The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1903-04-08
A SERMON FOR SUNDAY
AN ELOQUENT AND CONVINCING DIS.
COURSE BY REV. Or. PAakhURST.

Subject: Growing In the Things Of the
Kingdom Of God-The Idea Lies Close
at the Foundstion OF HIS System OF
Pred1ction and Administration.
NEW YORK CITY.--Dr. Charles H. Park
hurst, pastor Of the Madison Square Pres
inc on Growing in the Things Of the
Kingdom Of God" The text was from ii.
Peter iii: l8: Grow in grace and in the
knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ"
To grow: growing in the things o! the
kingdom Of God; that is our matter this
morning. It is a great Bible word, grow
10; particularly q great gospel word. The
word incarnates the idea Of life, and of
life that 10 swelling. crowding apart the
shell and crushing up in the direction OF
becoming q tree; knocking down walls and
breaking forth into territory. outlying. i
am come that they might have life and
that they might have it more a%bundantly,',,
nn and more more, Ct ;t.i II lite doubling and
That il one of the ideas that lie close ut
the foundation of Gods system Of produc-
ton and administration-life. and more
and more of it. Everything is for the sake
Of the things that grow. What cannot
grow il for the sake of that which can
scafolding along which the living walls can
be built, trellis up which the growing vines
can Chamber. The first two days Of Gods
great week were only a sort OF creative Ere
1ude. getting things ready, the seas COLLECT.
ed. the land dried of. in readiness for the
fish that live, the grass and the trees that
now-and man; scaffolding and trelises
prior TO the temple and the vines.
It was a strsnge moment in our long his.
tory when the first live thing began to be,
something that was no rock, nc mineral.
And the old torturinR problem is, where it
came from-out Of the ground? Out Of
Gods hand that had been holding it till
the right mornent came? Out Of the air
and drifted down from some other globe
that lad commenced harvesting before our
burrows were plowed? Which? .
But it was q supreme moment-one OF
the moments when it almost seems that
God must have stopped an instant to ru-
inmate, as :he Genesis record intimates
He did when at last there began to be q
man. something that God could enjoy and
pee His own great divine face borne hack
10 Him in a small human reflection. Even
before that supreme hour struck things had
gone Oh reshaping themselves and reshap-
ing themselves; but r~eshaping H. not grow
ing. The glacier in every step Of it's frozen
journey reshapes itself. but the glacier does
not grow. The great hills, the earth itself.
take all kinds OF shapes from century to
century. from aeon to aeon, but they do
NO. grow; but the corn grows. and man
growa-at least sometimes; some men:
rule. Il not simply exists-a mineral does
that, . Block Of stone does that-but it
lives, and, from infancy mp, with q life that
il more and more q life - blade. ear, full
corn; which Is the physical side OF that
verse in Join. that they might have life
and have it more a~bundantly." And not
only is there the kind of growth that
makes the individual more and more richly
q live thing. on the way from infancy to
mature manhood, and o completely
and b, auteously human on his animal side,
but thetrace as q whole appears to have
been progressing in that respect till we
more centuries show him-is 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.
ure and presumably in point Of refinement
Of organization.
Arrived at this stage, any new growth
that the race might make would have to be
q striking out into some fresh channel.
The body being a finished body. the rising
current of life in map-in the growing
man-wiIl, perforce, seek some new Issue
for itself. No longer needed to make for
him q more highly organized body, the wax.
ing tide overfiows into the SHAPING OF a
more finely organised mind. The life Is
there, the growing life Is there, n SO
when one thing is finished another thing
has to b. taken up, and when, IN the
L. .z.,oe lov.oop-opf' man
had become perfect as an animal he started
in upon the course Of making himself per.
feet an an intelligence. So.
That is what he is doing now, and it is
inexpressibly wonderful what he has al
Aady achieved in this direction. The race
cannot contemplate itself in respect of the
advance made within historic times unon
lines oil thought and research without be-
holding itself with feelings OF admiration
verging close upon reverence. It IS not
easy to understand how one can take ac-
count Of the steadily advancing line OF pro.
gress made by man into the domain OF
any rate, without becoming aware OF a Ger.
tain impulse. . certain milling Of life from
eomew here that mandates wider and wider
patches Of newly reached area, as the ris.
ing tide, inflowing from the sea, rolls with
each recurring billow farther up on the
sloping beach. How many thousand years
it has been since man commenced to think.
theorize and discover nobody knows, and
the Bible does not tell US, but up to date
the record is q tremendous one. and there
is no limit in eight: All OF this is telling
us what q wonderful thing it was that God
did when He started the race on its career
think of the way in which the human eye
has penetrated into the stellar spaces and
read out in terms OF every day English the
thoughts that at the beginning OF time
God wrought into the glitterinG. fabric OF
the heavens, or whether you think of what
1t shorter range has been effected by, the
study of our own globe and of the laws
that pervade it, Of the forces that actuate
Il and of the ways in which its mysteries
have been solved and converted into com.
monplace utilities, the story is one and
the same al. the way through, All these
discoveries Of course celebrate the splendid
o~mnipotcnt wisdom OF q Goo that could
make such O world, but they celebrate the
maenifcence Of the human creature that
could, in point of intelligence. grow far
enough toward God to be abe to make tht.
discoveries. ferret out the purposes OF
things, think out in common words the
thoughts that the Creator put into things,
and 20 on year after year. century after
century. millennium after millennium, for,
ever widening the area OF knowledge and
creating for human thought an empire
steadily advancing upward; ousward ana
downward upon lines laid down by the in.
finite mind.
It is certainly easy to say, and it is very
common to say, that the realities Of the
spiritual world are things that cannot be
confidently gotten at. just as certainly
was it an easy and very natural thing for
the dcnizens Of the o.den centuries to say,
or at any rate 10 think. that the great
lights that shonc in the heavens could no;
be gotten at, or that q mar could not hold
instant and ineligible intercourse with
his distant neighbor 5000 miles across the