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Show CHRIST DIVINE: GOD IS SPIRIT Absolutely Free From Any Limitation of Either Space or Time. "God a Personal Spirit" was the title of Rov. Dr. W. M. Padon 'b sermon nt tho First Presbyterian church Sunday Sun-day morning. The services wore well attended and the address was interesting interest-ing and timely, inasmuch as tho subject of the discourse is a question that lias involved considerable controvers3'. Tho sermon follows in outline: "God Is a spirit." In this text Jesus describes God s nature. He is spirit absolutely free from limitations of space and time, the king eternal. Immortal, invisible. in-visible. "The Lord Is tho spirit." In this text Paul declares that Christ Is divine; nnd as no one doubted that Ho wns a person, so omphnslzes the personality of God. "Griovo not tho holy spirit of Ood." In this text Paul implies his belief at once in the spirituality of God and the personality of tho Holy Spirit. An Influence In-fluence may be resisted but only a person can bo grieved. While personality cannot be exhaustively exhaust-ively analyzed nnd cannot therefore be accurately defined, it is the one thing we know best In the world. Even a baby n makes it clear that he or she Is a .son. not an "it." He does not need Kant to toll him or vou that he is "a self-conscious nnd self-detennlnlng individual indi-vidual and as such, an end in himself " That we ore persons Is tho one thing wo know best In the world. We must not, however, think thnt God Is altogether such a one as we know 'ourselves to be. Our personalities are imperfect. "Perfect personality Is In God only; to all finite minds there is allotted but a pale copy thereof." We feel our limitations even more when we try to conceive of a spirit. "It implies an order of existence which transcends tran-scends the order of sensible experience, the material order." Tho spirit Is the Invisible In-visible and Immaterial part of man in distinction from that which Is corporeal, fleshly, tangible. Yet nothing Is surer than that God is a personnl spirit and that we. as crented in his Image, nro personal spirits also. God is the father of spirits; our bodies arc born of the flesh The earthly parent, is our father after the flesh, the heavenly heav-enly our father after the spirit. Somo may say. God Is a spirit so Is man Man has a body but he Is a spirit. As Newman New-man phrases It. "No one can by any pos-slhllliv pos-slhllliv mistake his body for himself. It is his. it Is not he. This principle which thinks and acts in tho body, and which each person feels to he himself, we call the soul. ' As one suggests, the body connects us with the external universe; tho soul connects con-nects us with God. The flesh Is his production, pro-duction, the spirit is his Image Tho former separates us from him: the lattor asslmllntes us to him. There Is no point of contact hotwecn man and God save through spiritual parsonallts No material mate-rial thing or Impersonal force can be the child of God. nor can nny material force or impersonal Influence claim to bo the "Father of spirits." Whether wo talk of God or man, we must begin hy positing personality and spirituality. Now, as the life of Christ emphasizes the personality of God. tho life of tho Holy Spirit emphasizes God's spirituality All likeness to him i6 likeness in spiritual personality, or more simply In spiritual character. |
