RELIGIOUS WORLD

Taranaki Daily News, 4 October 1919, Page 91

RELIGIOUS WORLD

WAVE AND TIDE On the far reef tie breakers Recoil in shattered foam, H'et still the sea behind them Urges its forces home; Its chant of triumph surges Through all the thunderous din— The wave may break in failure, I But the tide is sure to win! The reef 19 strong and cruel; Upon its jagged wall One wave —a score—a hundred, Broken and beaten fall; Yet in defeat they conquer, The sea comes flooding in— Wave upon wave is routed, But the tide is sure to win! O mighty sea! Thy message In clanging spray is cast; Within God's plan of progress i It matters not at last I How wide the shores of evil, How strong the reefs of sin— I The wave may be defeated, :< But the tide ia sure to win! f —Priscilla Leonard. HOW THE WORLD HAS TO BE EBBUILT. SHALL THE BUILDING BE OF GODf' (By Edward Shillito, in the Westminster Gazette). This is an hour in which mankind will do well to count up its resources. Which of you intending to build a tower sitteth not down first and counieth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? Man intends to build now; his hands are free; but has he sufficient of vision and patience and love? The destructive movement seems ended now. The preparations of death are over. On every hand men are calling upcui the builders to begin; but it is one thing to clear the ground, another to raise a new city. If the city is to be a city of God, it will not be built by accident; nisi Dominus frustra; mankind cannot improvise that city: if there is no vision and no moral passion man may build a thousand times and never chance upon the outlines of that city.

THE SECRET OF STRENGTH. It is an hour in which in its joy a"d gratitude mankind may well consider where its strength lies, and where, it may be, are the unexplored resources for .the day of building. No nation has triumphed in this war by the strength it counted upon at the beginning. There were reserves unknown; these turned the scale in the end. Nor can any reverent mind but tremble, to-day, as he remembers the conspiracy of all powers in the earth against the traitors to man's ordained life. To all who have betrayed Liberty a thousand voices have been sounding, "I am against you! And I, and I against you!" That great word addressed to Toussaint l'Ouverture has been fulfilled for us:

"Thou has groat allies; Thy friends are exultations, agonies, And love, and man's unconquerable mind." In the preparations for this day man can remember how sleepless and incalculable in their action the traitors were the Powers of earth! The war has taught nil who have ears to hear thai the nation which hurls itself against Freedom is breaking itself to fragments. That Power, which eludes our measures, and seems to laugh at our forecasts, can never be overlooked; we shall never doubt in this generation that, in the order of this world, that nation is condemned to shame and confusion which darej to betray man. There is a Hidden Hand, far mightier than we knew, and know. THE jriGHTY HELPER, It is the Unknown Factor that decides. There waits an energy of Love, unspent and unclaimed, for a race which will receive it. That Lord of power undreamed is waiting to come in. Upon Him it is possible for mankind to draw i« the hour of its need; H.- destroys; but He is the Eternal Builder. He is'the Tiny, hut He is also the Yea. There is One who stands at the door and knocks. In any reckoning of materials and powers for the new world, the Church of Christ can never forget that energy of love waiting at the threshold. It can never e'S?!iinate the Divine seeking; its God Has more concern for man than man has for himself- It means more to God than it does to man that he should come through I to his perfect life. Of this God it may be said that He is a-thirst for man; like as the hart panteth after the waterbrooks, so He seeks; after man. There appear to be two movements; from the side of eternity they may be only oneman seeking for God, God seeking for man. We are not in eternity yet; and from this side the two must be distinguished. To the Christian Faith both are real and needful; but this is the startling truth, it is its glory to set first, we love Him because He first loved us. In Advent, the Church does not dwell upon the vision of man standing before the gates heaven and knocking; it shows the more amazing picture of God standing at the door of the human heart. Eeee sto ad ostium et pulso. It tells how the kingdom of Grace is for ever pressing upon mankind, and its powers waiting to. be released.

"A knocking on the door, An echo far within; A rusted bolt drawn back, And Christ comes in." And by Christ is meant Christ with all His benefits—with His redemption and forgiveness—with His inexhaustible wealth of moral power—with His wisdom, so simple and so daring and so final —with His way of dealing with man's values—with His love and pity! Nor does He stand only at the door of the individual man. Before the vast door of the House of the World, where the rooms are nations, He stands and knocks. There is in Him the moral power waiting, in the strength of which order may come and a new fellowship in the house.

