Arizona republican., 1908-12-07
TRUST IN GOD
 ABUNDANT PROOF
The Sermon of Rev. A. s. Hawley oi
 the Methodist Church.

The morning subject at the Metho- dist church yesterday was Trust in God" The pastor, Rev. A. L. Hawley, saying in party:
 That there is God and believe no thoughtful man denies. The great uni verse declares Him in the glory of the stars, and the multitudinous unfoldings of life on our earth.
 ''The fast that men understand the universe sufficiently well to construct a science concerning its varied work ings, is evidence that it Is the unfold ing of plan; and plan can only be constructed by intelligence. There can be no science based on chance happen ings. There must be some grand all- enveloping plan into which the seem ing contrasts can be seen to cOalesce and form a part, before a classification hence a science, becomes possible.
 "Mind only understands mind. and finite mind understands nothing else hence the only national explanation of the universe is that it is the result of mind acting on matter causing it to do the will of intelligence.
 Is this God a God of good or evil? All our desires are the result of the ex- istence of that which would satisfy them. The eye became because of light; the ear because of sound; the lungs because of air; etc. Not one fails of its object; and is failure only to be when it comes to the noblest, most powerful desire of all-that for God and life? This life and it's de- sires proceeded from God-He made it such as it Is by the environing influ ences. If therefore there is no good God to love and worship. He is the author of aspirations for which there is no satisfaction, and has forced His noblest creatures into a life of inevit able delusions. This is the alternative. Either God is the best of beings, or He has perpetrated a gratuitious fraud on men by endOwing them with religious instincts and desires. Judgment is not difficult. as we are simply asked to believe that God is good; or to contra dict the primary assertion of our minds and senses by saving this is not an honest world of realities.
 If God is good He loves His crea- lures and cares for them-it Is incon- that He would not: so He must manifest Himself to them in the very caretaking. Why should He not go further and manifest Himself to them in personal religious experience? The God Christ revealed satisfies our hopes, and the experience of millions dead and living, testifies not only to His existence; but also to His good ness. Some may object that eXperi- ence is personal. and only completely to the one who has it. True, for that is the nature of all experience, yet nearly all the things we accept as proven facts are based on the eXperi- ence of others. How do we know gunshot wound is painful, that arsenic poison produces raging thirst, or opium stupor? Few of us have experienced these effects. Do we say those who have say these things are true, and act like they were? So millions say, and have said God exists. in good, and re- veals Himself unto them, and they act like t as true and die like it was true. With so great a cloud of witnesses tes- tifying to the goodness of God, can we not trust Him more than we do? Are we not putting so much stress on few detached verses of scripture such as be diligent in business as to feel jus tified in giving all our time and thought to worldly affairs? De We not press the adage. God helps those who help themselves so far as to leave no room for Gods care in our life plans? Are these the most important things in life? Does implicit obedience to them make a man noble, generous, de- vout. unselfish? If not, fear we are making the part stand for the whole in causing the three little precepts our business responsibilities to usurp in our lives the place of Christ's gospel whose great precepts are Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thy self"