The Ideal and the Real.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 27 November 1912, Page 3

The Ideal and the Real.

At the .evening service on Sunday week Mr Milner dealt with the above theme. He pointed 'out that there were many experiences winch are not only common to all, but also true to all mankind at some period of their lives, "We can all look back to the happy days of childhood and youth when, with fresh young blood coursing through our veins, we started forth to fight and to conquer. The time when our aims were high and lofty, our visions clear, our ideals pure and holy and our whole beings filled with great hopes and anticipations sublime. Then there comes the time of a rude awakening, when we have encountered the cold callous matter-of-fact world and the days of our innocence are passed ; when our visions have been marred, our ideals dispeised by dissipation, and we find ourselves no longer pure nor our experiences joyous""and sublime. We contemplate the hopesand ideals of yore and compare therewith the pres°nt, then we discover that our fallen nature is asserting itself and working out our downfall. It is here we must exclaim with Paul ' For the good I would do, I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I practise for I delight m th© law of God in the inward man, but I see a different law in my members warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity under the law of law of sin which is in my members, 0, wretched man that l"am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death." (Rom. 7. 19-24) But Paul was able to speak of this as a past experience and to speak of himself in the present as being made free froih. the law of sin and death by the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. This is the secret of an overcoming life, the possessing Christ rather than merely professing him, the acceptance of a new life rather than attempting the reformation of the old. This is the truth revealed in that midnight conversation of our Lord ' Ye must be born from above.' Christianity to me is not mystical or obscure, but there are certain great fundamental truths that we cannot comment upon or explain, and this is one of them. Scientists stand upon the thieshold of a great problem, ' What causes life ? ' yet while this baffles great minds, life is a fact that we see all around us unfolding and manifesting itself. If this is true of earthly things, how much more of heavenly. In the small dry seed there are no tokens that it contains life, vet it does; how and why the beautiful pure lily grows out of the marshland is to us a mystery, yet a fact. So in the Christian life, and it is not the nature of the soil but the virtue of the incorruptible seed that unfolds and develops the new nature. The period of the generation and formation of the new life must be a real experience of all who would see and enter the Kingdom of God. Jacob had deceived his faith, cheated his brother, and become rich; he had dwelt in a foreign land for 14 years and was now returning homo. It wag then that God met him ; hy struggled against God's messengor. but h« had to yield, and then God dealt with him and blessed him. If we would have peace of mind, sooner or later we must surrender to him and open our hearts to receive the Sower's seod that will eventually become the mighty oak which shall withstand many a fierce storm ; that shall produce "the flowers of grace and blossoms of purity that shall shed sweet perfume on our way. Whon this comes to pass we shall be be ablo to say ' Beloved, now are we sons of God, but it doth not yet appear Avhat we shall be, but wo know that when He shall appear we shall be like Him.'(l John 3, 2).:'