SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 227, 23 March 1912, Page 2

SUNDAY READING.

THE HOLY MOUNT OF PRAYEK. (Continued from last week). Extract of Sermon contributed by Rev. R. J. Lidilell, of Queen St. Primitive Methodist Church. I would point out now the second feature of the transfiguration of Christ.' THERE WAS A GLORIFICATION OF COMMON THINGS.

, The jugged, mountains flashed with wondrous splendor. The dull rocks assumed more beautiful forms. The grey granite looked like the quartz of heaven. Pebbles shone with the brilliance of diamonds; "His garments became' white" — "White and dazzling," says Luke; "white as snow/' says Mark; "white as light," says Matthew. That coat of common texture, which related Him to the poorer class, or to the common order of the priesthood—worth, according to Dr. Edersheim, ahout twelve dinas (or seven shillings and sixpence in English money ), possibly the gift of His mother, the loveoffering of some poor woman whom He had healed; the garment claimed on the throw of the dice by one of the soldiers present at the Crucifixion—that coat became, by the outshining of the effulgent glory of God, fit for the form of a king. Every thread seemed dipped in the colors of heaven. The beauty and comeliness which Christ's physical form lacked now flowed from God's divinity, until His physical nature was bathed in the glory of " the Father. Thus common things took on new forms of loveliness, and both nature and life revealed new splendors while He prayed. It is thus that prayer both hallows and transfigures all life's commonplaces. The exaltation of the ordinary to the sublime is characteristic of the Christian religion. In the "Mill on the Floss," George Eliot indulges in a quiet sneer at the Dobson family, each number of which "would not be taxed with the omission of anything that was becoming, or that belonged to the etiernal fitness of things . . . '. such as obedience to parents, faithfulness to kindred, industry, rigid honesty, thrift, and the thorough scouring of wooden and copper utensils." Yet these 1 are the things which Christians transform into the holiest of ministries. It was not the genius of the elect few in decadent Rome that changed the face of European morals. It was the faith which taught the slave that he was a ; man and that it was not the work a man I did, but the spirit in which he did it, that enobled him. The hand that wields the spade may have a nobler motivity behind it than the mailed fist which grasps a sceptre. It w&s the immediateness of the soul's access to God through Jesus Christ that taught men the dignity of human nature. In human nature "the soul of the angel blends with the body of the beast; thus is our humiliation." Alas, this is too true. The trail of the serpent lies across life's holiest moods. We often think ,in Heaven while we act in Hqll. We fling God's richest treasures from us as dross, not knowing their worth, until perhaps, some awful sorrow, like a flash of lightning in the night reveals the invisible and shows life in its right perspective. Souls who pray need no tempest to clear their vision. The eyes of suppliants behold the unseen. No sparrow's fall happens, no deed of love, no common duty is done, but God is seen to be there. If such saints endure their bloody sweats,' it is not to wipe some guilty stain from the spirit, but to show the might of God's grace in a body of • clay, or to exalt life to a nobler condition. Lives 1 so dignified, so enriched, possess their treasure* in a fcasket,' so secure and strong that no rust can dim' its lustre, do thieves can bear it away. Augustine say a that the changed raiment typified the Church. I prefer to ■think'that it teaches the divinity which prayer reveals to the mind as existing in the ordinary things and events of daily •life. Life's phenomena ate but a coarse garment Which hides the soul of things. Biblical history begins with a garden tfrhere a sei-pent crawls, and ends in a dity where neither a lie nor a curse can enter. The Psalms begin by emphasising a negative good, but end in a burst of positive , praise. In the last Psalm there are six verses and thirteen hallelujahs. Beginnings govern endings. The universe is in the atom. Habit is the offspring of act, and both are the arbiters of destiny. Diamonds are glorified char,coal. The blue of the sky is the dust of the street transfigured, The splendor of many a sunset would be impossible without the mist and gloom hanging about the city. And prayer, by which I mean reverence, sympathy, worship, adoration in the presence of the Supreme can alone create that spiritual mood which in common things discovers the beauty of the Lord. To Jesus the lily's cup was shaped in heaven. A drink of water was the symbol of immortality. A,box of ointment w&s sufficient for age-long fame, and two mites superior to the rabbi's wealth. His knowledge of things unseen of which all earthly things were but the' shadow was based on the law of fellowship. It was with His face lifted to the Father that He said, "I know." If we prayed more, our estimate of duty would be higher, and our moral judgment clearer. We often see through a glass darkly because the heart "is dumb. We admire the distant, forgetting that God is at the door. We listen ' for the music of the cllcrubin, and know not that God may send it through the voice of a child. Caspar a Beccara longed to carve an image of the Virgin; but his thought continually eluded all liis power to embody it. The wood he attempted to carve his image upon had eome from distant climes. It vras thg rai-est and costliest kind. But still he farted Wearied he slept *nd dreamed that there, in the blading fire on his own hearth, was a piece of common wood charred, and defaced by the flame, on which his image of the Virgin could be traced.

