SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, 18 December 1915, Page 9 (Supplement)

SUNDAY READING.

"THY WILL BE DONE." SERMON AT ST. MARY'S CHURCH, New Plymouth, by the REV. A. H. COLVILE, M.A. Never surely since the days when Jesus Christ first taught His disciples the few simple petitions which we speak of as the Lord's Prayer have those words "Thy will be done" been oftener on the lips of all sorts and conditions of men and women than they have been since the war began; and never perhaps has it been so important to arrive at an understanding of their real and full significance. We will try and get at. the full meaning of that petition to-night by thinking of it first as an attitude of heart and mind, and secondly as an inspiration. It has often been said that the highest point to which a Christian can attain on this earth-plane is that attitude of heart and mind which can at all times and in every conceivable circumstance, especially in the hour of grief and anguish, repeat humbly and submissively, "Thy will be done." Now, though I don't like that word "submissive," yet we may be quite sure that the perfect acceptance of God's will, although meaning present pain and loss to the sufferer, brings with it a deep spiritual peace. No one can have ministered much among the suffering without having seen it and been convinced of its reality. There is something almost miraculous, almost super-human, we sometimes think, in that complete acceptance of the most desolating loss —in that attitude which is expressed in the words of the hymn: "If Thou should'st call me to resign What most I prized; it ne'er was mine, I only yield Thee what was Thine, Thy will be done." Think, could you say those words yourself if what you loved best in this world were suddenly taken from you? Say them and mean them? Don't be too ready with you mental answer "Yes" or "No." Most of us here tu night would, I suppose, say to ourselves, "No, no, I couldn't. I am sure I couldn't. I should feel bitter and wrathful and rebellious, or else too crushed and overwhelmed to think of God at all." Well, I am sure from my own experience as a clergyman that many people are greater jn soul and more "godly"—i.e., "Godlike"—than they know. Over and over again I have seen people, whom in normal happy times one might judge superficially to be quite irreligious and careless and worldly, I have seen such people rise to a wonderful faith and a most touching CONFIDENCE IN THE GOODWILL OF GOD at a time of sudden bereavement. It has seemed as if at such a time they have glimpsed a union with God, ana a mysterious fellowship in suffering with Him which though it does not take away their sadness yet lifts it to a higher plane, and even gives them a foretaste of that coming day when God shall turn their heaviness into joy. Truly it may be a long way to go for us all before "Thy 'will he done' 1 can become a perfect and intelligent response to what we realise is the love of an allwise and all-knowing Father. But it is that realisation alone that will stay the mind of God and bring us the peace that passeth all understanding. My friends, we must not think for one moment that there is a kind of magic power in the words, "Thy will be done," without a corresponding attitude of heart and mind. There is another and lower conception of the meaning of •those words which bring with it no spiritual peace to the soul, but only a stupid lethargy, or else a reckless "acceptance of misfortune. It is fatalism. "Every man's fate has God bound about his neck." It is Kismet, inevitable. Submit, acquiesce; it is all that is left of us. An inexorable law which we call God rules our lives, and it is useless to cry out for mercy, as it is useless to rebel. Therefore let us make n virtue of necessity and say, "Thy will be done." It is the half-unconscious attitude of many Christians, and it is out of that attitude we must rise if sorrow and suffering are to be the means of our progress; for it is in reality absolutely pagan. The old pagans were fatalists. The Greeks imagined an overruling power .fontrolling even their Olympian duties. The Latins had the same conception—a Being in the background who spoke the last word, against which the desires of the gods and the plans of men were equally powerless, to whom it was useless to pray or to sacrifice. When Jesus Christ came He interpreted and gave shape to the expiring thoughts of the old pagan world. He told' us that this mysterious Being in the background was God, that His name was Love, and His nature was Love, and that His relationship with man was not that of a Kaiser with his subjects, but of a Father with His children: and that submission to His will meant not a crushed surrender but a tranquil trust in a responsible Fatherhood. Thus He transfigured fatalism into filialism, and substituted trust in a Father for submission to a stern, inexorable Force. Fatalism had its uses. It was capable of producing a splendid disregard for danger and death. But filialism is infinitely higher. It means INTELLIGENT CONFIDENCE IN THE PURPOSE AND POWER OF GOD, who loves us