THE RELIGION OF LIFE

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 7, 23 January 1937, Page 10

THE RELIGION OF LIFE

Th?e popular i'ullacy still lingers that religious people aro nqt.moro than half alive. Even the mirror of literature often plays triclcs with the religious character like ciio of those distorting glasses wliich attract pennies out of youthf ul pockets in travelling fairs. How few are . the great characters of fiction who are conspicuously Teligious! And yet, in our experience of daily life,

we know that the contrary is true — that the really praiseworthy, excellent folk have more than a smattering of conventional religion; they are alivsj, intensely and atlractively, performing their tasks to the envy of others. If it were not so, woiild not the metaphorS of Jesus be far wide of the mark, and the ..Christian - be nc-ither like salt nor leaven? Perhaps the error of popui'ar judgment is due to the habit of judging the Church by the standards of its irregular adherents, the folk who come occasionally for what they can get, and do not stay long enough to learn tho' joys of the giving that Christ 's service demands. Many men have no clear idea at all of what constitutes true saiutliness. In other realms of human aetivity they have high -standards — fhey judge batting by Hammond and Bradman, football by Alex. James, and tennis by Dorothy Round. If you should happen to be watching a flfthl'ate garue in a public park, and say that you do not fxnd mxleh interest in it, they are liot in their explanations tlxat by no means ought the game to be judged by this exhibition; you should see the experts. Very well; then why not insist a little more veliemently than we often do on the exeellence of ro ligion, not as expo-ued in a loeal Peelcsniff, but in a hardy virile life that. has weathered storm and stress witJi serenity of countenanee and undpfeated ardour, simply because of the closeness of its attachxnent to Christ. ,* # # Our Lord Himself had to underfcakn this task of apology for - goodness. People were as rcady then as they are now to judge- by a low average and by externals, as though religion, which is

an .inward spiritual urge if it is^ anything at all, can ever be oxamined as a chemist analyses a dye or a horsedealer inspects a colt's mouth. His power coiisisted not only in a supreme tneory, but because in every aetion ancj. attitude He reveaied that the' religious life, far from being lukewarm and restrained, is life as it should be — as God, its Maker, has intended it to be. Religion is not aoeesspry to life; it is tho mainstream itself, and there is 110 other life worthy of the iiarne. The fatalism of to-day that iiaunts its cheap materialism and gaudy danee-room hilaiity under the quiet of the Midnight Sun, that disturbs the* golden eagle in tha Highlands with its portable gramophone, and turns sheep-wom mountaia tracks into potential Brooklands, stops short at — " Ah, make tho most of what wo Vet may spend, Before we. too, into the du-st descend; Dust into dust, and under dust to lie, Sans wine, sans song, sans singer, and ' — sans iencL" Poi the man who has known the wors of graee, there is uo v»Tine to be praisetlexcept what he drin'ks in memory of the Savxour, no supremo song but that which makes liim exclaim, "My heart it uoth dance at the sound of Hi» naino "