SUNDAY READING.

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXII, Issue 11494, 23 November 1931, Page 3

SUNDAY READING.

(By the Bey. James Aitken, M.A.) ' ' j, ■ : • . '/ r " “WHAT*OF THE NIGHT?”

About this time it is that we begin to be conscious, that, the year is far spent and the end of it not far a tray.' There are; it is true, six weeks to go; but the children are counting the days till the schools close.,, businessmen are planning their Christmas trade, the idea of n summer holiday lights up many‘people’s thoughts. No' doubt, wo shall soon bo done with this year and breaking into the next. With all but the youngest of ;p too the thought will occur; how (illicitly.the year has passed.; Many- of ns will remark that the older wo' • grow the faster timo seems to fly. It. is so. It. is not only the year, hut the years .that aro speeding on. Our. life is like a car that has lost, its braking, power, descending a bill with increasing celerity. It will pot be long till it reaches the foot: and what then? (

What then? That is the question. There awaits us the shadow men call death: that wo know. Does anything else await us Beyond the shadow? ‘Nothing,’ says the materialist: All of us ate of the dust: our bodies aro composed of material elements, water. carbon, lime and so forth. And into dust we a’l return, dissolving into the 'elements again : and there an end. It is true what he says of our bodies.; But,are we no more than flesh and blood? What of our consciousness, our powers of thinking and loving-and hating and willing, and all that mysterious unseen life of the mind and heart? Are we to be wholly identified with these bodies of ours, and to perish with them ? ‘Who knows,’ says the agnostic. At any rate we are bound for a bourne from which no traveller has ever returned. No one con tell us anything about a life beyond tho grave. All is mystery: it- may he, and on the other hand it may not ho. Meantime let us live our life here as best we can.'-

Which is all very wo'l. But it is going to make a great difference to us whether we. believe in a future or not. If we do not, then why should we-not'make the very most of the joys and pleasures this life offers us. Eat. clrinlr and be merry; for to-mor-row we shall be no more. But if we hope for a life to come, not pleasure liecomes our chief concern, but preparation ; not, the things of time and sense, hut the things of the spirit; not wealth of power or fame,, hutcharacter. It makes all tb*3 difference to the values we put on things, whether we believe that death ends all, or that the Valley of the Shadow is but the pathway to a fairer land and a brighter day. But we don’t know anything about it! We have no knowledge of life apart from the body, we cannot imagine what it can be like! The comnumications which the spiritualists profess to receive ane trivial and unconvincing! That is all true. But this also is true—or else Jesus Christ was mistaken and Christianity is all a dream. This also is true, that God is love and we are His Children. And we dare not, cannot giwa up our hope of immortality. We dare not think that Ho will cast us as rubbish to the void, or that the whole magnificent pageant of the universe is going to end in nothing at all. Faith must hold its own against nil the assaults of doubt and unbelief. Wo cannot but trust that not even death will separate us from the love of God. This life is hut the beginning of existence. Somehow we shall go on continuing to be. And if we grant that the golden city and tho white-robed choristers are hut a symbol, we shall yet believe that God has great things in- store for those whom lie loves. And that faith will illuminate all our earthly pilgrimage, give meaning nnd value to all its sorrows and trials, afford us guidance in its perplexities, and sustain us in all our endeavours to attain to what is beautiful, and good and true.