"0, thou sculptor, painter, poet, Take this lesson to thy heart; That is best which lietli nearest, Shape from that thy work of art." > Prayer will show us that the elements of all noble character and high achieve- [ ment are about our feet. Heaven lies at the feet of a child, but near the lips of | a man. It was while Zacharias ministered at the alter of incense that he saw the angel of the Lord. We all know the name of one who, by intercession, transformed the agony as of a stak£ through the • body into a riiinistry of grace. We have read of another whose prayer made the mountain height the camping ground for the militant hosts of God. Yea, and we worship One. as Lord whose devout spirit changed a carpenter's shed into the workshop of the Eternal God. Things are what they seem to him who, like dumb sheep or goats, lifts up no prayer to God. But the man who prays see» the invisible. The home, the church, the shop, the street, are, to the man who prays, separate rooms in God's great temple, in which Christ reigns and works His will through concerted liyes. Lastly there was

A TRANSFIGURATION OF SELF. "The fashion of His countenance was changed." But few words are necessary to illustrate this last result. It is a law of science that environment influence* life. It is also a law in the spiritual realm that associates color personality. The caterpillar conforms to the Ijue of the vegetation upon which it feeds. A certain man of the Bible ate red pottage, and lie is called "red-mail." There may be solitary exceptions to the law of imitation, but they are very rare. A few dull souls can move amid tile sublimities of nature, and of life with the eye and mind of the brute. Their pulseless souls are like the senseless clay. They have kinship with the clods. These citizens of the far country live in their natire air. Leeks and garlic are more to them than the fruits of Paradise. I do not include these in my argument, they are moral curiosities of the human species. But such exceptions only prove the fact that associations both tone and develop human personality. Who could live in the presence of a kingly man without giving a touch of lii's nobility? The very presence of some men quickens the moral piflsc. The best tonic for a feebled faith is contact with a saintly life. And if human character carries so much influence what shall we say of the Living God? The saints of old looked unto Him and were lightened. Looking unto Jesusi will produce a new face as well as fashion a new soul. Ej'es of prayer are windows into Heaven. Prayer has power to transform flesh as well' as spirit, • From Moses, Stephen, the Lord Jesus, down to the last saint whose face and form in life and death became the mirror of Heaven, all are examples of the transfiguring power of grayer. The habit of inward communion still writes its mark on eye and cheek ajid brow. Dickens says there was so much coldness in the heart of Scrooge that it froze his face. Contrast the portraits of John Milton and Charles the Second and you see this law exemplified. Heaven's seal is clearly legible on the one, while the other shows the violation of the Ten Commandments.

Pray! Pray! Pray! Pray until you live as near to God •as my right arm is near to me. Then walk God's world mailed in full proof of faith. The man who does this will bear a charm that mocks at fear, and bars the door on doubt, and dares the impossible.