SUNDAY COLUMN

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 37, 23 November 1940, Page 3

SUNDAY COLUMN

NEWS OF THE CHURCHES. DEVOTIONAL READING. (Conducted by the Ashburton Ministers’ Association) . MAKE EACH DAY A MASTERPIECE. “Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.” A famous English artist, Sir Joshua Reynolds, was asked v.fiiat he thought the secret of his success. He replied, “The fact that 1 tried to mate every picture my best.” A masterpiece has few, if any, flaws, and that is the ideal with which we should face each day of our life.

The Art “Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.” These wise words artcredited to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, son of the famous American poet. He .amplifies his thought w'hen he says, “Man is born a predestined idealist, for he is born to act. To act is to affirm the worth of an end; to persist in affirming the worth of an end is to make an ideal. . . . The root at once of joy and beauty is to put out as compact and solid a piece of work as one can, to try to make “first rate, and to leave it unadvertised.” It is not achievement in the art of true living' to add up the things wo possess and the things that are in our favour and find satisfaction in the answer. This process may require skill in arithmetic, but it does not follow that it is skilful living. Life has meaning and purpose. The background is just as important as the foreground. It knows values that defy mathematics. Life, lite> a picture, has grandeur, a quality, knows “heart throbs,” deep emotions and the joy of creation;. The sum and: picture interpretations of life are opposing viewpoints. You may add up figures without soul qualities; but it is the faculties of the soul that produce the picture. The soul is the starting point for building manhood, and through manhood a worthwhile civilisation. The fetish of secular education is unfair to the skill of man’s soul. We train men’s hands and feet, and eyes and brain; we make the animal “smarter,” and “more cunning,” but w«e leave the real man, which is the soul, improperly cared for. Dr. Horace Bushnell said, “The soul of all improvement is the improvement of tho soul.” The development of the soul has not only a value to happiness. “Things that are material,” reasons Morris Gray, “tend to differentiate us. The things of the spirit tend to bring us together. It is not .011 the things that are material; it is on the things that are spiritual that the great kinship of life, the . great kinships of the world are founded.” The Artist Love is the key to art. Who has loved more grandly than Jesus P He is life’s master .artist. “No man,” said Sir Joshua Reynolds, “can put more into a picture than there is in himself,” and the same is true of life. Our “spirits” must be “finely touched” if they are to. have “fine issues.” A magazine featured a picture entitled “Thie Ambition of Man —What He Wished to be, and What He Became.” There were' three examples. One wished to be a painted' of great pictures, and he became a tradesman painter; another wished to become a great actor and he became a clown: the- third dneamed of being a judge sitting in the bench in a robe and ermine, and he became a policeman! It is worthy of a smile if the humour exposes to us the tragedy that takes place in our own life if we refuse to pay the price of mental and spiritual discipline that produces the liability of soul. Tha Gentleman. An artist does not expect more from his picture than he puts into it. A gardener does not expect his plot to produce 'unless 'he restones the fertility of the soil. Neither should we expect life to favour us if we are not investing our true worth. “A gjentleman is one who puts back more into his generation than he takes out of it.”- Bernard Shaw used this definition satirically as an expression of his scorn for that artificial concept of life that makes it mlerely a sum. A gentleman is more than a creature of birth and wealth. He is one who can put a plus sign after his life. When he dies men will sa.y, “The world was better because he lived.” Captain Scott wrote in his diary, “It was the act of a man and an English gentleman.” He was referring to Captaini Oates walking out to his death in a noble (endeavour to save his three companions beset with hardships. History will forever know Captain "Oates as a-“gallant Christian gentleman.” AH men can share that gallantry and claim immortality if they so order their lives to put more into their generation than they take out of it. Many people are disappointed with tho church because they expect more out of.it than they put into it. Others forsake Christ because they miss the thrills of disciplUship. anticipating more than they put into it. There is reason to believe Judas was dissatisfied with his Master because lie was expecting more than he gave. Ho serves his home, church and generation well who endeavours to put more into them -than lie expects to take out of them.

THE CHRISTIAN REVOLUTION. Evangelism means making known the love of God in Christ so that the Spirit of Christ may rule in the whole life as the good news which is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes. This involves what I think is rightly described as the Christian revolution, whereby the rule of self, or of man, is displaced by the rule of Christ in every relationship -of life.—Dr. L. H. Roots, Bishop of Hanko, China. PRAYERS FOR TO-DAY. Look down, O Lord our God, from the throne of thy glorious kingdom; look down upon us and destroy us not, yea, father deliver us from evil. From all evil and misfortune, deliver us. As of old time thou didst deliver oivv fathers, deliver us. In all our straits, deliver us. From the evils of the world to come, from thine anger, from being placed on the left hand, deliver us. Deliver us and never let us be confounded; for the. sake of Jesus Christ

our Saviour and Redeemer. Amen. — Bishop Andrewes. O God, we give thanks that in Christ Jesus we haMe riddance —that the Christian life is a conquest of all handicaps, pollutions and impediments. Make our baptismal burial and resurrection to be both a. precious memory and a potent fact, an abiding parable of the faith, w Here by we 'share in the triumph of our Lord Jesus Christ and the merits of the cross. So may we be .raised clear above mere dread of human criticism or wretched scruples, above the mock virtues of ascetism and a legal life, into the nourished, united and growing body of Jesus Christ. In whose name we pray. Amen.