The county record. [volume] (Kingstree, S.C.) 1885-1975, 1903-03-26
OUR SUNDAY SERMON
THE GROWTH IN GOOD THINGS
The Idea of Growth Close to the
Foundation Of the System of Our
Religion.

hlngQOm OF EOu. Inc leNl Wis Jio4h l.
Peter iii: IS: Grow III grace and III the
knowledge OF our Lord aid Saviour Jesus
Christ
To grow: growing in the things Of the
kingdom of God; that IS our matter tins
morning 1t is a great Bible word, grow
is: particularly 4 great gospel word. The
word incarnates the idea OF life, and OF
lie that is swelling. crcwding apart the
shell and crushing up in the direction OF
becoming tree; knocking down walls and
breaking forth into territory outlying.
am come that they might have life and
that they might have II 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-life and more
and more OF it, Everything is Tor the sake
of the things tina. grow. What cannot
grow is for the sake CT that which can
scaffolding along which the living walls can
be built, trellis up which the growing vines
can Chamber. The first two days OF God $
great week were only a sort OF creative pre-
lude. getting things ready, the seas collect
ed. the land dried off. in readiness for the
fish that live, the grass and the trees that
grow-and man, scaffo!ding and trelllscS
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 from-out of the ground? Out OF
Gods hand that had been holding it till
the right moment came? Out of the ar
and drifted down from some other globe
that lad commenced harvesting before our
furrows were plowed? Which!
But it was 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 on reshaping themselves and reshap-
ing themselves; but reshaping is 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
not grow; but the corn grows, and man
grows-at least sometimes; some men.
The body grows, at any rate; that is the
rule. 1t not simply exists-a mineral does
that, block of stone does that-but it
is more and more life = blade, ear, full
corn; which is the physical side OF that
verse in John, chat they might have life
and have it more abundantly." 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 b,auteously 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 or
more centuries show him-is about as good
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
striking out into some fresh channel.
The body being finished body, the rising
current of life in man-in the growing
man-will, perforce, seek some new, issue
for itself. No longer needed to make for
him more highly organized body, the wax,
ing tide overfows into the shaping of a
more finely organized mind. The life is
there, the growing life is there, and so
when one thing is finished another thing
las to BE- taken UP. and when, in the
course of long year CT 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 is
ineXpressibly wonderful what he has al
ready achieved in this direction. The race
cannot contemplate itself in respect of the
advance made within historic times unon
lines Of thought and research without be-
holding itself with feelings OF admiration
vergirg close upon reverence. 1t 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
truth. the truth of the physical world at
any rate, without becoming aware of a GER
tain impulse. certain infilling Of life from
somewhere that mandates wider and wider
patches of newly reached area. as the ris-
ing tide, infowinC 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 a tremendous one. and there
is no limit in sight All OF this is telling
us what wonderful thing 1t was that God
did when He started the race on its career
of growth and conquest Whether you
think OF the way IN winch lne 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 glitterinC fabric OF
the heavens, or whether You thi"'; of what
at shorter range has been effected by the
study of our own globe and of the laws
that pervade it. of tine forces that actuate
it and of the ways in which its mysteries
have been solved and converted into com.
monplace utilities, the story is one and
the same all the way through. All these
discoveries of course celebrate the splendid
omnipotent wisdom OF God that could
make such world, but they celebyate the
magnifcence of the human creature that
could. in point OF intelligence. grow far
enough toward God to be able to make the
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. outward and
downward upon lines laid down by the in
finite mind.
1t 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
IL - ha o1Jo, fo