SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, 7 January 1922, Page 9

SUNDAY READING.

t DAYDAWIf, EVERYWHERE. <c And He that; sittetli on the Throne said: Behold, I make all things new.” —Rev., XXL, 5. (By Rev. A. H. Collins, New Plymouth.) The world moves, the world moves very swiftly, and all its movements are sunward. “Out of the darkness of the night, The world rolls into light, ’Tis daydawn everywhere.” Day and night this old planet swings in its tremendous curve through space at a speed pf fifty thousand miles an hour. Between the opening and the closing hymn of this service we shall have journeyed a distance equal to forty trips from Auckland to Dunedin and back! Yet our flight is so smooth and regular and perfect in its equipoise that we suffer no sense of friction or jar. Not a single petal of a solitary rose is bruised, or the lightest slumber of the frailest child is broken. Modern science is teaching us the spaciousness and speed of stellar worlds, and is giving us astonishing glimpses of the order ani the majesty of vast suns and systems that roll in splendor under the eye of God. For it is due to the will and wisdom, the power and goodness of the Great Creator that we catch the rhythm of the spheres, watch the incoming and outgoing of the seasons, the quiet dawns and sunsets, the unbroken sequence of summer and winter, the ripening of the harvests, and the dawning and dying of the years. MIND MORE THAN MATTER. But the manipulation and control of physical th i rigs is the least wonderful part of the mighty works of God. Mind is more than matter. Lordship of free souls is the stamp of deity. It is here the prophecy of our text' is finding its most constant and most brilliant fulfilment. New worlds are springing to glorious birth, new worlds of ideas and ideals. The last five years have witnessed greater achievements in the business of world-making than flhe previous five hundred years. The last few weeks have seen greater wonders than Pentecost. Do we realise the stupendous happenings of these great days that are upon us? We are living in a new world. Politically the map of the world is being redrawn. China has changed from a withering despotism to a free Reptiblie; from the position of a nation “drowsed with the fume of poppies” to that of a people suddenly awakened into consciousness after the sleep of centuries, and beginning to live at last! And China constitutes nearly one-fourth of the human race! India, the land of problems and paradoxes, a vast congery of nations, li'fld by a handful of Britishers, is finding its soul and reaching out for the right of self-self-determination; and in spite of evil portents, the commanding minds in India are the much-abused Gandhi, and the little understood Rabindranath Tagore, both of whom are essentially Christian in their outlook and ideals, and both stoutly opposed to the use of physical force. The missionary is coming to his own in that great land. “The fields are already white unto the harvest.” Nothing is surer han the passing of India under tl-.< agis of the Cross. Within the lifetime of our children India may be Christian. THE GREAT ROMANCE OF HISTORY. For a thousand years the Christian world has felt the sting and shame that the land where the Son of God walked and wrought and died should be in the hands of the infidel. Eight hundred years ago Peter the Hermit went forth to stir the knights of Christendom to the first, crusade. Attempt after atempt followed—seven crusades in all. The story forms part of the great romance of history. Even the children of the middle ages, with their crusade, adds its pathos to the story. These crusades ended in failure and disaster. The. “unspeakable Turk” held his grip. But the miracle has happened. In a few days the history of a thousand years was undone, and all the lovers of freedom and progress set singing! The men of the Balkans came down from their i rocky homes, and tore Turkey from the map of Europe. After seven crusades and a thousand years of failure Britain organised an eighth crusade, and won! The last crusade has been fought. The Holy Land is free. Palestine has its chance once more. Will it once more be peopled by the ancient race? Will ; it again blossom as the garden of the Lord? Will it flourish again like the land which Jesus knew? TRIUMPH OF REASON AND CONSCIENCE. Tt is too soon to forecast the result of the Washington Conference. But it is not too soon to see and say that “the Lord hath done great things for us whereof we are glad. Results al- [ ready achieved fill our mouth with 1 laughter and our tongue with singing.” The conference itself is a | triumph of reason and conscience oyer I reliance on brute force and the spirit I of the jungle. The world’s brainiest and most Christian statesmen are deliberating how to lift the cruel burden i of senseless armaments from the galled I shoulders of the nations. A new conscience has oeen developed on the subject of war. “The gunpowder and glory business.” as Lord Derby called it, stands condemned before the world as financially ruinous to the conqueror and the conquered, as politically insane and morally monstrous. WHAT SHALL WE SAY OF IRELAND? And what shall we say of Ireland? For seven hundred years that fair but | ' unhappy land, one of the loveliest spots | J on earth, has been rent and torn. From I i the davs of Cromwell on it has been a

storm centre; the perplexity of states men, the scandal of religion, anc the Achilles heel of the Em pire. The reason? Some attempted ex planations simply don’t explain, and for one do not believe you have coveret the facts by writing “R..C.” Th,

problem is racial and religious political and economic. But it will be wise and Christian to let the dead past bury its dead. Raking the ashes of old-time controversy is not, profitable work. A better temper has come to both the parties to the quarrel. The resolve to give to Ireland the right to govern herself and shape her future, subject only to the Supremacy of the Imperial Parliament,