completely, personally, intimately. • Jesus Christ takes us all with Him into the garden of Gethsemane, bids us kneel with.Him in the shadows, and as we express all our weakness and pain and anxiety in the cry, "Father, if it be possible to remove this cup from me," tells us to lay fast lio'.il of His wisdom and His love: "Xcvenrieless, not my will but Thine be done." It is not fatalism, but filialism. It is | the highest spiritual attitude of which wc are capable here on this earth-plane. It is to understand the "will" of God, [ in knowing the "love" of God. | But "Thy will be done" is not onl.v , an acceptance, an attitude of trust: it is an inspiration, it is a battle cry, it is ! a call to arms. It is active co-opera-tion with every movement that tends , to the bettfrment of the human race. It means throwing yourself, your means. , your abilities, your energies, even yom life, into every effort to sweep away abuses and remedy injustice to make mankind better. , There are times when , an attitude of passive acceptance be-

comes a sin, if not a crime—if, e.g., you witness a piece of cruelty in the streets and pass by on the -other side; if you turn your 'back and refuse to help your brother wlio is in distress; if you see young, inexperienced people being led astray, led into temptation, and do not raise your voice against it—more especially if you are iu some way responsible for these young persons—you have no right to the petition, "Thy will be done." Here to be jieutral is to be a traitor. 'Here he that is not with God is against Ilim. If a nation, rich and powerful, were to adopt the attitude of passive acceptance while a smaller and weaker nation were ruthlessly trampled and exploited—a nation, too, for which the larger one had made herself responsible —would it not be hypocritical and blasphemous for the stronger to cover her inaction with the words, "Thy will be done"? By whose will was Belgium violated and ruined? God's or the Kaiser's? My friends, most certainly injustice, cruelty and wrong are not God's will, and when we refuse to tolerate such things, when we lift up our voices against them, when we strike at them with all the strength and resource we possess we are sure of the driving power of God behind us. Last Monday we bade farewell to a number oi young men who are now preparing to take an active part in the great events that are happening at the other side of the world, events upon which the destiny, the future life of this country depends. They are going to fight for their country as well as for their Empire. But for something more even than these. They are going to fight for God that His will may be done on earth and not the will of the Kaiser or any, other earthly potentate whether we have one head or a million. So this simple petition is turned from an attitude of acceptance into a mighty power of inspiration. " THE LORD IS ON MY SIDE—I WILL NOT FEAR." In every age of the world's history soldiers have fought harder and better and more keenly when they have believed that God was on their side. It was the prayer, "Thy will be done," turned into a battle-cry on the lips of Peter the Hermit that set all Europe on fire for the Crusaders. Cromwell's Ironsides believed not only that their cause was just, but that God had taken that cause into His own hand, that they were in truth the soldiers of the Almighty. Nothing could dismay them. Surrounded on one occasion, you remember, at Dunbar by a superior force which had only to remain passive to compel them to surrender, the soldiers could still raise their voices in the old hymn— Fear Him, ye saints, and you-will then Have nothing else to fear. Make you His service your delight, Your wants shall be His care." Then Cromwell saw that madness of fanaticism had seized upon the Scots. They were leaving their impregnable position and coming down into the valley. "Let God arise and let His enemies be scattered," he exclaimed, and the soldiers never doubted that their enemies were God's, and "scattered" they most undoubtedly were. So it was with the Swedes' who in the 30 years' war followed Gustavus Adolphus into Germany. All were possessed with the feeling that God was on their side, "Ein feste Burg, unser Gott," and therefore they were irresistible. My friends, our soldiers can go out to-day to battle in the full assurance that they are THE SOLDIERS OF GOD, and are fighting that His will may be done. It is quite true that in most wars botli sides have claimed that God was with them, both sides have prayed confidently to God for victory. In this great war the Kaiser has openly claimed the Almighty as his ally, and we ha'Ve been startled by the easy, almost patronising, terms on which the Kaiser claims to be with this great Ally of his. Mr. Barry Pain expresses what most of us feel in a few short contemptuous lines: "You, with patronising nod. Show that you approve of God! Kaiser, face a question new: This, doe 3 God approve of you?" If God is indeed on the side of the Kaiser, then He is not the God we have known; He is not the God of the New Testament; He is not the God revealed by Jesus Christ. He may