SUNDAY BEADING

Taranaki Daily News, 13 January 1917, Page 6

SUNDAY BEADING

1 loyalty: i sermon preached by kkv. a. 11. COLVILE, M.A., at St. Mary's Church, New iPlymoutli. '•Be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee a crown of life.''—Rev. it., IK s Be loyal The word "faithful"' here means loyal, and there is surely no liner or grander watch word' for us to take over with us into the new year than this "be loyal unto death";, that you may live, and he conscious of that crown of lite, "Well done." Loyalty: it's meaning? Well, you may put many meanings to it; you may limit it, you may make it a negative 'thing; you whittle it down to a mere hit of threadbare morality—passive obedience; for example, to some form of government without making the smallest sacrifice for your country; the bare refusal fo speak ill of a friend, without really sticking 'tip for him; 01 the .mechanical acknowledgment of the claims of the Church on some small portion of your time, without any true membership at all; or you may burlesque it, so that it wastes itself in loud protestations or spends itself in frenzied denunciations and ridiculous boastings, Indeed, a great deal of what sometimes passes for loyalty we may usefully leave behind we enter upop this new year, and it will be no loss either to ourselves and our friends, to our Church or to our country. But the true loyalty that St. John speaks j>f here, of which he reminds the members of the church of Smyrna, one of those infant churches that was just feeling its way towards life and liberty and usefulness in jf poverty and tribulation, that true loyalty was an intense and sustained passion; it was a bright and yet a steady (lame; it was much moie than a morality, it was a religion: and that is the sort of loyalty we all need as we set our'faces bravely towards this coming year with all its changes and chances, its difficulties and perils, its hopes and disappointments. Only the loyalty that is to us a religion will carry us through, only a sincere passionate devotion to what is greater than our own Selves and our own interests and our class interests, to that which is outside ourselves and yet lies close to our hearts, will' avail to ennoble and enrich ou. lives and make this new year (whether it bring peace Ito the worid or not) a year pi real progress and of good success.

LOYALTY IS A RELIGION', and must therefore/be first of all and last of all, loyalty to God, lor loyalty to God is the basis and inspiration of all the loyalties of everyday life. We need, as never before, to make men realise that they cannot touch the higher and finer achievements of life until they have won to this supreme allegiance. Whenever you .find in a nation, in .1 town, in a home, a weakening, a slackening of this loyalty to God, you will find that al! the other and more visible one are in peril, and life become? a confused medley of self-seeking and • (■]!■ pieasing. Those who ihink to Ic.vo Ood out of modern thought and modern life are cutting at the root of all tinloyalties, the national loyaltie* of subject to king, of citizen to country, th: domestic loyalties of.husband to wife of child-to narcnt. and the every-dav loyalties, of friend to friend, of a mar to ois work, of n woman to her home, Ml are in dancer if there is no sense of faithfulness to what is greater than them all if there is no loyalty to God, ••'lf God did'not exist." said Voltaire •'it would be necessary to invent Him." which was his inverted way ot saying that the best proof of the existence of God is the fact that we cannot do without Him. And this is the lesson the war is teaching the, world to-day. My friends, this last, Sunday of the vear has been appointed as a day of thanksgiving nnd intercession <n connection with the war, and so it is being observed all over the Empire. Xow, thanksgiving and intercession, if they are real, must spring from an intense and (Vhole-'hearted Joyalty, loyalty to 'our cause, to our Allies, and to our own men, both those who are now bearing the burden and heat of the day, those who have been wounded and crippled by disease in this great struggle, and'those who have given their lives for us and for the future, of the world. And surrounding all these loyalties, transcending them all, but including them all, is our loyalty to Gpd. And this loyalty means'in the first place—thanksgiving. I think we sometimes forget this; in- ' gratitude that has, its roots in selfishness and conceit, that so easily slips into bitterness and discontent and expresses itself in grumblings and carpings and backbitings, is a sure destroyer ofjloyaltj. I think we sometimes fail to realise that if we would keep a.loyal heart we must keep a thankful heart towards Rod and towards out fellows. We may be conscious of mistakes made in the past in this war; we have bad our disappointments and reverses; we may not have made as mifeh progress as we'ought to have made, but for what great things have we to''thank God! Because He has preserved us and our cause from failure and disaster and kept us and out Allies firm and united and brought success within our reach. We thank Him to-day for the

