RANGITATA ISLAND.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2033, 15 April 1890, Page 4

RANGITATA ISLAND.

A harvest thanksgiving service was held in the Eangitata Island schoolroom on Sunday last. There was only the ordinary attendance. Probably the excessive heat induced by a nor’wester, militated against a larger attendance. Great pains had evidently been taken with the decorations, and as this was the first occasion of the kind unusual interest had been evoked in gathering grain, vegetables, and fruit from all parts of the district. The decorators deserve great praise for the way in which their labor of love was carried out. Cabbage palms, tois, grain, flowers, vegetables, and fruit mingled in bountiful profusion. The quality and abundance of the contributions were the cause of hearty congratulations and expressions of deep thankfulness to God for His merciful provision of food without stint. The Rev. T. A. Hamilton officiated, and preached a very impressive sermon from I. Corinthians, xv., 20, “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept.” I he preacher said in meeting together upon that occasion they had two reasons for thankfulness and rejoicing: the first was to Almighty God for the abundant yield of the harvest, and the supply of bodily wants ; and the second was joyfulness for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, a fast which Eastertide commemorates. Both of these thoughts were combined in the text taken from the sublime chapter which formed a portion of the burial service. It was a good thing to thank God for temporal blessings, but spiritual blessings were, after all, the cause of deepest thankfulness. The preacher then gave a masterly exposition of the chapter from which the text was taken, shewing that certain Corinthians denied the resurrection of the body, deeming that the regeneration of society was the only resurrection. The apostle controverted this by appealing first to the historical proofs of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and afterwards by a demonstration of the absurdity of a denial ot this truth. The resurrection of Christ was the keystone of the arch of Christianity. Without it the whole falls to the ground. If Christ be not risen “your faith is vain,” our preaching useless, nay wicked; “ ye are yet in your sins” —“ they also which are fallen asleep are perished”—what becomes of all their sacrifice—devotion—noble living ? This he maintained was absurd in the face of the historical fact, viz., f “ Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits” of a glorious harvest of those who should also rise hereafter to immortality. The “ first fruits ” were a sample and pattern of what were to follow. The Jewish harvest was untouched until a sheaf of tho first ripe barley was brought on the second day of the passover and waved by the priest before the Lord. The world’s harvest was yet to come, when the angel would thrust in the sharp sickle. Christ was tho first fruits; “ afterwards” the harvest would be “ they that are Christ’s at Hia coming.”

That a resurrection of the bod? was possible, St. Paul argued from the analogy of the seed sown, and springing up with the same life] though in a nobler form ; “so also is the resurrection of the dead.” “ Nothing is impossible with God ; look at His creative power in the celestial as well as the terrestrial world!” The preacher then reminded them that materialists would certainly wish that there were no resurrection, in order to eat and drink and live only for the lower and animal life, but no person could really be satisfied with such a life. '1 he true life was of selfsacrifice ; the real life was that lived by Jesus Christ, Who lived for the sake of others, and Himself said, “ Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die it abidetb alone, but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit.” He urged them to cling to the faith of a resurrection of the dead, and in this faith to surrender the present life into God’s hands with the same faith that a farmer commits his seed to the ground ; and as surely as a harvest follows times of anxiety, storms, heat and cold, etc., so surely will the dying Christian reap the harvest of well doing, and be able to exclaim in his last moments “Oh death, where is thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy victory ?” etc.