SUNDAY SERVICE

Evening Star, Issue 16923, 21 December 1918, Page 9

SUNDAY SERVICE

[Supplied by tho United Christian Council.]

■ Morning prayer (Robert Louie Steveuoon’e) : I'll© day returns, and brings ur tho -putty round of irritating concerns and duties. Help us to play the man, help ue to perform thorn with laughter and kind faioea; let cheerfulness abound with industry’. Give us to go blithely on our business all this day; bring ue to our resting bode weary and content and undishonored, and grant us in tho end tho gift of sloop. Amen. Evening prayer (again Robert Louis Stevonscava)": Ae beseech Thee, Lord, to behold us with favor, gathered together in the pence of this roof, weak men and women subsisting under tho covert of Thy pationco. Be patient still; suffer us a while longer ; with our broken purposes of good, with our idle endeavors against evil, suffer us a while longer to endure, and heln ns to do better, -liiosa to us our extraordinary mercies j if tho day comewhen these must bo taken, brace us to play the man under affliction. Bo with our friends, be with ourselves. Go with each of us to rest; .if any awake, temper to them the dark hours of watching; and when tho day returns, return to us, our Sun and Comforter, and call no up with morning faces and with morning hearts—eager to labor, eager to bo happy if nippiness shall be our portion—and if the day ba marked, for sorrow, strong to endure it. Amen.

Sing Christinas hymns or hymns on Home. Losson: Matthew, chapter 5i., or the passages on God’s Father hood -in the Sermon on the Mount.

Meditation on ‘ The Influence of Homo on the Theology of Jesus’ (Matthew ii.. 23 : “And Ho came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth ”). Tlris Christmas season once again directs our mind to th© early days of our Lord Jesus. Where so much excites our reverent thought, let us now direct onr attention to the influence of Km boyhood’s homo on Hi& theology. Of the essential and formative features of that home we know everything. For the character of a home,is oiide, first and chiefly by tho heads of it —the father and- mother and then by the- sons and daughters as they grow up, choosing their own amusementa, and following their own pursuits. We know the parents -and to an extent, the children in that homo in Nazareth, and therefore know what, were tho«e influences that did so much to mould tho mind of Him who “ increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man.”

Joseph is described as a just man. We are not to understand by this that ho was icily perfect, stem and hard, as so many called “just” have been. Recall the statement concerning h-is early attitude to Mary : “ Not willing to make her a public example.” Tills is a biography in a sontei*r-\ Tt reveals love, generosity, tan-

• i-t ness, compassion. Of Mary little need bo said, for wa.< cho not the worthy mother of Jesus As ons proof of her true motherlincss, notice how she pressed near to the Cross that her presence might comfort “ the despised and rejected of men. 1 ’ Of the brothers and sisters of Jeans little is raid. His sisters we do not know. His brothers become His devoted servants in the Kingdom of God. But ail were loving and good. So the home cf Jeans, though humble, wa.i beautiful. Now, that Jesus thought out His theology in tenn of His homo is abundantly evident. When we, have mastered this fact we have got to the heart of Hit; teaching. Thus, His governing thought and chief declaration is that Clod is our Father. Ho interpreted the Most High through Joseph. So we have from His lips such a characteristic saying as this s “Your Heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things ’’ —food, clothing, and such like. And God is Father of all and to all. There is many a prodigal on earth, but no orphan. The Into Dr Fairbairn said : “If wo attempt to construct a theology which shall bo faithful to the consciousness of Christ, the Fatherhcod must be the determinative principle of our thought. It is the architectonic idea ; out of it the whole system must grow: with it all elements and deductions must bo in harmony. All else is body ; it alone is the informing soul.” Does it seem 'to any that this emphasis on the fatherhood, while exalting .Joseph, who on earth interpreted to Jesus the idea of father, somewhat slights Mary, the interpreter to Him of motherhood? This is reallv not the case. Mary the mother, Just as'much as Joseph the father, aided Jesus in His conception of God. The Eternal One whom Jesus revealed is our Father and Mother. Kven Isaiah saw God through the mother bird, and cur lord Himself shows us the mothcr-like solicitude of God in the unforgettable reference to the hen’s care for hor little ones. c! 1 that Joseph and Mary together were in that home in Nazareth, that, tbough infinitely more, God Himself is in tire family cf men.

Our Lord's teaching, conceived in the atmosphere cf the home, and built np from the hearth, necessarily involved Use brotherhood of man. All war, all strife, is fratricidal. Tho Fatherhood and .Motherhood of God, in making all His children, gives the correlative fact that to cadi other they are brothers and sisters. Tima does tho home in Nazareth, with its voices of children, cast its gracious influence through the heart and mind of Jeans on all the earth.

Finally, let ns notice that to Jesus, who built up His doctrines or* the hearth, we owe the conception of Heaven as God’s home and ours. “In My Father’s house are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you.'* It has been well said that our home hero at its best is a foretaste and training for that higher and fairer world where joy is perfect and. unceasing, and to which wo can give no better name than Homs ! How comforting this for the many who are separated for a while from dear ones fallen m battle or removed through sickness. Yes, in this Christmas season, with its family reunions and joyous gatherings on the old hearth, let us realise afresh that father, mother, brother, sister, home are our Lord’s master words. By Him this universe is conceived and interpreted in terms of the cottage that nestled among the hills of Galileo.