SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, 26 August 1922, Page 9

SUNDAY READING.

DARK SAYINGS ON A HARP. "I will incline mine ear Io a parable; I will open my dark saying upon the harp.”—Psalm 49.4. i (By Rev. A. H. Collins, New Plymouth.) Do you catch this poet-prophet’s ■ meaning? He is thinking of the riddle ui the universe. The problems that plagued the ancients and perplex us still. The Godless look of things. He cannot discover the why and the wherefore of things. The world is dark, Providence is baffling, truth is dim, the future is uncertain, man is a shadow on the hills of time, God ja wrapped in clouds and mystery. The poet is dumbfounded. Then he flies to his loved instrument, the harp, and as his fingers strum the taut stretched strings, th music steals into his soul, and he is soothed and quieted. Presently he strikes a deeper chord, and under its influence the morbid mood passes away, his mind dilates, sorrow is rounded into cheerfulness, and he is able to take a sane view of solemn things and painful experiences. Thus the passage % points to this twin thought. First there is the soul bowed and burdened with the problems of human life. Secondly, there is the same soul turning the mystery to music, changing sorrow to.song, until the very darkness becomes vocal, as when a nightingale sings out of a shadowed copse, as when a flashing stream glides out of a frowning gorge. “I will incline mine eax- to a parable. I will open my dark saying on a harp.” z A SEEMING CONTRADICTION. At the first it sounds like a contradict?on. Dark sayings and a harp! Mystery and music! Sorrow and song! Riddles and revelations! How can these dwell side by side? Might we not just as well speak of blazing ice, or radiant gloom, or pleasant pain.? But, no; they are not contradictions, they are compliments. The dark saying needs the harp to interpret it. The mystery gives depth and range to the music. The sorrow sobers the song. The conjunction of mystery and revelation is universal I do not say that wherever there is mystery there is revelation, but I say that where you have revelation, mystery is not far off.

The world is very impatient of dark sayings. It loves the man who is master of sharp, chl’ystaline. epigramati? speech, and whilst I would not discount clearness, but would .cultivate and commend it, it is nevertheless true that the dark saying may teach us more than clear words ever can. It is not good to live on mental pap. Tid bits make tiny men. A good stiff dose of Browning and Carlyle would do many’ of us a real service. A book whose meaning lies on the surface will not do you much good. A ministrj r that skirts the commonplace is like coastal boats that seldom lose sight of land and nr-ver come to port | laden with the rich . 1 that lies across storm-swept seas. : don’t understand him” is not always the condemnation of the speaker; it may spell the condemnation of his audience. There are dark sayings inside the Bible and outside of it, just because there are dark sayings in life and religion. Mystery is educative and stimulating. There is a moral ! use of dark things, as Horace Bushnell I shows.

i When the larch tree was first introiduced into (England, the gardener, supposing it needed warmth, put it in a hoti liouse, where it wilted and wasted. Tn [disgust he tore it up and cast it on the ; rubbish heap, where it revived. Then he roughly planted it, and it flourished. The Great Husbandman knows what is best for the trees that are men, and sometimes rough and stormy weather suits them best. NATURE IS MYSTERIOUS. Nature is mysterious. “Kuo west th oxi the balancing of the clouds?” Those wisps of fleece in the azure sky, those imountain masses of blackness with torn edges, that move majestically before the ! storm king, those embankments of blazJ ing brilliance, crimson, purple, gold, piled :up at sundown! What is the law that i shapes and guides them? Who can explain the flight of a bird, the movements of the planets, the shaping of a snow star? “-Canst thou bind the sweet influence of the Pliedees or loose the bands of Orion"? How is it that every atom of matter attracts every other atom, distant or near? Yon say gravitation explains the circling of the stars, the shaping of a dewdrop, and the fall of an apple, but you have not explained a thing when you have given it a name. What is gravitation? It is a mystery. The inexpressible, the unexplainable, 1 the incomprehensible, meet us everywhere. The soughing of the winter wind, the moaning of the salt sea, have voices like the wailing of lost spirits, and the whole creation grdaneth and travaileth in pain, awaiting the Redemption. Mystery! Inscrutable mystery! ! Providence is mysterious. We dwell on i the earth which has been prepared for us I by aeons of struggle and pain, and war and suffering! The soil beneath our feet I is the cemetery of wrecked orders. The kills are fashioned out of the bodies of dead things. Sacrifice and blood mark the track of progress. Disease and death claim good and bad alike. Whole races have faded away by the law of involuntary sacrifice. Children suffer pangs they cannot explain Innocent things on land and sea perish on the altar of natural law. Man. beholding the great, wide, fair world, sees it through a haze of mystery and a shower of tears. For the weak and burdened carry staggering loads, the pure suffer, the good fall. Lives that are fruitful in helpfulness come to an early grave; lives that seem useless, and even vile, linger on to old age. “Ah’ sirs, the good die first And they whose fxearts are dry as summer dust Burn to the socket.” Mystery! Inscrutable mystery! MAN IS A MYSTERY. Man himself is a mystery—the Sphinx riddle of the universe. His feet are on the earth, his head beyond the stars. His bodv is dust, his spirit is immortal. He fights for food, he weeps fox* sin, he cries for God. He is fettered and bound by inexorable law, yet his spirit dwells in the country of the free. lie is master of winds and waves, and plays off the forces of Nature one against another, iand reigns in ever widening .-overeignty; • vet he is the most abject slave of pa&I sion. and cannot say no to a glass of [liquor and capitulates to the blandish{ments of "the strange woman! Man is (only simple and unmysterious when you [ignore one part of liis complex nature, j Deny his soul, and you can exp’ain his •body: he is clay and carbon and gas, [that you can weigh in scales and cork i in a bottle! Deny his body and you can 'uuuerstand his soul; he is ftee. (

