WAS IT A COINCIDENCE ?

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 237, 7 October 1933, Page 2 (Supplement)

WAS IT A COINCIDENCE ?

Another volume by Dr. F. W. Boreham has been published by the Epworth Press. It. bears the alliterative title "The Drums of Dawn." Here is an extract from one of its characteristic essays:—

"On a recent Saturday, a policeman came to the front door just before lunch. A man under arrest at the Melbourne gaol wished to see me at once. The constable gave mo the man's name, but it conveyed nothing to me. My first impulse was to hurry away to the gaol, and, indeed, the policeman urged this course on me. On the other hand, an appetising dinner was almost ready, and the cricket match at which I had expected to spend the afternoon, was at a particularly exciting stage. "As I pondered the situation in which I found myself, an irresistible conviction settle;! down upon me that I should be wise to have my dinner in peace, to attend the cricket match to which I had looked forward, and then to go to the gaol in the evening. The policeman protested that Saturday night would be the worst possible time at which to visit Melbourne gaol, but the feeling in my mind would not he shaken off. Let me say, in self-defence, that I can recall no other case in which I put apparently selfish considerations before the clamant call of duty. But my mind was fixed; I ate my dinner and made my way to the cricket ground. In the pavilion I sat beside a man with whom I was acquainted many years ago in Tasmania. 'I don't know why I've come hero today,' he said. Tve never been here before, and I take very little interest in cricket.' To my utter amazement, in the course of casual conversation, he mentioned the name of the man in the Melbourne gaol. I concealed my own interest in the case, hut gently encouraged him to talk. In the course of half an hour I had all the facts of the case at my fingers' ends, and when I went to the gaol that night I was able to deal with the man in a way that, hut for m v experience in the afternoon, would have been impossible. Now, why was my old Tasmanian friend so strongly moved to visit the cricket gTound that afternoon? And why was I made to feel so deeply that I must go to the cricket match before responding to the prisoner's call?"

A unique jubilee was observed in Chicago recently, when two sisters, twins, celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of their entrance as nuns into religious life. )

The "Holy Pood Chronicle," a Catholic organ, estimates the Roman Catholic population of the world at over 3G3 millions. The estimate is the of research undertaken by a Hungarian priest. "The servant of the Lord must not strive. I do not see how it is possible for men to wrangle about the deepest mysteries of the Christian faith. They may differ, and may engage in mutually helpful comparisons, but deep in the heart of a great mystery the very rarity of the air will suffocate the spirit of wrangling."—Dr. J. H. Jowett.

A prayer: Almighty God, give us, we pray Tliee, an abiding sense of the love of Christ, and grant that it may constrain us by Thy grace to walk in love, since He also loved us. Dispose us, as much as lieth in us, to live pcaceably ■with all men, recompensing to no man evil for evil, but overcoming evil with good. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger and evil-speaking be put away from us, with all malice; make us kind, tender-hearted and forgiving, even as Thou for Christ's sake forgjvest us. — Am en.