RELIGIOUS WORLD.

Auckland Star, Volume XLII, Issue 275, 18 November 1911, Page 14

RELIGIOUS WORLD.

THE INSIGHT OF LOVE. (By DR. FRANK CRANE.) "faithfulness to us in our faults Is a certain si«u of fidelity lu a friend."—J. <-,. iiullUliU. Love his been called blind. That is because it will not and cannot see faults. ikj men have despised love and boa-sted or intellect, which, they say, can discern the truth better. \nd herein men simply display their ignorance and show that they do not know what truth is nor what knowin-' is. l-'or a living truth, or the truth about a living thing, was never yet perceived by any brain. Mind can see dead truths, such as that two and two make. four, or that here is a book and there is a man, and all such things that have to do merely with material and inanimate propositions; but truths that grow in tho human spirit are only visible to the eye of love. Whoever loves, sees; and whoever sees, sees only things lovely. For the soul of a human being is essentially 'beautiful, and only the love ray can reveal it.

Tliis is proved by the fact that wherever we find love in its purest and intensest form, you find always that it has this glorifying effect. In three instances you will (ind love nt its best. First, in the loVe of a mother for her young child. This affection cannot Bee evil. "The mother kisses the crippled feet, yearns over the weak will, and sees beneath all naughtiness to a substratum of charm invisible to you and me.

Second, in the first love of a man and a, maid. Here Puck has squeezed upon their eyes the juice of that some flower lie used to make tho fuiry queen love the clown with nn ass's head. No matter how gross or common to our unlit eyes the girl may be, her lover thinks her an angel. So thite sex love, when raised to its spiritual potency, is the most wonderful of all discoveries. To the infatuated lover, she has no faults; they are but eccentricities of divinity no one but he understands. Ho would not change her in any least way, lest sho should cease to be she, and so be Jess a miracle. This is not folly, nor blindness. It is insight. For any one of us ds precisely so beautiful and glorious and majestic, if anyone ■could foe found who would love us enough to detect it.

For awhile, at least, it is given to us, in the passion of youth, to see another soul as angels see souls. There never vet was love enough in this world. God send more! And to any lover we may speak those words of Wordsworth:

Thou blest philosopher who yet dost keep Thy heritage: thou eye amongst the blind. Thai, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal Haunted forever by the eternal Mind!

The third instance is God's love for the human soul. The revelation of this, the emphasis he placed upon this, is Jesus' chief contribution to the happiness of the race. For, singularly enough, it is the reverse of all the creeds, is truer than the creeds. God' 3 faith in me is more saturated with redemptive potency than my faith in Him. Tho thought that infinite goodness can and docs "love mo is the flame that lights my love to him; as it is written: "The spirit of a man is the candle of the Lord."

What the world needs is trust, or, rather, to be trusted. Slowly and through painful years and centuries of intellectual stupidity we are to learn that children are to be made better by bcMeving in them and appreciating them, rather than by flogging and scolding: that criminals can only be ■cured by trusting them, never by punishing them; that nations are best conquered by disarmament and defenceless confidence, more certainly than by ormlies; and that sinful men are to be ■won to worship and morality by revealing to them through love their own dignity as God's beloved, rather than by threats and curses; that while Sinai and the white thunders of the law drive men to despair, Calvary and the revelation of divine love lifts them to nobleness. Love is not blind. Love is the only thing that sees. CHURCH MEWS AND NOTES. The success that has attended the establishment of the Congregational Church at Green Lane is shown by the fact tjbat already it has been deemed necessary to secure another site, to which the building was removed during the past week. It was shifted without being pulled down, and will, in due course, be enlarged to afford better accommodation, more particularly for the Sunday School, as quite a large number of children are now regular attendants. Service was toeld in the church on the new site last Sunday. The Act of Parliament required to legalise the separation of the New Zealand Methodist Church from Australia has either passed, or is well advanced in the Parliaments at New Zealand, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, and Queensland. In. Western Australia and Tasmania it has not yet been dealt with, but all is now in readiness for the legislature. The new Mayor of Mansfield, in Nottinghamshire, is a working miner. Councillor Thomas Hall, J.P., who was selected for the position, is a life-long Primitive Methodist. Mr Richard T. Booth, the founder of the Blue Ribbon Army, has returned from America to England for a permanency. He hopes to meet many of his friends in the campaign of thirty years. ego. The Blue Ribbon Army is not heard much of nowadays, but at the 4ime of its enlistment the force of Temperance opinion obliged almost every Temperance man and woman to wear a !blne ribbon badge.

