NOTES IN PASSING.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 147, 23 June 1934, Page 2 (Supplement)

NOTES IN PASSING.

A text: "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven."—Jesus. Sir Henry Lunn, in his autobiography, "Nearing Harbour," says that there are something like 40,000 Methodist lay preachers in England. The word rendered "secret" in the verSe in the 25th Psalm which reads in the authorised version, "The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him/' means rather the council, or counsel of the Lord. The rendering of the revised version brings the meaning out better— "The 'friendship' of the Lord." Wise sayings: Man can never get away from himself. The game of life looks cheerful when one carries a treasure safe in his heart. No language can express the power and beauty and heroism of a mother's love. The art of life is not merely to live prosperously a?id happily, but to live well—that is, righteously and nobly. St. John's Presbyterian Church, Hawera, has been celebrating its diamond "jubilee, the preacher on the Sunday being the Rev. D. D. Scott. St. John's is the leading Presbyterian church in Taranaki. It has an active membership of 472 with 150 adherents. The Rev. A. G. Irvine is the minister, succeeding the Rev. R. E. Evans, now of Mount Albert.

Lord Macmillan, the eminent judge at Home, gave an address a short 'time ago to the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, in the course of which he remarked that "the sanitary regulations of the Pentateuch (the opening books of the Bible) almost rival the provisions of our present-day Public Health and Burgh Police Acts," and that "certain texts in Leviticus still form part of the law of Scotland." He was stressing the point that the whole fabric of the Sacred books of our religion is interwoven with the phraseology of law.

In a recent issue of the "Christian World" Mr. Ernest H. Jeffs writes about the people who are fulminating in the papers against the purchase of the Codex Sinaitieus.. What he says is fair and sensible, but too long to quote. It is, however, as he saye, nonsense to suggest that anybody will go hungry or homeless by reason of the money spent. And, as he also says, what of that alabaster box of ointment, which the disciples called "a waste," but not their Lord? Is it not curious that these people never have any comment to niajce on the amount of money spent on the pictures and on cigarettes, even by those who are commiserated as poor? j

In one of the recent numbers of "The Christian Century" (Chicago) a writer says that, if he were invited to name his favourite author, it- would be ''Anon." He is referring to the fact that several of the books in the Bible have come down to us anonymously, as, e.g., Job in the Old Testament, and the Epistle to tho Hebrews in the Nc\V Testament. "He is," he says (Anon.), "a writer of many gifts, he is master of all tongnes; lie lives like the wandering Jew from age to age. A mysterious and elusive figure, but his works are immortal. . . . He also wrote the

letters of Junius, and many other famous works. He writes still, but not perhaps so freely as once he did." The last sentence is intended to be ironic.