The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-06-22
BENEFITS IF TIE
 SPIRITUAL LIE Hearing That Voice Which Is
 lnaudible REV. MIR. MONEYS SERMON Salvation of Nation, State and City Lies In Righteousness and Max
 ing Bodies Living
 Sacrifice.
REV. MIR. MOONEYS SERMON


 following sermon by the Rev. '. D. Mooney at the Second Presbyterian church yesterday.
 At all times and among all people men have heard the call of the spirit, and have hearkened to greater or less de- gree to the appeal for the life of faith. The means by which this call comes to men has never been materal-at times 1t has been spoken by the voice of prophet or seer, or preacher of righteous ness, at others by an apostle or min- ister; oftentimes it has been heard in the craving of the soul for larger life, and again by the lessons of trial and suffering wherein the heart is disciplined, and the ear of the soul is attuned. The church as an organized institution is the largest witness today for the life that is spiritual; standing in a world that is ma terial, it's spires point to a world that fadeth not away. It has always been true that God has never left Himself without a witness among the habitations of men. The saving feature of many periods in Hebrew history. lay in the fact that one man among them still believed in and communed with God, and stood with zeal for this faith among men.
 '"When Abraham the spiritual pioneer, left his pagan home for a strange coun- try, he simply answered in his own life the call which comes to men, and all the impressions which went out of his life to the world were those which drew the attention of men to the power of faith Moses in the Midian desert answered this call when he began to follow and to see Him who could not be seen Elijah stood on the crest of Mt. Carmel with confidence because for years he had listened to Jehovah's voice and had learned to detect it amid the scenes and the strife of life. In David the call or the Eternal found response from the man on the throne, and in Amos from the man on the farm. Obedience to it's claims made Luther as bold as lion and John Knox a man without fear. Because faith in the Unseen was to the Pilgrim Fathers a thing of substance and a body, they changed their home and native land, and moved to the great American wilderness.
  voices which speak to us of God, the changeless, of the realities of the spirit uaI world, of the life of faith, are as real and as clear as ever, and the quality of the material background in which life has it's setting today only emphasizes their appeal. In the call of the Great Spirit to our spirits, in various ways, and along many paths, lies your salvation and mine. For our constant tendency is to become at home among our material sur roundings, and accept them as final, so that in the end there shall be no diff ference between the complexion of our activity and that of the world. This still small voice of Our Father in Heaven, insisting on a life of righteousness IS the last voice in the world we can afford to drown. It is not necessary to say that the living of a life of faith has ever wielded a potent influence among, men and induced men to follow in the same path, for there is something so fundamental in the choosing of this life, that men are bound to feel it's force.
 "The man who has faith in God today and walks consciously in His presence, has his warrant in the mercies of God for all the ages. The prosperity, ma terial, moral, and spiritual of our nation, our state and especially of the city in which we dwell and have made our home, Is the high ground upon which we should with humility and obedience listen to the voice of God; who owns the cattle upon a thousand hills, and the iron and the
 thn r,nfdS St nf r,1a tU it is ever well to remember that Tit is He (God) that hath made us and not we ourselves" and that "He knoweth our frame that we are dust" and that we never get too sufficient to get beyond the anchorage of great faith in Him. The passing of our Christian service upon the bare mercies of God in experience and in history, appeared to a man pos- sessing the vision of Paul the climax of all argument.
 "All the great priests and prophets of the religion of Jehovah have made their appeal for religion of the heart. In the stage of religious development in which the Hebrew race found themselves an intricate ceremonial was the hand maid of faith, so that there was con- stantly recurring tendency to become more familiar with the form than with the substance, making it necessary for the prophets from Moses to Malachi to recall the people to real worship and a real service. In our own day, with less proyocation from the presence of form and ritual, there is the same danger that we shall judge our religious life by the measure of forms and occasions, and make these same things the standards by which we judge the religion of others. And yet as many as may be the voices which come to the inner ear, telling of the line between the substance and the shadow, between the permanent and the passing, and as many as are the claims of Jehovah upon us all, the bringing of our faculties of mind, and of our powers of spirit unto God, must ever be volun- tary act. It must ever be the act of a sovereign lowing before a sovereign; -an act of A king amid the things of earth presenting his body to the King of Glory. And never does a man appear more a man than when in doing the act of a subject he is at the same time doing the deed of a freeman. For man is freest not when seeking his own, but when he has power to deliver himself body and spirit, unto Jehovah
 
 If Ton Get Thirsty Today