Tjonl Derby lias convened a round table conference to discuss the best method of regulating street processions and meetings in Liverpool, with a view to settling the sectarian disputes which iliave so long disturbed the city. Tho members "ill lie:—Tim Risliop ,if Liverpool. Bishop Whiteside, Councillor Austin Harford. Sir Benjamin S. .Johnson. Colonel KvlTin-Tnylor. M.P.. Councillor J. i.. I.ynskey. Mr. T. P. O'Connor, M.P., Colonel .1. P. Reynolds. Rev. Stanley P.ogers. Alderman A. T. Salvidge, Alderman J. '!. Tagunrt. Councillor John YVnlker. and Pastor Ocorge Wise. The Rev. Thomas Ppurgeon, formerly pastor of Auckland, has taken to colour, r.nd blossomed forth ns an artist. A collection of n hundred water-colour c'rawinrs painted by Mr. Spurgcon within the last two years, has Men on exhibition nt the Walker Galleries in New Botid-.-treet. They are mainly landscapes of Swiss and Devonshire Bcenes and seascapes o n tlie Devon coast, with a few vagrant drawings in Suffolk and Surrey.

Dr. R. P. McArthur has resigned from j the pastorate of the famous Baptist Cal-J vary Church, New York, .after occupy-j inp that position for 41 years.

Some interesting facts* were supplied recently at a country Methodist Church where the people were farewelling one of th* local preachers, who had had charge of them without cost or charge for sixteen rears. In reply tt. words of appreciation, accompanying some memento of the connection, the speaker said he and another of the active local preachers had conducted 53 and 54 Sunday services respectively (hiring the past year. The miles travelled by each preacher were ■between 800 and POO, and he found that this was the average of their work for at five years past. They had suppliril their own horses, paid the shoeing smith themselves, bought their own horse feed, harness, etc-., and the horses used to reach the appointments were more engaged in the service ot the church than in their businesses. And yet he had heard church people who didn't do anything say: "It was only a local preacher" who was planned to-day. Glasgow Presbytery Sabbath Observance Committee reports that it has united with other committees in the effort to have the Shops Bill amended so that local authorities shall have the power to determine what shops are to he open on Sunday. It mentions the shooting and band practices by Territorials at weekend camps on Sunday, and calls for the strongest possible protest on the part of the Churches if suth things are to be j sanctioned by the War Office. Mr Henry Overtop Wills, tobacco manufacturer, of Bristol, left estate pro-j visionally sworn at £2,000,000. He con-| tinned his gift of £IOO,OOO to Bristol: University, and bequeathed £IOOO each to the Bristol Y.M.C.A., tho London Missionary Society, and the Church Missionary Society: £SOO each to the British and Foreign Bible Society, Mr and Mis Harold Wills for Trevandrum Missio i j ■work, Mrs Bramwell Booth for rescue j and social work, and the Broad Plain i Mission, Bristol; £250 each to the XS.P.C.C, the Orphan Working School, the Homes for Little Boys, tho Church j of Kngland Waifs and Strays, the Governesses' Benevolent Institution, and the Clergy Orphan Corporation, and other j sums exceeding £14,000 for religious pur- j poses and to charitable institutions.

The Methodist branch of the L<aymen"s Missionary Movement in Victoria has recently hold its first Ntati ronferenpe in Melbourne. About GO delegates registered their names as members, many of them being- leading business men. In a eonforonce extending over two days such subjects as "Business (Standards Applied to Missions " and the "Claims of Missions on Business Men" were dealt with. The time allowed was not found to be sufficient, and future gatherings will provide a more lengthy programme. The next step forward will ho to arrange for similar gatherings in variouß parts of the country, when contiguous towns will be joined together, as in Melbourne and its suburbs. Conferences for city men will also be planned in small towns away from large cities, where there will be freedom from the distraction of the city.

One of many striking incidents at the great farewell meeting to C.M.B. missionaries at the Albert Hall was the reception given to Archdeacon <T. It. Wolfe, a vice-president of the society, who has seen 50 yeirs' service in China, and was returning to Fukien. The Archdeacon, who has only been home three times in 50 years, was called upon to stand as the representative of the 147 missionaries returning to the front. The white-haired veteran rose at the back of the platform, and h.id resumed his seat almost before the audience had caught sight of him, but there was a storm of applause.