SUNDAY COLUMN.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 32, 20 January 1912, Page 3

SUNDAY COLUMN.

THE GIFT OF RULE

(By Sir William Robertson Nicol, Edior, “British Weekly.”)

“I will make thee ruler.”—Matt 25:21.

This is the word of Christ to the good and faithful servants who at last behold His face in righteousness. He does not say, “I will give thee many things; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.” The promise is “I will make thee ruler,” and the joy of the Lord is not in possessing, but in governing. Wo may fitly recall this word in view of the increasing potency of the labour movement, and the steps it is taking (through some of its most trusted leaders towards Christianity. The Methodist Churches—let God be thanked!—have sent out men to lead their fellow-labourers, who not only believe but regularly preach the Gospel. Others, whose position lias been less decided, are coming forward with at least a strong affirmation of parts essential to Christianity. To all—to those farthest as well as nearest—the Christian church is bound to make an eager and cordial response, and it will. For tho present social order is not Christian. It contravenes the fundamental law of justice on which the Kingdom of God is built, and which is more to us than mercy itself could be apart from justice. The truth which now rides so high in the heavens had never such an apostle as Christ himself and working men are beginning to understand this. They will find him worth listening to, as He not only stimulates tho deep and vital craving for justice, but shows how it may be satisfied. Over against mere possession Christ sets the great idea of rulership. I. Take leisure, for example. Wo are in the thick of a righteous movement for shorter hours. But suppose the day is reduced to half an hour what profit is there if the man is not ruler over his leisure? Multitudes possess leisure; very few of them rule it. The idler wakens to wonder how his day is to be got through, and the answer often comes from beneath . The general dullness and listlessness of men with no occupation has passed into a proverb. Even generous natures often become selfish under tho trial. It will be an evil day if working men learn to despise Labour. The great safeguard for nearly all of us is to be found in almost unrelaxed industry. It is pernicious also to despise certain forms of labour. Utopia itself will need scavengers. But “I will make thee ruler over leisure” is a groat promise to be perfectly fulfilled on high, where endless service means endless rest.

IT. Then what shall we say of money?: Dante’s gaunt hungry wolf of avarice is still abroad, and does more harm to the Christian Church than any other of its foes. In the United States Christian sentiment on this subject seems to be largely corrupted. In a recent uttcnice one influential preacher declared that it was the duty of some meai to bo rich. It has not been forgotten how a Christian minister recently boasted of the number of millionaires, to he found in the churches of America—where apparently needles have very large eyes. The limit of lawful possession is rulership. If a man is really ruler over his money, he possesses it; otherwise it possesses him. And as it is not an easy thing to master, the most miserable of ambitions is to create a large fortune. Wo remember William Smith’s picture of the Christin whose whole occupation was really gambling, who came home after a prosperous day thanking God for his gains, and praying to be made more like Christ—the great Spiritualist of eighteen hundred years ago, who would have told him to give all and begin afresh if he would save his soul! 111. Then the thirst to know is a noble passion, and knowledge unruled ends in the people whose names constantly sicken us , on magazine covers. They have read everything—except the best—in nearly every language and written on at least everything they have read. And the end is that they hope for nothing, love nothing, believe in nothing. Their whole nature has been submerged into selfish indifference, and can be stimulated only—if at all—by the literature of coarse and violent excitement. What, then, is to be sought is not possession, but rulership, and that can be gained only by faithfulness over a few things. In a sense tin's describes truly the life which began in the manger, and ended on the Cross. It is still the schooling, and the only schooling, by which men learn to rule their own spirits and all kingdoms whose thrones they climb. The fulfilment of the promise takes various forms. We arc familiar with it in this life. We see men go on from strength to strength receiving more and more, and remaining unmastored by their possession. But before Christ all earthly life, even the most victorious, is but a passage from “a few tilings to a few things.” The distinctions we make here may but pain Him; but “if that life is life, this is but a breath.” Inasmuch as no misdoing robs us of all, a man may begin faithfulness at the lowest point of poverty and shame, and lie made ruler at last. Our God is the God of Resurrection and Ho can revive men and nations of men from seemingly utter death. Often on earth there may lie hardly an earnest granted but our citizenship is on high. “There is a spectacle which I have witnessed in the streets of London. In a wooden shed which opens on a level with the damp pavement, sits a cobbler. Six days of the week, and in most hours of the day, you may see this man with his awl and his waxed thread and his lapstone, piercing and hammering the rough shoeleather. I look again to my cobbler’s stall. I see lying on tbo bench beside him—lie

•an snatch a word oven as ho works his “Pilgrim’s Progress” or his “Serious Call,” or perhaps some more serious polemic. Our cobbler, too, will flee the city of Destruction. These carriages with all their paint and gilding, what are they to him? All here is wickedness; no face smiles upon him, but he will so come to the River Jordan. Sometimes to the faithful their “few things” are so few that they almost seem to bury and brood over their own hearts in a grave. But it is a grave from which, as the Persian poet says, “a perfume shall yet spring.”

I believe in love renewing (All that sin hath swept away, Leaven-like its work pursuing, Night by night and day by day In the power of its remoulding, In the grace of its reprieve, In the glory of beholding Its perfection—l believe.