EARTHBOUND SOULS.

Press, Volume XLIX, Issue 14842, 6 December 1913, Page 16

EARTHBOUND SOULS.

The Rev. R. J. Campbell, preaching at the City Temple, London, on the words of Jesus, "When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation. . . . fleo into the mountains," said they •were not merely an allusion to political events. Jesus meant: When you see religion dishonoured and secularised, and all things seem to oonspiro to shut out God from the common life, then flee to spiritual uplands yourselves; get up as high, as you can, and from your lofty eminence of faith and purity of heart do bratre battle for '"tue word of God and iiie souls of men. Today, in spite of our utilitarian progress, we have not learned how to live riglit,' eaid Mr Campbell. Nearly all our •working hours are spent on the periphery of existence; our thoughts are continually outward, on tho visible and tangible, instead of upon other and higher values. "In this church tonight," ho contnued, "are young men, perhaps who have come to hear mo, they hardly know why, who might tell you if pressed that thoy have no religious interests, that while they neither affirm nor deny the reality of the religious experience, it has no appeal for them, they do not feel that they want' it nor that they have any capacity for it. Why is this? It certainly is not that you are one whit abler or cleverer in any way than your forefathers, though you know more about the facts of Nature than they did, but that your occupations, your daily tasks, the subjects that habitually absorb your energies, and the maxims and assumptions of the world, in which you. move, have unfitted you for feeling the pull of super-material forces and responding thereto. You. are the man you are becaueo tho world that holds you is what it is. You are like a bird that has become so accustomed to' gross feeding in tho valleys that it never spreads its wings, and in consequence has lost the use of them to carry it to tho nionntajn tops. Are you not uneasy about this? Are you not afraid of itP Do?s not this deadening of the claims of the soul augur ill for the future? The time must inevitably come when you will have, to quit all this—l was goinj; to say child's play, but it is not child's play, it is a grievous slavery, an agony or stress, a distortion of one's being—you willhave to quit all this phantasmagoria and pass on to where there is none of it. How will you mako ready for that?" My friend, if you would save: your soul alive you must flee to the mountains. Get up to the spiritual heights; take time to commune with God at the very Hghe point towMch your soul is capable of n.<or>ndingl Take your stand there with Christ. . . . and t> n descend upon the sodden, stnpeft<vl world to witness for that "wkiVh eha'l abido wnen this world end all tlio passion thereof have passed away."