LOOKING FORWARD

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 863, 6 January 1930, Page 14

LOOKING FORWARD

OPPORTUNITY WAITS IN NEW YEAR WORK WHILE IT IS DAY "Probably no better text than •Redeeming the time because the days are evil,’ taken from St. Paul's epistle to the Ephesians, could be found for the first Sunday in the New Year," said Pastor Reuben E. Dowle, in the Mount Roskill Congregational Church yesterday morning. "The ancient pagans gave us the name ‘January,’ ” Mr. Dowle continued. "One of their deities, Janus, was made to face two ways. He looked into the past and into the future. How fitting that we of today, with all our privileges in Christ, should encourage a certain amount retrospection, for the sake of experience, and a large amount of prospective thought. There should be a keen looking into the future, based on a Christ-like desire to make the future ever so much better than the past. "Such ideas were probably filling the mind of St. Paul when writing to the church at Ephesus, ‘Redeeming the time because the days are evil.' The Ephesians had, it is true, recently emerged from superstition and idolatry. Diana, of the Kphesian3, their goddess, was at that time an almost world-wide influence. St. Paul, realising the God-given power of mankind to choose the good-and resent the evil, invites the people to be very diligent in propagating the teachings of Christ. He wishes them to redouble their efforts, now that the light cf the Gospel had come to them. “Modern life needs undoubtedly to redeem the time, that is to buy up opportunities for better lives, more devoted service for the church. Evil is abroad in many seductive forms. We must work while it is day. Christ never lost a battle, and He leads us as the captain of our salvation." GOD AS LAW-GIVER CHRISTIAN SCIENCE SERMON •'God" was the subject of the lessonsermon in First Church of Christ, Scientist, of Auckland, yesterday. The golden text was from Psalms Ixxvii., 13, “Who is so great a God as our God?” Among the citations was the following from the Bible: “For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our law-giver, the Lord is our king; He will save us.” Isaiah xxxiii., 22. The lesson-sermon also included the following passage from the Christian Science textbook, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures”:—“God is the law-maker, but he is not thq_author of barbarous codes. In infinite life and love there is no sickness, sin, nor death, and the Scriptures declare that we live, move and have our being in the infinite God.”