Spring Reverie And Some Other Timely Thoughts

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 234, 3 October 1942, Page 4

Spring Reverie And Some Other Timely Thoughts

THE starlings have returned to * make nuisance of themselves. Already they have built in several of our chimneys. The willows are clothed in a pale and tender green, and rhododendron shrubs are ablaze with colour. Daffodils and crocuses are in flower. In other words, spring is here. With complete indifference to the mundane affairs of men, Nature continues her undeviating course, and poppies will soon be blooming on blood-drenched fields, and ugliness will be transformed into beauty, and sorrow will be turned into song. By Ret). C. W. Chandler I can hear the old Dame saying as she sweeps away the last vestiges of winter, "Oh, what a mess these humans make. And they always leave me to clear it up. Dear! Dear!" —just like any other mother clearing up the litter that her youngsters have made athwart the parlour floor. Nature Makes Profit In short, the "marchfields have been strewn with rotten death," and out of. human calamity Nature has wrung and is wringing profit for herself. Said Omar Khayyam, "I think that never blows the rose so red, as where some buried Caesar bled." Alas! thousands who are less than Caesars are dunging the earth with death to-day. But the starlings have returned, and in the endless cycle of seasons that come and go, we learn something of the patience that in Nature's heart abides. She blots out the evidence of all our wrongdoing, quickly hides the traces of our folly, and bids us remember no more the anguish for joy that Spring is reborn, with its unmistakable assurance of the triumph of life over death, and of song over sadness. From all of which is to be wrung a spiritual lesson, namely, that God is not lefcs ready to blot out all our iniquities, to cover all our sins, and to turn to good account all the waste of life and limb that is occasioned by war. * ♦ * # "Give us some more about Josephus," said an Auckland business man whom I met the other dav, with as much hunger in his eyes as had Oliver Twist when he asked for more porridge. Well, then, let us take this seasonable law that Moses enacted, "take care, especially in your battles, that no woman use the habit of man, nor man the garment of a woman." This law is being flagrantly disobeyed by our enemies to-day, and I am old-fashioned enough to believe that although, in the first. place, these laws were intended for the Jews in particular, they are. nevertheless, to observed by humanity in general. The Mosaic Code is a sound moral and ethical basis for all nations. It is the foundation upon which the Christian Church now stands, and the recitation of the Decalogue at every Communion service is sufficient proof of this. Moses' Injunction Now we will turn to a further exhortation of Moses, which he delivered to Israel just before he was taken from tnem. "Nor do ye prefer any other constitution or government before the laws now given vou; neither do you disregard that way of Divine worship which you now have . . . and if you do this, you will be the most courageous of" all men in undergoing the fatigues o/ war; and will not easily be conquered by any of your enemies." Obedience to this injunction provides the raison d'etre for the present "Campaign for Christian Order," for there can be nothing approaching a Christian Order after the war, unless during the war we live according unto right. Finally, let us gain encouragement from the words of General Moses, which he delivered from Mount Sinai, after having received the "Torah" from the Almighty. He was disturbed lest the congregation should ascribe to him and hot to God, all the praise for their deliverance from Egypt, "for it is not to be supposed," said he, "that Moses the son of Am ram and Jochebed" has done this, "but He who obliged the Nile to run bloody for your sakes . . . who tamed the haughtiness of the Egyptians . . . who provided a way through the sea . . . who sent food from heaven ... by whose means Noah escaped the deluge . He it is who conveys these instructions to you by me His interpreter."