SUNDAY COLUMN.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 39, 10 February 1912, Page 3

SUNDAY COLUMN.

“The Lord shall keep thy going out and thy coining in, from this time forth and for evermore.”—Psa. 121:8. Meditation by Rev. Percy Ainsworth. doing out and coming in. That is a picture of life. Beneath this old Hebrew phrase there lurks a symbolism that covers our whole experience. One of the great dividing lines in human life is the threshold line. On one side of this line a man has ‘a world within a world,’ the sanctuary of love, the sheltered place of peace, the scene of life’s most personal, sacred, and exclusive obligations. And on the other side lies the larger life of mankind wherein also a man must take Ids place and do his work. Life is spent in crossing this thresholdline, going out to the many, coming in to the few, going out to answer the call of labour and coming in to take the right to rest. And over us all every hour watches the Almighty Lovo. The division lines in the life of man have nothing that corresponds to thorn in the love of God. We may be here or there, but he is everywhere. I. The Lord shall keep thy going out. Life has always needed that promise. There is a pledge of help for men as they fare forth to the world’s work. It was much for the folk of an early time to say that as they went forth the Lord went with them, but it is more for men to say and know that same thing to-day. The going out has come to mean much more age after age, generation after generation. It was a simpler thing once than it is now. Thy going out—the shepherd to his Hocks, the farmer to 'lds field, the merchant to his merchandise. There are still flocks and fields Ujiid markets, but where are the leisure, grace, and simplicity of life for him who has any share in the world’s work? Men go out to-day to faco a life shadowed by vast industrial, commercial, and social problems. Life has grown complicated, involved, hard to understand, difficult to deal with. Tension, conflict, subtlety, surprise, and amid it all or over it all a vast brooding weariness that over and again turns the heart sick.

. Oh tlio pains aim pinna of tlio going out! There arc elements of danger in modern life that threaten all the world’s toilers, whatever their work may be, and wherever they may have to do it. There is the danger that always lurks in things—a warped judgment, a confused reckoning, a narrowed outlook. It is so easily possible for a man to be at close grips with the world and yet to bo even more and more out of touch with its realities. The 'danger in the places where men toil is not that Clod is denied with a vociferous athesism; ,it is that ho is ignored by an unvoiced indifference. It is not the babel of the market place that men need to fear; it is its silence. If wo say that we live only as wo love, that we are strong only’ as we are pure, that we are successful only as we become just and good, the world into which wc 'o forth does not deny these thingr —but it ignores them. And thm the real battle of life is not in tlio toil for bread. It is fought by all who would keep alive and fresh in their hearts the truth that man does noi live by bread alone. For no man is this going out easy, for some it is at times terrible, for all it means r >eed that only this promise avails tf meet—“ The Lord shall keep thy going out.” Ho shall fence thee wit! the ministry of His spirit, and give thee grace to know everywhere and always that thou art in this world tc live for His kingdom of love and truth and to grow a soul.

11. “The Lord, shall keep thy com ing in.” It might seem to some that once a man was safely across the threshold of Ins home lie might stand ui less need of this promise of help But experience says otherwise. Tin world h as little respect for any man’s threshold. It is capable of mam i hold and shameless intrusion. The things that harass a man as he earn; his bread sometimes haunt him as In eats it. No home is safe unless faitl lie the doorkeeper. “In peace will I both lay mo down and sleep, for Miou, Lord, alone makest mo to dwell in safety.” The singer of that song knew that, as in the moil of the world, so also in the shelter of the place he named his dwellingplace, peace and safety wore not ol his making, but of God’s giving Sometimes there is a problem and ; pain waiting for a man across his own threshold. Many a man can mon easily look upon the difficulties and perils of the outer world than he car come in and look into the pain-lined face of his little child. If wo cannot face alone the hostilities on onr side of our threshold we cannot face alone the intimacies on the other side of it. After all life is whole and continuous. Whatever the changes in the setting of life, there is no respite from living. And that mean: that there is no leisure from duty, no rest from the service of obedience, no cessation in the working of all those forces by means of which, or in spite of which, life is ever being fashioned and fulfilled. And now let m free our minds from the literalism of this promise and get a glimpse of ils deeper application to our lives. The threshold of the home does nol draw the truest division-line in life between the outward and the inward. Info is made up of thought and action, of the manifest things and the hidden things. “Thy going nut.” That is, our life as it is manifest to others, as it has points of contact with the World about us. We must go out. Wo must take up some attitude towards all other life. __ Wo must add our word to the long human story and our touch to the fashioning of the world. We

need the pledge of divine help in that life of ours in which, for their good or ill, others must have a place and a part. “And thy coming in”—into that uninvaded sanctum of thought. Did wo say uninvaded? Not so. in that inner room of life there sits Regret with her pale face, and shame with dust on her forehead, and Memory with tears in her eyes. It is a pitiable thing at times, is this our coming in. More than one man has consumed his life, in a llanie of activity, because he could not abide the coming in. “The Lord shall keep thy coming in.” That means help for every lonely inward hour of life. “For evermore.” To oiler a man an eternity of mnsicladen rest is to offer him a poor thing. He would father have his going out and coming in. Yes, and he shall have them. All that is purest and best in them shall remain. Hereafter he shall still go out to find deeper joys of living and wider visions of life; still come in to greater and oven greater thoughts of God,