Democratic messenger. [volume] (Snow Hill, Md.) 1869-1973, 1903-03-28

dod The lea Lies Close 20 :Ee Foun-
dation o! lis System of Administered on.
New YORK CIrY.-Dr. Charles II. Park
hurst, pastor OF the Madison Square Pres
byterian Church, preached Sunday morn
ing on Growing in the Things of the
Kingdom of God" The text was from III.
Peter Iii: Is: Grow ip grace and in 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. 1t is a great Bible word. grow
Is; particularly great gospel word. The
word incarnates the idea OF life, and of
life that is swelling, crowding apart the
shell and crushing up in the direction OF
becoming tree; knocking down walls and
breaking forth into territory outlying II
am come that they might have life and
that they might have it more abundantly,"
more and more of it. life doubling and
quadruplng upon itself.
That is one OF the ideas that lie close at
the foundation OF Gods system of produc-
ton and administratiQn-life and more
and more OF it. Everything is for the sake
OF the things that grow. What cannot
grow Is for the sake of 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 3
great week were only sort of creative pre-
lndc. 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; scaifolding 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 from-out- of the ground: Ont of
Gods hand that had been holding it till
the right m nent came; Out of the air
and drfffai down from other ClOhn
that lad 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 Il
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 OIL 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. 1t not simply exists-a mineral does
that, block of stone does that-but it
lives, and, from infancy up, with life that
is more and 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 abundantly." And not
only is there the kind OF growth that
makes the individual more and more richly
live thing, on the way from infancy to
mature manhood. and more complete,y
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 or
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 eve
when first He went about to produce man.
We have reached the limit in point OF stat
ure and presumably III point of refinement
of organization.
Arrived at this stage, any new growth
that the race might make would have to he
striking out into some fresh channel.
The body being 4 finished body the rising
current OF life IN MANN the growing
man-wlIl, neriorce. seek some new issue
for itself. No longer needed to make for
him more highly organized body. the wax
ing tide overfiows 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
has to b taken up. and when. in the
course of long wear OF development. man
had become perfect as an animal he started
III uIOO tHe course oil making himself Dcr-
feet as an intelligence.
That Is what he is doing now and il 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
verging close upon reverence. Ii 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 phvsical world at
any rate. without becoming aware OF a GER
tain impulse: certain milling of life from
somew here that mandates wider and wider
patches OF newly reached area. as the rs-
ing tide, iniiowinG from &he sea, rolls with
esch recurring pillow farther mp on the
slopIng beach. How many thousand wears
1t 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 tremendous one. and there
- is no limit IN sight. All of this is telling
us what wonderful thing IL was that God
did when He started the race on its career
OF growth and conquest. Whether you
think of. the way in which the human eve
has penetrated into the stellar spaces and
rec ont in terms of ever; day English the
Thoughts that at the beginning of time
Coz wrought into the glittering fabric OF
the beavens. or whether You think of what
at shorter range has been effected BY the
study OF orr own globe and of the laws
that rervade il, of the forces that actuate
it and of the ways in which its mysteries
have been solved and converted into CON.
monplace uti,itie-. the story is one and
the came all tho way through All these
discoveries OF course celebrate the splendid
omnipotent wisdom of God that could
make such world. hut they celebrate the
magnificence 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 go 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.
y 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 1t an easy and very natural thing for
the denizens OF the o,den centuries to say.
or at any rate TO think that the great
lights that shone in the heavens could not
le gotten at, or that a man could not hold
lstant and Ineligible intercourse with
5 distant neiShbor 5000 miles across the
!, hlt such intercourse Is now matter of
tory, and to the heavenly bodies that
h~ss 81. IL.