be, Mr. Blatchford has said, "Jehovah in one of Ilis worst moods," but most certainly He is not the God of Love. For if ' there be a God Who pities and pro ; ! teets the weak, Who upholds the cause ' of the oppressed, and has compassion on every creature he lias made, aye, and once gathered up little children into His arms. If' there be a God who loves justice and liberty, and those ideals that, bring out the best in men, for which men and women have readily sacrificed ' their lives, then surely we are right in ' believing to-day that our cause is the ' cause of God, that the driving power of His purpose is behind ns; and every man ' who leaves these shores for the front ' can pray witii a clear conscience as he j goes into the fight, " THJY WILL BE DONE," > and we who are left oeliind, wlio can • uphold our fighting men and strengthen . their arms by our sympathy and steadfastness, by our freewill gifts—those gifts that mean self-denial —and, above < all, by our unwearied prayers, we, too, can feel the inspiration in the cry, "Thy will be done"; we, too, can feel the irrej sistible power of God marching with us; we, too, can realise that His strength | is gripping our hearts and keeping us 1 faithful and undismayed a~s we sweep onwards to the goal. "Thy will be [ done"—it is a great marching song, and | we all know what a fine marching song will do for the spirits of the soldiers. I We are all uplifted by the familiar words of our great song, "God, save the ' King"; we catch the fierce thrilling in- ' spiration of the "Marseillaise"; ye feel ' the solemn grandeur of the Russian na- ' tional anthem; and here are some fine lines which I would like to quote to ' you to-night, which have "Thy will be done" in every word of them, and which ' seem a vision of a great army of riglit- | eousness swinging along on the road to |. .victory: "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the r coming of the Lord; r He is trampling out the vintage where . the grapes of wrath are stored, i He hath loosed the fatal lightning of His terrible swift sword, His truth is marching on. - I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps; They have builded Him an altar in the | evening dews and damps. > I have read His righteous sentence in » the dim and flaring lamps; > His Day is marching on. 1 He hath sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; t He is sifting out the hearts of men > before His judgment seat. r Be swift my soul to answer Him; be jubilant, my feet, Our God is marching oa,

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me, As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, The Christ is marching on."

ETERNAL PUNISHMENT. Fll'ilTHEß OBJECTIONS AGAINST DOCTRINE OF ETERNAL PUNISHMENT CONSIDERED. SERMON Preached at St. Joseph's, Hawera on Sunday, December 12, by DEAN (POWER. "Fear ye not them that kill the body, and are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear Him that can destroy both soul and body into hell." —St. Matthew, 10:28. In a sermon preached a few weeks ago, and subsequently published in the Taranaki Daily News and in the New Zealand Tablet, I made reply to some objections that had been published against the teaching of the Church on the duration of the punishment of hell. I showed that there was no antagonism between Divine goodness and eternal punishment, and that the denial of man's responsibility for his ultimate fate would involve a denial of free-will, man's highest and most ennobling prerogative. Some further objections against the same doctrine appeared in Saturday's Daily News, which I will now briefly consider. It is impossible, we are told, to escape from the love of God; true punishment is never vindictive, but always remedial; and fear is but a poor motive to lead men to the love of God. Now, there is a sense in which it is quite true that we cannot escape from the love of God. It follows us and canstrains us and gives us no peace until we yield ourselves to it, take it to our heart and rest in its beauty. The soul of man thirsts for God, and his heart and his flesh long after Him, and God, whose gift this thirsting and longing is, feels in some mysterious way, not given to us to understand, a responsible longing for the heart of man: ''How can I give thee up, 0 Ephraim? Ilow can 1 deliver thee, 0 Israel? My heart is moved within me, mv repentings are kindled together." Not merely this: God not only longs and vcams to possess the heart of man; He is the "Hound of Heaven" of the great Catholic poet, ever chasing the poor, fleeing sinner, never allowing him to rest in peace amid the fleeting goods of the earth, ever terrifying him with the echoes of the crash of doom that make inharmonious the quiring of Nature's sweetest choirs in which his heart would revel; never allowing him even the joy that ever comes from the innocent heart of childhood, but ever saddening him with the still, sad music of mere humanity. Everything a torment to poor, wayward, sinful man: knowledge, art, riches, nature, beauty, love, until this tremendous Lover runs him down at last, and bears him home, where