COMMONPLACE ROAD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 September 1941, Page 7

COMMONPLACE ROAD

DANGERS, OF DULL TIMES. In religion as in ordinary life There are periods of dullness when the order of- the day is slogging along a road which seems desperately commonplace, and when the temptation is to sink into a mood of unexpectancy, writes Dr. Sidney M. Berry, secretary of the English Congregational Union. Everyone knows those uninviting phases in ordinary life when there seems nothing very great to live for, but when the work of life has to be pursued without the zest which make it seem worth while. A great deal has been said and written about dangerous ages, but no phase of life is more dangerous than those times .of dullness. The temptation always is to make the high emotional pitch an end in itself and to turn away from the dull track r ’f duty on the search for sensations. The same kind of thing happens in the religious life. Religion has its great moments, its visions, and its thrills, but if those are made the test either of its reality or its vitality there is peril ahead. The Bible has one or two arresting phrases descriptive of 'hose periods when religion is an exercise rather than an experience. It speaks of “the days when there is no open vision,” and of “the day of small things.” Those phrases are in themselves vivid pictures of what we ourselves feel. They suggest to the mind something of the weariness of life and the effort to keep going. A week before the Day of Pentecost there must have been many of that first company of Christians who wondered whethe their religion had much to offer them and whether it really justified all the effort that was being put into it. Some may even have felt a doubt about its future prospects. A week later the full meaning and reality of it came to 'horn in unforgettable ways. But the road which led to that experience was the ordinary, commonplace, dull road, and it is along that road that all the great moments of life must come. If the attempt is made to find short cuts in order to avoid the dull grind, the result is only a few artificial and ephemeral excitements which do not deserve the name of experiences. In religion as in life, the price of the greatest moments is dogged resolution and plodding along the road of the uneventful.