SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, 20 August 1921, Page 10

SUNDAY READING.

“THOU FOOL!” “But God said, thou fool.” —Sainl» Luke, NIT. 20. (By Rev. A. H. Collins, New Plymouth.) When the All-wise calls a man a fool, the case is serious. The judgments men phss on their fellows are not always just or kind, and to be regarded as a fool by some people is a great compliment. It simply means that you are not guided by their maxims or ’seeking their enda. Some of the wisest of mankind have been “pilloried on infamy’s high stage,” because <i rough and carnal age was incapable of appreciating pure motive and high aims. But our God. is a God of discernment. “He seeth not as man seetli and judgeth not as man judgeth,” and when He writes “fool” as a man’s epitaph, we do well to mark the reason. The Bible never slanders mankind; its judgments are far more merciful than GUl's. The Son of Man was the most gentle of critics. He, makes excuses when He might condemn. 2kll of which serves to show that when God calls a man a fool, a fool he certainly is. THE “RICH FOOL.” " r -'' Nevertheless, I am not sure that we have done this man full justice. AA 7 e have called him “the rich fool” for these 2000 years, as though his folly were exceptional. But the plain truth is, we are not entitled to regard him as other than a type which has its representative in every age and clime. How dare we deride a brother man as a fool, simply because he is such in the eyes of his Maker? “The wisdom of men is foolishness with God,” and vice versa. Note, then, one or two things which stand to his credit. He was successful in his calling. He had a farm well tilled, the barns well filled. He was rich as men count riches. But no man is condemned because he has more than some of his neighbors. The Old Testament regarded prosperity as a sign of Divine favor. The vine, the olive, and the fig were tokens of God’s approbation. There is no suggestion that this man had grown wealthy by fraud or oppression. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, wo are justified in assuming that his wealth was the fruit of his industry. Poverty and piety are not synonymous terms. Some men’s poverty is not the result of misfortune, but the fruit of I carelessness “and wooden incapacity. Note, too,' that he was reflective. He took counsel with himself, and forecasted the future. ( He did not intend to grub and grab to the last hour of his life, and leave his estates for lawyers to quarrel over, and degenerate sons to squander. “Take thine ease,” said this wise fool, and, judged by modern standards, he was a shrewd, hardheaded, far-seeing fellow, -who stood head and shoulders above thousands who simply

“Chatter, nod, and,hurry by, And never once possess their souls Before they die.”

Besides, he was in a sense a religious man. Mind, T do not say he was godly, t am not going to labor that point; I shall have something of a modifying kind to say before I have dime. But at least lie had sense to recognise that he had an immortal spark. “Soul thou has much goods laid up for many years,” is not the speech of an utterly irreligious fool. THE REVERSE SIDE. But now look at the reverse side of the shield.’ for this man was a fool, the God of Wisdom being Judge. Beneath all his worldly thrift, and shrewdness, and success, and religion, Christ writes “thou fool.” Why? His fault lay, not in what he was, but in what he was not. He was active as a squirrel, toilsome as a beaver, and saving as a bee, all of which was right in itself, but was not right as “man’s chief end.” He was laying up treasures for himself, but not treasure in himself. He was not rich towards God, not rich in the Divine intelligence, which knows the right use of wealth, or in the Divine sympathy which applies wealth to right ends. He was rich only as the rooster that scratched up a diamond and carried it to a jeweller for a handful of corn! A little animal satisfaction was all that he coveted or got. “Eat and drink and bo at ease,” was his programme, and'it is the programme of a fool.

Carbonic acid kills because it cannot sustain life. It fills the place of vital air, but it is not vital oir. Tt has no positive quality, and is for that reason the more dangerous. Breathing it, a man supposes he is breathing vital air until his head 1 swims, and jic falls down and knows nothing. Covetousness is like that. The covetous man doesn’t know that he is covetous. He would be indignant if you told him that he was. He thinks he is only prudent, thrifty, enterprising. T never heard of a church member being disciplined for covetousness, though the church lias been tainted with this vice ever since Judas sold his Master for thirty pieces of silver. There are sins of excess and sins of defect. Sins of excess expose themselves in drunkenness, rioting and debauchery; sins of defect hide themselves under such names as envy, jealousy, and covetousness; but the latter arc* really more dangerous than the former, just as a man who is paralysed by carbolic gas may be nearer death than the man who is paralysed by strong drink. “Thon shalt do no murder,” and “thou shalt not steal,” are big brothers in the family of sins, hut the Tenth Commandment forbids the inordinate and unbalanced deaire to get and keep, and this respectable sin of coveting is as damaging as the clutch of the murderer, and the embrace of the libertine. A SIN NOT CONFINED. And here I want to remind myself, and you, that while this is the sin of the gel-rich-quick, it is not theirs alone. The poor may fall a prey to it. The barefooted lad eyes the rich man’.-, home and thinks: “How I should like to live like I that!” He lit Ho knows the skeleton that grins behind the silken curtains. The tired workman trudging homo is passed by the wealthy merchant, in his motor, and says: “He is a lucky fellow.’, Ah! if he only knew what a slave, what a nervous dyspeptic, the rich man is! How the gilded chains gall! An American doctor, speaking .to a class of students. Aaid: "Young gentlemen, I have known intimately the leading families of wealth and position in thi.; city for more than a generation, and with this consequence, that 1 do not envy any one of them.” I say. then, that this antiChristian interpretation of life, this idea that life consists in having rather than in being, in getting rather than in giving service, is the sin of rich and poor alike. Tt ifl not abundance of goods, but the use you make of them, that determines life’s yalues. Samuel Budget, ef Bristol*

