SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, 30 December 1922, Page 9

SUNDAY READING.

the sign of the swaddling BANDS. And this is the sign unto you; ye shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” Saint Luke 11. 12. (Rev. A. H. Collins, New Plymouth!) Everything in the story of this wonder child is wonderful. His cradle is the Mecca of the Christian world. His cottage home in Nazareth pulls like a magnet. His teaching holds the seeds of cosmic revolutions. His character confounds the critics. His cross rivets the gaze of men and angels. His deata is the one hope of our wayward and sinful race- To use the words of Jean Paul Richter, “He is the holiest among I the mighty, and the mightiest among the aoly, who with His pierced hands lifted empires off their hinges and turned the currents of the world.” But it may be doubted whether there is anything more wonderful than the sign of' the swaddling bands. “Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” The Lord of Freedom fettered; the King of Glory poor; the heir of all the ages homeless! You know how 'ancient mythologies have played fantastic tricks with the idyllic story. They have said that He, was known by the bees that swarmed about his cradle, and sipped honey from His baby lips, while strangled serpents lay about His bed. Christian art has done little better, for it has depicted Him as a kind of glorified Dutch doll, with halo of celestial light, so that the cattle cratch glowed with unearthly brightness. The whole atmosphere of the sunlit orient was saturated with these pious fictions. The people were looking for something supernormal and theatric, and for them to be told that Messiah’s advent was the reverse of all this; that He was just a helpless human child bandaged, and poor; that He would be known, not by His grandeur, but by His humbleness, not by bees that buzzed and serpents slain and rays of glory sheen, but by His poverty and His tears, was the confusion of all their stupid fancies and the rebuke of all their artful impostures. I They all were looking for a king. To slay their foes and lift them high; ' Thou cam’est a little baby thing, i That made a woman crv. I I TRUTH STRANGER THAN FICTION. [ But "truth is stranger than fiction,” 1 and the essential truth of the holy nativity is this: That Christ the Lord n mptied Himself of His Divine and eternal splendour, and entered life through the same low portal as any other child of the human race- His body was no phantom form. His manhood was no make believe. The sign of the swaddling clothes and the cattle stall was the sign of His humility and humanity. It was the majesty of meekness, the omnipotence of helplessness, the sublimity of the common place! Tn “the conversation in a Common Room. Oxford.” there is this suggestive passage: “What T want to know is this,” saM Trevor, “the Christ of the Churches is incomprehensible to me; probably is to most people, even the bishops and theologians themselves if they dared confess it. Can you tell one how to find the real Jesus?” “I think I can,” said Rutherford, “you will find the real Jesus when you discover that Jesus was a man.”

The venerable translators of the authorised version, probably r. Tver supposed that the phrase “swaddling clothes,” would need to be recast, but , it does. It refers to an Old World cusi tom that looks outlandish in our eyes. I Yet it is only a few generations since the rule prevailed in lands the most civilised. Jean Jacques Rousseau emancipated Europe from the ridiculous custom. But in the slow and slumberous East it is to-day as in the days of Mary. The newly-born is bound in starps of cotton stuff. The earliest gift of a mother to her babe is a fetter! Its first experience is a torture! TRUE TO EXPERIENCE OF JESUSMary followed the custom of her race. She did the best she knew, and in doing it she unconsciously typed all His future. For a little child with imprisoned limbs is truer to the experience of Jesus Christ than half the artistic falsehoods hung up in the galleries of Europe. Still is He fettered and cramped by false customs, stale opinions. effete ecclesiastical rules, and creeds outworn! In Bethlehem’s cradle. He wa-s “wrapped in swaddling clothes.” In Joseph’s rocky tomb He was bound hand and foot in grave clothes, and this beginning and ending of His earthly career fitly represented all the years that lay between. The hampering of His limbs in the cradle was true and typical of the limitations which have beset Him from year to year, from land to land, from age to age. He could not move with freedom to do His beneficient will, nor can He yet move freely. Ignorance, prejudice, sectarian rivalries, creedal debates, denomination feuds, and all the smothering mechanism of the churches, which mistake organism for life, frenzied motion for progress, and a hectic flush for spirituality—what are these save the perpetuation of His Bethlehem experience, when even she who loved Him imprisoned him? And is there any ministry more to be coveted than the power to use the scissors unsparingly to set, Christ free to work His sovereign will in our hearts, and in the life of the world. “Loose Him and let Him go,” is still the word we need to hear and heed. WHAT CAN COME OUT OF NAZARETH ? Think of the narrowness and the insular prejudice of Nazareth, that proverbially evil. almost illustriously insignificant, out-of-the-way village, wheie Christ spent thirty years of His earthly life. Nazareth was a mean hamlet, wedged between the hills of Zebuion, and far removed from the trade routes and military mads —drowsy, provincial, inert, the slave of dull routine, pinched thoughts, and domineering opinion; a nlace where the air was stagnant, life ; was drab, and the buzz of the blue botI tie would startle the place. “Can, any [wood thing come out of Nazareth?” expressed* the metropolitan scorn of a | place so mean and disreputable. Act environment plays a great part m li e. ' It means a good deal to have been born in Athens or Rome, in London or Florence, in Oxford or Cambridge, tor n there is a mind to quicken or a genius to bud such places act as a forcing But? Nazareth was nothing. The peoiplP were slow, unresponsive.. prejudiced, Snd when other places were nncn^ I w. h His praise it is recorded of Nazaretn I that P “He could not do many mighty

