Sunday at Home

Southern Cross, Volume 2, Issue 20, 11 August 1894, Page 3

Sunday at Home

CONCEIfNrNG EiITH

Sow long dost Thou make ns to douht ? John x. 24. Faith, which is the source of so much human happiness, is the mainspring of human activity. .. It moves more than half the machinery of life. What deeds’the husbandman, for exam pie, to yoke his horses when, no bud bursting to clothe the , baked trees, no bird singing in hedgerows or frosty skies, Nature .seems . dead ? With faith in the regularity of her laws, in'the ordinance of her God, he believes that she is not dead but sleepeth ; and sp. he ploughs and sows in .'the certain expectation that he shall reap, and that these bare fields shall be green in summer' with waving, corn, and be merry in autumn with sun-browned reapers. The farmer is a man of faith. So is, the seaman. No braver man than he who goes down to see God’s wonders in the deep. Venturing his frail hark on a sea ploughed by so many keels, but wearing on its bosom the furrows of none, with neither path to follow nor star to guide, the mariner knows no fear. When the last blue hill has dipped beneath the wave, and he is alone on a shoreless sea, he is calm and confident, —his faith in the compass-needle, which, however his ship may turn, or roll or plunge, ever points true to the north. An example his to be followed by the Christian with his Bible ; on that faith venturing his all, life, crew, and cargo, he steers his way boldly through darkest nights and stormtest oceans, with nothing but a thin plank between him and . the grave. And though metaphysicians, and divines have involved this matter of faith in mystery, be assured that there is nothing more needed for your salvation or mine, than that God would inspire us with a belief in the declarations of His word, as real, heartfelt, and practical as that which we put in the laws of Providence, — in the due return of day and night, summer and winter, seed-time and harvest. —Thomas Guthrie.