THE SABBATH

Waikato Times, Volume 122, Issue 20504, 21 May 1938, Page 20 (Supplement)

THE SABBATH

CHRIST'S PRESENCE Naught of self to mar His glory, Naught of sin to make it dim, Just a glorious, glorious shining That the friends around see Him. Resurrection joys abounding, Every morning/mercies new; Every day, His conscious Presence, All my life one interview. Soon He’ll come; then I shall see Him, See my Lord, “The Crucified,” ' What a glorious day is breaking, He and I, quite satisfied. THE ENGLISH SUNDAY At the twenty-ninth anniversary of the Imperial Alliance for Defence of Sunday, Prebendary, G. H. Vincent preached at a service in St. Paul’s Cathedral, and in the evening a meeting was held in Caxton Hall, Westminster, at which Lord Aberdeen presided. Sir John Haslam, M.P., asked, “Who are the people who suffer from that ‘Monday feeling?’ Are they the people who use God's day aright, or are they the people who go rushing about seeking for illusory pleasure on the day that God has appointed as His own?” Much was said about the Continental Sunday. What had It done for the people on the Continent? Were they so peaceful, happy and contented that they could set us in Britain an example? Dr. Scott Lidgett said that they could defend the importance of Sunday from the standpoint of every human interest.

CHRISTIAN COURAGE THE ENDURANCE OF FAITH Courage Is a Christian virtue of a high order, yet some forms of it appear to be devoid of any specifically ethical quality. Aristotle refused the name of courage to the rashness which despised danger; courage, he said, began only when danger was despised from a worthy motive. Courage may, therefore, be described as endurance for a worthy end. The Greeks put courage high in the list of virtues, but their conception of it was limited by their general outlook on life. The courage of the soldier and of the citizen they understood: it was a worthy end to face danger in the service of the State. But the wider vision of noble ends of pursuit unfolded by Christianity was hidden from them. The Enrlohment of the Moral Ideal effected by Christianity Is due to two things. Our Lord emphasised in His teaching the value of the individual soul. He saw In each man a child of God with immeasurable possibilities of spiritual growth. He insisted on the importance of motive as the true test of the quality of an action. What a man was in himself was of more Importance than what he did. This revelation of a new world of spiritual values widened the sphere of morality by bringing into prominence the inner realm of character. Our Lord also showed that morality was not self-based, but was an expressing of the being of God. The goodness which men were to pursue was a reflection of the Divine goodness; and they were to pursue it because God was calling them into fellowship with Himself. By His teaching on man’s filial relation to God Christ opened up fresh channels of moral adventure and gave a new quality to moral effort.

Christian courage is brave living in a spiritual world. Its root is trust In God, as the psalmist realised when he wrote, “what time I am afraid, I will put my trust in thee.” For the Christian the supreme values are those of the eternal world. In these he lives, trying to reproduce them in his own life. They provide a standard of reference by which he assesses his experiences. If called on to suffer he seeks to make his own the spiritual lessons which suffering contains Gods way with him he may not understand, but he is sure of God, and endures “as seeing him who is invisible.” His courage is grounded in the conviction that the spirit Is more Important than the body, and that the spirit's True Home Is the Eternal Realm. There is no virtue which has not received a fresh consecration from the fact that the pattern of perfect living was embodied in Jesus Christ. The Christian who seeks to be courageous will have constantly In mind Him who faced the Cross with serenity and unwavering trust in the purposes of God. From that perfect life he will draw inspiration and will And in the Cross a transfTgurement of his own troubles. He will find there too the encouragement to meet with resolution the difficulties which confront him in his service of others. His courage will be blended with hope, sustained by faitn, deepened by living association with his Master. will become less a quality and more of a triumphant attitude to life as a whole. That attitude was characteristic of the aposlle St. Paul, than whom no better example can be found of the man of courage. That courage was the fruit of that devotion. YYe become courageous in proportion as we forget ourselves in enthusiasm for a great and worthy end. The Christian is called on to be an instrument of God's purpose- Cowardice, whether intellectual or moral, can have no place in such a life, because if the cause is God's it must prevail. The Christian can “greet the unseen with a cheer," for behind the unseen stands God, who gives courage to all who have a living faith in Him.