The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-07-20
 REV. JOHN BARBOUR
 IN LOCAL PULPIT Kentucky Pastor Heard at
 Third Presbyterian LESSON OF TREES" Dr. Rarhour Was Pastor of the Hioh-
Dr. Barbour Was Pastor of the High lands Presbyterian Church
 Years Ago-Heard Dr.
 Edmonds Yesterday

speHoinB several uayS here as the guest
 of MT. and Mrs Caldwell Bradshaw, left
 for home late last night He joined his
 former congregation in divine worship yesterday at II o'clock, services being held in Temple Emanu- Fl because of the
 fact that the Highland church is closed
 for repairs. pr. H. M Edmonds invited pr. Barbour to preach but as the latter
 was particularly desirous of hearing the
 pastor, he sat in the body of the
 church and enjoyed the sermon.
 | At night pr. Barbour accepted an in-
 vitation from the Rev. Dr. j. A. Bryan
 to occupy the pulpit of his church-the
 Third Presbyterian. The visiting minis
 ter preached on the Lesson of the Trees" from text found in the ninth verse of the second chapter of Genesis
 And out of the ground made the Lord | God to grow every tree that is pleasant
 to the sight" etc. The preacher spoke
 in part as follows:
 The most wonderful thing God ever | made, next to a man, is tree. The story
 of mans life. from Eden down, is writ ten in the trees. In the four classes of
 trees in Eden, I think we see prefgured Gods just and compassionate view of llife-whether you regard Eden as a lit
 eral fact, or as divinely vouchsafed vision
 There were trees beautiful to the
 sight, and trees yielding their food, be-
 sides the tree of life which ministered to mans spiritual nature and the tree of Knowledge of good and evil There is
 here the field of sentiment and taste;
 then there are the useful aspects and
 needs of life, then comes the provision for carrying mans spiritual being up higher, and then there are the tests of
 mans moral strength
 l God wants us to have beautiful things.
 to be surrounded by the beautiful The Iearth, and sea and sky are reeking with the beautiful What beauty" said
 old Thomas Carlyle, must be stored up 1 in the black, grim earth that is able
 to flash forth into so many beautiful formsr' I did not use to know that | God Himself loves the beautiful, and
 that there is no more wonderful reve- lation of His love than His gift of d beautiful world to His children.
 l It is wicked to have ugly things
 about us when God has made every thing beautiful in its time. But there are the more substantial needs of man.
 and certainly food, attractive food, and
 plenty of it, are in the wise plan of mans creator; but sometimes both of
 these must yield to the spiritual things which test and make for character. Those objects and these occasions of the Ihigher tests, however, are not made | burdensome to us. We are called to look lupon the beautiful things, and the in- nocent joys of life an hundred times to one where We are put to severe moral tests. If we will settle once for all our
 moral attitude to God and to Gods world we can just go about enjoying the lovely things about us.
 When Godsput the man and the wom-
 an into beautiful paradise He rebuked forever the stupid religionist who does not know that Gods child is to be a happy man, and is to cherish and to construct beautiful things.
 1 But all of this was assembled about the tree of life, and the tree of knowl- edge of good and evil. When Adam had sinned, the garden had largely lost it's |sweetness to him, and the vision of pure beauty is not in mans heart today as 1t should be. Art and fashion and the social world are given up to the temp ter when Gods rights and Gods laws are dsregarded
 The food question, too. Is an amaz- ingly important question. 1t is certainly one of the great questions of our poli- tics and of our religion. God makes the
 earth to bring forth bountifully when
 man tends. upon his garden and shares its ample bounties with his brother man. Do you notice how in all those modern discussions we are ever coming back to the moral problems. to how man is treating his brother man, the
 child of the same Father who gave us this rich and beautiful world to share together? We are all standing today about the tree where every mans char acter, and every mans relation to his fellows, and every mans use of his lparadise is being tested. believe in the story of Eden because l see 1t about me every day.
 | h. ljust as God did then, and we know full 'well that if any man or woman throws laway moral strength, virtue, innocency. they will have to suffer for it.
 The tree of knowledge of good and evil is the type of every test of pure and simple obedience. If was not wrong lin itself to take the fruit. but God had put His law about it. There could not have been a simpler, more reasonable test. but any test would have meant the same thing. Men do not want any law restraining their actions.
 That Is the bottom fact discriminat- ling the religious life. When you admit His will, not yours, you enter upon the religious life. have quit debating the kind of Sabbath we should have with men who do not want any Sabbath at all with Gods law about it.
 Those tragedies of illicit love, what are they but the breaking down of the delicate and holy conditions which legitimate and decorate love with it's true beauty as God proposes it to us?
 It Is man trying to make paradise of his own. Love is innocent and beautiful
 in itself, but when it transgresses God s law and my neighbours rights then 1t
 Is inspired from beneath and not from above
 Now as to this tree of life, think it stands for everything that ministers to
 the upper story of mans being. It stood in the midst of the garden. accessible and to be seen from every direction but
 Adam did not see it, or passed it by. The story has been attacked as unreal;
 that he should not have put forth his lhand and partaken of tree which could give him immortality. But there was lnever a truer picture of humanity than that People today are an hundred times more concerned withs what is forbidden than with what is given to them to en- Hoy and they think little of what God thinks vast deal of. Adam was so
 absorbed with wonder at the other tree, and so resentful of the command for bidding it's fruit to him. that he was lnot interested in the tree of life. He Idid not, like most of us. see the need of 1t until he had lost his opportunity. Is not that true in Birmingham to-