SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, 6 August 1921, Page 9

SUNDAY READING.

GOD ALMIGHTY’S GENTLEMEN. ‘ To all God’s loved, ones at Rome, called to be Saints.” (Waymoutli Translation.) —Rom. I. 7. (By Rev. A. H. Collins, New Plymouth.) “Saint” is a word that belongs to the aristocracy of language, a royal, courtly, blue-blooded word descriptive of God Almighty's gentlemen. Saint is God’s ideal man, the finished product of redeeming grace. But this shining New Testament Vord has fallen on evil times. It is to many a sign of reproach. It is associated with narrowness, cant, and fustian. Many men would feel insulted if you applied it to them. They would rather be known to be wicked than thought to be a saint; and when tiiey wish to use a word of concentrated scorn, they find it here, and say, “Oh! he’s one of your saints.” Of course, such speech is a sorry compound of ignorance and prejudice, and the people who say these things have not even a nodding acquaintance with the meaning of the word. It is the unconscious compliment that vice -often pays to virtue; Every virtue has its counterfeit. There are quacks in medicine, bogus degrees in scholarship, and spurious coins in circulation. There are two influences which have helped to discredit this word. .One of them is churchliness. When you speak of a saint, people think of radiant figures burning ip stained glass glory, in the chancel windows of a cool, dark church; saints dressed in glass goat skins and sheep skins; saints whose pictures stream in bright, mysterious tints over the brasses of the walls, and bear antique names—fciaint Dominic, Saint Francis, Saint Theresa, and Saint Mary; but as Andrew Marvel says, “Never Saint Martha.” Some time ago a ritualistic clergyman said there had only been two saints since the Reformation! Two saints in, the last three hundred years! Of course I he was thinking of the Roman article, the mediaeval saint, a monk with a cowl, or a nun with a veil, a fervid mys- ; tic wrapped in contemplation and vigils, and, because Protestantism docs not encourage that type, he would have us believe that, with two honorable exceptions, saints have disjappeared! It is the use of the word in this ecclesiastical s.*nse that has helped to remove the word from the vocabulary of healthyminded, practical folk, and cast about it an air of unreality which breeds contempt. Only the critic should remember that such is not the New Testament use of the word. <; ln every work regard the author’s end, Since none can practice more than he intend.”

More potent, however, in discrediting the term “saint” is the fact that come have worn the livery' of heaven and served the devil. In not a few instances the mediaeval saint was lazy, and dirty, and ignorant, to a degree well nigh incredible. “The holy man” of the East is not seldom a ‘ sorry example, of manhood: and there are examples nearer home that are far from ideal. We are

sometimes asked to believe that the hess people are those with most crotchets!” Godliness used to be a question of the Ton Commandments, the Seven Beatitudes, and the Graces of Faith. Hope, and Charity. Now it is often simply a question of sound views on eschatology and eccentric methods of evangelism. Dickens has lampooned the type in his

“Stiggins,” “Chadbcind” and “Uriah Heep,” and I don’t complain. It is good that all pretence and hypocrisy should ho made to look ridiculous. But when the New Testament speaks of “saints” it means neither the men and women who figure in .the church calendar, nor the moral cripples that Dickens and George Eliott scourged so thoroughly. Taking the New Testament as our guide, wo shall find three things mark the saints. First, sainthood is -a question of ethics and not of esthetics, of morality' anc| not ceremonialism. It is high character, and not high churchmanship. It is pure living, noble deeds, and daily walk with God in the dusty ways of life, and not Gregorian music, mysterious masses, and a jewelled mitre. Then sainthood is practical rather than ecclesiastical. One of the greatest things Luther did was to bring the church into the home and show how sublimest truths can express themselves in “the daily round and common task.” That just as summer flowers, white, blue and golden, creep down the rough railway cutting and turn the track o? commerce into a pathway of beauty, so religion penetrates the rough ways of the world, and gives them the color and the fragrance of the sky. This third thing also is true. Sainthood is for public life and not for cloisteral seclusion. Religion is what the gardener calls a “hardy.” “The white flower of a blameless life” grows best in the open. Look up the use of the word “saint” in the Pauline letters, and yon will find /they were citizens, living in Ephesus, Corinth, Philippi, and Rome, with all the excitement, and splendor, and devilry of these elegant places. It was as if one should address a- letter to ‘The saints at Monte Carlo,” and Paris, Jind Chicago, and the recipients of the letter would, he “Saint Tom. - ' in a suit of dungaree; “Saint Bill.” lumping on the wharf; and “Saint George,’’ working at the carpenter’is bench-, for it is in such places, and such people, you will -see “the faith and patience of the saints.” Interpret saint in this way. this Now Testament way, and you need offer no apology for retaining the word in your vocabulary. It means neither “ignoramus” nor "milksop.” The saints of the Bible touched earth, and were real men and women, saints who could say and do foolish things, saints with a temper, saints that often blundered and sinned, saints with personal anxieties, family cares, and business worries, saints like Paul and Barnabas, who quarrelled; like Onesiphorus, who ran away from duty; like Thomas, who doubted; and Peter, who swore! A friend of the family called to enquire after the health of Dr. Alexander Whyte. “How is the Doctor to-day?” asked the visitor. The servant maid answered, “Oh, he’s awful wecl. He sups his parige and grows holier every day.” It was far from being a poor answer. Thanks be to God there are still mon and women who quietly and bravely do their daily task and walk in the fear of God, and when people tell me saint is an extinct type. I wonder what company they keep, and when they calmly tell us they don’t want to be saints, I can only pity and wonder —pity their ignorance and wonder at their perversity. For saint isn’t a label taeked on, it is an ideal presented, and the man who has no ideal need not boast of- that, it will cripple him all his days. If you accept the challenge of the text, and Strive to reach the shining goal, you may suffer many a set-back, and never be all you dream of being in this life; but if you start by saying, “I don’t want to be a

