SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 140, 9 December 1911, Page 9 (Supplement)

SUNDAY READING.

THK IiK.UTV OK 110LINT.SS. (Continued from last week), lint will von assent to tlie truth conla iueil in flu- next Scripture found in Paul's letter to Titus?—" Adorn, the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things." That is, we who believe in Jesus are to ornament or beautify the truth of Cod by which we ourselves are made beautiful. In our comment upon the words of the Psalmist, the truth we emphasised was this —that all beauty of .spirit and character in the life of man is the gift of God. The truth we would enforce now is that we who have the beauty of the Lord upon and within us are to adorn, ornament, even make more beautiful, the truth and grace of God, l»y which we ourselves are beautified. This we take to be the meaning of the words, "Adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things." But can the grace and doctrine of God our Saviour be beautified by being minted through human lives? Paul in his letter to Titus asks for it, and Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount demands the same thing: "Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven." That, little word "so" needs special emphasis. Jesus knew that as Christians our light might shine so dimly that men would not see our good works, and consequently could not glorify our Father iwhich is in heaven. The light of truth and love in many a Christian's life is feeble indeed. The* flame is both dull and dim. The life medium through which the light comes to us is often stained with wordliness, while within the temple of the soul the flame of God's love burns low. The oil in the vessel is sometimes exhausted. Like the lamps of the foolish virgins, "the lights are going out." The seven golden candlesticks may be in their places, but the sevenfold "radiance of the Spirit shines not forth from them.

Truth may be adorned. Let me illustrate this. Here is a bed of marble. In the quarry marble is beautiful; in the polished block it is more beautiful; but when the sculptor has found the angel in the stone, marble is most beautiful. So truth in marble may be beautified. In marble we have the positive, the comparative and the superlative degree. Marble in its natural condition, beautiful; in the prepared block, more beautiful; in the life-like statue, most beautiful.

I have a friend. His cottage is a miniature palace of neatness, order and beauty. He is a Christian. His gifts are few, but the grace of God in him is strong. He said to me one day, "I can't do much in the way of preaching myself, sir, but I thought I could make the flowers do a little." And so he did. Before his cottage door is a large plot of ground where he very artistically planted some crocus bulbs of a varied kind in the form of a Scripture device. After a while the simple flowers reached their full bloom, spelling out in all their natural loveliness the truth,

GOD IS LOVE. One day a titled gentleman was passing in his carriage, and noticing the flowers, lie gazed fixedly and smiled at the pretty sight. Others, also of gentle blood, lingered as they passed, and amired the lovely arrangement. The crocus is a common Mower. Had my friend cleared his garden plot and set the bulbs at ran- j doni they would have possessed no charm j for the passer-by; but, by planting them with care and taste, and thus making them spell truth in beautiful form, the, truth they declared was adorned and claimed attention by both rich and poor. So we see that the doctrine of God our Saviour linn' in this way be adorned by crocuses. What is true of the marble and the crocus is much more true of human life. Truth spoken is beautiful; j truth written is more beautiful; truth' ''lived'' is most beautiful. Truth in the speech may be powerful; in the obedient cat it is most powerful. I have read of a sculptor who was so enraptured with the perfection of his own genius that slipping back from the statue which bis hand had carved, he cried, "Live!" Ah! that was an impossibility. Hut Jesus, in the realm of truth, made , the impossible possible. He made the marble live. IMoro He came men saw the truth, but ''how to perform'' there : was the difficulty Tt is said that almost every truth which lies at the basis of Christ's teaching may be found in the writings of ancient philosophers. Tu tre old time, reason and conscience perceived the truth, but the life denied it. Jesus, in His life and death, brought down from the lofty realm of pure thought the speculative principles of philosophy, and placed them within the range of praetii eal life. liv so doing. He made the truth of God both beautiful and mighty. God knows (that the truth which is intended to redeem and sanctify can never be preached or written into souls. Behind the >poken or written word must be the life. The word without the living spirit is a dead letter. Xo genius of exposition, nor skill of oratory, can make God's Word mighty, apart from the Holy Ghost. These have been tried and are being tried to-day by many, but they have no more power to raise dead souls than the sound of a penny trumpet. The Holy Spirit works upon the heart and mind through Hie Word —the Word made Flesh—the Lord Jesus Christ, When God gave the world the highest ; revelation of Himself, He gave it through a society, or a book, but in a life. "God so loved the world that He gave"; and in that gift we see the whole heart of the Kternal Father.

