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

ESSENTIALS TO GROWTH. MORAL STRENGTH NEEDED. (By s.) We are prone to be satisfied with the same outlook year after year, the same weaknesses, the same shortcomings. We would do well to act on the counsel

given us by St. Peter to aim at a growing and mature Christian experience and at a greater stability and strength and dignity of character. There are three things essential to growth. First, there is the appropriation and assimilation of food. The seeds we' cast on our fields grow because we fertilise our fields. Our boys and girls become intelligent and capable men and women ' because we store their minds with elementary and technical truths. If wc are to outgrow our spiritual ignorance,' and to replace our moral weakness by moral strength, we must feed our nature at its roots. And the food on which we must chiefly depend is what the apostle calls the "sincere milk of the Word," that is, the doctrines and precepts of the Bible. We must daily nourish our nnn<l by the daily devotional reading of the Bible. There is spirit and life in its words, and, when we read and ponder them, their spirit and life become ours. And yet it is amazing how many people there are who make eome pretension to culture and virtually taboo the Bible. If only on such grounds as its antiquity, its distinction and its wisdom, it ought to be read, and read thoughtfully. But how" much more on the ground that it contains the oracles of God. The second thing that is essential is the breathing of suitable air. We may plant trees in soil containing the food, that will satisfy their hunger, but we must also see that they have the air they can elaborate into the gases their nature requires. God has given them roots to absorb the nutritive salts that are in the soil. He has also given them leaves to inhale the atmosphere. And their leaves, and the air they breathe are as essential to their growth as their roots and the nourishment they receive. If we are to grow in grace we, too, must have suitable atmosphere, and we must make suitable use of it. And where is

this atmosphere to be found? In our habits and customs, in our pleasures and amusements, in our environmet. If these are in the main pure and wholesome we shall grow. If they' are not in the main pure and wholesome we shall not grow. It is as long as our piety is sincere, our heart pure, our conscience tmblunted, and our instincts go out to what is honest and noble, that it is well with us. The third thing is exercise. We must do more than nourish our ,inner selves and breathe right atmosphere; we must develop our affections and exercise ourselves into godliness. Wo must give ourselves to prayer, endure temptation and affliction, engage in good works and put our experience and our opportunities at the disposal of the causes that are good and that need our assistance. And as physical exercise gives us a healthy appetite, so moral exercise will give us a healthy appetite—for Christ, and the Bible, and the things that are lovely and of good report.

NOTES IN PASSING. A text: "Take My yoke, upon you, and learn! of .Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls." —Jesus. - The death of Sir J.. Arthur Thomson came with a shock of sorrow to his friends, and to the vast public who read his scientific articles and books. He was the son of a • Presbyterian minister in East Lothian, some miles from Edinburgh, and intended to enter the ministry like his father. But his scientific jbent, coupled with theological difficulties in his student days, led him to follow a scientific career. All along he was .a devout Christian believer, increasingly so as the years passed, and during the* many years he occupied the chair of natural history in the University of Aberdeen, he was a member, if not ah office-bearer, of the Free Church, later the United Free Church (of Scotland), in Old Aberdeen, the congregation of which Sir George Adam Smith, principal of the University of Aberdeen, is, and has been for long, an elder. When he retired he settled in Edinburgh, a city for which he had a passionate love. He was no less attractive as a lecturer and as a conversationalist than he was as a writer, and no man was ever more modest, charitable or guarded of speech than Sir J. Arthur Thomson. He was recognised in Aber- j deen as one .of her greatest men and I finest Christian gentlemen. I

Swedenborg's "True Christian Religion" is no.w published in the "Everyman" series. The edition will amount to 20,000 copies.

Over 73,000 people visited the Dr. Livingstone memorial at Blantyre, near Glasgow, last year. So large were the crowds at times./ that , many failed to gain admittance.

Principal. Phillips told an interviewer of "The Western Mail,'" one of the leading English dailies, that depression and unemployment were so bad in Wales that, in a Welsh church in which he had preached on a recent Sunday, all the members except three were unemployed, and he had been told that a neighbouring -church had only one member at work. He was tremendously impressed by the grit of the people.

The Rev. Vera M. Findlay, Scotland's first woman minister (Partick, Glasgow, Congregational Church), is to be married to a Glasgow chartered accountant, and has consequently tendered her resignation to the congregation. She has, however, intimated her willingness to continue in the pastorate if the congregation 60 desires. They will have expressed their decision by now, but she undoubtedly set them a problem in ecclesiastical polity, as someone has said.

"The Times," in a recent ' religious article, eays that the notion that Jesus was an uneducated peasant is flatly at variance with the Gospel records. To His contemporaries, it eays, He must have seemed, not merely a spiritual eeer, but an intellectual master. He was welcomed as a teacher in the synagogues, and, unlike the great majority of His time, could read Hebrew, as wcli as Aramaic, and could meet the skilled interpreters of Rabbinic tradition on their own ground. There was no reason for supposing that such knowledge was innate in Him or supernaturally bestowed. It quotes St. Luke's statement that He "increased in wisdom" as indicating long and arduous hours of study, of mental discipline and effort, and as showing careful training and use of the intellect to he an essential part of a consecrated life, and as showing also that it was for us, according to pur powers, to follow His example*