What Do We Know Of The Life We live?

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 65, 17 March 1945, Page 4

What Do We Know Of The Life We live?

By REV. CANON C. W. CHANDLER

We spend our years as a tale that Is told. EVERYBODY loves a good story, stories that will "keep children from play and old men from their chimney corners." At some time or other a well-known publishing house had that as their trade slogan. What is it that so appeals to us in the story? Surely it is that we are perennially interested in life. The world will greedily devour anything with a humaii interest. The prologue to Goethe's "Faust" where Merry Andrew, the Poet and the Stage Manager talk over the writing of a play, very aptly illustrates the truth of this observation. It is a study in mass psychology. "Friend Poet! Take a good handful out of human life. Though ail men live it, few there be that know it. Grasp where you will, with interest 'tis rife. Your pictures vague—but crowd your mirror; a spark of truth —a sea of error." Yes, life is teeming full of interest, and to take a back seat in life's arena and from there watch the endless pageant as it passes is not by any means the least pleasant way of passing the time. "What will a man take in exchange for his life?" Healthy-minded people grasp it tenaciously, despite all the trials and difficulties that cross their paths. In spite, too, of the oft repeated confessions of our faith in hymns and creeds, our humanity is very much of the earth and clings to life. We can sympathise with the poet William Cory Johnson when he said: You say there is no substance here, One great reality above? , Back from that void I shrink with fear And, childlike, hide myself In love. Yon chilly stars I can forgo: This warm, kind earth Is all I know. That sentiment is far more honest than that which is expressed in many of our hymns. For instance, what full-blooded' Christian, thrilled with the joy of serving others, can honestly give expression to such- a morbid sentiment as.that expressed in A. and M. 234: 0 Paradise! O Paradise! 'Tis weary waiting here; 1 long to be where Jesus is, To feel and see Him near. Very beautiful indeed, but hardly honest, when we know that the whole of medical science is out to delay that occasion as long as possible in the lives of us all. No, that matches the exceptional and not the.general mood of mankind. We have been placed in this wonderful world and until we have steeped ourselves in its beauty and listened in quietness to its song it is not natural that we should want to depart therefrom. Textbooks on Life There are textbooks on how to grow tomatoes, breed horses, raise cattle, keep bees and tend sheep, but outside the Bible itself there are no textbooks on life and how to live it. Our complex physical natures have been departmental ised, and disease rather than health has been the primary study and concern of medical science. About every single disease (and there are hundreds) veritable libraries have been written, but about the mental and spiritual control of the whole man our ignorance is profound. The thing we value most, we know the least about. Perhaps it is its very profundity that makes it almost impossible to write about it—it has to be lived, and Experience is the tireless schoolmaster whom God uses to teach us. In the Book of Books the broad general principles are laid down and it is for us to apply them. If we fail to make the attempt today then we have to-morrow, and if even then we do not bestir ourselves well then, our failure will begin to express itself in every atom of our beings. God has eternity to work in and He never makes mistakes, and He balances His accounts to the very last farthing. Life cannot be cheated and God cannot be mocked, for "whatsoever a man sow that shall he .also reap. That's a' hard saying, but terrifyingly true. One truth I think is established, and that is that life can be lived at its best in association with others— in fellowship. That is probably why a Fellowship Meal occupies the central place in all Christian worship. Outside racecourses, public houses, churches, picture theatres and bridge parties the vast preponderance of people lack opportunity for fellowship. Schools For Ijife ' Couldn't something be done to recapture some of the carefree delights of student days? And for those who have never enjoyed that experience let something be done along' the lines upon which Sweden has been experimenting for the past seventy years and more? I refer to the People's Colleges, and I have by me a book entitled "School For Life," which is on' its way to my parish library. Herein the author, Margaret Forster, tells the fascinating story of the inauguration and development of these colleges for "grown-ups" which have sprung up in every part of Sweden. lam particularly interested in the one at Sigtuna, where the chapel occupies the central place and wl\ere conferences between doctors, clergymen, business men, sportsmen and churchmen are frequently held. "Yes," says Margaret Forster, "Sigtuna is a name to conjure with, and when a Swede says to you, ' Have you visited Sigtuna? he doesn't mean have you visited the relics of the ancient capital, but he means have you visited the place which is changing Swedish life to-day. I can visualise such a college on the banks of the Karapiro Lake (not yet formed) as the first of a chain of similar colleges up and down the Dominion. If we can spend millions to dam the Waikato surely we could spend a few millions in an effort to dam up and conserve for the nation what is after all the nation s greatest asset, namely, the mentally and spiritually creative power of those who constitute it. A young country like New Zealand should not be one step behind those Scandinavian countries which for the last century have been showing the world examples of fully practising and smoothly working democracies, ami these "Schools For Life" to which I have referred have played no small part in this achievement.