SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, 14 January 1922, Page 9

SUNDAY READING.

GOD CARES FOR THE YET THE SPARROW, FALLS! SB .. “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And not one of them shall .fall on the ground without your Father; but the very hairs of your head are all numbered.” —Saint Matt. X. 29, 30. (By Rev. A. H. Collins, New Plymouth.) Our Lord was not the first to teach the. doctrine of Divine Providence. He was born of a race whose history was musical with the poetry of miracle and awful with the voice of God. Moses and the prophets beb’eved in the love and care of One whose dominion reached to the outermost bounds of His bright and vast creation. The Psalms of David ring with the joy of living in a world over which wisdom and goodness reign. “His tender mercies are over all His works. Trust in the Lord and do good, so shalt thou dwell in the land and verily thou shalt be fed.” These ancient Scriptures were 'known and read in Nazareth, and Jesus learned them standing at His mother’s knee. In this sense it is true that Jesus was not original. What He did was to give the doctrine of Providence the imprimatur of His authority. Behind what the ancients wrote Christ put the lighted transparency of His own calm and sunny trust. There is no completer or more convincing statement of the Providence of God to be found in the whole literature of faith than this passage supplies. It is the expression of the personal faith of Jesus in the Father’s knowledge and care for all the wide domain of creature life. Yet no argument is advanced in favor of that belief. Jesus did not teach that way. He never argued. He simply affirmed. He calmly expressed His faith, and in this way inspired others to believe. t . ARGUMENTS AND PROOF WANTED. Some people are stumbled by this. They want argument and proof for everything, and when they do not find a definite appeal to reason, a clear explanation of all the difficulties that beset faith, they turn away. They tell us, things are different from what they were two thousand years ago; our world is vaster\and more complex. Faith was easier then than now; and they cannot believe simply because He did. But faith was not easier then than now, and Jesus did not find it easier to believe than we do. Jesus faced all the hard facts of a hard and brutal world. His voice comes to ms out of the struggle and the darkness. He trusted in the Providence of God, not bec|iuse His life was cast in circumstances of ease and success, but in spite of circumstances that were hard and success that seemed long withheld. Jesus tasted the worst life had to give, and carried the heaviest burdens an unfriendly world could supply; and when He speaks of faith in God’s love and.care He is speaking of something He had won in battle with darkness and doubt. CANNOT ARGUE INTO FAITH. After all, we cannot argue ourselves into faith. We can adduce evidence and explain some difficulties, but when all the reasons have been set in orderly array, there is yet another step before faith is ours. Faith never comes by merely balancing the pros and the cons. There is a logic of the heart, as well as the logic of the head. You cannot prove the truth of the Providence of God. It comes not as the result of reasoning, but as the fruit of experience. A working faith has to be put to the test in the school of life. It is a spirit caught from the life and experiences of others, as well as our own. Trust in God is an attitude of soul to the facts of life, and the best way to win it is not to listen to logic chopping, but to sit at the feet of One who Himself “trusted in God and was not confounded.” Faith, I say, is not the result of argument; if is the fruit of experience, the experience of Jesus and all the saints.

When Donald, Hankey said: “True religion is betting one’s life that there is a God” he not only expressed his own virile religion, but he gave a good description of all effective faith. “Faith is holding reasonable convictions in realms beyond the reach of final demonstration.” says Fosdiek. Faith is moral audacity in the face of an unfriendly world. Faith is virtue plus valor. “Think not that faith, by which the just shall live Is a dead creed, a map correct of heaven. Far less a feeling, fond and fugitive. ' A thoughtless gift, withdrawn as soon as given. It is an affirmation and an act That bids eternal truth to present fact.” THE RIGHT POINT OF VIEW. Look at thci setting of this great passage in order that you may get the right point of view. The Master is forecasting the future of His disciples. He is quite frank with them. He conceals nothing. He tells them plainly thenpath will not be smooth. Ho had been persecuted, and so would they. They must not expect a bloodless victory. But He did more than supply a forecast. It was not enough that they should know what lay ahead. They needed a spirit that would carry them through whatever lay ahead. It was in response to that need that He told them what God’s providential care means. “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? Aud not one of them sha.ll fall on the-ground without your Father.” Do yoii catch the meaning of that? Jesus wants these men to be sure that God knows and cares, but He a wants them not to nourish false expectations. God cares for a thing so cheap and common as a saucy, chattering house sparrow, and yet the sparrow falls! Mark that. The Providence that over and around us lies does not mean that we shall be sheltered and protected from the experiences common to men. Jesus does not say that creatures who are the objects of God’s care will be distinguished' from thbir fellows by a startling contrast in the outward events and ordering of their lives. God cares for the sparrow, and yet the sparrow falls. Tho men and -women over whom the mantle of God is cast are not immune from trouble. GOD’S PROTECTION. God cares for men and women who are faithful and godly, and yet they suffer! Try to get a grip of that truth, for it is the only solid foundation of firm and intelligent faith. M e often cherish the expectation that if we fear God and keep His commandments. He will deal with us in an exceptional

