SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, 2 July 1921, Page 9

SUNDAY READING.

THU ART OF BEING KIND. “The Lord deal kindly with you, as ye have dealt with the dead and with me.”—Ruth L, 8. “The fruit of the Spirit icf kindness.” —Gal. V. 22. (By Rev. A. H. Collins, New Plymouth.) There ere three books in the Bible which effectually redeem , Eastern womanhood from reproach: “The Book of Ruth,” “The Book of Esther,” and “The Song of Songs.” The first supplies an example of maidenly modesty, the second a pattern of queenly grace, the third a picture of womanly fidelity. Ruth the Moabite, “standing amid the alien corn,” charms us by her rustic beauty; Esther wins uh by her royalty; the swarthy Shulamite gladdens us by her love, which could not be corrupted by the blandishments of a kinglv suitor. These idyllic stories are less read than they deserve to be; yet they soften and humanise the judgments, the thunders, the sovereignty, and the grandeur of other parts of this Holy Book. The Bible might easily have been too majesties 1:

“Too great and good. For human nature's daily food.”

Multitudes of readers can follow the story of Ruth, who cannot understand Ezekiel or Daniel, just as the many feel the power of the parable of the Prodigal, who cannot interpret the mysteries of the Apocalypse. Thank God for the domestic scenes and. the shining virtues of the Bible’s’humble folk’ Thank God for Naomi and Ruth, no less than St. Peter and Saint Paul! The story of our text is very simple, but like many simple things, it is near neighbour to the sublime, and if I can only tell it aright, you will discover that it anticipates the spirit of Him who is breathing a new temper into the world.atemper that will yet end our social frictions, and make war impossible.

Yonder, bathed in the Eastern sunlight. stand three lone women at the fork of the road. Each has a wound in her heart, for each is a widow. One of them is old, and wrinkled, and grey, a stranger in a strange land. Life lies behind her. Poor soul, she is returning to the land of her fathers, but it is a sad home-going, for in the land of strangers she has emptied her heart to fill a grave, thrice over. The others are young, though widowed. Life may still hold some good things for them, and at least they are amongst friends. The lonely and aged woman reads the hearts of the younger ones. They mean to cling to her. But that, must not he. They must return, each to her mother’s house. They must not give up the pleasure and promise of life for her. Why should there be three wrecks in one day There in the sunlit road that leads to her desolated home, Naomi speaks words which have in them such music as I hope may never die out of our hearts so long as they shall beat. “The Lord deal kindly with you, as ye have dealt with the dead and with me.” “I shall never forget you, or your goodness to me, and to those who were mine; to- my husband, and to my sons who were your husbands. I shall never forget. By all the dear memories of the days that have passed beyond recall, and by all the loving kindness you made to breathe through those days, the Lord Himself deal kindly with you. That is my prayer for you. That is my benediction. And now, my dear daughters, turn back home. Salaam!” Blessed are the lips that could speck such words, and blessed the ears that could receive them as Ruth and Orpah did. For the grace of kindness is one of the most God-like things on earth, and it will survive and spread when much that is more pretentious has passed into the limbs of forgotten things.

It may he said (hat this grace is not exclusively Christian, that it is not unknown in lands unvisited by the messengers of Christ, and that writers who never claimed Divine inspiring have nevertheless sung its praises. This is only true if you give limited interpretation to the words “Christian” and inspiration. Dickens left behind him twenty precious volumes, and there is probably no passage in them all that has made a deeper impression than that which came from “Poor Joe” in “Bleak House”: “He was wory good to me, he wos.” You may remember how the life of the lonely ]ad came to centre in the one thought of the friend and benefactor, who made the London street-cross-ing a shining pathway, and lighted the way for him, at last into the City of God. “I’ve been a-chivied and a-chivied, first by one and nixt by another, till I'm worrited to skins and bones. . .

He wos very good to me, he wos, he wos the only one I knowed to speak to, as ever come across my crossing. . . It’s time for me to go to that there buryin’ ground where they laid him. and ask to bp put along with him. I wants to go there and be berried. He used fur to say to me, ‘I am as poor as you to-day, Joe; says he. I wants to tell him that I am as poor as him now, and have come to he laid along with him.”

I confess I would rather be the author of that passage than the writer of many a thick book supposed to be religious. As we think our way through the pages of this English master of fiction, pages sown thick with comedy and tragedy, it is’this passage that supplies the cine to Dickens’ immortality. He was kindly <ind genial, and “Poor Joe” sums it all up in notes that chime like silver bells. “He wos wery good to mo, he wos.” Nor do I feel that such words are unworthy to stand beside Saint Paul’s great hymn of love: “Now abideth faith, hope. love, and the greatest of these is love.”

