SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, 26 February 1916, Page 9

SUNDAY READING.

"'ALL THINGS 'ARE YOURS." SERMON PREACHED BY REV. A. 11. COLVILE, M.A., at St. Mary'.- 1 Church, New Plymouth, on Sunday,) February 20. On this Sunday, called Septuagesima, we read in the Scriptures of God as tlx? Creator of all things, the Source and Origin of the world and all that it contains. of the life and power of man, and therefore of all that lias sprung from man's brain, or that is the product ol his energy and industry, all that ho has evolved in himself and in the world by the power involved within him. "In the beginning God"—this morning wo read in the lirst chapter of Genesis the account of God's creation of the world, step by step, period by period. lam not concerned at this moment as to tlu. scientific accuracy of that account, nor who it was who gave it to the world. Hoses may, as tradition say.?, have been the author of the first five books of the Bible, or he may not. But whoever wrote the book of Genesis, the human race is eternally indebted to him for his majestic declaration of the only intelligible solution of the problem of existence—"in t/he beginnning God." It is the only logical interpretation of creation. In that marvellously beautiful passage from the book of Job, the ,"Btii chapter, probably the oldest book in tlio Bible, God challenges man to find any other interpretation. "Man, the greatest of all evolved creatures, who cannot set bounds to the sea. nor bind the stars, nor send forth the lightning, the snow or the hail, nor give vhoso wonderful instincts to birds and animals; man who is at once so great and so, little, placed for a time in the midst of this world with all God's gifts scattered around him to use and to enjoy and to develop, "All these things have I given thee to enjoy," says God; "all arc yours, and all speak to you of Me and of My power and love." What can man answer to God's challenge except to reply out of ar humble and thankful heart, "Thou hast created all things: we bless Thee for our creation, preservation and all the blessings of this life." And yet the thought come to me, perhaps—isn't it really a mockery to say that all things are mine, that all the 'beautiful things in God's world are feline, have been given to me? We think of some rich man and the tremendous possibilities to enoyment. that his money gives him. and contrast his lot with thnt of one who by sticking hard to his work every day can only just make enough for 'himself and his family. The one has the whole wide world to enjoy; ho can travel from country to country, and all the glories or the earth are his; the other is squeezed into a little corner of the world without money or leisure or opportunity to explore bevond it. "All things are yours!" To what sort or man does that refer? Surely only to the rich and prosperous, the masters and the millionaires, the modern inheritors of the earth. So our thoughts run, forgetting that

THERE IS A SOUL IN ALL THINGS, and only he who possess the soul can also possess the thing. I remember onee walking with a friend through a most beautiful valley in Wales. That valley was "property." It belonged to a man who was not present, whose tenant my friend was. Here and there notices protected certain choice parts of it, "Trespassers will lie prosecuted," by means of which the owner called attention to his rights. I think I made some remark to the elVect that I wouldn't mind being the man to whom all this belonged. "Well, I wouldn't care about that," replied my friend; "he doesn't appreciate it; he is never here; he spends all his time in London and Paris. I suppose he likes to feel that he is the legal owner of it, but really I think that it 'belongs to me more than to him, because of the delight I take in it, the real happiness it gives me, and the purifying power that the sight of all this wonderful beauty has upon the. soul. I feel that I can understand and appreciate it, that it is really mine." I am sure that many of us can understand what that man meant. He spoke in the spirit of St. Paul, when that apostle wrote to a society, half of whom.were slaves, "All things are yours." The words clearly indicate that in any true sense the legal possession of objects is not necessarily to own them. I can imagine one of those poor slaves in a great Roman mansion really owning the beautiful pictures and statuary with which it was enriched in a far truer sense than tlio legal possessor who very likely spent his days_ in gross and sensual pleasures. I pan imagine a poor man with a library of fifty books which he had collected carefully arid lovingly, each one costing him a sacrifice, really owning those books; and I can imagine a millionaire sitting in a sumptuous library, surrounded by hundreds of volumes, most of which lie has never opened, which lie has only bought for the same reason that ancient kings of the East used to acquire wives—to add to his glory. I can imagine him having no real ownership ill those books at"all. Read John Galsworthy's novel, "A Man of Property,- and you have tlie picture of an individual who was in legal possession of many things, including a wife, but who did not own one of them, his wife least of all, -because he had no knowledge of the soul. So true it is that

