PRAYER

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 1, 16 January 1937, Page 12

PRAYER

I know not by what methods rare, But this I know — God answers prayer. I know not wlien He sends the word That tells us fervent prayer is heftrd. I know it coiueth — soon or Dte; Thereforc we need to pray and \va;t. I know not if the blessing sought Will come in just the way I thought. I leave my prayers with Him alone, Whose Will IS WISEE than my own.

— IHE TW0 VOICES Two voices challenge each other. One cries out, "Jesus is accursed"; the other, "Jesus is the Lord"; the | former voiee reveals the abscnce, the I lattey the presence of the Holy Spirit. | Why St. Paul felt it neeessary to | give this warning to the Cormlhian : • Christians cannot be answered with assurance. It is, perhaps, most likeiy that he is warning them, as St. Jolin j in his first Epistle was afterwards io warn other Christians, that "tho . spirits" must be tested before they are foilowed. We know that ecstatic utteranee, a. "speaking with tongues, " was held in high repute, and probably in aws, in the Corinthian Ghnrch, more so than St. Paul, with his strong common sense, thought liealthy. Some of the members of the Church may have been impressed by the fact that persons who showed signs of religious ecstasy pronounced a curse upon Jesus. Who such persons Were is uncertaiu; the suggestion has been made thiat they uttered their blasphemoue cry in a meeting assembled for Christian worship, but this is improbable.

THE ANATHEMA. In any case, the Apostle insists that Christians should attend, not to the manner of the epeech, but to its content. Whatever spirit may be at woL'k when the Anathema breiaks out, it is not the Spirit of God. Conversely, the confession of the Lordship of Jesus is too majestic for it to be made by anyone whose spirit is not upheld and guided by the Holy Spirit. St. Paul was writing with a particular eituation in view. But this is ojj.6 of the frequent instances in his letters where his words gain in point when their relevance is seen to be universal. The con);rast, as h.e stat.es it, belongs mainly, though not quite entirely, to a past age. It is a sign of the impression which the personality of Jesus has made — more than that, of the way.in which He has acjted upon the world — that the notion of an ^nathema pronounced agamst Him would appear outrageods far beyond the circle of those who profess and call themselves Christians. Nevertheless, thfere is much in life and thought which does involve the repudiation of Jesus as the One in whose service man may lind his true well-being, the One Leaaer to whose Kingdom it is infinitely good that man should belong both here and hereafter. There is no other character in history who; divides them. That this should be so is part of the mystery of His i'erson. It is quite unthinkable that human life and civilisation should be fcmilt up around any other person who has a place in history. No one — it is hardly an exiaggeration to say — would take seriously the idea of a world-wide Buddliist or Mohamedan civilisation. It is not a case of the rejection of something that has been offered, but of an ofi'er that does not exist, But the possibility of a Christian civilisation spread throughout the world remjains real.

A LIVING HOPE. Even now, when there is so much to depress the .Christian observer of tbe movements of *the time, it is well to remember that on the as yet sealed pages of the future the name of Christ may come to. be written as the one name in which men and nations will find a Bving hope. Of no other name is it imaginable that this should be true. No other name compels deeision for or against itself. In terms of that deeision the future is rightly to Jae read; for whatever the world d'oes^ it will mean either a turning towards or a turning away from Jesus Christ. And just because there is this mystery which is ,attached to His Person alone (St. Paul seems once to speak of Him as "the mystery"), the Cfhristian will not claim that it is through his own power that he is enabled to make his deeision, In everything that testifies to his trust and loyalty, not least in that confession, "Jesus is the Lord," which may be regarded as the earliest Christian creed, the believer relies on a power greater than himself. Where there is true faith there is the grace of God, and where there is the grace of God, there is the Holy Spirit. He is strengthened when he thinks of his confession of faith as indeed his own, and at the same time the testimony of the Spirit, who from within this world and within the heart of man bears witness to Christ. And in that witness Christian is united with Christian; for mightier and far nearer to the reality of things than whatever speaks of disunion is that voice in which believers are at one in the Holy Spirit, as they confess the one Lord Jesus Christ.