Intelligent, Godlike. But the nxomeixfr You admit body and Spirit, all cheap and easy classification ends. •

“An animal, an angel, he •Combining seraphs’ ecstacy, 9 With sensuous delights, All good above, all ill below, Through his mysterious being flow, He heaven and earth unites. Mystery! Inscrutable mystery! WHAT IS THE BIBLE? The Bible is mysterious. I used to think 1 knew my Bible pretty well, but 1 have been cured of that folly. 1 have scarcely touched the fringe of it. What is the Bible? Say with Matthew Arnold that it is "literature.” So it is, but does that explain’ its unique place in the world. Call it “dogma”—is that all? You might as well say that a mummy is a man. Say it is “inspired,” and so it is, but what is inspiration? Sir Oliver Lodge tells us that he believes in the inspiration of the Bible, but that when it comes i<> a. definition he confsses himself :b.ear.< and thinks it fortunate that we cannot define the inspiration of the Holy Book in a neat and final phrase, so that oux’ own conception might enlarge nd become more definite as our knowledge "grows. Tell me the Bible is “doctrine.” Very well; doctrine means teaching. Are the Bible doctrines easy and plain? The doctrine of the Atonement, the Incarnation, the Resurrection, the doctrine of sin, salvation, death,immortality, the doctrine of God! Is there no mystery here? Why, these are the subjects ovex’ which the most devout .'and penetrating minds have pondered these two thousand years, and our greatest scholars and saints are poring still, and if you want to get outside the realm of mystery, you must keep away from the Bible. So I might give one example after another, in proof of the fact that, like this poet-preacher, we are in the presence of dark sayings, riddles, enigmas. But enough. The question is, how shall we handle the facts? What shall we do with the dark sayings? Half our natural life is spent in the dark! But we don’t like darkness, though it is a time of growth and renewal. Children dread the dark hours and people them with fearsome shapes. Oh! treacherous night, Thou lendest thy ready veil to ever treason, And teeming mischief lurks beneath thy shade. WHAT SHALL WE DO ? ’ What, I say, shall we do with these dark sayings? Well, me may brood over them. Some people do. They become gloomy, sour, despondent, even cynical. That isn’t wise ox- healtuy. It is as if a man should say that because the whole twenty-fdur hours are not brilliant sunshine, he will keep the-blinds down and the shutters closed when the sun is shining. Bettex* use the light you have and trust that it will grow. There is a second course possible to us. We can open our dark saying, not on a harp, hut in the ear of a neighbor. Instead of consuming our own smoke we may use it to choke somebody else! Strange how some men find pleasure in scattering not sunshine, but glo*m. I have known a man plunged into years of mental, darkness because some evil genius lent them a shall, v, ill-digested, sceptical book, and he did not know where to find the antidote. The third thipg is to follow David’s* lead, and whilst deffj?fng none of life’s dark things, we can open them on a harp. We can seek the cheerfuL aspect of solemn things. We can turn sorrow to song, just as I have known a sorrowful woman fly to her piano, and as her fingers fled over the ivory keys, her spirit found freedom, the music unsealed the fountain of her tears, and the sweet rain fell and washed away her grief. SINGING AND HAPPINESS. Something like this is a common experience, and so we have poetry fox’ cultured people and hymns for holy folk, and we all become happier while we sing. This is why music is the finest of the fine arts. Poems, painting, skilled work in bronze and brass, are inferior to music. For, under the skilled touch, wood and wire, pipes and reeds, are changed into living and breathing things, that wail or whisper, laugh or cry, thunder and thrill as the soul needs. Perhaps that is why in the upper world, whilst there is no church, there is a choir, with harpers harping on their harps as they stand on a sea of glass. Oh! God be praised for music to rouse, to soothe, to interpret dark sayings.

‘•'Nature is red in tooth and claw”? Sing that mystery on the harp. “I know not where His island lift Their fronded palms mid air. I only know I cannot drift Beyond His love and care.” Porvidence sometimes glowers? Sing it to the harp: “Thy providence is large and kind, Both man and beast thy bounty share.” Man is a mystery? Sing it to the harp: “Thou madest man, he knows not why, He thinks he was not made to die, And Thou hast made him; Thou art just.” The Bible is dark? Sing it to the harp: “A glory gilds the sacred page, Majestic like the sun. It gives a light to every age, It gives and borrows none.” God is incomprehensible? Sing it to the harp: “My God, how wonderful Thou art, Thy glory passing bright. Thy wisdom with its deep on deep, A rapture to our sight.” Death is shadowing us and ours? Sing ic to the harp: “And with the morn those angel faces . While I have loved and lost awhile.” “I will incline my ear to a parable; I will open my dark sayings on a harp.” T will wed mystery to music, sorrow to song, death to life immortal.