SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, 23 December 1922, Page 9

SUNDAY READING.

THE MAGNIFICAT. =>■ “Then Mary said: □fy soul extols the Lord, Aly spirit exults in God my Saviour, For He has remembered His servant in her lowliness; And from this hour all ages will count me happy. Great things has the Almighty done for me, And holy is His Name. Age after age He shows his mercy To those that reverence Him. Great are the deeds of His arm, He confounds the headstrong with their own device, He dethrones princes, and exalts the lowly, The hungry He loads with gifts, and the rich «f»e sends empty-handed away. He has stretched out His hand to His servant Israel. Not forgetful of Hie mercy, As He promised to our forefathers— Mercy for Abraham and His race forever.’ ” —Saint Luke, I. 46-55. (Twentieth Century version.) (By Rev. A. H. Collins, New Plymouth. 1 * THE NEW EVANGEL. Birds pipe at day dawn. The sun shoots his first arrow in the east and the forests are vocal. By the same divine law, the dawn of Creation and the dawn of Redemption are set to celestial music. Tn the matins song that woke the darkness of our planet, “the morning stars sang together and the sons of God shouted for joy.” It was when dawn was still marching with swift and soundless feet over the Judean hills that the first Christmas carol rang out beneath the Syrian stars. Drawn by the same great and gracious mystery, the Church assumes her singing robes, and echoes back the angels’ strain in sweet antiphony. Most fittingly did Christianity come to the accompaniment of herald angels music, for the New Evangel has changed the face of life and death. It has put a new song on lips long drawn by pain, and kindled in the midmost dark the quenchless flame of a new and an immortal hope. In the Benedictus of Zacharius, in the Nunc Dimittis of Simeon. and in the Magnificat of Mary, we have the prelude of the deathless song which the redeemed shall one day sing, standing on the Sea of Glory. MARY’S PERSONALITY AND INFLUENCE. The religion of Mary, as it is mirror'd in the Magnificat, reveals a character of surprising beauty and strength. Her song leapt like a jet of praise straight from the hidden depth of her pure heart, and it falls like scented spray which makes fragrant the whole wide world. But Mary's song is no pul ing rhapsody. The strain is virile and vibrant. The singer is no waxen-faced Madonna. Medieval art never tired of painting, and half the world has deified her. but it is open to question whether the Church of the Holy Child has over rightly understood His human mother. Tn a thousand glowing pictures Alary

stands in the sweet modesty and purity of flowering maidenhood, and in ten thousand frescoes she is seen looking down on her enfolded Babe with a gaze of mingled pride and tenderness, blended with the ecstasy of a saint. It is from such pictures that Christian hearts have received their most cherished impression of Alary. Nor are these impressions wholly false. AA’e might well believe that she Avas the perfect pattern of maidenhood and motherhood. But the song she chanted in the. hour of her rapture depicts her as something vastly greater and nobler than the sweet and gentle Aladonnns of the canvas and the fresco. The Alagnificat mirrors Alary as possessing a richer, fuller, stronger personality, and invests her with qualities of strength and nobleness of ambition and fervor, of moral passion and patriotism. THE HUMAN LIFE OF JESUS. Many influences played their part in shaping the human life of Jesus—the fields and flowers, the sunny sky, and the shimmering sea, the synagogue, the doctors, and the law of Afoses. But His first teacher was His mother, and His earliest and deepest lessons came from her life and lips. Jesus lived in a land enslaved by foreigners. He was a carpenter. He was poor.. Ono of the early fathers reminded the rich that the Lord Jesus brought no silver footbath from heaven. It seems probable that Joseph died when Jesus was a boy. and Ho had to work for a widowed mother and His younger brothers and sisters. He knew the tragedy of lost money and the joy of finding it. ITe knew how hard the poor proud folk find it to keep the children in food and clothes, and how the time comes when patching old garments with new stuff is no longer possible. The leaven working in the meal was a sight familiar enough in that simple home in Nazareth, and it was in such things the Great Teacher found the background of His parables. Men are mostly of the same religion as their mothers, and the song of Alary suggests the simple and strong religions principles taught in her home. There is hardly a saying attributed to Alary in the Lnkean gospel which Jesus did nut echo and recast. So that the Alagnificat is not only a great and noblsong: it is a revelation of the character of the woman who gave to our Lord th? human nature He shared with us; and. further, the song indicates the spirit that pervaded that village home in the days ere there had dawned on Jesus the consciousness of who He was, and what He had come to bo and to do A TRAGEDY OF OUR FAITH. One of the tragedies of our holy faith is the shameful way the mother o-f Jesus has been made the subject of ignorant and ill-tempered controversy. Rome and Geneva have transgressed. Roman Catholic and. militant Protestant, share in the blame. The one has deified and the other almost despised her. Alariolitry is an old weed. One can trace its rise in early Christion art. The first pictures of the early Christian ages simply represent a woman. Next we have pictures of mother and child. Later we have the Son on a throne and the mother crowned, but sitting below Him. Then the mother is seen sifting on a level with her Son. Later st ill the mother is throned above her Son. and finally the Son is seen in dreadful wrath and the mother is represented as intercessor. First. Mary is reverenced for Lor Son’s sake, then she is reverenced above the Son and worshipped as ‘ Queen of Heaven.” “Star of the Sea,”

