SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, 31 December 1921, Page 9

SUNDAY READING.

“DREAM LIFE AND REAL LIFE” “What is your life?” —Saint James, IV. 14. (By Rev. A. H. Collins, New Plymouth.) I have read somewhere of a crazy fellow who was found busy at a grindstone sharpening a butcher’s knife. Ever and anon he would pause to test the keenness of the blade. “What are you doing ” said an onlooker. “Don’t you see?” cried the idiot; “I’m sharpening this big knife.” “Yes, but what are you going to do with it when it is sbarpened?” “Cut off old Ben Brown's head, to be sure,” was the prompt reply. “What! Kill him, will you?” “Oh, no.” said the crazy one,” “I’ll only cut his head off and stick it on again hind side before, just to let the old fellow look back on his past life. It will take him all the rest of his days to review.” That is what Sir Walter Raleigh called “a sharp cure for all the ills of life," and yet it is certain that an occasional look backward may prove the way of wisdom for us all, and the last Sunday in the year is probably the time for such stock-tak-ing. But there is a right and a wrong way of doing it. WHAT IS YOUR LIFE? Saint James asks the question: “What is your life?” in order that he may remind us of its fleeting character. This is true, and the measure of its truth should help us to be thoughtful and earnest, and yet the fact that life is brief and troubled is only part of the truth, and not the best part either. Life may he long or short, troubled or triumphant, according as a man deals with it, and inasmuch as our thinking affects our actions we should see to it that we formulate a true answer, an answer that covers all the facts.

Now I have a conviction that we ahe in some peril of thinking too much, and too often, of the brevity of life, and of forgetting how much good work can be accomplished in the short span if we husband our resources and “redeem the time.” Our poets have perhaps laid too much stress on the brevity and have struck the minor key too often when touching this subject. We need music of a healthier kind and robuster tone. Morbid self introspection isn’t good for any of us. One of our minor poets

sings—- “ Life I know not what thou art, But I know that thou and I must part.” That is true in part, but in the best sense it is not true. LIFE THAT CANNOT B>E DESTROYED. Life and I are inseparable through all the years of God’s right hand. There is a life, and that the noblest, which neither death nor time can touch, much less destroy. The Son of God brought “life and immortality to light in the gospel.” Another of these rhymsters quaintly moralises in the halting lines: Man’s life is like a winter’s day Some break their fast and then depart away, Others stay to dinner, and then go full fed, The longest age but sups and goes to bed.” The wit and wisdom are not equal, for one would like to ask, what is done between the meals? It may be right to remind us that life is a day —a short day if you will —but can it be right to forget that it is a working day, that there are four*and twenty hours in it. and that ,after spending the days in hearty, honest toil through all the golden hours, there are the wages that- will take the leisure of Eternity to spend. Nor is it right or wise to forget that life’s little day may be shortened by wasting or lengthened by improvement, and that, in spite of all that time can do, this life may smoothly fit into a bright Eternity and so become “life that is life indeed.” NOT A FLEETING SHADOW. It may be right to say that life is a fleeting shadow, but it cannot be right to say it is only a fleeting shadow, for

then we shall fail to get out of life the golden treasure it most assuredly contains. To think meanly is near neighbor to living so. Longfellow strikes the nobler note: “Tell me not in mournful numbers Life is but an empty dream, And the. soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem. Life is real, life is earnest, And the grave is not goal, Dust thou art to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul.” Our days must not only be numbered they must be weighed. We live in deeds, not years, in heart throbs, not in movements on a dial plate. Look at the passage in this chapter, which specially emphasises the brevity of life, and you will find side by side with the idea of brevity the idea of value. Shortness and service are combined. Life is a vapour? very well; but life may be a vapour in its beauty, as well as in its brevity. A vapour may be a child of the sun, its home in the blue heavens, or it may be cold and unlovely, the creature of stagnation, the abode of death. Life is a vapour? Granted, but where do you find the vapour at its worst? Isn’t it down in the lowlands, hugging the swamp? Watch the selfsame gauzy, airy nothing when it is drawn upwards, transfigured by the sun and made to shine like a jasper, clear as crystal. NEARER TO THEE!

“Nearer my God to Thee, nearer to Thee!” Let any man make that the aspiration of his life, and it will be glorified with the beauty of the Lord; let a man become selflcentred, self-seeking, and it will drag life down and make it as ignoble as it is troubled, “a vapour which appeareth but. a little while and then vanisheth away!” And yet a vapour may be the home of lightning, or the result of an explosion. It may quickly pass away., and in passing it may be the swift-winged messenger of death, or the pasturage may be greener and the corn refreshed because of that fleck of cloud in the summer sky. Only a vapour? But that vapour may fall into a bog or drop into a drain, or it may shine in the rainbow’s seven-hued splendor, or hang on the lip of a rose, like a pearl coronet of dew. There are two- other symbols of life that are equally suggestive. “My days are as the swift ships.” One moment you see their white sails swelling in the wind; the next moment you turn to speak to a friend, and lo! the last trace of the ships and their sails is gone. Such is life,” says the wise man. Ah! but that is not all the truth. The ships have not perished because they have passed out of sight. What treasures they hold, as they ride stormy seas and make for the desired haven! Life is what we make it, and however swift their flight, the years carry us somewhere. “My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle,” says Job. Think of it. Days and nights are flying from us like .the threads of the weaver at each throw of the shuttle. What a picture of life! Yes but the shuttle does not fly nothing. Every movement tells. It is weaving all the time, and the greater the diligence the more work done at the end of the day. THE BIG QUESTION. The question is, what thread are you using, and are you working faithfully according to pattern This also,, are you working with a will? By and bye the shuttle will stop, the loom will stand still, and* the piece will be finished and taken off the machine, and the workman will go up to the pay office and receive his wages! What will the settlement be like? The years of man are the looms of God,, let down from the palace of the sun, Wherein we are weaving ever till the mystic web is done. Weaving blindly, but weaving surely, each for himself his fate; We may not see how the right side looks, we can only and

But looking above for the pattern, no weaver hath need to fear, Only let him look clear into Heaven — the Perfect Pattern is there. If he keeps the face of the Saviour for ever and always in sight, His toil will be sweeter than honey, his weaving is sure to be bright. And when the work is ended, and the web is turned and shown. He shall hear the voice of the Master, it shall say to him “Well done!” And the white-wjnged angels of Heaven, to bear him thence shall come down; And God' shall give bim gold for his hire—not coin, but a golden crown! THE SECRiET OF LIFE. “Redeeming the time,” says Saint Paul. The word “redeeming” means to recover from waste, to improve for great ends. Years ago an artist in mosaics lived and worked in Italy. His skill was wonderful. Out of bits of glass and stone he produced striking works of art valued at thousands of pounds. In his studio was a poor ]ad who swept the floor and tidied up the workshop. He was a quiet and thoughtful lad. who did his work well. One day he timidly asked to be allowed to take the fragments thrown aside by the artist. Day after day the boy gathered the rejected bits. Years passed, and one day the master entered a store-room little used, and came upon a mosaic carefully hidden behind the rubbish. He brought it to the light, and found it a noble work of art nearly finished. Enquiry followed., and the shy lad told his story. With an artist’s soul he had gathered up the fragments rejected by another, and out of them had wrought a work of supreme beauty. You catch the hint? Gather up the fragments of time, gifts, opportunities, and work them into life’s mosaic, a masterpiece by the grace of God. The secret of life is to yield it to God.