The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-12-28
Pastor South Highlands Metho-
 dist Church Breaches
BUILDING IS INADEQUATE
Large and Representative, cOnsresa- ton Fills the Church to Hear the Pastor of the New. Methodist
 Episcopal Church.


 hear the Rev. J. H. Mccoy, the pastor, preach on "The Incarnation" MT. Mccoy is attracting much attention in Birming- ham by his oratory and deep thought and his effort yesterday was considered as master piece. It is very evident by the numbers who are attending this new church on the Highlands that the building is altogether inadequate, and hope was freely expressed yesterday that steps would soon be taken to enlarge it.
 Mir MeCoy's sermon was as follows;
 The Incarnation.
 And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth" John l. 14.
 "There is nothing more credible, in all the range of human knowledge, than the doctrine of divine revelation. As suming the existence of a supreme be- ing who is related to man by creation and by provdential control it follows as a thing pre-eminently rational and easy of belief, that this being would, in some way, find means of making Himself movable by His creatures. No cause can be imagined why God should wish to shut Himself in solitary isolation from the knowledge and fellowship of those with whom He has peopled His universe On the contrary, every natural presump- tion would lead to the conclusion that in the wisdom and power and love of the Creator, there would be found between earth and heaven some meeting point, somewhat in common that should serve the purpose of medium of the ex- pression of thought and for the exer- else of fellowship
 Limitations to Knowledge.
 But, if God is to bring Himself, by means of self-revelation, into the range of human knowledge, then, very evident ly, the methods and the media of revc- lation will be conditioned by the lmi- tations that beset our finite powers. In other words, the unknown must be re- vealed in terms of the known. The data of human knowledge must serve as the starting point in any approach of heaven toward earth The natural must be pressed into service to express the supernatural. As matter of fact, we see revelation developing toward Its fitness of light after this manner
 Mature is a known term in the vast equation of being, and becomes to us by divine appointment, the means by which we come to the knowledge of re- alities above and back of nature God speaks to men, and must speak to them in Iap The heavens declare the glory of God and the Armament showeth His handi- work Looking upon nature as an ef- feet the mind inevitably predicates an efficient cause. Looking upon it's mas terly arrangement in the correlation of ends and means, we find the evidence of mind in its creator The mind that made and the minds that interpret and understand, thus find a meeting point and basis of some degree of acquain- tance Looking upon the stupendousness of material creation, one sees proof of the omnlpotence of it's architect and builder Thus through the data of em- pirical knowledge does God make Him self known to us.
 Revelations Limited.
 But His revelation through inanimate nature is very limited, very imperfect, because the medium itself is incapable of receiving and of expressing the higher things of God. Natural religion, that claims nature as the sole and sufficient medium of revelation, can never do more than to give us a shadowy vision of those attributes of the Eternal by which He is related to the physical universe. Those higher qualities of moral and spiritual being by which the divine Father is made known to us in ineffabe perfection could no more be revealed through rocks than they could be revealed to rocks
 T look upon a stately. massive build ing and through 1t l get acquainted with It's architect and builder. He deposits himself in it's mathematical proportions In its artistic finish, in the appointments that look to some particular utility. But at his best he can express his real self hood but poorly through the dead mate rial with which he builds Not a millionth part of the man himself speaks in these stones By merely looking upon the build ing, no one would be able to gain even hint of the moral qualities of the build CT. In him there are illmitable ranges of thought. immeasurable wealth of af- lection and the steady play of a will In correlation with the higher laws of be- ing. that have utterly nothing to do with the rules of architecture.
 Must Find Medium.
 If God would come by revelation into
 
 the range of our Knowledge. revealing to us the higher moral and spiritual per fections of His nature He must find q medium of communication in creation at it's highest reach. He must speak through that which is capable of mirroring not one but all. of the divine attributes If God is love, He must make that fact known through what Is capable of loving and of understanding love. If God is in- finite holiness, the knowledge of that fact must be arrived at through the power of moral dlscernment in the realm of hu- man ri sousness |. were impossible even to imagine any attribute of God not existent in some degree in ideally per feet human nature
 "The Incarnation Is a subject that in- wolves deep and hopeless mystery How two whole and perfect natures. the hu- man and the divine, are united in the per- son of Jesus Christ, no man knows. Re- gently a man of intelligence said to me, I have never become Christian, because I cannot understand how Jesus Christ can be at once human and divine I wonder what that man thinks of the mystery of a natural birth as he stands at the we'd ding of an immortal. immaterial soul with a lump of clay? wonder what he thinks of the mystery of the lilys beauty. or of the seeds germination? l wonder if ever, in Al II