The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-03-15
HIGHLANDS CHURCH
 OPEN FOR WORSHIP
Handsome Five Points Struc-
 lure Thrown Open
DR. J. H. M'C0Y- BREACHES
Rev. Bransconnb Conducted Love Feast During Afternoon While Rev. Hoyt Dobbs Preached the
 Night Sermon.

Impressive services marked the open
 ing of the main auditorium of the High
 lands Methodist church at Five Points
 yesterday morning The Rev. Dr. James
 H. Mccoy, president of Birmingham col
 lege and former pastor of the church. | preached the sermon, while a beautiful
 musical programme was carried out. | The Rev. L. c. Branscomb. pastor of | the First Methodist church, led love
 feast, which was held at 3:S0 o'clock
 in the afternoon At the evening service
 special musical programme was car- | ried out, while the pastor, the Rev. Hoyt ! Dobbs, preached sermon on music.
 | Each of the three services was well ! attended, the congregation at the morn-
 ing service taxing the capacity of the auditorium, while 1t was filled at the l evening service.
 Dr. Mccoy took as his subject "The Mind of Christ the Form of the Church." | his text being Philippians, Ii, 5-S: "Let | this mind be in you which was also in | utation, and took upon Him the form of | God, thought 1t not robbery to be equal | with God; but made Himself of no rep | utation. and took upon him the form of | servant, and was made in the like
 ness of men; and being found in fashion
 as a man He humbled Himself and be-
 came obedient unto death, even the death | of the cross"
 Dr. Mccoy said:
 l Perhaps nothing has been more inad- 1 equately conceived by us than has the nature and mission of the church. This | is due in large part, doubtless, to the 1 fact that the interpretation has been so 1 often from the wrong starting point. l It has been so much easier to think of
 a church under terms of mere poIity and ceremonial constitution than of a king | dom expressed in terms of the divine thought and love and purpose. that our 1 ideal has rarely risen to the height of
 the divine mark or laid down radius ! sufficient to describe the wide circumfer- l ence of it's field of action.
 Obviously, if we are to conceive the
 church under terms that are at all ade-
 quate, we must begin by interpreting the 1 church through the idea of the kingdom, | and not the kingdom through the idea | of the church. The Kingdom Is primary;
 the church Is merely its visible and in | strumental aspect. The kingdom, then, must first be interpreted And, in or | der to do this, we must have recourse
 to something infinitely beyond mere mat
 ters of polity and ceremonial We must l go to Christ himself for the ideal. The | Kingdom of which the churok Is but a | partial visible expression must be con- 1 ceved and expressed in. terms of the
 person of Christ Himself He defines Christianity, not in mere words of deh- | milton, for such definition can never be | put into mere words. but by simply what 1 He was and Is. It registers the reach | of His purpose; it's functions are the ex- | pressions of Ills will on the field of human | life; 1t is His body, having no mean | ing whatever apart from the divine mind | animating and using it toward the heav- enborn ends that characterized His min | istry as He served men fin the body of It Is Ethical.
 1 If we attempt, then, to construe the kingdom from this starting point. we face | first and at once the fact that it is ethi- | cal. That Is It's primary and determi- , native note. A religion is always as It's | God Is. We have not faced as we should | the wonderful fact of how Jesus ethicized | the conception of God. To illustrate how | fully and gloriously He did this let us
 compare for moment the Father as Jesus shows Him, with the two highest | conceptions of God held before the day | of Jesus. The God of the Greeks was | conceived. not in terms of ethics, but I of aphysics-the last deduction of | thought and it's supreme object. He | never transcended the categories of 1 thought. He remained abstract, logical, | impersonal. The Jehovah of the Hebrew
 was primarily lawgiver. His law was 1 the creation of His will, rather than a i transcript of His nature. His love was 1 hedged in by the terms of the covenant. | It was not felt to involve any contradic- | ton of His essential nature that He was 1 the God of the Jews only. The law was 1 the regulatve idea, and the divine na- f,1ro al l legal rather than moral categories.
 | But when we approach God through Je- | sus, what a different being does He be- | come. Here He Is no longer conceived under judicial or meta physical terms, but | is the Father-the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Father of all men. l That, to the consciousness of Jesus, was | ever the determinative idea of the God head. In Him the paternal feeling is 1 eternal; and the paterna cannot be with I out the filial; and for these to be means | that He is the infinite home of all the moral emotions with all their correla tive activities. God Is love. But love in it's ! very nature is social It can as little live ! in solitude as a man can breathe in a {! vacuum. Just because lie is love He creates men capable of loving and of be- | ing loved. Since He Is love He seeks | to come close to men in the glory of self-revelation. Because He is love He | will not abandon His children who have l lost their way in the darkness of sin, l but sends His own Son to find them in | their lostness and to bring them back | into the life from which they have | strayed.
 l Now bear in mind that God is as Jesus l represented Him-is as Jesus. was It l Is the traf1scendent ethical conception | And bear in mind, too, that Jesus is the l form of the church. Its mission is to parallel his purposes. It's spirit is to be | His spirit. as He empties Himself, as He | condescends, as He serves, as He volun- | tarily conditions himself under the laws | of human life. bearing its burdens on His l willing shoulders. sounding the, gulfs of l its sorrow with His sympathy, buying
 back the forfeited life of men by the | ransom of His own life. That is the
 mind that was in Jesus. and that mind. | translating into terms of human life the 1 love that is the heart of God, yearning
 and energizing until its desires be accom- | plished in human redemption, types for l o1,or afa nd ftrn AL