The Birmingham age-herald., 1905-06-12
ANCHORS OF THE
 SOUL WAS THEME Practical Sermon at the Second Presbyterian Church MAN UNAlDED IS HELPLESS In This World of Temptation Are Currents and Tides of Evl-The
 Soul Must Be Anchored
 to Christ
MAN UNAI0ED IS HELPLESS

The Rev. U D. Mooney, pastor of the Second Presbyterian church, preached yesterday morning on Anchors of the Soul" His text was taken from Acts xvii, 29; Then fearing lest we should have fallen upon rocks, they cast four anchors out of the stern, and wished for the day"
 MT. Mooney said in part:
 There is nothing more attractive or more restful in the world that we see than vessel at rest upon the surface of great sea The tide moves against the bow, the waves beat against the side, the current labors underneath in the unseen sea, but the vessel stands, and it stands because 1t Is anchored
 Now when we pass from the world we see, to the world that we don't see, we find that the individual is surrounded by great, unseen forces; forces whose aim is destruction, forces which are hostile to any movement of the soul toward God, forces which must be conquered, or they will conquer the man.
 Amid the presence of these forces a man must stand his ground or he is lost.
 Tendency to Drift.
 Now, as a matter of fact, Gods word tells us that amid these tides and cur rents of evil all around about us, that we are absolutely helpless; that no frail bark upon an angry sea was ever more at the mercy of the waves than the natural man is in the face of the worlds elements of evil.
 God says: We have all sinned and come short of the glory of God" Sin IS the breaking of law, and we have broken the law of God because the pressure impellng us was beyond our power to stop.
 He says also 'that all we, like sheep, have gone astray." What does this mean? It means that God has set for our feet a plain path. a path of good ness of righteousness. of purity and of life extension, but that away in the strength of the earth currents all around us we have been forced out of the path of life into the paths of evil and sin.
 Now this helplessness shows itself in tendency to drift. A vessel must be an- chored or it moves in the direction of the tide; it drifts with the current, and destruction is its end.
 There was a time when man was att tached to God, when there was no drift in his life. Adam was connected with God not by a physical connection, but by a moral one. He was like God in character and in ideals, and Gods com mands were his law, but in some mys- terious way the tide of evil touched him, and by his own choice he cut himself loose from the intimate fellowship of the eternal, and began to drift away from his likeness and his presence.
 Ever since then, down during the ages, humanity has been uniformly drifting away from light away from life.
 The tendency to drift is a fact. To overcome it help is needed from without. Now when a man goes outside of him self, he finds only one real personality, and that is God He may traverse the measureless space, he may travel on mountain and plain and sea, and he will find only God. And when 8 mans help l,ssness has driven him to God, he Is pre pared for the gospel of God in Jesus Christ to touch his life. So that the first anchorage of the soul must be to the irresistible and immovabe Christ.
 Augustine said, Lord. Thou hast made us for Thyself and we are restless till we rest in Thee" More and more our rest less humanity Is turning It's eyes to Jesus.
 It's the cry of the helpless out in the tide and the current, crying for the aid of the strong. From all quarters of the world there is the desire to anchor to the Christ who Is able to make men strong and steadfast In Corea and Thibet, on the Congo, and in the Soudan, from the frozen north and in the islands of the sea.
 And as you and I walk and have our being here in this world and this city there are currents playing around us every day, and every now and then in one life or another they assume the force of a great tidal wave.
 To walk upright, to stand in the hour of shock, to live as men and women should under the pressure. our souls must be anchored to the Christ who is the same yesterday and today and forever.
 Another anchorage of the soul is knowledge of the spiritual world and of It's laws.
 Knowledge Necessary.
 One of the strangest things in world of strangeness Is the fact that we as spiritual beings are so ignorant of the c,,t~;t,,aI ruorld and tho la Us that Ohtain