and “Afother of God.” Tn manuals of devotion, in “Lady chapels,” in processions and images. Alary receives the homage due to God alone!! Thus I read: “We ask many things of God, and do not obtain them; we ask them of Alary, and obtain them. Sometimes we shall be sooner heard and saved by evoking her aid than that of Jesus Christ!” If Mary be conscious of all that has gathered round her name, surely a sword must pierce her gentle heart. It is idolatrous. But the cure does not lie in angry and bitter scolding. Error is generally the exaggeration of a truth and the corrective of error is the presentation of the truth, which has been obscured or over-stated. Alary has been worshipped because God has been misconceived. AT A e have thought of God as a male. A HUMAN CRAVING. The Fatherhood of God has been preached, i but not the Motherhood of God, and the sinful and sorrowing hearts of men crave the mother-heart of God, the infinite patience and pity, the infinite hope and sympathy of our mothers. Who docs not find it easier to tell mother our faults than confess to father? In the life of lan Alaclaren it is told how he visited a. church in Italy and saw a woman at her prayers. AA T hen she rose from her knees he approached her, and gently asked why she offered her prayers to Alary instead of praying to God direct? The woman turned to him a wistful, eager face and said: “Ah, sir, but you are a man!’’ Alaclaren instantly saw the point and apologised, saying: “Forgive me, my dear woman, and pray on.” AVe need no ill-natured denunciation, but a warm and winning interpretation of the Alotherhood of God. The story of the Incarnation means that God is near and kind. God is not a cold and shadowy abstraction. He is not outside and apart from the world. He is not stern, unbending, vengeful, hut warm, gracious, lovable. We do not need Alary, or Mary’s Son, to protect us against our Father-Mother-God. The cure of Alariolitry is to show that in Clirist we have all they seek in Alary. THE AVTSH TO BE REMEMBERED. I said that the Alagnificat is more than a-noble song; it ie a revelation of the singer’s soul: for, see. there is worthy ambition, moral passion and true patriotism. Alary exulted in the prospect of immortality. Her heart thrilled at the thought of being held in affectionate memory. “From henceforth all generations shall call me blessed;’ It is ambition, but not the ambition that

craves for power and glory; it is the nobler desire to live in the grateful regard of lives helped and saved. The wish tq be remembered, and loved beyond the grave is legitimate. Christ promised that to another Alary as the reward of her g’’eeiou>s deed of uncalculating love. Nav, more. He erav

this for Himself. Ho wanted to bo loved and trusted, not by the twelve alone, but by races unseen and generations unborn. Hence He instituted the Holy Supper and said: “This do in remembrance of Ale.” Of the vaulting ambition that grains at power and cares nothing how it reaches a pedestal and the gaslight, Christianity has only scorn; hut if wo seek gratitude and love, and learn to live without applause. then the song of Alary, and the example of her Glorious Son, give their sanction. THE SONG’S PATRIOTIC FERVOR. A second feature of the song is its patriotic fervor. Alary lived in a small land, hut her outlook was wide and her grasn of history was firm. She wa.s no pre-Christian nun. dividing days and nights in dreams and vigils. Tiers was the broader sympathy and nobler task of her country's prophets. Love of Fatherland was cherished and taught in that white-washed cottage in Nazareth, where the deeds of David and Daniel, the siege of Zion, and the hernias of the Macabees, were recounted, like th • story of Salam island Troy. This child of Israel nourished her own soul and the heart of her Holy Child on the past splendours and coming glories of her race, and when Jesus wept over Jerusalem. as a woman mourns the ruin of her first horn and her pride. He learned that noble grief at Mary’s knee. A PATRIOTIC SONG. But the most striking feature of the Alagnificat is its passion for righteousness. Tn quivering and exultant strain she sings the praises of the God of Revolutions! “He hath put down the mighty from their seat and exalted the humble and meek.” Wo must not blunt the edge of that by so-called “spiritualising.’ Alary’s was a democratic song. The words mean what they say. Her heart burned with wrath at things as she saw them. “Our Afother of Sorrow” entered into the. wrongs of her people. Tradition has represented her as sitting in a bower whore roses bloomed, screened from the rough winds of this naughty world! The facts are the reverse of that. She came of a suffering and exiled people. Her nation's foes wore (trunk with pride and passion. Their ill-gotten gain was squandered on luxury and vice. Her eyes looked on deeds that made her cheeks blush and burn. Unjust taxes impoverished her humble home. Some of her kindrod paid the penalty of political oppression. Her glorious First-horn died on a cross! But God reigned. Alessiah was at hand, and her heart, swept by hot moral passion, trembled into a revolutionary song, and when Christ scourged the Temple courts free of traffickers and denounced as whited sepulchres men who made long prayers and big dividends, we catch vibrant echoes of His mother’s strain. The Christmas moo’n will shine on a sad and distracted world, hut let us lift up our eyes and sing, for God is marching on: “He comes to break oppression. To set the captive free. To take away transgression And rule in :Equity.”