RELIGIOUS WORLD.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXII, Issue 147, 22 June 1901, Page 2 (Supplement)

RELIGIOUS WORLD.

"LOVE PROFANE AST)

SACRED

DR. HOETON HOME ITKOM ITALY.

(From Christian World.")

Dr. Horton lias como back from his three weeks in Italy, and has brought the Italian atmosphere back with him. On Sunday morning the skies ■were gloomy even at Hampstead; but the congregation at Lyndhurst Road Church seemed to bathe in southern sunshine and poetry.

Dr. Horton took as his text the words, "Love one another from a, clean 'heart, fervently." For three weeks, he said, he had been much in spiritual fellowship with Virgil and Francis of Assisi and Dante, in a land filled by them with influences which enriched the mind, aud fed the spirit of man. The preparation lor that morning's sermon had been clone there and not in the study; and Ins subject had haunted him all the time of his absence. In Italian picture galleries it wa.s very common to see pictures representing a conflict between '■profane and sacred love." Titian had a celebrated picture of this sort; but in Pisa there was one of even greater charm. In the foreground were two winged boys-Cupid, blindfold and bound to a. rock, and an ano-el burning the bow and arrows he bad wrenched from the little heathen god This contrast was exemplified in the works of the three great men already named. Virgil was rich m "profane" love. There was no greater love passage in literature than the passage iiTthe Aeneid, describing the love of Dido and its tragic close. Dt. Francis might be taken as the representative of "sacred" love; he had been called "the troubadour of God. Dante strangely combined the two. One poem attributed to him, which, it might be hoped, was spurious, lamented that he had spent so muchtime in praising "love," and then turned to "love to God." It was to be hoped Dante never wrote the line referring to his love for Beatrice as false sentiment. The contrast, indeed was an untrue one. There was no such thing as "profane" love; the antithesis was monkish and unreal. In the New Testament there was no contrast drawn between love of Cod and love of man. All true love was on the inclined plane leading up to God. If it did not reach that goal it was love diverted and corrupted. It would be the beginning of a great reformation in the world if we got ourselves and others to understand that love in our hearts was the bud of which religion was the flower. The bud was sometimes blighted; but if it had blossomed the flower would have been religion. The children— and all of them had been children a little while ago—knew what love for a mother was; but dirt they know that love for a mother led right up to love of God? It was put into our nature to draw us up to God, from Whom we and our mothers alike came. "How is it"—people might ask

—"that so many of us loved our mothers and so few love God?" One reason was that we had not been taught to recognise in this deep and exquisite instinct of the human heart its significance, its point and pur-r<»-c "Hie point of all revelation was Ih;t1 God loved man as a parent loved tli*- child.

Some young men and women were enjoying the pure and rare experience of early love, as described in Dante's earliest sonnet. They had just begun to experience the transforming power of what was commonly called love. Their.nature grew more tender, and yet much stronger. They* learned the power to bear as vroJl as to enjoy. The young man became heroic; the girl rich in womanhood. Self seemed to die down in the fire-that burned in the heart. These young people were at the point when they got a real vision of God. They •were putting a foot on the first step, of which the highest step was God himself. The image, of the bride and bridegroom had been chosen by Christ on purpose. If they would preserve this love in all its purity and power let them press forward and the bud would unfold into the blossom. Why, then, did so many love in the common sense and so few reached the love of God? He feared it must be admitted, though it sounded cynical, that it was because they had never loved enough, was because they had not been true enough to their love, had alloAved their love to become earthly and to wither away by careless neglect. Debase love into the he&ts of passion and it quickly burned out. A cross was involved in true love, and if they would not bear the cross their lore would perish. The bright vision faded, not because love had failed, but because they had failed to love. Till love reached the point of the Divine, it could not be permanently even human. There was something much more terrible than death; and that was the death of love. The human spirit, by its failure and fault, had in it the seed of decay for what was best in it. God was the great heart of love in the universe which gave to human love its perir.anence and vitality. When Christ, in one of His strong phrases, said that people should hate father and mother in order to love Him, he meant that there avbs no way of saving our love for. one another except by fixing our love on the Divine. That this was His meaning was clear, from the whole course of the New Testament. Christ not only came because He ?.cvfcd the world", but to save the love of the world. From a clean heart alone true love could flow; and unless the heart was clean love must die.

It is the Bishop of Carlisle who declares that the Church must now"collect the poor man's penny a« v.yell as the rich man's pound," says the "Daily Mail." For in the diocese of Carlisle things ecclesiastical are impoverished indeed—there are not 300 livings all told in the diocese, but 150 of these have less than £200 a year and not a few of them are under ,€IOO a year. And the poor man will gladly give his penny, to help his poor Church, but he may probably ask first why the Bishop'of Carlisle has £4500 a year and a "castle" "to live in.

"She is America's greatest actress," Bald Mrs Tenspot, speaking of a tragedienne whose name came up in conversation. "Tndeed! Who says so?"

a«kca Mr Tenspot. "The man who k malcc» the pills that cured her of mdi■- ■ gostlon." 1