Orange County observer. [volume] (Hillsborough, N.C.) 1880-1918, 1903-04-02
our SUNDAY SERMON
THE GROWTH IN GOOD. THINGS
The Idea Of Growth Close to the
Foundation Of the System of Our
Religion.

lhe Idea Of Growth Close to the
Foundation Of the System Of Our
Religion.
NEW YORK CIrl.-Dr Charles H. Park
hurst, pastor of the Madison Square Pres
oyterian Church, preached Sunday morn.
Kingdom Of God The ehe text inss mas from OF the
Peter, iii: Is: Grow in grace and in the
Eho!vl EERhowledge OF our Lord and Saviour Jesus
10 grow; growing in the things Of the
morning It IS great Bible word, grow"
IS; particularly great gospel word The
word incarnates the idea OF LIE, and Of
life that. is swelling, crowiing apart the
shell and crushing up i'll the direction of
pecomng tree; knocking down walls and
breaking forth into territory outlying. II
an am come that they might have lie and
that they might have it more abundantly, y
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-
tlon and administration-life, and more
and an m more Of it, Everything is for the sake
grow is for the sake of that which can
scaifoldlng 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 sort Of creative pre-
iude,, getting things ready, the seas collect
/ Cd; the land dried off, in readiness for the
nsh that live, the grass and the trees that
| prior to the temple and the vines.
1t was strange moment in our long his
cory 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 th hand that had been holding it till
the fIghe moment came? Out of the air
| and drifted down from some other globe
that lad commenced harvesting before our
| burrows were p]owed? Which?
| But 1t was supreme moment--one of
the moments when it almost seems that
God must have stopped ansinstant 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 small human reflection. Even
before that supreme hour struck things had
gone on reshaping themselves and reshap-
ing themselves; but reshaping is not grow
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
lives, and, from infancy up, with life that
is more and more life - blade, ear. full
corn; which is the physical side OF that
verse IN John, that they might have life
ana have 1t 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 bsauteously human on his animal side,
put 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 eve
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
The body being finished body, the rising
current of life in man-in the growing
nan-wlll, Derforce, seek some new issue
for itself. No longer needed to make for
him more highly organized body, the wax.
ing tide overhows into the shaping of a
there, the growing life is there, and SO
when one thing is finished another thing
has to be taken up, and when, in the
course OF long year of development, man
mad become perfect animal he started
in upon the course of making himself per
fect 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 the
advance made within historic times unor
lines Of thought and research without be
holding itself with feelings of admiration
verglng 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 O.
truth, the truth of the physical world al
any rate, without becoming aware of a Ger
tain impulse, a certain milling Of life from
somewhere that mandates wider and wide1
ing tide, inhowing from the sea, rolls will
each recurring billow farther up on the
sloping beach. How many thousand year.
IT has been since man commenced to think
theorize and discover nobody knows, ane
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 tellin:
us what wonderful thing it was that Coo
did when He started the race on its career
of growth and conquest. Whether yol
think of the way in which the human ey
has penetrated into the stellar spaces ant
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 pervade it, OF the forces that actual
7 ! it and Of the ways in which it's 1nyster;e
| have been solved and converted into com
; monplace utilities, the story is one AM
the same all the way through. All thes
: discoveries Of course celebrate the splendi
omnipotent wisdom OF God that coul,
make such world, but they celebrate tn
, magnifcence Of the human creature tina
+ could. in point Of intelligence. grow ia
:. enough toward God to be able to make tn
discoveries. ferret out the purposes o
!. things, think out in common words tn
!. thoughts that the Creator put into thing;
, and go ON year after year, century afte
century millennium after millennium, fol-
: ever widening the area of knowledge an
: creating for human thought an enpir
, steadily advancing upward, outward an
!, !, downward upon lines laid down by the il
finite mind.
l It is certainly easy to say, and it is yer
? common to say, that the realities OF tn
= spiritual world are things that cannot =
confidently gotten at. just as certainl
was it an easy and very natural thing 10
t. the denizens of the o.dcn centuries 10 sa,
\ or at any rate to think. that the gTea
: lights that shone in the heavens could ne
@lo% n& hpl