SPIRIT OF SACRIFICE that has lit up so many lives, for the qualities of courage and unselfishness which pain and peril has revealed in so many men and woi'nen, for that crown of life that they have already won, for those who have borne loss and desolation with patience and fortitude; aye, and we thank Him for those who have died, for every man who has given all a man can give for us and for our cause, the very thought of whom should keep us steadfast unto the end, and inspire us with the determination that there shall be no weakening, no faltering in our purpose, lest by holding back we should he guilty' of disloyalty to the dead and roty the world of the fruit of their sacrifice. Yes, my friends, our loyalty to God includes loyalty to them, and it is not a submissive but a passionate loyalty, burning brightly with the spirit of thanksgiving. Do you know Lowell's great commemoration ode for those who fell in the American Civil War? May I quote a few lines to you': I with uncovered head Salute the sacred dead Who went and who return not. Say' not so 'Tis not the grapes of Canaan that repay, But the high faith that failed not by the way. [ And to the saner mind f We rather seem the dead that stayed behind, 4. „

Blow trumpets, all your exultations Mow, „ I see them muster in a gleaming row. i In every nohlor mood We feel the orient of their spirit glow Part of our life's unalterable good. They come transfigured backSecure from change, in tlieir highhearted ways, beautiful evermore, and with the rays Of morn on their w'hite shields of expectation. '■Their white shields of expectation"— my friends, let us be loyal to that expectation. Let u; thank Cod not only for the past but foi the future, and in His strength go iorwafd, faithful unto death that we too may receive a crown of life. Thanksgiving—yes, and intercession; the two go hand in hand and both together will preserve us in our loyalty. Continual prayer is the continual acknowledgment of one greater, stronger, holiei than ourselves: it is the surest proof we can give of our loyalty to Him Who is invisible, but in Whom we live aiid move and have our being, and intercession is a taking of others into that loyalty and assuring ourselves of faithfulness to them. To weaken, to slacken in oiiv intercessions a? the days go on and the end becomes nearer would be to enroll ourselves in the

IGXOBLE COMPANY OF SHIRKERS. Nay, the number of those who meet together in this Church every week should be greater this year than ever before. We must put at the back hi the great final efforts our men will be making—the intense spiritual force of earnest and sustained prayer, and such prayer will keep us loyal, loyal to them, loyal tc our cause and loyal tc our God, and it is not only those who have friends at the front who should come. Realise that as a member of Christ's Church ou earth your life is bound up with the life of others. The Church bids you pray with others and for others to watch with them through these dangerous and anxious hours. Be faithful to them now, and if the shadow of death falls across their path, you will have earned the right to'share their sorrow, and a , right to touch their, crown. Be loyal unto death. May I say one more word that can be applied secondarily to the change that will take place in this parish during the coining year. Loyalty to Cod includes loyalty to God's cause, to God's work. We can well understand this when we look back on the past yeai and. out into the future. How many brave men have we lpst in the year that has gone (Lord Kitchener greatest), but thousands of others, and how many more we shall lose God knows. But the work goes .on and we are loyal to that work, for it is always greater than the men who do it. just as God is greater than either. Now, this is the loyalty of which T would remind you, both in grave national affairs and in smaller ■parochial matters. Loyalty to what is [greater than men. ' Have you heard the story of Ida Lewis, the woman who helped her husband, the keeper of'a lonely lighthouse on the Atlantic coast; One night the keeper went out m a storm to aid those in distress and never csdic back, and she took his place Despite her loneliness and sorrow she kept the light burning through all the nights and storms of many years. Her labor had its-perils. It had what was much harder to endure, its daily % -call to fidelity. She would not have chosen such a life, but she chose how to live, it when she found it. Climbing the lonely stairway evening by evening, site still did her duty. She was loyal to the work, loyal to the cause, though her leader and hclpen was gone. My friends, there are thousands of such loyal lives to-day, and the world may thank God for thein. 'ln that brave company enroll yourselves. Your cause may be your country, your home, your family, your work; naj, it includes them all. Or it may be some particular thing, the carrying on of some task left undone by one who has fallen asleep, only half" completed by one who has gone away, but whatever it is, be loyal To it, loyal to the end; let not loneliness or disappointment weaken you, or shake your faithfulness to what is greater far than man, and whether you succeed or fail, as the world counts failure and success, that loyalty, that loyalty to God which has been the key-note of voitr days here and whieh is above all other, will win for you a crown of everlasting life—"Well done, good and loyal servant."