SUNDAY READING

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 166, 30 November 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

SUNDAY READING

lIEAVEX AND HELL.

( lining a Sermon preached by the REV. A. 11. COLY'ILIi, -U.A., at St. Mary's recently). "If I climb up into Heaven, Thou art there; if I go down to Hell, Thou art there also."—P.s. 130-7. Surely, surely the man who wrote those inspired words (and inspired they most undoubtedly are) was 110 mere r»ligiolio dreamer, no mere mystic with a mind for ever lixed upon a future state; but a man with wide practical experience of life as it is lived here on earth. .Moreover, a man with not only a wide but a deep experience of life,, who gathered inspiration from his experience, a practical optimist who saw God everywhere and Knew that that great FatherSpirit, wrapped round the world, had the lives of every creature in His keeping. I can imagine the writer of that Psalm—a man who had seen the uttermost limits of life, who had stood 011 the peak of prosperity and the heights of happiness and had plunged down into the gulf of despair, who had limped painfully through the Valley of humiliation and had even dwelt for a time under the shadow of death. And now, what had he brought out of all his experience? What had his wide and deep knowledge of life taught him? ..It had taught him this great, truth—the perpetual presence of God. It had taught him the overwhelming fact that life is God, that there is 110 place where He is not. no sphere that He does not fill, 110 experience that does not contain Ilim. And so he leaves on record his own great experience that those who came after ; might be inspired and lifted up as he. Wits. "Whither shall 1 go, then, from Thy Spirit, or whither shall I go from Thy presence? If i. climb up into Heaven, thou are there. If I climb down to Hell, Thou are there also." And St. Paul lifts this experience 011 to an even higher plane, and brings'to us out of his own experience a still brighter hope, and comfort even more blessed and enduring when he cries, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?"

CLIMBING. NOT "CAUGHT UP."

"If 1 climb up into Heaven. Thou art there." Surely, my friends, that is not only an anticipation—a sort of prophecy or vision of the future. It is the simple record of an experience gained here 011 this earth plane, gained after slow, gradual, painful progress. "If I elimb' —the Psalmist doesn't speak of being "caught up" into Heaven, but' of climbing; and climbing certainly implies toil if it doesn't imply pain. Moreover, it is as I said something that he obviously attained to and experienced in this life. And St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Philippians,' speaks of Heaven as a state we should be conscious of in this world.

"Our citizenship," he says, ''is in Heaven." Not "shall be." The absence of the future tense is important. There is no suggestion here of Heaven as wages to be waited for —when God's toilers will receive the accumulated earnings for which they have labored. There is 110 sanction given here to the materialistic conception of heaven as a kind of endless oratorio, or an infinitely prolonged celestial idleness. No; the apostle directs our thoughts to the present and bids us go to the root of our own natures and bring out all the God-like possibilities that lie within ourselves.

THE HEAVENLY NATUBE.

"Ye must be born again," said our Lord to Nicodemus. That surely means that 110 man ean enter heaven who has not the heavenly nature, the nature from above, awakened into life within him, or, as Archdeacon Wilberforce puts it very tersely, "the way to Heaven is through Heaven." Now. no man could have the heavenly nature wakened within him if it were not already there. So it is now within each of us—in germ, so to speak; like a seed slumbering in the ground containing great and marvellous possibilities. You and 1 have Heaven within us at this moment, and if we are not happy it is because we have not yet discovered it; we have not suffered it to be brought out. We have

hugged our lives to ourselves. We have fled from the Holy Spirit of God. We have kept religion at arm's-length—, afraid of it, afraid of its demands. The ! little that we have seen of it doesn't interest 11s. And, of course, while we just play about without and can't really interest us. for that essential, "from above," part of our nature to which religion appeals, lies very deep. "Deep ealleth unto deep." Xor must we ordinary people expect a sudden blaze of Heaven to burst upon our lives. God forbid that I should deny the possibility! There, undoubtedly are such things a» sudden conversions. I don't mean an extraordinary upheaval of the emotions which lift men and women for a time into an ecstatic and abnormal state from which they too often drop back to earth with a shock that leaves them prostrate for the rest of their lives. No; 1 mean a sudden rending of self-will which discovers a God-power within, followed at once bv a fixing, of the will towards God. That is, indeed,

