SUNDAY READING.

Shannon News, 3 October 1924, Page 4

SUNDAY READING.

THE ROAD TO HONOUR. | Text —'Them that honour Me I will honour, and they that, despise Me shall be lightly esteemed." —1 Samuel ii. 30. , As we are creatures we are bound to honour. God. Just notice how we ought to honour Him, and consider wherein this duty lies. We should honour Him by confessing His Deity: I mean the Deity of the Father, of the Son, and. of the Holy Ghost. We should honour God in our worship both in public and in private, intensely paying homage unto the God of Israel, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We need not perpetually repeat a form of words, but it will be well for all our private and public worship to flame with the great truth which sparkles in these words —"Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and.to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.* We honour God when we believe Holy Scripture to be inspired—infallibly inspired; and, taking it as such, say, "It is, not mine to question it, or to argue against it. but simply to accept it." It is to me. 1 'The-Delight of My liife. to admit into my very soul great master truths which I am unable to compass, and yet receive into myself by affection and humbl e reverence. I cannot comprehend the truth by my understanding, but I apprehend it by my faith, and thus it becomes mine. To love is to understand; at least, it is so to me.

This inward sense of truth is a more real knowledge than mere reason can ever obtain. I know the philosopher sneers. What of him? He is not worth sneering at. Brethren, our whole nature must honour God ana worship at His footstool. Is my intellect to play the monarch before God? Nay, but that crown, that royalty of man —his understanding—must b e cast before Jehovah's feet. The subjugation of the intellect seems to me to be a great part of conversion, and I question whether men are converted at all unless their reasoning powers bow down at Jehovah's feet as subjects and disciples. Oh that we might honour God by vindicating His truth against all comers, saying, "Let God be true ana every man a liar"! . • Further, we honour God's love by a daily trust in Him. You honour God, you that scarcely know . . . - . Where to-Morrow's Bread Shall Come From:

when, having said, "Give us this day ouir daily bread," you work for it and "bless His name that you have work to do. \ . . ■ We also honour God, dear friends, when we confess His goodness by patiently enduring His will, and especially by rejoicing in it. It is such an honouring of God when we take great delight in Him. Pulling, long faces, pining over our troubles, and whinmg over our does not honour God. But in the midst of darkness ana gloom still to say, "The Lord is good, and His mercy endureth for ever, therefore will I sing unto the Lord as long as I live," —this is to honour Hjm. If I be in prison, God shall bo my liberty; if I be sick, H e shall be, my health; if I be poor, He shall by my riches; if Ibe cast down, His smile shall lift me up. I will praise Him while I have my being. This is to honour the Lord, and to all who thus praise Him the promise of our text,is made, "Them that hon(«if Mel will honour." We. honour God in our daily life. When We Confess Him.

It is comparatively a small matter to confess Christ before the church, though I have known some of you rather frightened of doing that. But the tug of war is to confess Christ before the world. For the merchant, for instance, to stand up for that which is good and right wl\en he is in a web of false trading, and surrounded by unscrupulous dealers, —this is honouring the Lord. For th e workman in the shop, when the men are making fun of every holy thing, to say, "Well, now I believe in all that, and if you want to laugh at anybody you may laugh at me/ for I am on the Lord's side" — This is horiouring God. But the tendency, is to sneak, away and remain quite quiet. Christ seems to have nobody to speak up for Him. Is it really so? Is the dark hour being repeated, "Then all the disciples forsook Him and fled"? Everybody will speak up for the devil. You can "hear them in th e street far into the night; but as to Christ, how many are there to give Him a good word in this time of rebuke? Be firm for that which is right, not wishing to provoke opposition, but be ing quite able to bear it if it must be borne. Be men, and quit yourselves like men. Men, I mean, who set their faces like a flint, and are not to be moved from their integrity and their love to Christ, come what may; Honour God, clear friends, daily, by a holy manliness, by a consecrated womanliness

Then you can honour God with your substance when He gives it to you. I will not say much about this; but all through Scripture it is laid down as on e mark of a child of God that he holds what he has as a steward, and that he uses it for the promotion of the kingdom of God, and the helping of the poor and the needy. Wherever he is he does not seek substance merely to aggrandis e himself; but with all his getting he desires to get a liberal heart, without which the richest man is still a pauper. He longs to b e useful to the cause and the kingdom of Christ. He believes in the joy of dedicating his tithe and more unto the Lord. He has heard a voice in hi s ears saying, "Honour th e Lord with thy substance, and with the first-fruits of all thy increase: so shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine."

In a word, the man that.really honours God seeks to praise Him. He wishes to make the Lord's name great throughout all the world. His main object in living is that he may make Jesus known, —that he may win more hearts to God, the blessed Father, more minds to Jesus, The Brother of Humanity,

and more souls to the Holy Spirit, the Quickener of the heaven-born race. Oh for a thousand hearts wherewith to lov e our Lord God, a thousand tongues with which to speak for Him, a thousand lives wherewith to glorify Him!

2. Now mark the reward of all this. "Them that honour Me I will honour."

Suppose that a man is a preacher,' and in his preaching h e seeks to glorify God only, and sets forth the finished work of Jesus, and cries earnestly, "Behold the Lamb of God," God will honour Him. He shall not labour in vain, or-, spend his strength for nought. Suppose another I man is living injthe midst of hia family, praying for the conversion of his children, setting them a holy example, chiding them for their faults. * and encouraging them in all ■ good

things; shall h e be without a blessing? Nay. "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." Some of us know the blessing of honouring God in our families. Where ther e is family prayer where God is set before the young as the chief end of their being, God will surely honour such parents by giving them a believing household. The man who honours God shall be honoured in his own heart by peace of conscience.-r-honoured in his own spirit by the conviction • that it .must be wisdom to be iright and true and honest, and that it can never be under an v circumstances right to do wrong, or wise to break a Divine command. A straight line is the shortest distance between any two places; and the shortest way to true happiness and prosperity is to do right though the heavens should fall. "Who is one the Lord's side?" Who that has not been on His side will enlist to-night? How is the enlisting to be managed? It is to be done as all enlisting is done. In the British army they used to enlist a man by making him take a shilling. He; was not enlisted by giving anything, but by receiving the King's money. Take Christ by faith .Receive Him. Stretch out your hand. He shall be the earnest money to you of the great reward that God will give His saints in the dav of His glory, when He shall honour them and make them to " shine forth as "the sun in the kingdom of their Father." A BISHOP'S CONFESSION OF FAITH. In "his presidential address at the recent Church Congress, the Bishop of Chelmsford said: "Forgiv© ' a brief personal note, for I do not wish tobe misunderstood by many of my old friends to-day. and throughout the countrv. A Methodist mother taught mo to pray, and a Wesleyan father taught m G to read my Bible, and at the age of fourteen I knelt in a little Methodist chapel for my first communion. I knew nothing Of theories of 'Validity' or of 'Orders.'/ but I knew that, as I knelt between sainted father and mother, God blessed me. and their hearts rejoiced. I imbibed the evangelical fervour, and it still flows in my veins; and to me the quiet simplicity of the Communion office; approaches more closely the dignity of the uppar room than the full ceremonial of St. Peter's at Romel"