svill end an ancient fend and bind Saxon and Celt together, not by steel handcuffs, but by the silken cords of friendship and trust. THE WORLD MOVES SWIFTLY. I say, then, the worid moves; the world moves very swiftly, and all its movements are sunward. It is part of the fulfilent of the will of Him who said: “Behold, I ake all things new.” “This is the vision glorious; The times are whispering o’er us, No star in the East need rise, Just right before our eyes, The Kingdom waits to come.” For these world-movements are not traceable to any source less than God Himself. I do not say the human agents are always sensible of this: I know too well that some are not. But just as in the making of this round world and all that is therein, the creative ' spirit worked through blind forces and material things, so now tlje new order is being hastened by the labor of men who fail to recognise their Divine Partner. The drawing together in closer bonds of the scattered provinces of the British Empire, and the voluntary sharing of the weary Titan’s burden, the dawning of an Empire between whose far-flung provinces wide seas rqjl, dominions held together not by any external forces, but by the subtle bonds of blood, and language, and faith —the uncompelled loyalty of free communities —is a spectacle the world has never seen before. THE VISION FULL OF HOPE. If from the political turn to the social and economic movements of the world,, the vision is equally full of hope. One of the most brilliant and Christian magazines in America, “The Outlook,” published an article on this subject. After stating how the cry for social ‘justice goes up throughout the world, the writer declares that the movement is more than political, and more than national; it is a movement which is transforming the religious, educational and the industrial world, and this is how he states the problem: “How to prevent the concentration of wealth and the widespread extent of poverty has been the theme of political students for centuries. The social, injustice which this wealth concentration causes has for; centuries created in the oppressed classes a discontent varying in degree from dull depair to a furious outburst pf wrath, and has aroused in humane souls a fiery indigi nation, expressed sometimes in fierce invective, soetimes in open war.” This is no new cry. It is eloquent, in the pages of the Hebtew prophets—in Isaiah, Micah, Amos, Hosea. It is expressed in the writings of the Christian Fathers, in language that sounds radical even for the radical of our times. It inspired the ministry of Saint Francis of Assisi. It sharpened the sword of Oliver Cromwell. It kind-led the fires of the French Revolution. It was behind the Chartist movement. It moved the sons of the pilgrim fathers to declare for American independence, and it struck the fetters from the limbs of ‘•he slave in the Southern States an! .Jamaica. To-day it expresses itself in divers forms, in anarchism, socialism, single tax, and what not; but. at bottom it is religion. It is the soul of the people striving to express iself, and is so far deeply Christian. It is easy enough to say the social, unrest is the fruit of sensational journalism and unprincipled muck-raking; easy enough to say that Labor men suffer from a double dose of original sin. Were Isaiah and Micah, Amos and Hosea sensational journalists or muck-rakers? THE HAND OF THE ALMIGHTY. When will men cease these silly attempts to explain and learn to see the hand of the Almighty? Aye! and when will the friends of reform cease to concoct pills to cure an earthquake? We shall never, never reach the deep-seated maladv that way. Our Divine Master taught the fact of human brotherhood, with all its social implications, and it is onr Christian duty to help to realise this brotherhood and see that every child has a fair chance to grow sweet and strong, and every man the chance to live a rich, full,’ free, happy life. The gladdening fact is that growing numbers of Christian people are at last coming to see that the Labor movement means more than a cry for bread, or work, or rent, or houses; it is humanity’s cry for fullness of life, and not to see this is to miss the chief thing about it. WHAT ARE DEMANDED? Meanwhile two things are demanded. We must possess our souls in patience. Rome was not built in a day, still less are new' worlds. If evolution teaches anything it is this, that world-making takes time.- It required countless ages to change the brute to a savage, and the savage to a civilised being. It may well be that the new civilisation will slowly emerge out of the welter of social misery. But come it will, and every day brings it nearer. Next, we must nerve our hearts to high courage. F. W. Robertson, of Brighton, one day preached a great sermon on. the insistence and sacredness of social duty. He spoke like a prophet on fire. A lady came to the vestry afterwards and said: “Such preaching will get you into trouble. “I don’t care,” answered the preacher. “Mr. Robertson, do you know where don’t dare came to?”* expostulated the visitor. “Yes/ said Mr. Robertson, “Don’t Care came, to the Cross.” That was finely spoken, and it is true. For “without'the shedding of blood” there is no'remission, and reforms tarry because bleeding saviours are so few. We must blood to bless. I have no time to tell of the new religious world that, is dawning, of the ! approach to church union, of the expansion of nationalism into internationalism, of the quickened sense of personal evangelism, and of the growth of the temperance sentiment. But I must yet again remind you that new worlds can onlv come through men regenerated by the Holy .Ghost. “If any man be in Chr'st Jesus, he is a new creature. “It needs a soul to lift a soul, E’n to a cleaner sty.” “The soul of all reform is the reform of the soul.” WELL DONE!

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