way, and lead us in paths different from others. You find that idea very prominent. in the older Testament. Length of days, prosperity and ease were supposed to be the rewards granted to the righteous, whilst sickness and trouble were evidence of sin. That was the cruel creed of Job’s false friends. Job suffered exceedingly, and he must have sinned exceedingly. f That is the perplexity of Asaph in his psalm. Jesus met with the same idea. “Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he. was born blind?” That creed survives to this day, though Jesus contradicted it again and again.) But health and prosperity are not evidences of righteousness; neither are sickness and trouble proofs of wickedness. Some of the saintliest have suffered most. Jesus Himself died on. a cross. God cared for the sparrow, yet the sparrow fell! God cared for the Apostles, yet they suffered imprisonment and martyrdom. God cares for you though you suffer. Trial and sorrow and loss are not signs that God is far away; such things may be proof that He is near. “He sitteth as the refiner and purifier of silver.” We often draw false conclusions from common events. “Thinkest thou that the twelve men on whom the tower of Siloam fell were sinners above all who were in Jerusalem ? I tell you nay.” Accidents are not punishments. Sickness is no evidence of wrong doing. Death is not proof of sin. God cares for the sparrow, and yet “the sparrow falls. Its fall is part of His providence for the sparrow. THE REASON. Why do I dwell on this? Chiefly because it is true, but also because a mistake here is fatal to a sunny confidence in God’s providence. I remember as a lad how perplexed I was. Some boys went boating on Sunday. The boat cap.sized, and the occupants were drowned, and it was said to be a judgment on Sabbath breaking! Some years ago one of the Australian States passed an Act of Parliament to discontinue religious instruction in the public schools. The year following was a time of severe drought, and some people si>id it was a punishment on the State.!/ But such teaching is fatal to intelligent faith. Instead of thinking of the all wise and\ all loving Father of mon, it makes Him a petty and irritable Ruler, who needs must be “squared.”

When in South Australia I heard of a farmer in the North who gave up all faith in God because, in a series of bad seasons, he lost everything. His sparrow fell, and he concluded God was nonexistent. or else that He did not care. But I heard a very different story. A farmer in the same district was burnt out. Wheat ricks, hay stacks, wool sheds and homestead were reduced to yet that; modern Job knelt in the presence of the ruin and offered thanks to God that wife and children had escaped! His sparrows fell, and he still believed God cared.

Which, of these two men represents the nobler type? You believe in God when al] goes well. There ip no credit in that. Anybody can do that. Your sparrow hasn’t fallen, and so you believe God cares. But suppose the ease is reversed? What then? Let ns learn this larger conception of the Providence of God. Let us try to understand that the hard and baffling things are part of God’s 'plan, and that His care is seen not in sheltering us from trial, but in sustaining us through it. Sheltered and easy lives do not make the best men. Gott’s concern is not that we shall not suffer; His concern is that we fail not. You have come to this service burdened and perplexed. You wonder how God can be in it at all. 1 ask you to believe. on the authority of Jesus, that God is in it all. and that nothing can come to you. or yours, that Ho does not know. Cast your care on God’s care, even as Jesus did. Faith, as Tennyson , sings—- “ Sees the best that glimmers through the worst, ■She feels the sun is hid but for a i night. She spies the summer through the ' winter bud. She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls, She hears the lark within the songless She finds the fountain whe-v* 'Uwy > wailed. “MirageA”