THE ALGEBRA OF LIFE

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 514, 17 November 1928, Page 8

THE ALGEBRA OF LIFE

THE QUIET CORNER

(Written for THE SUN by the Rev. Charles Chandler, Assistant City Missioner.)

Religion with many people is a sort of vermiform appendix, which ought to he cut out —a rudimentary organ which has long since fulfilled its usefulness. It was all right for man in the early stages of his upward growth, but now, in these enlightened days, it is an impediment. Those people are wrong. They are only sparking on two cylinders —-mind and body. To be real hill-climbers all the cylinders must be working. In the algebraical problem of life, God may be the unknown quantity denoted by the letter X, but that letter X plays a vital part in arriving at the correct solution. Pm mixing my metaphors, I knoic, but let us hold on to that algebraical idea. The question of the unknown X has, in all ages, given man an incentive to mental and spiritual growth, without which he would still be grovelling in the dust of ignorance and lust. This divine unrest has been the animating impulse in all the loftiest endeavour. St. Paul, standing upon the Hill of Mars, and speaking to the men of Athens, said: “Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.” Paul told them that the altar they had raised to the Unknown God. or X in the terms of this article, was the God whom he came to declare.

God equals X in the algebraical problem of life, and until we have the capacity to comprehend the majesty of God, such He will remain.

To have that capacity we-should need to be gods ourselves. In the meantime, let us hold fast to that which is good, and not ignore the unknown X in the algebraical problem of life. Next Week: THE IMPRISONED SPLENDOUR.