WHAT THE CHURCH MAY DO. In an hour when man sets out to order all things new, and counts up what is on his side, he cannot forget this Hidden Power. The Church may reinterpret, its ancient language; it must do that if it is to he intellectually sincere; but at the heart of all the hymns and counsels of such a season this truth abides; there are resources, which may break into human life as the waves break over the bar; there is l an everlasting love always at the service of mankind—a glorious destiny near at hand. "A hand upon the door-latch gropen, Knocking the man inside to open." The past days, therefore, are no measure of that which is to come. There is no inherited fear which cannot be banished; there is no hope which may not be fulfilled. Christianity, in its interpretation of Jiumaa life, keep? company indetd a long

way with Pessimism. It can outstrip all others in its account of the evil in the world. A primer of Pessimism might easily bo compiled from detached words in the Bible. Christianity, too, declares that it is night, and the world is in the evil one; this evil must be met and disclosed and overcome. Nothing is gained by ignoring its existence. But Faith pa: Is from Pessimism when it comes to deal with the long future and the inevitable end. It sets this life with all its evil in the heart of another world of incomparable splendour. It tells of One at the door in whom all this world with its powers draws night. Jt bids the noisy race of mankind be silent and hear through all the rooms of the House the sound of that knocking. It says age after age to the children of men, 'That knocking which echoes, though often faintly, in your conscience and mind, is the sign that you are not forgotten; you have great allies in your midst now, but it has never been yours yetto know what Beauty and Love and Power and Hope would enter if the bolt were drawn." JOHN RUSKIN'S BIBLE. Of his mother's teaching, which was founded on the Scriptures, John Ruskin leaves the following noble words: "I opened my oldest Bible just now, yellow now wtli age and flexible, but not unclean, with much use, except that the lower corners of the pages at the eighth chapter of the first book of Kings and the thirty-second chapter of Deuteronomy are worn somewhat thin and dark, the learning of these two chapters having caused me much pain. My mother's list of chapters, with which, learned every syllable accurately, she established my soul in life, has just fallen but of it, as follows: 'Exodus xv., xx-.; 2 Samuel; 1 Kings viii.; Psalms xxiii., x.vxii., xc, xei., cii., cxix., cxxxi.w; Proverbs ii., iii., viii., xii.; Isaiah lviii.; Matthew v., vi., vii.; Acts xxvi.; 1 Corinthians viii., xv.; James iv.; Revelation v. vi.' And truly, though I have picked up the elements of a little further knowledge ... in mathematics, meteorology, and the like, in after life, and owe not a little to the teaching of many and protective to me in all modes of thought, and the body 'of divinity they contain acceptable through all fear or doubt; nor through any fear or doubt or fault have I ever lost my loyalty to them, nor betrayed the first command in the one I was made to repeat oftencst. This material instillation of my mind in that property of chapters, I count very confidently the most precious, and. on the whole, the one essentia! part, of all uij education." v :, v / KEEPING AT ONE'S BEST. By Rev. J. H. Jowett, D.D. I "On Thee do I wait all jhe day."— Psalm xxv. 5. What I am thinking about is this—that so many of us only wait on God for a very little while,' and then we withdraw, ajajl it is all over. Our wait-

fa a. passing visit; it is nut an abiding. We merely call upon the Lord; we do not live with Him." We go and we come away; we do not wait on Him all the day. The trouble with many of us is found in this broken and fragmentary idea of the devotional life. We think of our devotions as a sort of discipline or gymnastics which we can pack "into five or ten minutes. We do not regard them las a vital communion which runs right through the day. And so fellowship comes to be looked upon as a kind of morning drill. Not that I would disparage the morning drill, even in physical exercises; but the morning drill is not worth much if it is followed by the careless indifference of a lounging attitude, or a shambling walk, "or if we huddle up in our chairs in an almost hunchbacked deformity. And the morning devotion is worth just as little if it is regarded as something we can do and have done with, and carry no shaping devoutness into the rest of the day. We have not really entered into the secret place of the Most High if we can leave it behind. The only vital fellowship is that which waits on God "all the day." Professor Gairdnev used to say, "One never knows what work God may ask one to do at any moment, and one should always be at one's best" And surely that is only a paraphrase of the Master's counsel: "Have your loins girt, and your lamps trimmed, and be ye ready." And if this spiritual readiness is to be ours it will demand a spiritual habit and not merely an occasional act. For it implies a. way of living. It means that the soul keeps itself reverently posed toward the eternal with an alert readiness to know and to do the will of the Lord. That is one of the shining distinctions of the angels of God: "They do His commandments barkening unto -the voice of His word." Their spirit is ever ready; they are alert and vigilant. They are receptive and appreciative, and their mood is constant. They serve Him day and night in His temple, and it is a service in which they never tire, and never grow old. Yes, we should always be at our best, ! and the secret of being at one's best is found in waiting on God "all the day.'' We must seek continuity of communion. We need a Divine fellowship which remains unbroken even in seasons of merriment and in the hours when we earn our daily bread. Our God is 1 a Companion for the whole journey. He will accompany us all the day and all the way. I