SUNDAY COLUMN

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 25, 9 November 1940, Page 3

SUNDAY COLUMN

NEWS OF THE CHURCHES.

DEVOTIONAL READING.

(Conducted by the Ashburton Ministers’ Association). "FEAR NOT.” What is the most characteristic of the sayings of our Lord ? That profound scholar, Wescott, had not a doubt. It was His “Fear Not,” Jesus came into a thoroughly frightened world, a world in which “fear-thought” was epidemic. Men trembled before the unknown, the terrific, the uncanny. They had good cause, they knew so littlo about anything. The wisest of the ancients said his prayers to the sun. The Greek was afraid of the Chathonian gods who dwell in caverns beneath the earth. The Emperor of the world would remiiiu shivering in hod all'day il in his haste he put his left loot, first to the ground. Behind the freakish little gods

and the malevolent devils stood Fate, with which no one could argue, and to whom no man is anything. Who would not be afraid in such a world ? But He who knew the end from the beginning, and to Whom the veil was transparent, came to men with this word on His blessed lips, _“Fear not.” To those who believed Him it was like the sudden calm that fell upon the vexed waters of (Galilee. It gave to those who received Him a new attitude towards life and death. They had His assurance for it that everything is controlled. He g-avc His guarantee that the Love of Gocl undergirds the world. On the very margin of the fearful valley they heard Him say “Let not your hearts be troubled.” They even heard Him sing on His way to Calvary. From the bitter cross they caught His word “Father into Thy hands my Spirit.” They believed Him when He said “Fear not.”

In the story of the Everest Expedition, the Dalai Lama insisted on one thing before he -would allow the English to proceed. No stone in Thibet must bo moved. To move a stone is to release a devil. Devils in that dour land are always waiting to spring from the earth to wound or kill unsuspecting men. The safeguard is to move no stone. And if a mail is hurt, the, thing to do is to pile stones upon the place, that the devil may not do it again. In Schweitzer’s African Book the story is much the same. The negroes cower before the terror of life. The diseases that ravage them, the beasts that trample their plantations, the mysteries of climate, all these beating insistently on the mind of these children of nature produce a chronic fear. That fear yields at the touch of sympathy, and at the utterance of Christ’s words. His “Fear not” is the sweetest sound ever heard in the primeval forest. The penalty of irreligion is that we slip back into the fears from which Christ delivers His people. It is the consequence of basing life on man, and on man’s cleverness instead of on God and His grace. J. B. Priestley’s book “Angel Pavement” is a picture of sordid life in a London office. It is read because it is so true to a great deal of contemporary life. He is analysing the soul of a clerk. Here-it is: “In his universe the Gods have been banished, but not the devils. Ho saw clearly enough all the signs and marks of evil in the world, having a mind that could foreshadow every stroke of malice out of the-dark, and so he was surrounded by demons he was powerless either to placate or to vanquish. If desiring as he did to be honest, decent, kind, good, happy, his courage failed. He could call in nobody, nothing but tho police. Thus he lived, this man who went so cosily from his little house to his little office more apprehensively, more dangerously than one of King Edward tho Third’s bowman. He touched wood and desperately hoped for the best.” Is such a man very different from Schweitzer’s negro, or from the Dalai Lama of Thibet? In an ago when the great fears seem to have returned, the Prophets of Israel are our teachers. But they spoke of a sanctuary where men would find spiritual and mental poise, and a peace that passes understanding. They spoke of a Coming One Who would lift life’s fears, and upon Whose lip’s the most characteristic word would be “Fear not.”

■ We shall never lose our fears or prevent the slido back into paganism, until we “Cease from man whose breath is in his nostrils.” One of the deepest promises of the Prophet is this: “Blessed is the man who trusteth in the Lord and whose hope the Lord is.” Jesus putt men into such relations 1 with God that the crash of earthly hopes, the slumping of land values, the withering of world systems, was little other than the removal of cushions that separated them from the hare arms of the Most High. Who secs God in Christ, and who receives Him gladly and by faith into the life, will “Fear no evil.” He will walk calmly through a distracted world. The Peace of God that passeth understanding will hold him undaunted “Though the earth do change and the mountains he moved in the heart of the sea.” THE TWO WAYS. “To every man there openeth A way, and ways, and a way ; And the high soul climbs the high way, And the low soul gropes the low; And in between on the misty Hats The rest drift to and fro. But to every man there openeth A high way and a low, And every man decidoth The way his soul shall go.” —John Oxen ham. THE POWER OF EXAMPLE. Jack Ilobbs, the famous English cricketer, who scored over 150 centuries in first-class cricket,.is a. devout Christian, and does a lot of good work for his church. A clergyman who met him in Australia records the following incident :

“I was travelling from Melbourne to Adelaide, and it became necessary for us to stay the night at an hotel. Accommodation was scarce, and the whole party had to sleep in one room. This was rather awkward, because I did not want to embarrass the others. I was wondering whether I should read from

the Bible and offer prayer in front of them, when the great batsman settled the’matter, by ,going down on liis knees to pray. His example was followed by others.

“Speaking of the occurrence nextday, one of the members of the party said, ‘I haven’t done that for years, hut when Jack got down on Jiis knees 1 had to get dpwn too; what is good enough for him is good enough for me.’ ”

Astronomers can weigh a star, And tell a planet’s girth, And bring the moon from skies afar Well nigh in touch with earth. But who can tune the throstle’s throat, Or match the streamlet’s song, Or estimate the joyous note Upon the skylark’s tongue?” By mathematics men can count The motion atoms make, And calculate the vast amount Of force when billows break, But Love’s equation cannot ho By sign or figures given, For, boundless as Eternity, It touches earth and heaven.