said a wise thing: “Riches, I have had as much as my heart could desire, but I never felt any pleasure in them for their own sake, only ae far as they enabled me to give pleasure to others.” A THREEFOLD ANSWER. If, then, we are asked why did the Almighty call this industrious, thrifty, and prosperous farmer a fool, the answer is threefold: (1) Because in reckoning up the sum of life he the chief factor out of his I calculation. Here is a man totting up the columns o'f his cash book, pence so much, shillings so much, but when he comes to the pounds he says that column does not matter! Here ie a jeweller. He orders twenty cases of gold watches. They arrive, and he advertises gold watches at one penny each. The shop is crowded, and he laughs with idiotic glee as he sweeps the coppers into the till. Jie is doing a roaring trade, but he has forgotten the reckoning with the wholesale firm! The rich fool had left God out of his reckoning. His universe was a bigger barn, his heaven was a good dinner. He bade his soul eat and drink and take its ease as if his soul were a fat ox turned into a field of clover!

The tragedy o'f so many of us is just this, that we have left God out of our life. Charles VII. of France was dancing at one of his innumerable balls when the English army marched on Paris. One of his nobles hurried into the noble presence for instructions. The King frivolously showed him the programme of sport for the next day, and asked the Count’s opinion of it. “I think, sire,” said the nobleman with warmth, “that it is absolutely impossible <for any one to lose his kingdom more pleasantly, than your Majesty is doing.” It was a fine rebuke, and the modern applications are endless.

(2) A second thing which justifies the verdict is that, that in his chronology of life he omitted the chief date. He talked glibly enough about days, and months, and years, and prepared for them, but when Eternity burst suddenly upon him, he was unprepared for that. I am no advocate of morbid thoughts about death, and constant self-introspection. But if I knew that I was soon, to remove to live, say in France, and spend the refit of my life there, I should at once begin to learn the language, and seek to know something of the laws and customs of the land. Well, there isn’t one of us who expects to live here for ever. What about the future? Are you getting ready? God sometimes gives His tenants short notice. You may be in Eternity within a week. I know some say there is no future, or if there is they will take their chance. It’s the speech of a fool:

“What, my soul, was thy errand here? Was it mirth or ease? Or heaping up dust from year to year? Nay, none of these. What hast thou wrought for right or truth, For God or man? From the golden hours of bright-eyed youth, To life’s mid span.”

(3) The final reason for calling this man a fool is that his religion lacked reality. I said he was religious in a certain sense. He addressed his soul, and it is a fine thing to do, if you do it in' the right way. But when a man talks to his soul, he should talk plainly, and he should talk about the things that matter. Tt is ho use talking about “goods” and “barns.” He should talk about soul things, about “sin” and “salvation,” about “God” and “Eternity.” A STRANGE INSCRIPTION. In a village washed by the Mediterranean, there is a tomb-stone with a strange inscription: “Here lies the soul of Count Louis Esterfield.” Many a traveller passed and wondered. Some laughed, others looked grave, but one paused and pondered. After a while he began to dig down, until he came to a box filled with gold and jewels. Inside the box was a paper, on which was written: “You are my heir; to you I bequeathed this wealth, for you alone understood me. Tn this box is my soul, the money without which man is a machine, and hia life is only a procession of weary years.” Poor fool! Yes, but at least he was honest about it.

The mistake this prosperous and retired farmer made was the mistake of confounding pious professions with piety. His’ religion lacked touch with the actual.

When Barney Barnato went to South Africa, he bought up all the old workedout mines and set to work on them. He went down below the first strata, which had been exhausted, and. deep down in the clay, where no one else had delved, he found hie fortune in priceless diamonds. Tt is a parable. We simply cannot ! afford to live superficially. A surface view of life is false and” shallow, and a religion that is out of touch with reality will leave you bankrupt on the Great Day of the Audit.

“Prepare my soul to meet Him.”