The Camden chronicle. (Camden, Tenn.) 1890-current, 1903-05-01
A SERMON FOR SUNDAY
AN ELOQUENT AND CONVINCING DIS.
COURSE BY REV. DR. PARKhURST.
Subject Growing in the Things of tho
Kingdom Of God-The Idea Lies Close
at the Foundation OF MA system Of
Production ahd Administration.


Production aHd Administration.
New YORK CIrY.-Dr. Charles II. Park.
hurst, pastor OF the Madison Square Pres
hyieuan Church, preached Sunday morn
ing on Growing i'm the Things OF the
Kingdom of God" The text was from H.
Peter iii IS. Grow ia grace and 10 the
knowledge OF our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ"
To grow; growing in the things Of the
kingdom of God; that is our matter this
morning. II is great Bible word, grow
Is; particularly q great gospel word. The
word incarnates the idea OF life, and Of
he that Is swelling, crowdng apart the
shell and crushing up in the direction of
becoming a tree; knocking down wallis and
breaking forth into territory outlying. 81
am come that they might have life and
that they might have It more abundantly'
more and more of it, life doubling and
quadrupling upon itself.
That is one Of the ideas that lie close at
the foundation Of Gods system Of produc-
ton and administration-lfe and more
and more of It, Everything is for the sake
/ OF the things that grow. What cannot
/ grow is fer the sake Of that which can
| seatto,dng along which the living walls can
| be built, trelliB up which the growing vines
can Chamber The first two days of Gods
| great week were only a sort OF creative pre-
| lude, getting things ready, the seas collect
| ed, the land dried of, in readiness for the
fish that live, the grass and the trees that
/ groT-and man; scatfolding and trellises
| prior TO the temple and the vines.
! 1t was a strange moment in our long his
/ tory when the first live thing began TO be,
! something that was no rock, no mineral
! And the old torturing problem is, where it
came trom--out OF the ground? Out Of
! Gods hand that had been holding it till
the right moment came? Out of the air
and drifted down from some other globe
that had commenced harvesting before our
burrows were plowed? Which?
But it was a supreme monochrome Of
the moments when it almost seems that
God must have stopped an instant to ru-
inmate, as The Genesis record intimates
He did when at last there began to be a
man. something that God could enjoy and
see His own great divine face borne back
to Him in a small human reflection Even
before that supreme hour struck things had
gone Oh reshaping themselves and reshap-
ing themselves; but reshaping is not grow
ing. The glacier in every step of its frozen
journey reshapes itself, but the glacier does
not gov. The great hills, the earth itself,
take all kinds Of shapes from century to
century, from aeon to aeon, but they do
not grow; but the corn grows and man
grOws-at least sometimes; some men,
The body grows, at any rate; that is the
rule. It not simply eXists-a mineral does
that, a block of stone does that-but it
lives, and, from infancy up, with a life that
is more aud more a life ~ blade, ear, full
corn; which Is the physical side of that
verse in John, that they might have life
and have it more abundautly." And not
only is there the kind Of growth that
makes the individual more and more richly
a live thing, on the way from infancy to
mature manhood, and more completely
and btauteOusly human on his animal side
but the race as a whole appears to have
been progressing in that respect till we
may Suppose that man, as the last forty OF
more centuries show hints about as good
a thing physically as he can be; the sort OF
human animal that God had in His eye
when first He went about to produce man
We have reached the limit in point Of stat
IRE and presumably in point Of refinement
of organization,
Arrived at this stage, any new growth
that the race might make would have to bt
a striking out into some fresh channel
The body being finished body, she rising
current of life in MANN the growing
man-will, perforee, seek some new issue
for itself. No longer needed 10 make fol
him more highly organized body, the wax
ing tide overtiows into the shaping Of
more finely organized mind The life i
there, the growing life is there, and SC
when one thing is finished another thins
has to be taken up, and when, in tbs
course of long year of development, mar
had become perfect as an animal he started
in upon the course OF making himself per
feet as an intelligence
That is what he is doing now, and it il
ineXpressibly wonderful what he has al
ready achieved In this direction. The race
cannot contemplate itself in respect of thu
advance made within historic times uDoI
lines of thought and research without be
holding itself with feelings of admiration
verging close upon reverence. 1t is no
easy to understand how one can take ac
count of the steadily advancing line of pro
gress made by man into the domain o
truth, the truth of the physical world a
any rate, without becoming aware of a Ger
tain impulse a certain milling of life from
somewhere that mandates wider and wide
patches of newly reached area, as the ris
ing tide, inflowing from the sea- rolls will
each recurring billow farther up on tn
sloping beach. How many thousand year
it has been since man commenced to think
theoriZe and discover nobody knows, ant
the Bible does not tell us, but up to dat
the record is a tremendous one and Their
is no limit in sight. All of this is teilin
rs what a wonderful thing it was that Go,
did when He started the race on its caree
Of growth and conquest. Whether yor
think of the way in which the human ey
has penetrated into the stellar spaces am
read out in terms of every day English tn
thoughts that at the beginning of tim
God wrought into the glittering fabric o
the heavens, or whether you think of wha
at shorter range has been effected by tn
study of our own globe and Of the law
that Dervade it, Of the forces that actual
it and of the ways in which its mysterie
have been solved and converted into con
monplace utilities, the story is one an
the same all the way through All thes
/ discoveries of course celebrate the sp,endi
omuipotent wisdom of God that coul
{ make such a world but they celebrate til