SUNDAY COLUMN.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 81, 30 November 1912, Page 3

SUNDAY COLUMN.

THE PULPIT OF TO-DAY. “THE COMMON PEOPLE.” By llcv. C. Silvester Horne, M.A., M.P. “Ami the common people heard Him gladly.”—’dark xii, 37. (Continued.)

And what weird wisdom lies in the verse of tne great Persian poet—“l sent my eoul through the invisible, Some letters of that after life to spell, And by-and-by my soul returned to me And answered, ‘1 myself have heaven and hell.’ ” There are these possibilities in every soul. That is the fact.

It was not long ago that this country was devouring the details of life in a little and quaint village, where you might have supposed that vice and crime was but little known. There was a poet once who evidently knew nothing about it, like many poets, who wrote an eulogy of the country places. “’Mid the fields and simple faces,

Out of sight and sound of evil”— I am waiting for the country place that is out of sight or sound of evil. Letters were produced from that village life which could not be read in Court, so horrible they were, and the writers testified before the judge that this was the normal intercourse of that village. The whole vile forces had finally resulted in a deed of seduction and a deed of murder. We wanted to shut our eyes and put our hands to our ears; we felt that we were in the country, God’s country, gasping for clean air. “I myself am hell.” Every lustful and brutal passion had its home in that modern Gadara, where that legion of devils; dwelt. The scene of pastoral and tranquil beauty covered such depths. But not tragedy alone dwells there, I set over against that Suffolk village a little Moravian settlement. There, from a little Church, went out twelve members to carry the tidings of tin love of a God mighty to save to tin darkest places of the world. Thej built their own ships, manned them, provisioned them, besought the authorities of Hamburg that some of the State criminals might be sent them that they might devote themselves tc their reclamation. And a casual visitor testified that the spirit of love so possessed the little town, and illuminated the faces of the simple foil who liked there, that he thought hi was treading the golden streets of tin Celestial City. “I myself am heaV Gil. < _ __ “To turn aside from Thee is hell,

To dwell with The© is heaven.” Is it, therefore, too much to sa.i that the common people felt thai Jesus Christ understood them? _ H( spoke to them as those who had heights and depths in their souls. He nevei spoke, so far as I can see, as if th< experience of great happiness or grea'misery belonged to the clever or tnr fashionable, or as if it were reserved for an elect few. Pass’on, sentiment, romance, remorse, pride, hate, love, fear, and all the other elements wine! lift a soul to heaven or sink a soul t( hell, have been given in their measure to each 1 mystic entity we call a soul and just as the creative word of God evolved order out of the chaos, out of the welter of discordant elements brought harmony and peace and progress, even so peace to the end o J fife will come through Him who is tin Word of God. Gpd bnilds His kingdom within. When the common, peo pie cease to love and hate, and tc hope and fear, to be cruel and to he generous, they will cease to present the material. with ty.hiel) the Low Christ can / work Hi& will, and the a will cease to discover in His Gospei the bread of life for soul hunger. But not till then. . It was written of Him, in never t<; be forgotten words, that ‘‘He knew what was in man.’ , He knew whai powers for good and evil lie dormanl in everyone; He knew what passion; proceed" out of the human heart; He knew how holy a sanctuary, or how profane an idol temple, one or other, the soul of man will he. And a; He knew He spoke, and a last mei heard the words that reached then and the truths that found them. The:, felt the stripes that chastised them and by their stripes they were heal ed. They knew that the Lord hac come at last, and beneath the gain of poverty there woke the unsuspect ed cravings and aspirations, and the common people heard him gladly. This is mv last, word. We see Hm still, the Christ of the common people, the supreme Master of the humai | ie art the Redeemer of souls from depths of hell to heights of heaven, .great Giver of joy and Creator of bliss Say is not this the Christ for us ant for all the world, for our age and even, ao-c, mil- race and every racer J: not this the Christ—the Saviour o the lost, the Friend of publicans am sinners, to Whom the wise men am the unlettered shepherds alike tb homage, and of whom it shall be niu ten to the end of time in golden Jet tors that “the common people heart; Him gladly”? .