SUNDAY READING

Taranaki Daily News, 20 January 1917, Page 6

SUNDAY READING

""'SEEIXG IT THROUGH."' SERMON PREACHED BY HEV. A. Tl COLVILE, Ar.A., in St. Marv's Chun)!, New Plymouth, on Sunday, January 14. "Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the prime of this world be east out. And I, if Ihe lifted i!]) from the earth, will draw all men unto Me.'"—St. John xii., 31, 32. .There is in the world to-day in its hour of travail the stirring of'a great interest in Jesus Christ and His "message by men who may have considered themselves and been considered by others outside the pale of Christianity, a positive and compelling interest expressed for us in a new boo]; to which I shall presently allude and which has suggested to me the thoughts of this sermon. "Now is the judgment of this world" —how wonderfully true those words ring out to-day. flow eloseiy thev seem to lit in with the situation in 'which the world finds itself at this hour, with this horror and torment of war. We can alm6st see our Lord standing in the midst and trying the words out to us again and again, "Now is the judgment of tlu world"'—now. Is the wai then a "judgment"? Xot in the conventional sense in which we sometimes use t/ie word. "Those eighteen on whom the tower of Silvaro fell" were not suffering a judgment. Yet the war is a judgment in two ways. It is the natural and inevitable outcome of materialism and mifaith, of self-seeking, ot the spirit of greed, relentless and remorseless. All this had been making for war. For Ion" the sword had been hanging over Europe, but vfe persuaded ourselves it would never fall; we trusted to mutual selfinterest, to mutual fear; we trusted to humanitarian ethics, to' the fascination of scientific progress, to popular control of governments and to many other flimsy things to protect us, to stand between us and the dark threat of disaster, and then the judgment came, natural, inevitable. I am not going to labor the point. It has been presented to us so often and in so many different "'iys, and thoughtful people acknowledge it to be true. Read Mr. H. G. Wells' new book', ,"Mr. Britiing Sees it Through." It is nn excellent description of the awakening of the average thinking Englishman to the full reality of the war and to the significance of the Christian religion m relation thereto. The war is not a punishment "sent"' or inflicted on the world by an all-powerful and offended God, but it is the natural inevitable consequence of

THE DRIFT OF LIFE AWAY FROM GOD, away from the spiritual towards the material. The. shattered health of the drunkard, the poisoned mind'of the sensualist, the ruined home of the gambler, these are in the same sense judgments, not vindictive punishments imposed by some enraged power, but natural and inevitable penalties that men incur by rejecting the law and love of God. So this horrible but inevitable' war is a judgment, and every new example of "irightfulness," every freshlyissued casualty list, every tear and every pang, every outburst of hatred, every cry of despair deepens in our minds and hearts the sense of present judgment. But that is not all Judgment also implies a test. Now is the test of this world; now are we being put to the proof. Will (he world rind its way back to God out of the blood and mire of war? \Are those spiritual optimists right in declaring that in much pain and torment the soul of man will be born again? Will a real national, nay, an international, repentance for past sins and mistakes, for tragic failures and deliberate ignorance liberate our spirits and bring to us the blessing of an inward peace? Once more, do we not feel the test that we are undergoing? Does not every call to sacrifice that comes to us, every friend with whom we part, every wounded man who comes back to us shattered and shaken in health, yes, every grave that we can see in imagination in those far-distant lands deepen the test and etyphasise the call of God to repentance. "Now is the judgment of this world," cried Jesus Christ as He went to His death tliat others might live. Yes, the Cross was the judgment, both the inevitable penalty and the test of the heart of the world, in every saddened life, in every rent heart, in' the tears of thousands, in the woe of the world we discern the judgment of God. And what else can we discern in this great Cross on which the world hangs to-day? Surely a hope, a prophecy of the overthrow of the evil that has nailed it there. "Now," said Jesus Christ, "shall the prince of this world be cast out,'' the enemy that dominates i'.ia lives of men, and holds their hearts in thrall, How silly, how futile it is to despise one's enemy and undcr-estimate the force he is able to bring against one! Over and over again we have been taught this lesson, and over and over again we have disregarded it, and have dignified our blind stupidity with the name of optimism. Now Jesus Christ was under no delusion as to the reality, the force, the tremendous malignity of the power of evil. It was not merely a negative thing; it was not merely human ignorance, susceptibility to temptation or the weakness of human nature °i>.i human will with which He was con-i-.-i.i.'ci!, but the positive, organised hos- • tiiii'- of a power which had enslaved man and still rules the world. It is quite clear, too, that our Lord believed in the personality of a Tempter (He speaks many times of this personality as "the devil"), a being very much alive who stirred ip the worst passions of men. who marshalled and arrayed the

