TWO MEMORIES IN HUMAN LIFE.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1557, 28 September 1912, Page 9

TWO MEMORIES IN HUMAN LIFE.

DR. MOFFATT AT 11RONDESBIIRY.

Dr James MnlTntt, who last year left Scotland to become Yules Professor of New Test anient Exegesis at. Mansfield ('allege, Oxford, rceentlv occupied the pulpit of his friend and fellow student, Ibe I,'ev. 11. Tl. H. Maepherson. of St. George's Presbyterian Church, Brondesbui'v. A number of strangers took the omi'orlunilv of hearing the brilliant New To-lamcnt' scholar, whose youthful appenrunee look them by surprise. Dr. \liilVall' preached in tliti morning on "Two Memories in Human Life," Inking as text n couple iif sentences from one of the iisalmisl:i of tlio Exile—"When T remember these t.liinqs," "Therefore will I remcmbor. Thco" (Psalm slil Ml* JYhen

people wero deprived, for a time or permanently, of some religious custom or form of worship, it was almost inevitable, ho said, that they should doploro tho ehango as if it impoverished their own. soul. Wo cluug to outward institutions and rites as if tho whole of religion turned upon the question where men. ought to worship, in what church, according to what creed. Tho very first effect of religious growth was that it seemed'. to remove God from us, and wc were tempted to wish wo could sacrifice our 'wider knowledge and get back to tho earlier faith of childhood. Yet such a longing, though sincere, was a form of weakness. Growth in mind and heart, as ill tho body, had its own pains, and sometimes we thought growth was disease, when tho aim of God was to deepen"! faith.' Tho object of tho interruption'-and expansion of knowledge was to give us a more spiritual and independent hold upon God. ' "If our faitli is to. be time we need tho" simplo direct sense of God tho Father, that wo had .as children, expanded into a sense of the great, living God. What was dear to .us in . our childhood's religion is purified ■ and preserved- awlstrengthened by- tho wider range which tho expansion of our life has opened up." Even the memory of regret could bo overcome by the deeper memory of the living Qiod. •