
midst of the spiritually discerned realities
that compose that kingdom, nothing just
now ABOUT the steps a man takes in tread.
ing that highway. The only impression [
am studying to leave this morning is that
there is continent of reality as distinct
from the continent of every day interest
as the Western Hemisphere OF our globe
Is distinct from the Eastern; that we are
endowed with faculties which to the de-
gree in which they are developed and ex-
ercised make the matters of that remoter
continent as certainly distinguishable and
as confidently appreciable to the earliest
Spanish explorers; that spiritual discern
ment has lust as solid a meaning in its re-
lation to things spiritual as ocular discern
ment has in its relation to things material,
and that 1t is capable of yielding results
that are just as convincing and satisfying,
and lie as solidlv planted in the assurance
of the man that has become spiritually cog
infant of them; that the soul is endowed
with the faculty of vision that is as true
a. the vision of the body, Independent of
bodily vision and a thousand times more
richly and wonderfully gifted.
Men are interested in houses, lands,
clothes, money. markets, commerce, science
and art, but there is not much interest in
religion. There is interest in the matter
Of being saved, whatever that may mean,
but desire to be saved is no more religion
than the desire to be gotten out of the
water when you have fallen overheard is
navigation.
This does not mean that there are not a
good many who have an inkling of the
meaning of the spiritual kingdom. some
thing as men at sea gain a suspicion Of
distant land by observing the impalpable
blanket of mist that hovers about it. 1t is
NO r,Ntts in ,,I =
deal, because OF the much that it is capa.
bic OF widening out into. 1t is kind Of
spiritual coast line which. seen from afar,
appears to be but a filmy thread, but
which is for all that the solid edge of
solid continent.
ing mean that there are not those who
have already Travelled a good stretch Of
distance into the midst OF things, the spir-
itual verities, that make out the spiritual
world, In all departments of life and in all
directions of growth there have always
been men who have outrun their fellows,
pioneers in the. enterprise of discovery,
giants in research who have stood high and
looked over the shoulders OF their contem-
poraries, who have lived in the same
world as they, but at the same time lived
in larger world than they. In the world
OF religious thought and experience we
call such men prophets. a prophet, prop
erly. speaking is not so much man who
Is able to see what is going to be as he is
one who sees more widely than others the
things which are now. There is such
thing, even in matters OF science as coming
so into accord with the spirit of scientific
truth as to be able to see with a firm and
fast vision where eyes less sympathetic
have failed. Exactly the parallel OF that
has been true over and over again in that
other world of truth mysteriously hidden
that Is our special concern this morning.
And, as | say, we call such ones prophets.
And And there are prophets now as in the old
days-men and women whose spiritual
steps are more than abreast with their
own day. They know what they see, they
realize what they feel, and it is as feeble
and infantlle for those whose eyes have in
them a feeble light to deny the uncoeering
that has been made to these prophets and
prophetesses of longer and purer sight,
as. for you and me to slur over with ironi.
cal contempt the revelations brought back
to us by those who have climbed farther
than We into the heights of the material
heavens.
But that is the way history grows; that
Il the way the. world becomes larger-a few
prophets, pioneers in the van, and the rest
plodd:ng on behind-some not even plod-
ding, some no nearer millennium than
When history started out, OF course the
great prophet OF all prophets, the great
seer OF all seers, was Jesus Christ IL
the heavenly kindom were as near and as
distinct as were the long hidden mysteries
Of the solar system distinct to the vision
OF Copernicus. He did not reason Christ
did not. nor conjecture, nor guess He saw.
When He told of God, OF the soul. OF the
life eternal, He spoke of that which He
knew and testified that which He had
seen. He came not as a delineator. While
He was telling things to people He saw
the things that He was telling them. Theirs
is nothing in the Bible about supposing,
but there Is great lot in it about seeing.
Like all the great verities, this one we
have been handling this morning grows
upon US with the handling. 1t has made
Us feel, some of us, that we are out at sea
still, and that instead OF having yet planted
a firm foot upon the solid territory OF the
continent eternal we are only inspecting
what rather looks to us on the whole to be
coast line, and instead of pushing onr boat
up, come no nearer to actually landing
than to get our sea glass out and spend our
odd moments in trying to make out wheth-
er what we try to focus our glass upon is
land, mirage or Imagination. In the mean
time the continent is thore, the winds
blow athwart it, the sun warns it, the
stars smile down upon it.