SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 March 1922, Page 9

SUNDAY READING.

"I BELIEVE IN GOD THE FATHER.” '»/? . Mfr “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” —Gen. 1., 1. (By Rev. A. H. Collins, New Plymouth.) “I believe in God the Father.” To say that with serious purpose and wise discrimination is to say everything that really matters. It is the first, the last, the most central and vital thing in the whole reaim of faith. It is there the Bible begins. It is the first article of “the Apostles’ creed,” and it is the firef article in any religion that is worthy of credence. Men do not always spell God the same way. To the Hebrews he was "Jehovah”; the Romans called Him “.bove”; to the Chinaman He is “Foo”; the Hindoo names Him “Brahm”; taught of Jesus, Christians call Him “Father”; but in essence the faith is the same. As Lyman Abbott says: “Religion antedates religions, and is mother of them all.” The label is nothing. Names do not matter. Letters and words are symbols, and our concern is with the Great Reality.

“A firemist and a planet, A crystal and a cell; A jellyfish and a saurian, And caves where the cavemen dwell: Then a sense of law and beauty, And a face raised from the sod; Some call it evolution, And others call it God. “A haze bn the far horizon, The infinite tender sky, The rich ripe tints of the cornfields, And the wild birds sailing high. And all over upland and lowland, The charm of the golden rod: Some of us call it Autumn , And others call it God. “Like a tide on the crescent seabeach, When the moon is new and thin, Into our hearts high yearnings Come welling and surging in— Come from the mystic ocean Whose rim ho foot hath trod; Some of us call it longing, And others call it God. “A picket frozen on duty, A mother starved for her brood; Socrates drinking the hemlock, And Jesus on the rood, The millions who, humble and nameless, The straight, hard pathway trod— Some call it consecration, And others cal] it God. RELIGION’S STARTING-POINT. My point is this: Belief in God is religion’s starting point. “If there were no God it would be necessary to invent one,” for this belief is fundamental to the order and the*. stability of human society. Character and conduct are involved in it. Dissolve the sense of God in the soul and you slacken the bonds of national security, weaken the sanctity of the marriage bond, loosen the family tie, and give hostage to commercial immorality. Oliver Wendell Holmes puts the truth tersely when he says that if you could find ten square miles of land where men do not believe in God, neither iife, nor property, nor womanhood would be safe. “Belief may be difficult, but unbelief is impossible.” Who said that? Why, Voltaire.

THE GOD TO BELIEVE IN. But if belief in God is to be intelligent and authoritative over our conscience, our will and our affections; if belief is to inspire confidence, service and worship, it must be belief in a God who is holy, wise and good; and before we proceed any further, let it 'be frankly said there are some gods in whom we do not believe. The thought you make of God is thought that makes you Men are like the gods they worship. We do not believe in the God whom, men say, gave commandment to slay whole tribes, sack fair cities, and put women and children to the sword! We do not believe in a God who sits somewhere on the outer rim of the universe and does nothing —an absentee God! We do not believe in a God of partialities and favoritisms who elects a favored few to eternal life and blessedness, and dooms the rest to endless woe! We do not believe in a God who has an especially kindly side to those within a particular church fence; for children who had the good fortune to be sprinkled with holy water; a God who can be imprisoned in a wafer that a mouse might eat. or in wine that a priest might spill!- We cannot believe in such a God because He is not big enough or good enough. Out moral sense rebels against such conceptions. ‘ The loving worm within its sod Were diviner than a loveless God, Amid his worlds, I will dare to say.” MATERIALISTS’ NEGATIVE GREED. But ‘1 believe in God the Father,” and I will try to tell you why I say that, and say it with so great confidence. First, however, let me remind you of two objections. The unreserved materialist. with hie full-throated denial, says he cannot believe in anything he cannot sec. Matter is eternal. Thought is the product of the grey matter of the brain. Death ends all. This used to be the creed of large numbers of thoughtful persons, but the number has rapidly fallen, and there is hardly a man of front rank who would say that to-day. The materialistic philosophy is played cut. The creed is so hard, so cold, so hopeless! To say you only believe in what you see is untenable. You believe in a good many things you cannot see. You cannot see kindness; I hope you believe there is such a thing. You cannot see mind, spirit, truth, loye; yon have never seen yourself, your wife, your child, your friend, but only their outward form, yet you admit their existence. You say God is wrapped in mystery, but so is all life. in the crannied wall, T pluck you out of the crannies, I hold you here, root and all, ip my hand, Little flower—but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in ‘all, I should know what God and man is.”