Let us then fix this thought in our minds, that truth and righteousness can only lie "lived" into us. Definitions never melt hearts; brilliant conceptions never convert souls; truth beaten out on the intellectual anvil will never save men. Many a man whose intellect is large, whose definitions are perfect, and whose conceptions are sublime is in spirit and life a babe. The head is far beyond tin- heart: the mind is cultivated at the expense of the spirit. Such men stand longer than (hey kneel. They think all their religion away. They seek more 1 rut h ami forget to use that which lies at their feet. The Church has already discovered truth enough to last lier till the Millennium. The practice of what she knows would build her "waste places, - ' and (ill her borders with the fruit fulness of Eden. There is only one way by which the irut 11 can reach the heart; and that is through the heart. Grace and truth tran-I'orming human lives make grace and truth more beautiful still. "Return to thine own house and show how great iliings God hath done unto thee." said •le-iis to the demoniac of Gadara. Tie was not to j-ing nor preach nor argue, but. to show himself and the grace of God in him. "He ye followers of me." slid I'aiil. "Look on us." said Peter to the man at the gate of the temple, and tlnn in a single sentence the Apostle compressed the eternal' challenge of the Chrislian Ghnrcli. The man who cannot preach himself as manifesting in his own 'life the power and blessedness of the of Christ, must, be a poor representative of his Lord. "Tom." said a workman to one who had been converted some months before, and the moral fragrance of whose life filled the whole factorv. "T think you are a perfect fool." Tom looked up in surprise and said, "Do' you? 'Why do you think so?" "Why,

you say you love Hod." said the man, "but you never saw (iod. Xow it' ever .1 love ;i God I want to see my Cod." "lint," answered Tom. "you have seen me." "Scion you'.''' said the workman; "of course 1 have seen you; I see you every day. lint what has thai to do with itY" "A great deal," said Tom. "Have you marked any change in me Hie last few months'/" Of course 1 have,' 1 rejoined the workman; "everyone in tlic factory-has noticed that." "Well, then," continued Tom, "believe me when I tell you that the God you can't see has wrought this change in me, and if you cannot see my Cod, believe in Him for His work's sake." Thus, grace and truth interpreted before us in the form of flesh and blood are adorned and beautified.- God manifest in the flesh \% the most sublime revelation of infinite loveliness. As God gave to us the highest revelation of Himself through a human body, we, as followers of God, arc called upon to give to men the highest revelation of the invisible Christ, not in the exercise of some inherited gift, nor in the mere consecration of some acquired power, but in the glad and total surrender of our whole being to the grace and spirit of Jesus, that in the life we live in the flesh the whole doctrine of God our Saviour may be adorned in all things. For an illustration of this, take one «grace from the realm of truth, namely, love.

WHAT IS IX)VE? Can you weigh love? How high, how broad, of what color is' love ? Does it come within the evidence of the senses? Can it be handled or heard ? What is love? For the best definition of love you refer me to 'Paul's words, and I read, "Love suffereth long, and is kind." "Yes," my heart cries, "beautiful as a statement, but where is the fact? I close the Bible in which I have read this beautiful definition of love, and pass into the room of a cottage. In one corner is a fair young girl. Her fragile form seems cast in too gentle a mould to j bear the rough winds of earth. Tenderly reared, cultivated, graceful, purer than the snow, she had devoted her life to the services of her Lord. Her work lay among the vicious and the vile. One' day as she passed through the wretched quarter when for Christ she toiled, a base brutal fellow, maddened at her goodness, picked up a stone, and shutting it in his huge fist, came close to her, striking her in the face, knocking her bleeding to the pavement. Kind hands helped her up, and bore her to her room. •It was there, in her room, suffering acutely from the effects of the. blow, that I saw her. As I gazed at the bruised face and thought of the intense suffering to which she must have been subjected. I felt a righteous indignation rising within me. All the manly feelings of my heart rose against her base, cowardly assailant. Speaking to her, I said, "My sister, how did you feel when that ruffian struck you in such a cruel manner?" Looking at me with tears in her eyes, she said with more feeling than I can describe, "I felt as though I could have died for him." My indignation withered, my heart was melted, my tears mingled with hers as at the mercy seat we prayed for the man who had done the deed. The words. "Love suffereth long, and is kind," burned and gleamed with a-grander meaning.'- The one before me had transmitted them into her spirit of life and thus had intensified for me their beauty and power. Then my mind wandered to Calvary, where infinite love in Jesus was nailed and pierced and crowned with thorns and mocked with gibes and sneers, resisting unto blood, striving against sin, yet in that dire extremity finding for her murderers an excuse, which only God could frame, and offering for their salvation a prayer, which only the heart of infinite pity and love- could breathe: "Father forgive them: they know not what they do." And as T thought of that scene my lips murmured. "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that .He, loved us." Not with a. love passed in word through the lips of another, nor embodied in correct definitions found in a book, hut expressed in the life and work of Jesus, crowned with the shedding of His blood for the rebellious and unclean. He gave Himself for,us. What is true of one grace in the realm of truth is true of all. In mere abstract statement truth is powerless, but in the living act it is mighty to redeem. -Let us then adorn (he doctrine of Jesus Christ in all things. Paul, urged this upon slaves: the men who by Soman civilisation were classed in the same category with cattle, who could be bought and sold like a horse or an ox. He said to these men, "Be noble in your degradation: carry the holy heart behind the chained wrist. You may transmute your chain into jewellery for the adornment of the soul: glorify your degradation by your Christlike hearing; magnify your Lord; show the superiority of the man over the occupation, of the spirit over the flesh, of the love of God over the hate of man, and 'thus adorn the doctrine of God your Saviour in all things.". Xobly were the words obeyed, for the foundation of the Christian Church in the first centuries was laid on the broad base of consistent living by the common people. God grant us grace in these happier times to be as pure and holy in life, as they.