ALL REAL POSSESSION* IS OF THE SPIRIT, AND XOT OF THE I'LESII, that what is of the body only is never truly our, own until the soul of that possession passes into and abides in ours. And more, what we get in this way will remain ours, when the outward semblance of it is destroyed. What we have really gained in spirit from the beauties of God's handiwork, from our work and front our friends is the real title-deed of possession, and when all the limitations of sense have vanished away, will abide with us for ever. And it is for this real possession wo must strive at any cost, and pray tliat God will make us fit fnv it, and bear any pain and 'hardship that we may possess it. As Stevenson says, l 'Tf beams from happy human eyes Have moved me not; if morning shies, Books and my food, and summer rain Knocked at my sullen heart in vain. Lord, Thy most pointed pleasure take And stab my spirit broad awake." Surely this was In St. Paul's minil wJien he wrote to the Corinthian Christians, "All' this are yours." At the time ia which lie lived what above all things distinguished the Christian Church from the outside world ,was the resurrection hope. St. Paul was writing to men who were "looking for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world do come/' to whom

the future life was far .more real and practical than this. It is usual to speak of such people as "unworldly," because they look forward to another and a better life. In reality it is only they,, only those who have within them the sure and certain hope of everlasting life, who can in a true sense possess the tilings of this world. The materialist, the hedonist who grabs everything tangible he can get hold of. and sees in it nothing but the tangible, is in reality what the hymn calls "a stranger here." Tiie world is his enemy. He must snatch from a hostile and reluctant universe such fleeting joys as he may, for lie is but the creature of a day. The :M in no sense belongs to him; lie •."> to it, and one day it will go ■! him. He does not leave tjie v " i'en he dies: the world leaves him, i,.., knowledge, his experience, are ot' no permanent use to him. They are not truly his, and this is his dreary philosophy, the only clue to life that lie liius got. "One moment in annihilations waste, One moment of the well of life to taste; The stars are setting, and t,he caravan Starts for the dawn of nothing, oh! make haste.

Oh! make the most of what ye yet may spend Before ye too into the earth descend, Dust into dust, and under dust to lie, Sans wine, sans song, sans singer, and sans end." One so placed cannot call the world his own though he may own all the millions of America, for he cannot make them fruitful and meaningful for him. Their purpose is bounded by the grave. Their meaning is limited by death. What, then, is the message 1 have to give you this evening? It is this: Beware of anchoring your life to things that have got no soul in them. Beware of being dependent on outside things for your happiness. There is no safe anchorage there. You cannot get the best out of life as long as you know that your happiness is governed by your circumstances —if yon knew, e.g., that you would be made utterly wretched and your whole life completely dismantled if you lost all your money to-morrow. Yet that is just what happens when a man anchors his happiness to his 'banking account, or to anything that it is in the power of men to take from him, or of accident or misfortune to destroy. If that would happen then it is a proof that he has never really owned these things at all—they have owned him. Who is the man who lets disappointment sour his whole life but lie who has anchored his happiness to worldly success? Who is the man crushed and overwhelmed by the loss of money but he who has never possessed it, who has let it possess him, who has hoarded it selfishly, or spent it selfishly, who has seen nothing in it but 'a means of obtaining comfort and security who has so used it, or failed to use it that he lias never discovered its soul? In the old days there was a well-known saying, "noblesse oblige,"i which meant that a man of good birth could not do mean things. He must be fine and generous. His secret honor constrained him. In these ' days when plutocracy has got astride of democracy, and it is not the aristocrat but the plutocrat whom the people have to watch, there should be and must be another motto, "riehesse oblige." The man of wealth must discover also a secret honor that will constrain him to justice and generosity, and to do that he must grip the soul 'of his wealth. For THERE IS A SOUL IN MONEY as there is in all things, and the trouble is that men treat it as if it had only a 'body, and though they know they cannot take the body, the actual tangible golden sovereign, the actual balance at the banker's, with them when they die, yet they persist in anchoring their lives to that body which they have to leave behind, therefore though they are in legal possession of the money, it is never really theirs. But he who regards his money as a trust for which he is eternally responsible—who knows the magic it can work in cramped, imprisoned lives, of the misery it can relieve, of the hope it can inspire, the dark places it can lighten, and the beauty it can scatter all around, he grips its soul, he makes it really his own, and when the actual body has been left behind, what he has gained out of it, from a right and beautiful use of it, lasts with him through all eternity. My friends, I have just taken money as an illustration, but t,he same thing applies to all life. W<< cannot make the things'of this world our own if we live for time only—we merely touch them and handle them, and perhaps soil them, as we go drifting by into darkness; wealth and knowledge and art, friends and lovers and comrades —to make them all "our own" for ever we must anchor our lives to the eternal, to\that which endures, to that which is everlasting, to Jesus Christ, the embodiment of the eternal, the Prince of life Whom death could not bind and hold, in Whom are all things and we in Him. That is to make life our own. Great is the fascination of the world and great are its prizes, but the greatest of them all—love itself—can only be truly possessed by him who believes and knows that for human love there is an enduring object, and for all beautiful experience a purpose that shall not die—who looks for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.