SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, 10 June 1922, Page 9

SUNDAY READING.

A MAJESTIC COMMONPLACE. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should, not perish, but have eternal life.” —Saint John 111. 16 r (Rev. A. H. Collins, New Plymouth.) WORLD’S MISSIONARY CHARTER. These are great, wonderful, thrilling words. How great, how wonderful, how thrilling, is best known to those who have striven to scale their sunny height, fathom their unfathomable depth, and compass the incomprehensible sum , of their mighty meaning. Luther described the text as "the Bible in Miniature.” Maclaren, calls it “The Gospel in a Gospel.” Glover calls it a threefold ray of Gospel light.” John Wesley would claim it as “the marrow of Methodism.” It is all this and more. These are the very words of Jesus Himself. They arc not a discovery, but a revelation. They are the primary source of all our knowledge of God’s motive and method in effecting our total redemption from sin and death. It is not a philosophy of salvation, though it supplies all the ; material for such a philosophy. It is not a theory of the Atonement, but it is the test of every theory. It is not a dogma, but Gospel, not an argument, but a message. Small wonder that William of Erromanga made this the text of the first sermon he preached on every island touched by his craft, in these warm southern seas, for this is the missionary charter of the world, and without it wc have no Gospel for ourselves or the heathen nations. 1 Glorious words! But a terrible text for any preacher. They invite failure. No man ever did or can deal worthily with such words of almost incredible splendor. If one cannot look with naked eye on the sun at noon, but needs must take refuge 'behind a bit of smoked, glass, how can he gaze on the burning glory of a passage that is “dark with excess of light”? Fenelon tells of a proud, .ambitious cardinal who boasted of the originality of his preaching, that on one occasion he announced his text and explained it with 'brevity, and said: “This is obviously the meaning of the passage, but it is a commonplace meaning, and, thank heaven, we have a horror of the commonplace.” Well, God be thanked, our text is a commonplace of the pulpit, a majestic commonplace. It sheds light on God, His Being and Benevolence; on Christ, His Ministry and Message; on man, his (dignity and destiny. GOD LOVES THE UNIVERSE. Our Lord begins with God, with God Himself, with God in the totality of His Eternal Being, with God in His redeeming purposes. He who knew the Father as none else ever did or can, deals with the subject of salvation, not from the 1 standpoint of man in hie weltering wickedness and daring Rebellion, but from the view point of God in His eternally loving and saving purpose. The Redemption of the World was not an afterthought, not a “plan” devised to meet an unforseen accident in the government of the world. Redemption is part of an Eternal purpose of Grace. Calvary is a revelation in time of the everlasting love of God. The Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world. The Cross was in the heart of God before it was rearer at Golgotha. Now mark what Jesus declares concerning God the Everlasting Father. God is. The Universe is not a freak. Life •is not a game of battledore and shuttlecock., Man is not an orphan, in an orphan family of worlds. Behind this bright and vast creation lie intelligence, order, mind and will. God is. But so is the Sphinx, so is the oyster, so is the dog, so is the daisy; and our heart craves to know God’s quality, how He thinks and feels. Is God’s Throne mercy or marble? To these questions Jesus Christ answers: God loves, loves the world, loves all the world and every creature, loves with a distributive affection that includes all lands and ages, loves with affection so deep and self-effacing that He gives His best, and loves with love so wise and holy that it issues in the Spiritual rescue of the wide, wide world. You see how these simple syllables are bursting with great meaning, how they burn and shine. Think of it! God loves the whole wide universe! How new, now well nigh unbelievable that would seem to the men on whose astonished ears the words first fell! The law, the prophets and the Psalms never said that. The Apostles of Jesus Christ did not at the first believe that. Twenty centuries of Gospel preaching lie behind us, and we hardly dare accept the words as true! “It is He that hath made us” is the voice of Reason. LOVE RULES ALL THINGS. “We believe that Thou shalt come to be our Judge” is the voice of Conscience. ( But in a world of profound moral disorder, in a world of broken hearts and souls passion swept, who is there bold enough to stand up and say that God loves? The Hindoo will not say it, for his gods are cruel and bloody. The Chinaman will not say it, for it would seem a solemn denial of the dignity of his ancestral gods. First in the story of the race, and and boldest of all its teachers, Jesus Christ declared that Divine, Eternal, Saving Love rules and orders all things. If anyone else than Christ had said this, it Would have been very' surprising. We know but little of the mealing of “Love, that king of words.” how vast' its range and how splendid its triumphs and sacrifices. Our love, at best, I is a poor, stunted and dwarfed., thing, like a lovely flower crushed into a tight pot, and set to grow amid the smoke and grime of a city slum; and yet, if we had said that God loves, it would have been brave and bold. If Saint Paul, or Saint John, had said it, the ■ meaning would have been richer and fuller, for they would have read into ' the words the strength and glory of their royal hearts. But on th P lips of Jesus, love found its noblest interpretation. For when He said God loves the wide world. He meant all the glory, and passion, and grace, of God, which made Him every man’s Servant, Helper. Refuge and Redeemer. Ho meant the pity which made His eyes a fountain of tears, t.lio compassion which made Him hunger to taste and take away every sorrow on which Ho ever looked. On no j other lips Ibid love a thousandth part j the meaning it had on Christ’s lips, yet . He said that God loves the world, loves j all the world, loves the dark, unregen- | erate world, the world whose heart i.s I resentful and rebellious, and that, just i as a mother loves her cripple and way- ; ward child, not loss, but sometimes even • more than the child that is dutiful and i strong, so God the All Father loves. I though it ba with broken-hearted gri«L,

