RELIGIOUS WORLD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 83, 8 April 1933, Page 2 (Supplement)

RELIGIOUS WORLD.

PRESENT-DAY OUTLOOK. A JAPANESE SAINT. IMPACT OF LOVE ON LIFE. An English minister, the Eev. George Evans, 8.D., preached a thoughtful sermon recently in Union Cliapel, Manchester, the church of which the famous Dr. Alexander MacLaren was for years minister, on the exceeding preciousnees of the soul. The following passage about Kagawa and his realisation of the exceeding preciousnees of the soul is taken from the sermon. Kagawa of Japan has [become a world figure, one of the saints of the race. What gave the initial im- i pulse to his consecration? —the sudden and unaccustomed impact of love upon his life, and then the overwhelming realisation of being loved by God in Christ. The son of an aristocrat of Japan, he was left without father and mother at the age of four. He was sent to the ancestral home to be brought up by a foster grandmother, who hated him, aiid night after night put him to bed with blows and curses. For about 10 years he was the unwanted child, utterly unloved. He knew his heart's need to be loved, but he did not know that the love he hungered for existed. Night after night he wept out his loneliness. Then he"was sent to a school -where were two prcathearts, Dr. Myers and Dr. Logan. They looked upon his sad face and sensed his condition. In their home he passed into another world. It was as if he had been, flung suddenly from the bleakest winter into the dancing light, the warmth, the glow, the fruitfulness of midsummer. Dr. Myers took him out into the open places, and, lifting his tearlined face to the sky, said: "Look at the sky, look at the sun, let your tears dry, then we -will laugh together." It -was his initiation into laughter, happy holy laughter. He learnt that the overflowing spring of their love had a fount—Jesus. He heard about Jesus, he read about

Jesus. He felt tie impact of love upon Lis soul—love he had longed for during the lonely days, love he had_ cried out for in tie terrors of tie night. He, Kasrawa, was loved, loved by men for Christ's sake, loved Iby God in Christ. He knelt, and in impassioned prayer cried, "O God, make me like Christ!" Not words about God's love ~ become familiar and dull through frequent and listless hearing perchance, but. God's love realised as the central and overwhelming fact of life in the -world/God's love about him, God's love welcomed into every room, every recess, nook and cranny of his empty desolate heart. The exceeding preciousness of his soul to God, and . . .the exceeding preciousness of every other souL

"HIS LIFE AND OURS."