he finds in peace and plenty the goods for which his soul was thirst, but which '.ie had thought could not be found where grace and holiness reigned. But what if the Hound of Heaven does not succeed in running the human hare to earth? What if man, foolish, blind and weak should continue to the bitter end to flee away from Love? What if in spite of every appeal and every pursuing grace he should make a final choice of sin and impenitence: To contend that Heaven must be his portion still would be to undermine the Bible and its warnings, to repudiate the teaching of the infallible Church of Christ, and, as I have already shown, to reject free-will by denying its essential consequences. If, moreover, God rewards every man according to his works, and if the punishment of evil is the counterpart of the reward of virtue, the eternal duration of the punishment must surely follow from the eternal duration of the reward. This faith the Church clearly professes in the Creed of Saint Athanasius: "They that have done good shall go into life everlasting, and they that have done evil into everlasting fire." Deny the eternity of hell, and the sacred duty of interpreting and explaining the Bible becomes the impious effort to explain it away. If eternal life in heaven is better than non-exist-ence, despite the intervening pains between death and their cessation, what did Christ mean by saying "it were better for him, if that man had not been born?" If the worm of the damned shall die, and their fire be quenched, why did Christ say: "Their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched"? If the unjust shall ultimately possess the Kingdom of God, why does the inspired Apostle of the Gentiles say that : they shall not?

The parable of Dive's and Lazarus lias been cited, and "an amendment in the character" of the rich man while in hell is brought forward as an argument for his final happiness. Now, it is tinsafe at the very best to draw doctrinal conclusions from this parable, since the best commentators are not sure of what is meant by the term "Abraham's bosom." (But wherever the abode oI Lazarus may have been, does not Abraham in the parable say to Dives, "Between us and you there is a great gulf fixed; so that they who would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence?" Moreover, to assert that his solicitude for the brethren he has left on earth shows an amendment of character in Dives is to read intd the parable something which it does not really contain. There is always this dangerous tendency in reading parables. This parable was spoken to show that man can develop a hard character under the most favorable circumstances, and on the other hand a character of the most sublime patience under circumstances the most trying. It was towards Lazarus, not towards his own brethren, that Dives had shown unkindness on earth, and the argument for amendment fails when the kindness in hell is not shown towards him. The parable gives no warrant for the assumption that Dives was at any time unkind towards his own. I was present at a little drama a few days ago when a hard-hearted millionaire was seen signing a cheque for ten thousand to satisfy some whim of his daughter at the moment he was ordering out the State militia to fire upon a handful of working men who had struck for an advance of a penny an hour. We are told that the reformation of the evil-doer is the sole object of all true punishment; and a certain analogy has been drawn between the modern, humane treatment of culprits in our gaols and the punishment which alone the Omnipotent is supposed to inflict, But the statement tiiat all true punishment Is remedial is simply not true, and the analogy put forward has been only partly drawn. There are in the law of Cod and in the civil law punishments that are corrective, and there are also punishments not intended for the correction of the guilty, but for the satisfaction of justice. The civil law condemns men to terms of imprisonment,

and many humanitarians urge that the punishment of these should be entirely with the view of reformation; but others hold that the punishment Of even these should be mainly a vindication of violated laws, and in terror of evil-doers, and that it would be effort wasted and love's labor lost to attempt the reformation of the average tenant of the gaol, whose free-will is strongly set against reformation. Now, similarly the partieular judgment immediately after death condemns certain souls to a term of imprisonment in Purgatory, where they expiate their lesser guilt and have every stain of defilement washed from their souls in the penal waters. The cleansing effect of these waters and the desire of the soul to undergo this purifying process are beautifully described in Cardinal Newman's "Dream of Gerontius"; and even the pagan poet Virgil sees beauty in some such remedial process:

"Nor death itself can wholly wash, their stains; But long-contracted filth e'en in the soul remains. The relics of inveterate vice they wear; And spots of sin obscene in every face appear. For this are various penances enjoined; And some are hung to bleach upon the wind: Some plunged in waters, others purged in fires, Till all the dregs are drained and all the rust expires. Then are they happy when by length of time The scurf is worn away of each committed crime; No speck is left of their habitual stains; (But the pure ether of the soul remains." But the beautiful analogy between the Divine and civil laws does not stop here. In both codes there are sins unto death, their punishment is for the vindication of justice, and justice is honored, not degraded, while avenging. One who kills his fellow man or commits certain other gross crimes is judged by the civil law to be unfit to live any longer in the society of his fellows; and jury, judge and executioner conspire without compunction to cut him off for ever from human society. So the soul that has been guilty of gross crimes against the Omnipotent Head of the company of the saints, and persists in these unto death, and even in the act of death refuses to repent, is judged to be unfit to live with the saints, is east into the exterior darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, and out of which there is no redemption. But even while condemning the unrepentant to eternal punishment, God's justice, strong and righteous and unerring, may not be thought to stop short at condemnation or bo content to accept failure; for if the fear of an avenging God does really deter men from sin, it serves for the reform of morals, and thus in a very effective sense His vindictive .punishment of the guilty becomes remedial for the mass of men; it works for the greater good and perfection of God's universe as a whole, even as the presence of the guillotine, the gallows and the executioner's thongs protects and sweetens man's social life. Coming to the third objection, we are told that the goodness produced by the fear of eternal punishment must be a very inferior sort. However' this may be, we know that the threat of such punishment produces the fear of God in the heart, and "the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom." The psalmist says that the fear of God troubles the peace of sinners; and this troubling of the sinner is a necessary prelude to his conversion. The dread punishment niav be the most unworthy motive to right conduct, but it is the motive that appeals to most; and therefore it has been put forward by God, Who knows best what is in the heart of the man Ilis hands have made. It teaches obedience and reverence to the infant nt the mother's knee, it trains the schoolboy into habits of order and discipline, and it enables the executive to police our towns and cities and influence fullvgrown men for good. "The fear-of hell prevents a man from lying down in ilic lap of deadly sin, and tranquilly acquiescing in that position, as a worldlyminded person is apt to do. The prodigal never thought of returning till famine and uneasiness overtook him in the far-off country. A good fright or a gnawing fear is the first symptom of recovery from sin. All preachers of Lentmissions know that it is the. sermon on hell that usually brings people up to confess their sins and seek reconciliation with God. The lower motive is the stronger for fallen men; and when lie has fallen low and lain long, it is often the only available motive to arouse him from his torpor. Another point the doctrine of hell enforces upon us—that religion is not a discretionary thing, a taste that we have or have, not, a hobby that we fan cherish and then fling aside, a creature of the people's will, nice matter for a plebiscite. Nothing shows the masterfulness of God more than this, that Tie will cast down the disobedient into hell fire. A God who will do that must bo much in earnest in His commands, and intend His words to be taken in all seriousness. Nothing is more galling to the worldly-minded man than this absolute dominion of God over mankind and their entire subordination to Him. The worldly man lives in the world either as a proprietor in his own mansion, or at any rate as a fashionable visitor staving at an hotel. He thinks of the master of the hotel as a being that exists for his convenience. He is ready to complain of deficient acommodation. It never practically occurs to him that this world and all that is in it belongs to God and exists for God's glory. Thus it comes about that no dogma of revealed religion is so sharply criticised by modern worldiness as this doctrine of hell. Worldliness is a systematic belittling of God; but hell is "a terrible revelation of God's greatness, majesty and sovereign claims." (See Oxford and Cambridge Conferences, second series, pp. 3'2-33). Let us, dear brethren, thank Almighty God, Who has made us members of the Church that speaks with no uncertain voice on this or any other truth revealed to her by God; let us follow the advice of St. Augustine, who urges us to go daily to the fire of hell and warm up our faith and love there, lest we burn there for eternity; let us think frequently of our last end, knowing that if the whole land is made desolate with desolation it is because there is no man who consider* eth in his heart.