the men and women who won’t let Him save them! THE LIVING SACRIFICE. Further, this “loye so amazing, so divine/’ found expression in gift. The warm heart ever means the bountiful hand. Every life rooted in love makes suerifice, and God was not willing to forego the luxury of giving. He shares the wealth and wonder of the world. But if countless worlds could have provided a soul’s ransom, God could have given these and .suffered no impoverishment. He would have given of His abundance, for with a word of His lips, or a wave of His hand, He might have called into being worlds brighter and vaster. But when God gave “His only begotten Son,” He gave His other seif, His best, His all! Infinite love made infinite sacrifice. “My Son. God will provide Himself a Lamb,” said Abraham to Isaac. The Welsh version reads: “God will look into Himself for the Lamb.” Looking outside Himself, there was bear the burden of the world’s redemption, but God found the living sacrifice in His own great heart of love. So they rose up early in the morning of time, and travelled the path of the centuries, until they reached the hill called Calvary. This, then, is the first clause of the Gospel within a Gospel. God is. God loves. God gave His best, His all. Isn’t this a Gospel worth believing and proclaiming Does it not carry the stamp of truth? It is only truth that can be great to the point of sublimity. A lie has about it the meanness and paltriness of its shabby origin. But once the heart of man gathers courage to look at the Christian Gospel, its very greatness -becomes the witness that it is true. God is the God of holy, saving love. Love is the Alpha and the Omega of His Divine Being; but God’s love, is not a soft saccharine sentiment; it is an energy, it is 'strong and holy love that will not excuse sin, but will suffer to save. JESUS ALONE IS SAVIOUR. The text sheds light on the ministry and mess-age of Jesus. Who is this Jesus Christ? What is His relation to God? What is His relation to man? These are the ever-recurring questions. The ages have been wrestling Jacobs, whose cry is: “I pray Thee tell me what is Thy Name.” Try how men will, they cannot escape this haunting Presence. The old world ended at His grave; a new world rose with Him out of the stony sepulchre. From Calvary to this good hour, tlie eyes of the world have ibeen rivited on Him. In His presence the loftiest kneel in reverent homage, and under His shadow the broken and defeated rest with great delight. His teaching is admired even when it is not obeyed, and His perfect example extorts tributes from the princes of ’tnen. But we need more than a Wise Teacher and a Perfect Example, and the question that plagues the heart of the world is this: “Can this -gift of God save? Can He shed the oil of gladness on life here and the light of an immortal hope on the great hereafter? The text vindicates itself by the answer it gives. Jesus Christ is Son of God in a unique sense and degree. Jesus Christ is the Son of Man, who has linked Himself with our nature, stooped to our human lot, taken upon Him our sorrows, our temptations, our death, the vast forever, ours by obvious gifts, ours in life and death and the vast forever, and ours by evident sympathy. Jesus Christ is the Saviour of the World. That is a great Name He alone bears, for though Mohammed was a prophet, and Gautama an example, Jesus alone is Saviour. That He is Saviour our hearts knqw, for has He not wakened hs from our death-sleep, given life a new direction and a worthier goal. Has He not pardoned, cleansed, inspired? We have believed in Him, and so found rest and joy and peace. MAN’S DIGNITY AND DESTINY. And, finally, this great word sheds light on man. his dignity and destiny. Low views of God, and low views of man, always go together. And you cannot lose your faith in God and keep your faith in man. They stand or fall together. Oh! it is easy to say that man is insignificant and contemptible! The scientist sends you to the zoo, and, pointing to the ape, says: “See your glorious ancestor! Perhaps he tells you man is a cell and spells it with a C! He finds the dramas of Shakespeare, the music of Beethoven, the creations of Phidias, and the Sermon on the Mount in the quiverings of the grey matter of the The cynic, with cheap sneer, wants to know if you are going to make angels out of this sorry tiding with vulgar passions and appetites? Oh! there’s a better way, for as Browning sings—- “ Love greatens and glorifies all things, Till God is a glow to the loving heart In what was mere earth before.” Mothers are bewitched and colour blind and pour their love on lads in whom none others see a spark of grace. God believes in you and me, and sees in us a Divine quality: “Thou shin’st with everlasting rays, Before the insufferable blaze, Aug Is with both wings veil their eyes, What then to Me, thine eye sould turn, In sin conceived of woman born, A worm, a leaf, a blast, a shade?” The answer is, because God is God, and God is Lover, Lord and’ Saviour.