The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1904-08-03
A SERMON FOR SUNDAY
AN ELOQUENT DISCOURSE ENTITLED
"UNFlNIsHE0 THINGS
Tie Rev. A. II. c. Morse Bases an Inter
eating Address Upon the First and
Last Words in the Scriptul es-Ee Not
Impatient, God Has q Plan.

odptlsG SnurCi '9uI!cdS HiOihlhS 'NS r.,
tor, the Rev. A. H. c. Morse. preached
a strong sermon on Unfinished Things"
He said:
My sermon this morning is based upon
the first and the last words in the Scrip
heaven and the earth,S even so, come
Lord Jesus" And between these texts
there is an Unreasonable distance. The
first deals with the beginning OF things:
The last closes the Bible with a note OF
incompleteness. The first takes us back
were hurled from the battlements of heaV-
en- by the hand of the Creator. The see
ond points forward to some far off divine
event to which the whole creation moves"
It would solve many troubles in our
thinking if we remembered that we live IN
a world of unfinished things. This earth
Is not a finished product. 1t is rather the
sum of all the forces with which it was
stored in the beginning. 1t is what some
one has called an eXpectant creation. 1t
stands with shaded eyes looking toward
the future. Hidden behind all its move
ment there is a divinely appointed end:
evolution in the light of this single truth.
But in the beginning they must post God.
Life is an unfinished product. Whoever
saw a finished life? In q great workshop
we must look for noise and dust and tu-
mutt and confusion. We also look for the
finished product, but it is not there. As
| soon as a product is finished it is removed.
It's place is not there in all that dust and
dirt. This world is Gods great workshop.
Are We startled at the noise and confu-
sion? Human beings are in process OF be-
ing formed and perfected. But the end is
not yet. 1T doth not yet appear what we
,hon ha" No Ona Ic norilnf tn-dav And
what we call the best is made up of un-
finished and incomplete products. If this
world has ever seen the perfect, it is only
that it would be removed. Life is n great
school. What man is, or does, after grad
uation has not been told US yet with any
detail.
We are appalled, at the evidences of So
cial wreckage. They tell US there is moth
ing good in all the world, that the whole.
earth is a vast m%adhouse, her inhabitants
are drunk with delirium, the fields are be-
coming bankrupt, and the harvests are
well nigh exhausted. They tell us that the
strong trample the weak to death in their
cruel greed and hunger. Now this seems
world is filled with madness. 1t does reek
in cruelty and greed. But still l am
taught that this world is Gods, and that
it is working for a divinely appointed end.
1t manifests along its course one great In
~tention.
Who, then, are the p~essimists? They
are the disappointed whom fortune seems
to have shaken from her skirts. Here is a
man you used to know. Then he was
bright and keen and vivScious and ener-
getic. In those days his eyes were bright
with the CLEAN Of far-off fire. But now we
meet him and the light has faded from his
eye, and the spring has departed from his
step, and he has joined the great army OF
upon obtaining something which the pass
ing years have said he could never have.
And his life has failed and his possessions
have taken flight. Now what does this
mean? 1t simply means that he has been
displaced by the very progress. OF the
world. When an army is marching for
ward and it quickens its pace, the weaker
soldiers must fall by the wayside. But the
army has gone to valiant duty. And the
very fact that the world is sweeping on
ward means that some must be dropping
every year. They are flung backward be-
cause the race is hurrying forward.
This world is an incomplete world be-
cause it is divine. If life, as we know it,
were complete, if this were the end, then
we should have to-day the ultimate staud-
ard of success. Our judgment of ourselves
and of others would be final. But is that
so? Who of US dare Judge another? Do
we not rather look at this life as part of a
whole, whose greater part lies beyond the
vision? There isn't room in the longest
human career to develop all we hope and
love and long for. And SO We say that the
most encouraging thing about this life is
that it is not yet complete. The basis of
hope is the possibility of growth-not in
the perfection of attainment now or in the
Immediate future
Shall l be misunderstood if I point out
that the earthly life OF the Saviour par
took Of this same incompleteness? His &C.
tons, His parallels, His whole teaching
constitute a promise of the future. His
life led to His death, His death to His res
direction, His resurrection to His ascen-
sion, His ascension to His throne of glory,
and that again leads to His second coming.
"Even so. Come, Lord Jesus" Il is as
though the lines of life projected far be-
yond Our farthest ken, and could be fol-
lowed only by an infinite hope. Why was
a man had a right to be a pessimist it was
He. He found that the world did not
want Him, the rulers of the state had no
place for Him, the church of Judea that
God had been training for 1900 years to
look for Him did not know Him. Why
was He not in despair? Because He had
in Himself the wells OF Joy. Not the Joy
OF Indifference, not the JOY of Him who
sees and does not care. But the Joy of
Him who sees all, and through all to the
living Col. Just as in one of Corots pic
lures YOU can see in the foreground the
gnarled and blnckened trunks, and be-
yond all and behind all the clear shining
of the sky.
The gospel with its mission still unac-
compiished is another instance of that
church and in the soul of the believer the
gospel sees not yet all things put under it.
And that for the simple reason that this
is a world of unfinished things. And even
this may come to us with inspiration, for
unlike the dwellers in the Orient we live
in the midst of unfulflled %prophesies. Nor
shall they ever be fulfeled here. Other
conditions and other circumstances are
needed. From this incompieteness one
might gather the largest argument for our
Immortality. This world is in accordance
with a divine purpose, and cannot be eX-
planned unless it tells of a fulfllment in
the ages, yet to come, when this earth shall
have been replaced by a new earth where.
self shall be satisfied.
The old philosophers used to represent
all things in q state Of continual low.
They stood by the river whose dark wat
ers, fed from some hidden source, stole
past in voiceless mystery. They saw the
same mysterious flow in the seasons, in
the harvests, in human life itself. And
they posted motion as the substantial in
the world of things. Now the world is IN
q state OF flow because it is a state of in
completeness, and that again because it is
eXpectant. There is something yet before
us. God has not made men who can long
and love and hope and struggle and deny
themselves, only that they may fall into a
hole in the grass.
For what then does th;s whole c~reatinn