GOD IS INFINITE. ’ But some will say that we cannot prove the existence of God, and that is true, if by prove you mean Scientific proof, or the kind of proof applied to a proposition in Euclid. God is infinite, and man is finite. The mind of man can no more hold all there is of “God the Father Almighty” than your watertank can hold all the water in the clouds. No. but your tank holds enough for your daily need, and you could enlarge your tank to meet your growing need. You canriot comprehend God, but you can apprehend God. You cannot exhaust God, but you can use God. You cannot know God scientifically, but y° u can know Him morally and

You do not xjmplain' that you cannot hear a perfume or taste music; why should, you complain that spiritual things are spiritually discerned? Intellectually, belief in God is a great venture. You must risk something. “Religion is betting your life there is a God,” says Donald Hankey. And now let me tell you, as simply as I know how, why “I believe in God the Father.” I will avoid the technical terms of text books. Those who receive Christ as the Teacher sent from God rest their faith on his revelation of the Father and cry with Browning:

“I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ, Accepted by the reason, solves for thee All questions' in the world and out of it.” REASONS FOR BELIEF. I have no cheap sneers for good men who have toiled in the fields of science and philosophy, and helped us to find evidence outside the Bible, that , makes belief in God reasonable, but I am taking a simpler way. Excuse mq for using the personal note, and I will tell you why “I believe in God the Father.” Others may put it better: let me put it my- way: I believe on authority, the authority of others—ray mother, my teachers, my church, my minister! I was born in a Christian land and breathed a Christian atmosphere. The noblest buildings on which my eyes rested were erected for the worship of God. The finest music and pictures and books were inspired by His holy fear. Church bells chimed over my cradle. Men and women —the best of men and women—regulated their conduct by religious traditions and beliefs, and I unconsciously imbibed their religious faith in God. Isn’t that where all knowledge ' begins ? Next, “I believe in God the Father” because, happily for me, I cannot help it. You say that is not reasonable. Excuse me, it is very much ■ so, and in abler hands than mine it j could be worked out to prove the necessary existence of God. But* I am content to say that just as I breathe because I must or die, and just as I see because I cannot help seeing unless the optic nerve is destroyed, so, being what I am, I cannot help believing in God, unless I harden my heart. Instinct is of God, and the hunger of the heart for God is as universal as the hunger of the body for food, and the hunger of the eye for beauty. “Arise and eat,” says the body, and just as surely the spirit says “Kneel and pray,” and in both cases the urge comes from God. All sorts and conditions of men, who differ in other respects, agree to worship Turn where voft will, the face of man wears a look of awe and wonder, and if man is not to worship, you will need to take him to pieces and make him over again with something left out. Look at the flowers: there is color, fragrance, beauty. Whence do they come? Frori* God. They are home-sickness for the Father.

“Tn all ages, Every’ human heart is human, In even savage bosoms There are longings, yearnings, strivings For the good they comprehend not. The feeble hands and helpless, Groping blindly in the darkness, Touch God’s right hand in that darkness And are lifted up and strengthened.” THE MOST CONVINCING WITNESS. Further, my knowledge of God is experimental. We know God is and helps, as we know fire is and warms, as we know sugar is and sweetens. You can test it, and until you have tested you are not entitled to deny. If any man say to me: “But I have no experiences like that,” I answer that his ignorance, however 'expensive, cannot disprove my knowledge, however limited. God is not a vapor, a gas, the stuff whereof our dreams are made. He is our Creator, Preserver arj,d Redeemer. You may know Him. For myself I will say this, that without God the sun would ‘be darkened, the stars would pale their splendors, the universe would shrivel into a mean and paltry thing, and life itself would hardly be worth the trouble of rising in the morning and putting on my clothes! Nor is my belief in God without some ground in reason. Let no man tell me that the Bible which lies open before me happened to come out of a heap of “printers’ pie,” that the words spelled themselves, and the covers covered themselves! Thia universe is not just “a fortuitous concurrence of atoms.” There is order, design, purpose, intelligence. Saint Paul’s Cathedral was in the architect’s mind before a stone was laid. “In Memoriam” was in the poet's mind before a line was written. The universe is the outward expression of the mind of God. Anything else? Aye! the greatest thing of all. Jesus Christ is the last, loveliest, most convincing witness. 1 will not be blind or deaf to other evidence. But Christ is final. Huxley once wrote to Charles Kingsley, saying: “1 cannot see one shadow or tittle of evidence that the great Unknown, underlying the phenomena of the universe, stands to us in the relation of a Father —loves and cares for us as Christianity asserts.” And perhaps if I looked where Huxley looked, I should say the same-, but I have heard Jesus, and that makes all the difference. It is He who has made me sure of God. He felt, as I have never felt, the horrid jangle and discord of the world. Sin and suffering tore His soul as no soul of man was ever torn. He saw suffering innocence Yet, to the end, He knew that love was through and over all, and lie died with the word “Father” on His lips. Therefore, though the griefs and graves of men make me dumb, I dare to believe with Jesus that God is good and “Love creation’s final law.” Yes: “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth.”