GOD THE CENTRE

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 26, 23 October 1937, Page 12

GOD THE CENTRE

in this last generation many Cliristians have been disturbed by the new astronomy, whicli opens to one's eyes and imaginations such vast expnnses that the soul seems dwuri'ed ui con-tia-st. lu reality, however, the stais should be among the mo-st indispensable ministers to tlie spiritual life. We need them. They help us get ourselves out of the cei\tre oi the picture. They say to us: This tiniverse isn't ceutred iu you. You have not Gie sJig'htest reason to expect any exemption from trouble or tragedy. Tliis Universe is centred in God, in whose eyes a thousattd years are but as ye&terday when it is paBt and as a wgtch in the night. Flay your

small part like a man. Stand what you have to stand like a nian. God is not ietting you down because yotl eutfer. Bee how i'ar beyond your beholding sweeps His eternal purpose. Get that for the centre of the universe. At any rate, such self-renunciation is indispensable to great religion, and it certainly belonged to the essential quality of the religion of Jesus, He never expected God to take care of Him in the sense that God should save Him from suffering. From His early ministry He knew that God would lead Him into suffering. „ What, then, was He doing that tremendous hour in the garden befcre He went out to be erueified? Trying to get Bimself out of the centre of the picture 1 "Not My will, but Thine, be done." Three times He went to His knees with that cry-— iiot Me, Thee— trying to get Himself out of the centre oi the eosmos and to focus the universe rightly, with the eternal purpose there. Ah, Christ, that is our probiem too. Ih the third place, if " we are to handle well tbe heavy houl's when God seems to Us like a deceitf ul brook, I suspect We shall have to recognise that God is gfeater, sterner, and more austere than our Bentimental popul&r Cliristianity commonly sUggests. For our difficulty with this probiem is" not simply self-centredness but sentimentality. If a man starts with a picture of the uhiverse as run by a sweet, indulgent diety, he is doomed to be let down. In Baying this, one need not deny the gentle aspects of Christian experience. There are hotirs when the Unseen Friend within tnakes real everytliing that ^ JeSus . said about the Fatlier's individual care. It is true that warin, sWeet, tender, even yet, A present help is He. While, hoWever, that is true, it is not the whoie truth, and wheiiever paftial truth is taken for whole truth dangerous fallaey ensues. The lovelie^tt forget-me-nots I kaVe ever seen afe in the higli Alps. They are beautiful, running their blue gloHes Up'to th& very edges of the snow. But, lovely as they are, they are not the wliole of the Alps. The high Alps are towering altitudes with austere aspects that for-get-me-nots do not exhaust. 8o is the great God,— H E. Fosdick.