SUNDAY READING.

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 11382, 6 December 1930, Page 3

SUNDAY READING.

A MAX’S RELIGION

STI T DDERT-KENNEiDY’S RHYMES

(By Hip Eev. .Tas. Aitken, M.A.)

Studdart Kennedy is quite well aware, as you and I are quite well aware, that the incessant struggle to do the right and uphold the right is too much for us. We simply can't keep if; up. It- is too much for any of us. We need help for it. And the only help that .avails for us is the help that God gives to those who ask Him for help. Studdert Kennedy believes in prayer, and he believes in answers to prayer. There are a great many prayers that lie does not believe in selfish, 'unreasonable pr£iyers. He pours rude scorn sometimes on the notions some people have about prayer, as if it were just a kind of magic, a kind of way of getting God to give them what they want. The prayer he believes in is the prayer that uims^at —not making God do what we want, but getting strength somehow to do what God wants. There’s a poem here called “Prayer Before an Attack,” which puts in a simple intelligent fashion the true meaning and value of prayer.

It aiut as I ’opes ’E’ll keep me safe White the other blokes goes down ; It aint-as 1 wants to leave this world An’ wear an ’era’s crown. It aint for that as I says my prayers When 1 goes to the attack, But I pray that whatever comes my way

I may never turn my back. I leaves the matter of life and death To the Father who knows what’s best, And I prays that I. still may play the man Whether I turns east or west. I’d sooner ithat it were east, you know, . ’ , To Blighty and my gal Sue; I’d sooner bo tlieie wi’ the gold in

her liair And the skies behind all blue; But still I pray I may do my bit,

And then, if I must turn west, I’ll be unashamed when my name is named And I’ll find a soldier’s rest.

That’s a true- prayer. There is nothing mean or whining or selfish about. it. It is in every way manly and honourable, such as no true man need be ashamed to kneel down and /And Stud cleft Kennedy believes, that prayers like that are 'answered and help and strength does come. Surely he is speaking out of his experience. He, prayed and grace came in response to his praying. There is a poem here called “A Shell-hole Mecitatibn.” It is a meditation on the familiar 'text “Come unto me and I will give you rest.” lam not going to read it all to you. It is too long, for -one thing, and parts of it fU'O too terrible. But the end is beautiful, teaching this same lesson of the grace of God in Christ*

Come unto me: If, sounds like mockery, A voice that calls a wounded man Across a weary space ■ He cannot travel o'er; For we would come to Thee, We long to see Thy face, But we are wounded sore, And evermore Our weakness binds ns. Darkness blinds us. We stretch our hands out vainly towards the shore Where Thou art 'waiting for Thine own. We groan, and try, and fail again, We cannot come—we are but men. Come Thou to us, 0 Lord. Come Thou and find us. Shepherd of the sheep, We cannot come to Thee, It is so dark. But hark, I hear a voice that sounds across the sea, “I come” And what of our failures—failures through lack of faith, lack of loyalty, lack of what Studdert Kennedy calls “giving Christ.a chance.” Studdert Kennedy believes in forgiveness. In one very beautiful verse lie describes how we may take our lives with all their broken vows, all their sin and shame, to- God as ehiildren might take their exercise books to their teacher, and hand them in trusting in His love and mercy. I cannot read this writing of the j years, My eyes are full of tears. It gets a.U blurred, 'and won't make sense; It’s full of contradictions Like the scribbling* of a child, . Such wild wild Hopes, and longings w intense As pain/, v-hich trivial deeds Make foll.v of—or verse I can but hand it in, and hope That Thy great mind, which-reads Tlio writings of so many lives, Will understand this scrawl And what it strives To say—hut leaves unsaid, I cannot write it over; The stars are coming out, My body needs its bed. I have no strength for more, So it must stand or fall—dear Lord—That’s all*