RELIGIOUS WORLD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 97, 26 April 1930, Page 2 (Supplement)

RELIGIOUS WORLD.

PRESENT-DAY OUTLOOK.

(Contributed.)

PUTTING INSPIRATION TO THE TEST. •;' CONTINUOUS AND UNIVERSAL. From a sermon on "Inspiration" preached by the Rev. W. A. Constable, M.A., at the Auckland Unitarian Church on Sunday evening, April 13, the following notes are taken: — "Inspiration is a continuous process, not confined 16 one book or one religion, but universal. God is present in the heart of man, prompting his struggles for betterment. He always has been present from the very beginning, speaking His divine message. It is man who has not always been able to hear or interpret the message rightly and fully. But in every nation and in every age there always have been men who have been more spiritually and morally sensitive than their fellows, who have been able to hear the Divine Word, and give it partial expression in human words. "Bound as we are by our human limitations, we cannot help thinking of God in human terms —even though we hold that the Eternal God must in reality far transcend our human thoughts of Him. The expression that 'God speaks to men' is an example of this. When the prophets refer to God as speaking to them, they arc generally using the word 'speak' not literally, but as a metaphor to convey their spiritual experience. The spiritual imagination of a prophet may sometimes take a strongly auditory form so that his new thought becomes clothed in words and seems almost to be spoken to him by God. Abraham Lincoln Inspired. "But in many other cases the inspiration of the prophet is not so definite in form, and, yet equally true. It may be simply a new which has dawned upon his mind after much brooding and meditation and prayer. It may be a new sense of duty to help some section of suffering humanity, for Abraham Lincoln was inspired when lie took up the cause of the slaves in America. Or it may be a strong urge to take up the cause of social righteousness or peace. And in some of these cases the new thought, the new duty, or the social urge may be so strong and powerful that in writing of it, it can only be adequately described by such metaphors as Thus saith the Lord.' "The i*ea that the Bible has been ' dictated by God to prophets, evangelists land apostles, and is therefore literally accurate and verbally inspired from 'beginning to end, is due to crude ideas of God. Another mistake that many people make about inspiration is that it must necessarily be sudden and spontaneous. We know, that many of the most inspired poems were the result of long brooding and often of constant revision and correction. And yet the, later and i evised form of the poem will often appeal to the reader as the more spontaneous and inspired. The same applies to religious inspiration; it .is not something which is dictated by God from outside in some distant heaven, but the result of a real co-operation between the indwelling God and the spirit of the prophet himself. ' and it may have taken years of brooding and even revision before it take 9 the inspired form in which it is given to the world. " " '• Truth, Goodness, or-Beauty. "Inspiration is the discovery of some part of eternal truth, or goodness, or beauty. God and truth and such eternal things are the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. But man's discovery of such eternal things must be limited by his state of development. Hence Jesus said: 'I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now,' for he realised that the minds of his disciples were not ready to receive certain truths. "In the Old Testament the early prophets who first mentioned that Jehovah, or Tahweh, was the only God of Israel, were inspired according to their time and place in history. But it was not the whole truth. It took centuries of prophetic inspiration to purge the idea of God of unworthy attributes and to exalt the idea from that of a tribal'deity to one of t a God of justice and mercy. And even then they did not quite fully realise the conception of God as love, symbolised in that favourite metaphor of Jesus as 'Our Heavenly Father,' which is the, ' highest and holiest to which humanity ihas yet attained. "Thus we see that the Bible is a record of an ever-growing revelation or inspiration. And such .inspiration, whilst it goes back to the dim beginnings of history, also continues to the present day. The lives of men like David Livingstone or Wilfred Grenfell are; truly inspired. They are infinitely more holy thap those of some of the ancient judges of Israel, ■which are recorded with praise in the Old Testament. The Book of the Acts of the Apostles does not really end with St. Paul awaiting his trial at Rome, where it breaks off. It. is being written even to-day." The preacher then went on to speak of some of the tests of inspiration such as the power of certain ancient writings, to maintain their vitality through the centuries, and that of ancient or modern sayings to stand the test of a reverent reason. Personal Spiritual Response. "Perhaps the most important te?t of all," the speaker continued, "is the subjective one of your own spiritual reisponse. Does the truth of a saying 'grip you'? Does it make your heart 'burn within you'? Does it bring light to you, helping to< clear, away your idoubts and difficulties ? Does it urge you on to nobler living, or raise in you an admiration of more perfect goodness or beauty? If so, then that' saving— whether ancient or modern—is inspiration for you foe the time being,; even though you may partially outgrow it in the future. For it is only by being faithful to what light we have that we will grow into the fuller light. "Even when we test the writings of the past bv such searching tests as these, there is very much that remains as truly inspired. Turn back to your Bible, and you will find that whilst some of it is only interesting as history, there 5? also much that remains as true revelation. Read reverently the sacred scriptures of other religions, and you will find that, though there is much that you cannot understand because of the strange outlook, there are yet many sayings that will strike home to your hearts as truly inspired. In the literature of modern nations you will again find that God has not ceased to speak to man, since the canon of the New Testament was closed. Passages from the plays of Shakespeare and some of the best poems of Wordsworth and Shelley, and even of poets like the. late Robert Bridges, are truly inspired, and will stir jour spirits like some of the ancient Psalms. They are all part of the great Word of God, which is an ever-open book, the last word of which will never be written until man ceases to be."