RELIGIOUS WORLD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 102, 2 May 1931, Page 2 (Supplement)

RELIGIOUS WORLD.

PRESENT-DAY OUTLOOK. « FATHER .. MAKE ME." PARABLE OF PRODIGAL SON. The folio-wing notes are taken from a sermon preached recently in Mount Eden Congregational Church by the Rev. R. C. Roberts, 8.D., the sermon being based on two words in the parable of the Prodigal Son, "Father . . make me": — "There we have the petition of a young man who not long before had clamoured for the remaking of everything but the remaking of himself. He had withdrawn his interest from his father's concern, packed up his belongings, and cleared out because, to his way of thinking, the system under which he was living needed remaking. Thus he makes a clean break with one system, clears out of the place, and sets up in business on his own account. In other words, he sets about making things according to his ideas of how things should be made. "It must have come as a shock to him to find things turn out very different from his expectations. Things became so bad that all that was left to him was his bodily craving and a recollection of the only true love and happiness he had ever known. Then it dawned on him that this system or that system matters little in comparison with what sort of men and women live under it. A miracle had taken place within him and had changed everything outside, for he does not now demand a change of everything else, but prays to have himself changed. " 'Father .. make me!' This is the cry that goes up from various quarters. *If only this or that system were changed— if only this class or that class were wiped out—if we were allowed to shatter the whole scheme of things, and then remould it nearer to the heart's desire!' All such talk conveys very little and takes lis nowhere until atid iniless it he based upon a genuine and contrite petition to our God and Father that He would remake us —all of us, and each of us. Let us not he carried away by the triumphs of applied science, in tie belief that it can make this„ that, and the other device to advance the conquests of man over his environment, for the only thing worth making is an immortal soul. Let us not forget that we have a souk and that our soul is in the making. Unless our civilisation can produce souls fit to inhabit the Father's louse, it must he scrapped and make room jfpr another which will give itself to the making of souls. It- is not so much the world in which we live or the providential order within which we pass our allotted, span that is at fault, but man himself. If ever there was a time that called for a regenerated humanity to Taaike use of an unprecedented opportunity, that time is now. Let us, therefore, switch over from 'Father . , give me' to 'Father . „ make me.'"

SEPARATED, YET UNITED. " (By S.) Before He left the Upper Room and made His way to Gethsemane, our Lord sought to inspirit His drooping disciples. He told them that He was about to pay the debt that every man must pay, but that in another and better world He would again be to them their beloved Master. They would only be parted for a season. Then He told. tligm that, though they would be bereft of His presence for a time, they would not be bereft of the presence of His Spirit. They would have the fellowship of that living Soul until they were reunited to Him- He took by way of illustration a vine tree, pointing, perhaps, to one near at hand on which the full moon was shining at the moment. Its roots, its stem, its boughs, its purpling fruit were separated from one another, and yet, they formed one organic whole, and the vital juice that was in the roots hidden in the mould was tasted by the remotest shoot. They were separated, yet united; they comprised many parts, yet were one whole. "That is how it will be with you and Me," He told them. "We shall be separated from each other, yet united; we shall be many -units, yet one whole." Here then is a wonderful truth that Christian people should never forget, that, though in His bodily person our Lord is in the world where parting is unknown, He is in the person of the Holy Spirit as really here. We should not only think of Him as an historical person then; we should also think of Him as being spiritually with us, and if we do, it will help to take from our souls the strain and stress to which they are so subject, and enable us to realise the truth of Amiel's saying that religion is a higher, supernatural life, mystical in its roots and practical in its fruits; for that is what our Lord sought to make clear to the disciples. Here, too, is another truth Christian people should never forget, that they are members one of another— related to one another as well as to Him. And, yet, is not this where the weakness of the Christian Church chiefly lies? Do not many who hug the conviction that Jesus is their friend, forget the obverse truth that so is their fellow Christian? There may be fruitless branches to be met with in our churches, and even reverent-mannered hypocrites who keep their place among us and disarm suspicion by their skilfulness in daubing their vices with shows of virtue. But what of the others; what of the great mass of our fellow believers and fellow workers? Should we not try and make it impossible for critics to say of us in irony: "Behold how these Christians love one another"?

Mrs. Bramwell Booth, the widow of the late General Bramwell Booth, is resuming active public work on Salvation Army platforms. Referring to the statement of Sir James Jeans that space is finite and the universe limited, a writer in an Australian paper asks how the distinguished scientist managed to reach such a conclusion. He wants to know further by what it is bounded, and whether Sir James can tell him. A German professor, in a book recently published by him on "The Origin and Growth of Religion," says that there is only one people among whom we cannot with certainty say that they ever engage in prayer. They are the Andamanese. He thinks, however, that certain mysterious ceremonies peculiar to them, may represent a sort of prayer consisting, of gestures, not of words. The Andamanese are the inhabitants or a croup of islands in the Bay of Bengal a*"* are said to l " e as low in civilisation as almost any people of whom we lave aD 7 knowledge.