A NEWSPAPER EDITOR ON PRATES.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 94, 21 April 1928, Page 2 (Supplement)

A NEWSPAPER EDITOR ON PRATES.

• Here is a lay sermon on prayer delivered by Mr. James Douglas, the Editor of the "Sunday Express," to his readers in his paper recently. Mr. Douglas writes as follows: — Science has sent up sounding balloons to a height of nearly ten miles, more than nine-tenth* bf the way to the top of our atmosphere. But faith can send up sounding balloons farther than a paltry ten miles. It can soar beyond the Milky Way. Faith is not alarmed by the expansion of science. It is not perturbed by the latest peeps into space. It is not chilled by the magical explorations of the atom which have revealed the existence in it of "petty Suns and Planets." It is inspired by these universes that are beyond our universe, by these stars that are beyond our stars, and by these ultra-microscopic universes Jbat are whirling in every atom of every inote in every sunbeam. Faith should emulate the modesty of Science. It phould revere the revelations of Science us enlargements of its vision. Its conception of God should be ennobled, and purified by the wonders of atomic astronomy as well as by the wonders of cosmic astronomy. It should let all the old half-gods go as God arrives in a grander fashion. Science cannot tell us anything about prayer, but its wonders make prayer more wonderful, for they prove that the universe is a living unity as far as thought can reach. If there be laws, there is a lawgiver. Just as ♦Socrates worshipped the laws of Athens even when they slew him, so we may worship the laws of science. Behind them is the Lawgiver Whose name in our little language is God. Why should we bo afraid to believe in a God who grows more wonderful every century as we catch larger glimpses of His Godhead? Why should we lack the courage to draw near to Him in the mystery of prayer? It is the poverty of our words that limits our vision. Faith simplifies the macl ocosin and the microcosm, the great unimm so outside me and the great universo within me. Its supreme simplification is in the three words "God is Love. I believe <that the universe outside me, like the universe within me, is .benevolent and benignant. "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee." Prayer is the experiment which proves the reality of "God. It is an experiment which every human being can carry out. It is not possible for every man to verify the experiments of science. We accept them by faith just as men of science accept them. Praver is an experiment which we can all Verify, •It is faith soaring into certainty. There is nothing in life so wonderful as the miracle ©'prayer, for it enables us to be one with the One in Whom wo live being, and nobody can SriELi* °? 01 our knowledge of this which we°caH 5!!? harmon y 1 P-aeWan understaffij. t 21 ££ absolute knowledge lUuufaay S&? *