THE QUIET HOUR.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 25 October 1924, Page 13

THE QUIET HOUR.

(Published by arrangement with, the ' Hawera Ministers’ Association.) A PRAYER, O Lord, renew our spirits and draw our hearts unto Thyself that our work may not be a burden, but a. delight; and give us such a mighty love to Thee as may sweeten all our obedience. Oh, let us not serve Thee with the spirit of bondage as slaves, but with the cheerfulness and gladness of children, delighting ourselves in Thee and rejoicing in Thy work. Amen. —Benjamin .Jenks. THE SYMMETRY OF LIFE. I hope that we are all striving and praying that we may come to some • symmetrical completeness. ’This is the glory of a. young man’s life. Do not dare to live without some clear intention toward which your living shall be bent. Mean to be something wdth all, your might. Do not add act to act and day to day in perfect honghtlessness, never asking yourself vhither the growing line is leading. Jut at the same time do not dare to >e so absorbed in your own life, so mapped up in listening to the sound if your own hurrying wheels that all his vast pathetic music, made up of he mingled jov and sorrow of your ellow-men, shall not find out your leart and claim, it and make you re-oic-e to .give yourself up for them. Vnd yet, all the while, keep the uppard windows open. Do not dare to ,hink that a . child of God can worthily pork out his career or worthily serve foci’s other children unless he does >oth in dhe love and fear of God their father. Re sure that ambition and •Viarity wall both grow mean* unless hey are both inspired and exalted by ■eligion. Energy, love and faith, make the perfect man. And Christ. Who is the perfectness of all >fthem, gives them all three to ,'onnc! man who. at the very outset of lis lifp, gives himself up to Him. If :here is any young man who generousv want.-;, to live a* whole life, wants ;o complete himself on every side, to dm Christ, the Lord, stands ready to mm these three—energy, love. and ? nith —and to train them in him‘all together, till thev make in him the oerfect man.-—Phillips Brooks. , THE PEACE! OF GOD. . Peace is independent of place, as it is independent of fortune. It can be possessed in a. narrow corner of life, or amid distractions and labours, or through fiery trials and temptations, or even with sorrow and tears, i Tt cannot be gotten for gold, nor lost tli rough povertv. The world cannot give it, nor take it away. This is the message, of the faith. Peace is to be sou"ht in the soul, and is to be found by losing of self, in love of God arid service of man. It. comes over opr tumultuous lives, and settles pn the soul as min on thirsty land. With the roar of life in ears and brain and heart we can still be calm. Jn the hr.sv market, place - and the crowded street, in the multitude of our cares and thoughts and activities, a,mid the strife of tongues and the wearv ways of men, -we can be at peace because our hearts are fixed. . Over the broken maters of our restless life there hovers the • golden glory of God’s eternal peace.—Hugh Black.

We live by Faith; but Faith is not the slave Of text and legend, Reason's voice and God’s, Nature’s and Duty’s, never :are at odds. What asks our Father of His children, save Justice and mercy and humility, A reasonable service and good deeds, Pure living, tenderness to human needs, ! Reverence and trust, and prayer for light to see Tire Master’s footprints in our daily ways ? No knotted scourge nor sacrificial knife, j But the calm beauty of an ordered life Whose .very .breathing is unworded praise! , A life that stands i as all true lives have stood, Firm-rooted in the faith that God is good. —Whittier. HOPE. They know little of human nature who complain that the Gospel is full of hope. So indeed it is. There is no faith without hope, for faith is the assurance of things hoped for; no love without hope, for love hopeth all things; yet no true hope -without faith to endure the unseen as seen, no true hope without love to inspire it, for only love can hope in a world of sin. How could the Gospel be otherwise than hopeful ? Is not the love that beareth all things the love that overcometh all things? Be it soon or be it late, the victory is surer than tomorrow’s sunrise; and in that hope we can dare and do, and—what is harder —we can watch and wait, and suffer earthly failure like the Lord Himself. What else would you have ? ' A man cannot do common work without hope, though it be 'nothing better than his daily wages; and the Gospel would be self-convicted if it called on a man for the noblest of work without kindling in him the noblest of hope. Hope is neither a natural gift nor an amiable weakness, nor a selfish calculation, but the very life by which we live, in this world or another. What matters the lapse of ages to spirit* like ourselves, in Christ immortal spirits, that we should greatly care to see the victory one of these days rather than the day when we shall meet and welcome our Dord returning?—Prof. Gwatkin. THE LOVE OF GOD. I have no sympathy with those who disparage the nobilities of human life in order to magnify thq nobility of God. We do not magnify Hi* beauty by deliberately calling our own beautiful things ugly. We do not glorify the love of God by treating a pure mother’s love as tinselled jewellery, or as seedy and unworthy moral attire. We must reason from the best we know to what exists in God. And, therefore, quietly and confidently I accept the best and tire fairest in human love as mv implement, however poor it be, in mv exploration of the glorious love of God. Human love is not •is a dead feather, plucked from a. dead bird, in its relation to the grandeur of a continent. It. is a ■Urn luster itself, and filling the air with pong. Human love is not a bit «f the furnitire of the Homeland, it is a veritable hit of its life. When, therefore. T want to think of the love of God. 1 do not roieot the helpful sin»'»o-sfion of linurm nioiherliood. and t'ni.V-. ln-nd. .-’ll' l v-ifebood. and husbandl'ood. and childhood. Nav. rather do T listen to their mush- all the more ea.irerlv. and in their love-strains T h°ar “'.«.w°et snatches of the .'••one’s j -ivi-o * t-dwt of tli° wonderful love of God. No, the love of o” T Father in heaven is not altogether un-

like the love of all good fathers on earth. It is very .like and yet very unlike; so like as to be akin, so unlike that it fills us with adoring wonder and. praise; so like, as. the vast organ and the harmonium are akin, and can express the sarnie tune; so unlike that, as with the organ and harmonium, one overwhelms the other in range and capacity, in height and depth, in length and breadth of musical glory. “God loves you, ’ and you have heard a bit of the tune in your mother’s love, in the/love of your husband, in your father’s love, in the love of, your life, in the love'of your little chiid. Human love may be only as a child’s broken song in comparison with the Hallelujah Chorus, but it is akin. “Now Jonathan loved David”; “God loves thee.” —J. H, Jowett.