The Penn's Grove record., 1903-03-27

And we should be stimulated in the d.
fection OF coming into closer quarters with
the sublime facts of the spiritual world
'Iod, toul and all the ~eternals, If we would
keep closer company with those impulses
OF ours, those spiritual appetites, that in
stlnctlvely lean and extend themselves in
tne direction of that suspected but I'M
known world. There is not an impulse yet
detected IT. our nature, whether physical
or mental, that has not been found in
course of time to be correlated with some.
thing outside that precisely matches it.
thirst means that there is water, and the
water is there waiting. The eve means
that there is light. and the light is there
waiting. The budding interrogation in the
chlld's mind means that there is truth, and
the truth IS there waiting. So far as we
nave yet gone the inward impulse has
shown itself to be an infallible prophecy
OF an outward reality that perfectly fits It.
And those great ~longings of the soul that
swell within Us IN our best and freest mo-
ments, so great sometimes as to be beyond
our power to articulate, these, too, it il
foolish and stupid in US to treat as less
trustworthy and infallible than are the
guleter appetences of the intelligence or
the coarser instincts of the body. There is
no safe creed that does not start in with
a confession of faith In mes own superb
self-superb in the sense of being gifted
with powers that put him in direct rela-
ton with the rocks under him, the air
about him, the great God overhead, ard
the eternal realm of Spirit, human and d.
vine. And that gives a man something to
go upon: 1t at once makes the farthest
star in the heavens a proper object of in
quiry, and lays out before him a highway
into the heart and centre of the kingdom
spiritual.
But the highway into the heart and GEN.
Ire OF the kingdom spiritual is not a road
that is being numerously travelled. We are
about as far along on that road as Column
BUS was on the way to the Western CONT
nent when he was still heaving anchor in
the harbor of Palos. But the road is az
feasible and passable as the waterway Of
the Atlantic. And the world is going to
get there. The religious impulse, the pas
SION of tie divine is in us for a purpose.
God Is movable and He is going to be
known Spiritual things are discernible
and they are going to be discerned. There
is such a thing as the life eternal and there
IS such a thing as having a realization OF
that life, having it here, too, as a matter
of clear and definite experience. We are
not saving anything just now as to the ma
ture of the highway that leads into the
midst OF the spiritually discerned realities
that compose that kingdom, nothing Just
now ABOUT the steps a man takes in tread
ing that highway. The only impression I
am studying to leave this morning is that
there is a continent of reality as distinct
from the continent of every day interest
as the Western Hemisphere of our globe
Is distinct from the Eastern; that we are
endowed with faculties which to the de-
gree in which they are deveioped and ex.
erclsed make the matters of that remoter
continent as certainly ~distinguishable and
as confidently appreciable to the earliest
Spanish explorers; that spiritual discern
ment has lust as solid a meaning in its re-
lation to things spiritual as ocular discern
ment has in its relation to things material,
and that it is capable Of yielding results
that are just as convincing and satisfying,
and he as solidly planted in the assurance
of the mar that has become spiritually cog
INFANT of them; that the soul is endowed
with the faculty OF a vision that is as true
az the vision of the body, independent OF
bodily vision and a thousand times more
richly and wonderfully gifted.
Men are interested in houses, lands,
clothes, money. markets, commerce, science
and art, but there Is not much interest in
religion. There Is interest in the matter
of being saved, whatever that may mean.
but desire to be saved is no more religion
than the desire to be gotten out of the
water when you have fallen overheard 10
navigation.
This does not mean that there are not a
good many who have an inkling Of the
meaning of the spiritual kingdom, some
thing as men at sea gain a suspicion OF
distant land by observing the impalpabie
blanket of mist that hovers about it. 1t Is
net much in itself, and yet it is a great
deal, because of the much that it is capa-
BILE of widening out into. 1t is a kind OF
spiritual coast line which. seen from afar,
appears to be but a flmy thread, but
which is for all that the solid edge of a
solid continent.
Nor does that which we have been say
ing mean that there are not those who
have already travelled a good stretch of
distance into the midst of things, the spir-
itual v~erIties, that make out the spiritual
world. In all departments of life and in all
directions of growth there have always
been men who have outrun their fellows,
pioneers in the enterprise of discovery,
giants In research who have stood high and
looked over the shoulders of their contem-
p~oraries, who have lived in the same
world as they, but at the same time lived
in a larger world than they. In the world
of religious thought and experience we
call such men prophets. A prophet, prop
erly speaking, is not so much a man who
is able to see what is going to be as he is
one who sees more widely than others the
things which are now. There is such a
thing, even in matters of science, as coming
so into accord with the spirit of scientific
truth as to be able to see with a firm and
fast Vision where eyes less sympathetic
have failed. Exactly the parallel of that
has been true over and over again in that
other world of truth mysteriously hidden
that is our special concern this morning.
And, as / say, we call such ones prophets.
And there are prophets now as in the old
days-men and women whose spiritual
steps are more than abreast with their
owl day. They know what they see, they
realize what they feel, and it is as feeble
and infantile for those whose eyes have in
to- n c1>114 E-l@ - 1nr- L
that has been made to these prophets and
prophetesses Of a longer and purer sight,
as for you and me to slur over with ironi-
cal contempt the revelations brought back
to US by those who have climbed farther
than we into the heights of the material
heavens.
But that is the way history grows; that
is the way the world becomes larger-a few
prophets, pioneers in the van, and the rest
Flooding on behind-some not even pod
ding, some no nearer millennium than
when history started out. OF course, the
great prophet of all prophets, the great
seer of all seers, was Jesus Christ. 1t
would seem that to His eye the things of
the heavenly kindom were as near and as
distinct as were the long hidden mysteries
of the solar system distinct to the vision
of Copernicus. He did not reason, Christ
did not, nor conjecture, nor guess; He saw.
When He told Of God, of the soul, Of the
life eternal, He spoke OF that which He
knew and testified that which He had
seen. He anne not as a delineator. While
He was telling things to people He saw
the things that He was telling them. There
is nothing in he Bible about supposing,
but there is a great lot in it about seeing.
Like all the great v~erities, this one we
nave been handling this morning grows
upon us with the handling. 1t has made
us feel, some of us, that We are out at sea
still, and that instead of having yet planted
a firm foot upon the solid territory of the
continent eternal we are only inspecting
what rather looks to us on the whole to be
coast line, and instead of pushing our boat
come no nearer to actually landing
than to get our sea glass out and spend our
odd moments in trying to make out wheth-
er what we try to focus our glass upon Is
land, mirage or Imagination. In the mean
time the continent is there, the winds
blow athwart it, the sun warns it, the
smile down upon it.
Bearing Fruit.
Are you stin bringing forth fruit? What-
ever you age, you may grow In goodness,
in knowledge, in love and purity and in
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