TO FIND HEAVEN; to be tilled witli Heaven and to see God there. But for most of us, my friends, it is a climb, and often a weary climb. We make some venture of faith; we revisit the pull of our own self-will; we undertake some work for God; we try to be more patient' and loving in our homes; we give up our time to help someone in dilKiculties; we beat back some great temptation—it is the Godpower within us stirring, the "from above" part of our natures struggling to the birth. Then we catch glimpses of Heaven. We understand then what Heaven is—that the way to Heaven is through Heaven. But it is

A WEARY CLIMB. God give us all strength to persevere. Remember that the great test of Heaven is to find God. God is there. People sometimes, in moments of great happiness. speak of themselves as being in Heaven. "This is Heaven." they cry. Often they are right. The wonderful power of love as it takes possession of the soul will often reveal the Godpower within, and men and women led by that power will sometimes rise to great heights of self-sacrifice, and "we are in Heaven in each other's love." they say. Yes, trillv. if God is there. Take that as the text of love. Have you found God in that heaven of yours? Is that new power of love of which you are conscious born from above? Ts it pure, unselfish, uplifting? Th<>n God give you joy of the heaven you have found on earth. But surely there is nothing more awful than

A false heaven into which passion or greed or selfishness lead many men and women—the false heaven without- a fieri, where souls are caught and crushed and defded, where love turns to bitterness and hope becomes mockery, and faith in liod and man is too often lost for ever. Be sure, then, before you claim your heaven here on earth that it is a real one; that if, is indeed "born from above"; be sure that Clod is there—that is, that you can see and feel Him there.

A WONDEIiKI'L STATEMENT. And if "I go down into hell Tlion art there also." That is. I believe, one of the most wonderful statements in Ilie whole of tlie Bible. lam surf that the mail who wrote those words wrote them in a moment of great inspiration. When we read the Psalms we cannot help being rather painfully impressed by the gloomy tone of many of the Redeemists who spoke of the after-life. What more depressing thought could there be than that of eternal separation from the love of God? ''Shall Thy loving-kindness be shbwn in the grave and Thy faithfulness in destruction?" How gloriously this man rises above these dark conceptions of the future. "If 1 go down into llell. Thou ;ire there also." One of the most terrifying conceptions of my childhood was the idea of hell ruled by a powerful and awful being called the Devil. His domain was hell, and he was as supreme; there as God was in Heaven, and once a soul had gone to hell God had 110 more power over it. It was the devil's own. That is

' AX AWFCL CONCEPTION. I wonder how many people have been daunted and terrified by it? My friends, let 1 us at onpe.drive out from our minds J any idea that we may have had that I there are two gods almost equally powerful, each in his own domain, one called the Devil and one called God. That is impossible. "If Igo down into Hell Thou are there also." In other words, God is the God of Hell as well as the God of Heaven, and Hell is not outside the Government of God. Whatever punishment, or. as I prefer to put it. whatever painful educative discipline may be necessary for us in this afterlife, it is not, from the devil. ft is the love of God that follows us down into the depths of hell, that love we cannot, ) escape. The tires of hell are the lircs of the love of God, burning away the selfishness and greed and eovi'tousness and lust that have shut up the heaven within us. And that burning love can never be quenched and never ultimately defeated. [leaven must at last be revealed to all, for our citizenship is there, and we must be born from above here or hereafter before we can fulfil our destiny. Remember, that if ever you go down into Hell, if ever you have to bear the horror and shame of discovered sin, the just punishment and scorn of men, remember G'od is there. His love still wraps you round, awl you may climb in His strength and by tiie power of His sacrifice out of the dust of a living death into a sunshine of a full life which here 011 earth is but a foretaste of that Heaven whose promised glory is that we shall be for ever with tiie Lord.