RELIGIOUS WORLD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 78, 2 April 1932, Page 2 (Supplement)

RELIGIOUS WORLD.

PRESENT-DAY OUTLOOK. LONELINESS OF JESUS. SOLITUDE AS DISCIPLINE. The following extracts are taken from a sermon preached on Sunday evening two weeks ago in All Saints' Church, Ponsonbv, by the Archdeacon of Manukau, the Ven. W. J. Simkin: — The lesson which I bring before you la what I have ventured to call tho loneliness of Jesus, for it has been said of Him that "He was a lonely man going the lonely way into the shadow of death." What do we mean by loneliness? We may define it, first, as meaning the lack of friends and sympathisers, and, secondly, as isolation. Loneliness must bo considered as resulting from two distinct and separate causes. The lack of friends, or isolation, may on the one hand be the result of circumstances, in which case it is enforced upon tiß. On the other hand, the absence of friends, the isolation, may result from our own deliberate choice; it may be in the nature of a necessary self-discipline, in which case it is a loneliness which is self-enforced. We will call this "selfenforced loneliness." Let us try to realise something of the enforced loneliness of Jesus. It is seen again and again during His ministry, but there is a foreshadowing of it long before He entered upon His ministry. The consciousness of His mission in the world, and the consequent manner of His life, Jnust have been the cause of many misunderstandings in the home and surroundings at Nazareth. His life must iiave been to a great extent a lonely life.

Knew What Lay Before Him. The first outstanding instance of the enforced loneliness of Jesus is the Temptation. What the feeling of isolation in the wilderness was like we can hardly gauge, but we can realise something of it from the record at the conclusion that the devil left him for a season, and that angels came to minister to Him. It was alone, in human isolation, that Jesus met and conquered the devil. On one occasion, we are told that many of His disciples went away and walked no more ■with Him, and later in the same connection that His brethren did not believe on Trim. The passage is capable of more than one interpretation, but it may be quoted here to show how very much alone Jesus was and how little understood by those nearest to Him. In the garden, having left the greater number of His followers, He took with Him Peter and James and John, and, after asking them to watch, He withdrew a little and entered, into that most awful conflict ■with temptation. He knew all that lay ■before Him, and He cried, "Abba, Father, all things are possible unto Thee; remove 'this cup from me; howbeit not what I will, but what Thou wilt." Then he returned to the three only, to find them Bleeping. When He went forward to his arrest, they all forsook Him and fled. We see Him in his trials, and as we look at that lonely figure, in His majestic ■bearing, we cannot fail to realise what His loneliness was like. Then Calvary, and finally that exceeding bitter cry, "My God, My God, why hast Thou for•aken me?"

Feeling of Being Alone.

Most of us are experiencing temptation in some form, and have felt in that experience that we seem to be utterly alone. W© cannot tell our friends about it, and the pressure sometimes seems too great, almost more than we can stand. At times like these let us remember the solitude of the temptation of Jesus, and renew our strength. Or it may be that we are seeking to stand for truth or honesty in dealing or in work, and our attitude is misunderstood. Instead of gaining friends and sympathisers for our cause, we are met with rebuffs, and we feel that we are fighting a lonely battle. Even our brethren do not believe in us. Well, remember Jesus, and that He met the same trial. In almost every life, at some time and in some degree, there is the experience of Gethsemane, when the outlook before us seems so black, so hopeless, and the dearest and best of our friends are absent, or do not realise, and we are facing all alone. If this be our experience, let us look to the Saviour in Gethsemane, and from His example get strength to drink the cup whatever it may be. There are many feeling the pinch of want; there are many to whom financial affairs are a pressing anxiety; there are many who are seeing that which they !have saved during a life of hard toil to make provision for their old age dwindle in the purchase of the bare necessaries of life; others who are having to deny their children that which they had hoped to give them by way of education as the endowment of their lives. And in the large majority of cases they are bearing these things alone; their natural pride ■will not let them speak of them, but the burden is emphasised and increased by the fact that it. is borne alone. Do you not think that Jesus understands? He toiled, He hungered, He had not where to lay His head, and He can feel for you in your lonely anxiety. If the present is for you a period of pressing anxiety, turn to Him and let Him help you to hear what you are trying in vain to bear alone.

Lessons to be Learned. Consider the self-enforced loneliness of Jesuß, and you will remember that as the ministry proceeded this practice became more and more frequent. What was His purpose in withdrawing into solitude? It was that He might hold communion with His Father. At the most important crises in His ministry He prayed, "calling forth His Father's power for the accomplishment of the Father's work." If for Jesus solitude was necessary, can we for one moment assume that it is unnecessary for us? Solitude is the schoolroom in which we learn to pray, but it is a solitude which is in the nature of self-discipline. We need sometimes, even frequently, to be alone, that is, from the world, from human friendships, that we may learn the will of God. We need this isolation that we may be with the Father and draw strength from Him. To cultivate the habit of self-enforced solitude is to prepare ourselves in the best way for those times when solitude is forced upon "ns and when trial and temptation comes.

Loneliness, isolation, are both very Teal experiences for all of us. "The heart knoweth its own bitterness." Let us, then, at this holy time learn from Jesus how to bear alone the trials and temptations which may beset lis, and also the blessedness of that other form of solitude wherein we learn the Father' 3 will, sand from Him gain strength. '