saint,” you simply kick down the ladder by which the best men have climbed. The man who aims at a gooseberry bush will never hit a star. I know it is sometimes said that sainthood is beyond the reach of average human nature; that to say all are called to be saints is about as irrational as to say that all men might be poets like Keats or musicians like Beethoven. The ideal is unattainable. Exalted piety is as far beyond the common herd aa exalted poetry. Jesus Christ did not think so. Saint Paul did not find it so. History does not say this. Mind, I don’t say it is easy. It isn’t easy. Nothing in this life that is worth while is easy. But it is possible, and if you put as much into your religion as you put into win1 ning a game, or passing an examinaI tion! “No man becomes a saint in his I sleep.” ; This letter was addressed to “the < saints at Rome,” the saints in Caesar’s household. Think of that. It seems incredible. Can snowflakes live in a blast furnace? Saints in Rome! Saints in Nero’s palace! Can men handle pitch and keep clean hands? Only a miracle of Divine grace could make it possible; but Christianity is a miracle of grace, or it is nothing. The life of these slaves of the palace was a life of colossal difficulty. We know the date of this epistle, and history' stamps the period a«s one of deep and unrelieved villainy. Nero ruled, and we are not left to conjecture the service he required of his vassals. Historians of the time have stained their pages with the details of infamies that arc unprintable. Caesar’s slaves were the spectators and the instruments of deeds so monstrous and revolting that the men of that time, familiar as they were with every species of bestiality, were shocked. Yet in that Sodomite city there were, saints! And this is how it came to be. The executioner of Octavia and Agrippina might be the guard of Paul next day! The soldier chained to the Apostle’s wrist one day had been Caesar’s bodyguard the day before! Ears that were assailed by the lewd songs and brutal jests of the barrack room yesterday, heard the Christian hymn to-day! From the at-, mosphere heavy with plot and vice, the soldier passed to a societ y that breath cd of purity and peace! How strange it must have seemed. It was a battle between light and darkness, and in some hearts victory rested with light. These moral heroes beside the Tiber were the fruit of one man's fidelity. The grace of the Christian gospel, like day dawn, creeps softly in through unexpected chinks and crannies. A man may encase himself in infidelity and drown his better self in drink, only to find that he still shares the benediction of a woman’s love, and listens to the baby prattle of a little child that calls him “Daddy,” and helps to make him feel a better roan.

I say saintliness is never eaey, but it is possible, or Jesus Christ is not Lord God Almighty. Marine science has contrived an apparatus by which a man can dive io the sea bottom, and remain, there long enough to seek for lost treasure in the sunken hulls of wrecked ships, and, having gained the object of his quest, can rise unharmed to the surface. Someone in charge of the operations pumps down the vital.air, and, at a given signal, stands ready to draw the diver up when the work is done. Thus God provides the means by which men immersed in trade shall not be overwhelmed. Invisible communications may be kept with God. A man may breathe celestial air, and, when his task is done, God draws him upward as the sun draws up the dew. Saint is God's ideal man. Saint is Go.d’s finished product. We are “called to be saints,” and Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are working to give to the human soul the last touch of imperishable beauty.