TRUE RELIGION

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 2, 3 July 1939, Page 4

TRUE RELIGION

MUST BE CULTIVATED

SACRED TIMES AND PLACES

Preaching on "A Religion of Odds and Ends," at St. Michael and All Angels' Church, Kelburn, yesterday, the vicar, the Rev. G. M. McKenzie, said that there was a quaint picture in Isaiah 44 of a man who made his god out of odds and ends. He selected the wood he wanted: "He burneth part thereof in the fire; with part thereof he eateth flesh: he roasteth roast and is satisfied; yea.. We warmeth himself and saith, 'Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire.' And with the residue thereof he maketh a god, even his graven image; he falleth down unto it, and worshippeth it and said, 'Deliver me, for thou art my god."

"It may sound a quaint conception, but" there are few of us who are not in danger of manufacturing our own ;gods for practical purposes,"' declared 'Mr. McKerizie. "Many people today have elevated physical fitness to the stature of a deity, at whose shrine they worship. * With others it is the determination 'to be comfortable, which is lifted up into a god. 'Aha, lam warm, I have seen the fire.' Others fashion, a god which expresses their predominant interest in wealth or in business. Again and again we manufacture a god of our own to get permission to do the things which the real God'forbids us to do.

""For instance, when a man substitutes the laws of trade for the Ser? mon on the Mount, he manufactures his own god because he distrusts the ethics of Jesus. And the result of all this is that real religion gets-only the odds and ends of life. Such a religion may be adequate for calm weather, but when the storms of lif6 break, the, tendency is to throw overboard the religion of odds and ends, and then loudly declare that religion is of no use. .'...'

''True religion is never the result of an accident or of chance. It must be cultivated. We must keep sensitive to God so that when His \ self-dis-closure comes to us, it may ; hot pass before blind eyes. It is necessary for man to appoint and diligently keep sacred times and places if he is going to be aware of God at all times. Unless man does keep sacred times and places, he is far more likely to, forget God all the time than ever to remember Him. The old simple ways -of church-going, praying,. and Bible-read-ing are as essential to the Christian today as ever before."