FORCES OP EVIL AGAINST GOD, \'no carried on not merely a defensive -'■•, entrenching his armies against the ■j'srd march'of moral iml spiritual r.i'jress, but who .was constantly at- ■ king, now nibbling at somo 'salient" ne good principle in the life, some dly-won ideal, now rushing at an esiisiied position in overwhelming mini- - fully alive to every trick- am" si">.■'uge of war, ever ready to make new ■ ■, nee?, to form fresh cliques and 'm:s, utterly unscrupulous, utterly imputing. Such was without doubt our .;'.!> estimate of evil, and this (I say ; - of myself'as much as any of my ■:hi'i'ii) was one of the realities of i that we had forgotten. We had nine very largely disciples of that , nchman (I forget his name) who .:med to have "abolished sin." We .-hut our eyes to the fact tha,t evil was ;: active, positive, desperately malignt thing. We lived happily enough " mifgli somewhat' restlesslj on the sur.iee of We,.: Such evil as existed was

[due, we thought, chiefly to social and economic causes, which the advance of ■science and education would in the course of time destroy. For the restwell, it was futile to worry much about mora! evil and what the Church called "sins," of which a man was hardly conscious'as long as he was "up and doing." As for relying on spiritual forces to defend us, well, we hardly recognised that there were such tilings', that they could be necessary, or that there was any "bite" in them supposing they were. Now war has forced on the world this one thing at least—the reality of the power of evil "It is just hell" is what the men who Ire seeing it through confess it to be, and now .that the first excitement and glamor has worn off we who stay at home can. gravely accept that judgment. In the book to which I have referred a very suggestive chapter is that headed "Malignity," whiqh describes the second stages of the awakening of Mr. Britling, th. philosophic English optimist and writer of literary essays, to the horrible activity of &vil and, the reality of its power." "But I suy," be says feebly on being confronted with the evidence of some? new horror, "it's the sort of thing that might come out of a lunatic asylum." Just so. So once we might all have thought. A few years ago, if we had been told, am! realised as we had been told,

THE AWFUL AXD APPALLING POWERS

that were to rage over the world, we should have thought "only lunatics could conceive and do these things." Now we know the reality, the strengtli and malignity of evil, and the fact that our eyes are open, that we see evil now as Christ saw it, gives us courage to fight against its power wherever we find' it, and hope that in our time the words of Christ shall come true, "Now shall the prince of this world be cast out." But how? Think of His next words.' How did He go on? "If I be lifted up from the earth will draw all men unto Me." That is, quite simply, by the Cross. Christ, a suffering, broken Christ, lifted up in the world and in the souls of men. There is a beautiful legend believed in by the fisher-folk of a certain village on the coast of Britanny. It is said that where the sea now rolls immediately in frbnt of the village there once stood-a mighty city with domes and spires and many rare and stately buildings. But one day a great inundation took place and the city sank far down beneath the waters of the ocean; there it will remain .mtil the day of resurrection, when it will rise to the surface once more in all its former glory. And the fishermen tell'that when they are out in their boats, sometimes on a calm, dear night, sometimes when a storm is raging they can hear deep down the tolling of the 'cathedral bell in the depths oAhe submerged city. Do you see what a significant parable that is of the world of to-da* and of a man s soul'' The world is submerged, as it were at this hour beneath the cruel waves of hate and fear and disaster, and the evil passions of men run high. Yet deep down the cathedral bell tolls. It tolls for the Cross. It tolls the knell of those who are passing triumphantly by the wav of the Cross to the glory of a fuller'life beyond, and it tolls for each one of us the summons to sacrifice- it rings the note of the future, the resurrection of the world, it tells _us that God is here in His world suffering with the suffering of the world; it rings out the note of hope, it tells of something buried but not destroyed, something gloriously waiting to bo revealed to our conscious experience- in the. days to come. Yes,

THE WORLD GOES TO THE CROSS and Christ goes with the world. Think of the contrast, one of the most dramatic in the Bible, between Herod in his palace and the thief upon the Cross. To Herod 4 in the smooth luxury of his life Jesus Christ could give no word ft, hope. To the thief in his torment Jesus said, "To-day thou shalt be with Me in 'Paradise." The world has been like Herod, smooth and comfortable and careless, and God was forgotten, and the power of evil was able to gather all his forces secretly for the great attack. Now Herod has been torn from his palace- and nailed to the Cross, and Jcsns is there numbered •among the transgressors waiting for the appeal, "Lord, remember me." Will the appeal come? Will the power of the Cross break the heart of the world and uplift the souls of liven? God grant it. Remember, there was another cross on with an impenitent man perished, reviling and rejecting his Saviour. Here J .s our test. If this war produces only hardness and carelessness and sensual f.olly, then the world will have failed to pass the .test and will have been nailed to the. Cross in vain.' But if we find Christ, as the man in the story who sees it through found' Him, the Christ who suffers with us and struggles with us, and is always by our side upon the Cross, the Ch>Ut who' lifts up the world