The Birmingham age-herald., 1905-12-25
DOING FOR OTHERS
 BRINGS HAPPINESS The Rev, Dr.. John W. Stagg Breaches Christmas Sermon WORLD GLAD YESTERDAY
Many Men Never Find God for They They Never Look for Him in the Right
 Way.

The Rev. Dr. John ". Stagg yesterday preached at the First Presbyterian church on a text taken from John 4:1o as fol- lows:
 Herein is love, not that we loved God, be the propitiation for our sins
 All the world is glad today, because at this season nearly everyone is thinking of and trying to do something for some one else The gladness may be the simple joy of the little child with it's toy, or it may be the calm satisfaction of the grown-up man, who feels that after all the world Is not entirely bad. But deeper than all this is the fact that when we consider others We begin to find the ways of God. It is unlkeness to God that causes unhappiness. When our good im- pulses are traced far enough back they are sure to be found in God No man in all the world is striving after good, whether consciously or unconsciously, but he Is finding the ways of God.
 Many men never find God, for the req son that they never look for Him in the right way There are ways to God and they are as plain as the ways that men make for themselves up the mountain side. The way taught in the text of Gods coming to man along the highway of love is one in which there is no confusion. The teaching about God may change in form from ago to age, and always remain the same in principle. Man never is before God in anything he does in the world. His best dreams about the world and life have all been anticipated by God Man makes the world a more habitable world but He does so out of the things God has provided. It is into a furnished and gar nished earth that man comes. The present has come out of the pre-existing. All the splendid achievements of civilization over the world of matter and man lay first wrapped in the purpose of God.
 The fundamental truth of Christianity as taught by Jesus is not a fermentation in humanity, where man struggles and at last finds God shut up in his heavens. 1t Is distinctly that God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten N'Co do He has first done himself. This method of God, in the world of men, is as effective as his way in the world of things It does not matter what may be your views of the coming of Christ, whether he was born in the way the Bible tells or not, the effect that Jesus has had on man and his society and his in- stitutions, you cannot explain away nor deny. From Nazareth has come an n- fluence that has changed the world. The explanation that Christ gave himself was that he was a coming of God to man. Christ's teaching about God, and his love for men, backed by all that the Savior endured make viewpoint from which the writer of our epistle sees the source of all that is good and noble in man. Human love, in whatever form, fades in contemplation of the love of God for lost man. Sin and God are antithetical. 1t needs no doctrine of the fall of man to prove that men are sinners the con ditions as they now are from that man is not right. To redeem from this con giveness. which you may accept That is salvation
 The testimony of St. John is that through the visible we are to appreciate the invisible, through the love of man that we grow into the love of God. The trouble with many is that they put God too far away. They seem to think that they must climb up to God, when the surer way is to descend to man. There is more of God in man than many suppose. The men of history who have taught most about God have been precisely those who thought most of man, and those the most devoted to are those who loved most their fellows. The man who loves most here Is the one who is forgiven most in heaven. Mans way of saving the world is by punishing crime Gods way of saving it is by love- More people are saved to so- oiety every year from feeling that they are counted for something and are cared for by some one than by all the devices for punishing men for being bad To love the unattractive and hateful Is pos- sihle, not alone to a divine being, but is possible to those also who initiate divine ways. If Gods wishes for man were rounded out there would be no misery and wretchedness anywhere, and when men find God through devotion to humanity the z kingdom of God will not be far from any of us.