HOW MUCH MORE

Lake County Mail, Issue 20, 8 October 1947, Page 7

HOW MUCH MORE

“It was not until I looked into the heart of my fellow-man,” wrote Stacy Aumonier, “ that I founds evidence of Divinity, and began to sense the reality of God.” What did he mean? He tells us. “ Every day all over the world,” he says, “men and women give their lives for others, perform little deeds of self-sacrifice that they know the world will never hear of. It is this which gives one hope again, and teaches one that we have at last made God a reality.” In a Word, he loked at the concrete and unmistakable goodness present amongst us, and from that argued up Mo the Eternal Goodness. As we examine and pick out the good from the bad, we are convinced by till our reasoning powers that Almighty God must have these good attributes magnified to infinity. And as we study God s dealings with mankind and the life of God Incarnate here on earth in the Bible, we find that these facts arc true and indisputable. Aumonier may not have realised it, but that is the way that Our Lord would have us argue from the good in humanity to the good in the Divinity. For Christ the best things in human nature wore but stepping stones upon which a man might tread his upward way to God. When God would show us what He really was like He became mail and dwelt among us. When Nathaniel was meditating on the Scriptures and thinking about Jacob’s vision of a ladder set up on earth to Heaven, our Lord interprets it for him, by saying, “Ye shall see the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” Human Nature, Christ’s human Nature is the perfection of God. We were created in the image of God and arc to be like Him in every way, “Be ye perfect even as your Father which' is in Heaven is perfect.” “If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in Heaven. . . . “If a man have a hundred sheep, and one of them go astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine and go into the mountains and seek that which is gone astray. . . . Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in Heaven that one of these little ones should perish.” Always Christ argues like that, taking something common, something homely and human, some natural and native goodness of the human heart, and, beginning there, arguing up to God. If it be so Avith you avlio know yourselves to be of defective virtue, His argument runs, how much more shall it be with the Divine? The story is told how our Lord and His disciples walking the streets of Galilee came across a dead dog lying beside the road. “ Hoav mangy he is,” said one. “Look at the maggots on

him,” said another. “How he smells,” said a third. “ What lovely pearly teeth he lias,” was what our Lord said. Yes, He picked out the best thing and remarked upon that. What a lesson to we who criticise others so, always to look for the best in others, rather than criticise the worst. There’s so much bad in the best of us, And so much' good in the worst of us, That it ill-behoves any of us To be hard on the rest of us. Again, if we think that God is remote, far removed from the sphere in which we live and move and have our being, difficult of access, reluctant to' reveal Himself to us, let us not think so any longer. We have not to ascend up into Heaven to find God, we have no need to descend into Hheol to discover Him. The trivial round, the common task, will furnish all the data necessary for us to find out what God is like. Beginning with that goodness with which they were themselves acquainted in the homes about them, in their own homes it might be, they were to argue up to God. “ How much more. . . If only we will see it, there is a stairway starting where we stand which leads straight up to God. Philip C. Williams.