works because of their unbelief.” There lis a sadder fact still. Mary herself seems to have been at cross purposes with her son. There is a revealing word in the gospels, where Jesus says: “A prophet is not without honor save in his own country and among his own kin, and in his own house.” It is also written that “His brethren believed not” in Him. That village household regarded Him as fanatical and needing restraint. His public utterances would endanger the family in the eyes of the religious and civil authorities. was alone and fettered even in His own family. His mother did not understand Him, and a man misses a great deal when his mother cannot understand. YTien the hour struck and Christ moved out into the larger world of Caparnaum, Caesaren, Pbilipi, and Jerusalem, and so passed from the cramped confines of Sleepy Hollow to the city of David, far-famed in song and story. He only exchanged physical limitations for mental bonds. In Caparnium they murmured against Him, and in Jerusalem they nailed Him like a kite to a barn door. Fetters were still His lot! SWADDLING BONDS. But you will remind me that Jesus had His disciples- Yes, He had, and they rested His gentle heart on many a sad day. But they, too, supplied the swaddling bonds. How little they understood Him! “I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them. ' He spake of a kingdom without * frontier—vast as the bounds of creature life, soundless as sunshine, and free as the grace of God—and straightway they scrambled for office and rank! He proposed to win the world by sacrifice and endless loving, and they would have drawn the sword and called down fire from Heaven. He told of a cross, and they rebuked Him. He faced Cavalry, and “they all forsook Him and fled.” He bade them “Go ye into the world and preach the gospel,” regardless of racial and creedal distinction, and they loitered about the confines of Judah until the church of the catholic son of man narrowly escaped shrinking into a Jewish sect instead of expanding into a universal faith. In this way the fettering and cramping. of the rude manger followed Him down the years. Isn’t this the tragedy of modern Christianity ? We have kept the Friend and Saviour of the whole round world in swaddling clothes. He made religion spiritual instead of ceremonial, world-wide instead of local, rational instead of magical, humane instead of cruel, spirit instead of letter, sublime instead of trivial! He gave to the world the splendid dowery of faith in one common father of the race, and one bond of brotherhood. He confirmed our hope of immortality and “opened the kingdom of Heaven to all believers.” Tie interpreted the infinite value of the individual, the dignity of motherhood, the value of a child, and the true glory of life. He freed the slave and robbed the grave of its terrors. WHAT WE HAVE DONEAnd we? All! We have tried to imprison Gotf-Jn a three-lined syllogism; tried to shut God in a stone church; tried to limit His free mercy. We have made His cross the battlecry of warring sects, His church a close corporation. and the Holy table a place of separation instead of the trysting place of humble souls. We have discussed when we should have stood in awe, wrangled when we should have prayed,

and been familiar when we should have been wonder-struck.

And now the advent season has come once more, with its message of peace and goodwill, its family re-unions, its innocent merry-making, its carols, and its roundelays, let us think of the needy, and purge our hearts of nncharBut let us keep in mind the deeper meaning of the season and hear the call to enlargement of mind and heart. Above all. let us set Christ free; free in our hearts, free in His church, and free for all the world. Ring out false pride in place and blood, The civic slander and the spite; Ring in the love of truth and right, Ring in the common love of good. Ring out old shapes of foul disease, Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace. Ring in the valiant man, and free The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness of the land, Ring in the Christ that is to be.