THE QUIET CORNER TIN HARES

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 566, 19 January 1929, Page 8

THE QUIET CORNER TIN HARES

(Written for THE SUN by the Rev. Charles Chandler, Assistant City Missioner.) rp/_v HARE racing seems to have been a nine days’ wonder. To those who have ever lived within earshot of a mechanical hare in motion, time itself will barely suffice to efface the memory. The wisdom or otherwise of thirty thousand people watching dogs chasing a tin hare need not concern us just now. To say the least, it was a novel diversion, and as such met some sort of human need. It is with the dogs that these words have most to do. Those canine sleuths who, hunting by sight and not by scent, are deluded by a cunning device of man. Sooner or later they must have aivaTcened to the fact that, after all, “things are not what they seem,” and that, to use the xcords of Bassanio in ‘‘The Merchant of Venice,” the tin hare is one of the many examples of “the seeming truth xvhich cunning times put on to entrap the wisest.” The sluggard has been told to go to the ant, and by the same token we might as Well go to the dogs, if not for our admonishment, at least for our learning. The subtle allurement of the tin hare, a foolish ambition for monetary power, has led many a foolish maxi to learn, in deep humiliation, the truth of those words which Jesus spake: “For ichat shall it profit a maxi if he gain the whole world, and lose his oxen soulf” Sight, as one of our physical senses, is capable of leading us far astray. The mirage on the desert, which xnakes the frenzied wanderer grovel in the sand to quench his aching thirst, finds its counterpart in many of the more familiar experiences of ordinary human life. Through placing too great a reliance upon the physical senses, both dogs and men “gang aft astray,” and it is only by the aid of our spiritual sight that xce see things as they really are. By the aid of this higher faculty death is robbed of its sting, and the grave of its victory; and the greatest men in all ages have been those who, undeceived by the tin hare of mere Worldly allurement, have set their hearts upon the quest of the “unsearchable riches of Christ.” - NEXT WEEK: FRIEZES.