This is the grace of God. the grace that saves us from ourselves, and from our sins, the grace that makes life livable and lovable, the grace that is better than life. Well has it been said: “The world can get along without genius, but not without love. When it will not listen to the brilliant man, it will listen to the loving brother.” Scholarship, culture, capacity, the warrior’s dash, the poet’s charm, the statesman’s foresight, we need them all; but the indispensable thing is the loving kindness which cultivates—“A heart at leisure from itself, To soothe and sympathise.” I have mentioned Dickens. There is another not unworthy to stand in the same shining rank. It was part of R. L. Stevenson’s working creed that “the whole necessary morality is kindness, and it should spring of itself from the one fundamental doctrine of faith. If you are sure that in the long run God means kindness by you, you should be happy, and if happy surely you should be kind. -Stevenson gave to his creed the endorsement of life.

jj-that bravp heart had ceaspd to beat in ! his loved Samoa, aii Australian journalist wrote thifi story: “Some years ago fl Jay ill in San Francisco, an obscure f. journalist, quite friendless. Stevenson *knew me slightly, came to my bedside, land said, ‘I suppose you are like all |of us, you don’t keep your money. Now, lif a little loau, as between one man of letters and another—eh ?’ This to a lad j writing -rubbish for a vulgar eheet in California!” It would be easy to multiply instances of his great kindness. Kindness was a vital part of his creed, because he was sure God meant kindness bv him.

I have confessed that this lovely flower blooms in lands and hearts not called “Christian,” and this is true, but it is only true because God has not left Himself without a witness in any land. Nevertheless kindness is a Christian grace. We are justly proud of the reforms that mark the century. But there are still wide fields io teap. Christian kindness must temper political economy, administer public charity, and soften trade disputes, or the machinery of modern life will pull the social fabric, down. And here it will be well to make clear just what the Apostle means, for I fancy “kindness” is something less, and more, than we sometimes think. The translators of the Authorised and Revised Versions and the R.V. have used three words to express the one Greek word, “kindness,” “gentleness” “goodness.” Perhaps it is not too much to say that neither word, alone, hits the subtle sense of the Greek. “Goodness” may be austere and repellant, chaste as ice and as cold. “Kindness” is goodness with the added charm of warmth and geniality. It stands opposite to severity and allied to philanthropy. It is used of God in His Fatherly relations. You have human examples in Joseph, and David, and Barnabas, and chiefly in Him whom the pagans called “Christos,” that is “The Kind One.” Kindness is moral sunshine that ripens and slays, ripens fruit and slays weeds. But it is separated by the whole heavens of distance from some things called by the name. “Kindness” is not amiable weakness.

“Call me what you like,” said One. “Call me hot-tempered, or mad, or anything else, but don’t call me amiable.” I know what he means. It was a merry protest against against sacharine sweetness, the soft and pliable, natures that earn a cheap reputation for virtue to which they have just claim. People say of such: “How kind he is,” when the truth is he is only pliable and weak. Peace at any price isn’t Christian. Meekness is not readiness to toady. Neither is sleek servility. “Kindness” is not inconsistent with moral indignation. All greet natures, from St. Paul io Gladstone, have been volcanic in the presence of wrong. Jesus scorched the Pharisees. Better the ocean that can storm and boil than the pool that is placid because it is shallow. Kindness, which is the fruit of the spirit, is the quality that tempers harsh judgments and makes large allowances for human frailty. Kindness discriminates between infirmity and vice, between the accidents of birth and fixed habits of wickedness. Le Clerc, who was blind, walking in Paris, stumbled against a young man, who resented the supposed insult by striking the blind man full in the face. Le Clerc quietly said, “Sir, you will be sorry for what you have done when you know that I am blind.”

We act harshly for want of consideration. If we stopped to enquire we might discover that tJie imagined wrong is due to a defect which calls for compassion more than for blame. We of the Anglo-Saxon stock are reserved and close. We keep a firm hand on our feelings. We don’t gush. We are apt to be taciturn. We are sparing of compliments and frugal of praise. But it may be carried too far, and in some cases it amounts to cruelty and injustice. How many a shy child would find incentive to better being, and better doing, if met with a little sincere and timely praise! How many of our social frictions would “fold their tents like the Arabs, and as silently steal away,” at the touch of a bit of kindness! How (many a disheartened worker in the church would take heart of grace ff you would drop criticism, and speak, approvingly! It is not that we mean to be unjust, but what with our natural reserve, and our false notions of dignity, we kill friendship by withholding moral sunshine.

“Man shall not live by bread alone.” The heart needs refreshing. If some of the sweet and tender things that are chiselled on gravestones were graven on human hearts, the dead would not be so many, or the living so sad. Don’t keep your alabaster cruse till friends have gone; spill the sweetness now. The kind things you mean to say when the loved are the departed, say before they depart. The flowers you mean to send to their sepulchres, send to their homes. “Above all things be kind,” says Pere Lacordare. “Kindness is the one thing through which we can be like God and most disarm men. Kindness in mutual relations is the chief charm of life.”

“So many gods, so many creeds, So many ways, that wind and wind, When, all the help this sad world needs Is just the art of being kind.”

“The fruit of the spirit is kindness.” It is one. of the rarest of the fruits of the spirit. It hangs on the topmost boughs where the sun paints its softest beauty, and ripens its sweetest fruits; the kindness of a mother to her child’, an elder sister to an erring brother, and one church member to all the rest. These are the sights which angels linger to look upon, as they journey home to God.