RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

Evening Star, Issue 23113, 12 November 1938, Page 6

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

[By Forward.] “ PEACE ON EARTH.” “ Jesus designated those who can make peace children of God. Yet He had spoken of the meek, the pure in heart, and the merciful. Why this supreme benediction ? Is it not clear that for Jesus peace-making was a uniquely Divine enterprise ? Peacemaking is a blessed task, and we thank God for the lubricators who allay irritation. But to create peace out of a conflict, a friendship out of a feud, a harmony out of hatred, takes something of the Divine Creator Himself.” Once again we have remembered Armistice Day, and in two minutes’ silence have sent our thoughts back across the years —20 years—to that first Armistice Day when hearts were glad in a great thanksgiving, for the war to end wars was over. Twenty years —rand still the clouds of war hang heavy over the nations; still man faces man in armoured strife. Man at war with man hears not The song of love they bring; 0 hush the noise, ye men of strife, And hear the angels sing. BROTHERHOOD. When men shall live in loving faith And not for golden gain, When greed becomes a vanished wraith, The Christ at last shall reign. When beauty takes its rightful place Within the hearts of men, When terror yields to kindly grace, The earth will bloom again. When nations plan for human weal, Nor bow to kings and courts, When faithless laws no more conceal The sham of guns and forts, The haunting fear of war shall go, The battled years shall cease, And in a day the earth shall know The benison of peace. Then love shall conquer hate and pride, And Heaven will find it good That men have learned at last to bide In bonds of brotherhood. —From ‘ It Shall Not Be Again,’ by Thomas Curtis Clark. THE CHILD—AN ASSET.

Wherever you find a crowd there is sure to be a lad not far off. Indeed, he is usually found conspicuously near to the front. Emboldened by his natural curiosity, he refuses to “stand back,” and no amount of repression will restrain his eagerness to see what is going on. So it was in the days of Christ when He was followed by the multitudes into the wilderness, and when the emergency of hunger demanded the provision of a meal. But there were no supply stores in the desert, and the dilemma of the situation was perplexing to the disciples. .Something had to be done, and it was done through the timely presence of a lad, whose slender resources were acquired by Jesus, and miraculously enlarged, much to the astonishment of the disciples and the throng. “ There is a lad here,” said Andrew,, and Jesus, divining the significance of his presence, made him the most valuable human asset in the performance of one of His most amazing and suggestive miracles. But the boy was not only the instrument of a miracle; he was the central figure of a most suggestive parable. Like the Galilean multitude, humanity is very much in the wilderness to-day, hungry and weary, and needing bread—the Bread of Life. In spite of its seeming indifference, it is looking inquiringly towards the church, as typified hy the disciples, to satisfy that need, 'there are signs that the church is becoming anxious and concerned as to how it can he done. Is it too much to suggest, speaking from the human side, that its most promising source of supply is in its consecrated resources of youth? It has many other assets, as evidenced in its vast and elaborate organisation, its culture and its wealth, hut none so valuable as the dedication of the spiritual resources of its young life to the service of Christ. The problem of how to reach the masses and minister to their spiritual needs is engaging the attention of the churches. Endless hours have been spent in discussions and in organising campaigns and revivals towards that end, with too often disappointing results. Mass movements in the long run are rarely successful, and are often attended with disastrous reactions. The only really successful method is to begin with the man and to begin with him before he becomes a man—in the promising days of his youth. In the loaves of the lad is the real secret of the answer to the cry of the crowd. No church needs to despair of its ministry to a hungry world so long as it can say, “There is a lad here,” and is truly alive to the possibilities and opportunities which his presence presents. For in him there are capacities of heart and mind and soul which, when placed in the expanding hands of Jesus, may be enlarged and transformed into miracles of wonder-working power. What is the history of all the groat movements that have taken place in the world for the uplift of humanity, if it is not a, living witness to the fact that someone thought it •vorth while to encourage a lad to place the resources of his life at the disposal ol Jesus? Bead the biographies of the world’s greatest missionaries and social reformers, and you will probably see that . their great achievements originated in some humble homo or chiirch where, through the infiuence of sainted men and women, they wore induced to consecrate their powers to the service of humanity in t]*r name of Christ. It is told somewhere of a certain minister who. after a term of rears of quiet and faithful ministry, thought himself a failure because dur-ing-that time be bad only added one member to his church, and that one only a lad. But the lad became one of 'the world’s greatest missionaries, feeding countless multitudes wHh the sacrificial bread of a life Lillv surrendered to the canse of Christ, One is sometimes led to wonder what was the name of that hoy whose loaves and fishes Jesus accepted that day in the desert uf Tiberias, and what became of him. We shall never know, but what we do know is that half a century later multitudes of men and women who boro the name “ Christian ” witnessed valiantly for Christ, and won through in trinmnhant. martvrdnm for the sake of TTi= TTingdom and for the love they bore Him." And that hov may have been one of them. Rev. A. C. Williman.