QUIET HOUR

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 9 May 1925, Page 14

QUIET HOUR

WIRELESS AND WORSHIP. (By Rev. T. E. Ruth). The woman saitli unto him: Si*', I perceive that thou art a prophet. Our fathers worshipped in the mountain: and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. Jesus saitli unto her, Woman believe me the hour cometh when neither in the mountain nor in' Jerusalem shall ye worship the Father. True worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth. . . God is a Spirit. John IV. 20-23. Here is an instance on the spirituality and universality of religion. And Christianity is not strictly a religion. It is religion itself, the spirit and the truth of all the religion that ever was or ever will be. if is independent of age and of race, independent of climate and of creed, independent of rites and or' ceremonies, independent- of place and of prestige. It belongs to man, to man as man, to universal man. Its spirit is broadcast- over all the earth. It is not an outer thing, dn external thing, a building, a Temple, an altar. It is an inner thing-—a mental voice, a mystic sense, an ethical reality, a spiritual vision—“He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” X am not say in, r the text is a weird prophec.v of' wireless. I am not attempting to read that into it. But it is a revelation of the reality out of which there rises the sense or wonder which .is the soul of worship. This is a- spiritual universe. Man is a spiritual being. Communion* is a spiritual experience. That is the wonder of "the world. That is the wonder of wireless. That is the wonder of worship.

THAT IS THE WONDER. OF WE WORLD , Nature is alive with a spiritual presence “Whose dwelling,” writes Wordsworth is the light or the setting suns.” To Emerson Nature was “an everlasting hint.” To Carlyle all visible things were emblems, all sights and sounds, the universe and man, were symbols of the inner Reality, the ineffable God. When Goethe in a. flash of insight saw the structure of the entire tree in a single leaf, and the complete skeleton in the skull of a sheep he gave an additional assurance of the unity of nature. There is universality of law.* There is universality of light. There is universality of love. East and west of Suez, there is the same eternal Decalogue, the same eternal sense of duty, the same insatiable spiritual quest. Physical science universally applies. Moral law makes no exception. God has no favourites. The world is one. Therefore the insistance on a merely technical Christianity is nothing less than a- tragedy. And sectarianism is not simply absurd —it is a stupendous stupidity. Superficial theological differences or sectarian issues can only engage the attention of men with kindergarten minds or men who hold themselves aloof from life and keep their religion 'far removed from reality. Chit of a'kindergarten sectarianism, out of M kniekerbocker creed, we are called by the very winder of the world in which we live, by* the very oneness of the world, by the unity of nature, by the establishment of a world neighbourhood. The world is one whether the churches are one or not. And the world, like wireless, and like spiritual worship, has no national and no sectarian wave, lengths.

that TS THE WONDER OF WIRELESS. When Marconi, dodging a music lesson persuaded his music teacher to listen-in to a little box, a few hundred yards Up the hill, while he stood on the roof of the house with another box, and the teacher admitted he heard something ticking, Marconi flung up his cap and cried, “There’s music in the air! There’s music in the air!’’ The music master thought Marconi was mad. But the wonder of the wireless had begun to make itself known. And it. is so wonderful, and so weird that its most amazing developments are but promises of universal sound and universal sight for any man who sets out to achieve a universal soul. • Missionaries at present in Sydney are making, or hoping to make, arrangements for services in Sydney to be, broadcast in New Guinea and the islands of * the Pacific. Missionaries certainly should be equipped and will be equipped with- apparatus which will ultimately link Labrador with London, Africa with America, Sydney with Singapore and California, with China. At the outposts of Empire men will hear London calling, and the most solitary will find fellowship in the Britannic family. And more than that will happen. As the Atlantic has been bridged and the Pacific crossed by the ministry of wireless the vast estranging oceans of national ignorance and international prejudice will be obliterated and in the sense of separation, “There will be } 3 o more sea.” The wonder of wifeless is really the .revelation of the wonder of the oneness of the world. The universe has become a n auditorium. The world seems to have been made for a whispering gallery. What has been here, hidden from the foundation of the world, has yielded to scientific importunity. And instead of finding ourselves at the end we find ourselves but at the beginning. So far from exhausting the deep we have scarcely scratched the surface of this wonderful old world. We have scarcely got on the track of the path of the wireless wave. There are endless possibilities: Life is inexhaustible. And the radio is really a recognition of unseen realities of inaudible voices, or realities hitherto un_ seen, of voices hitherto inaudible.-That is the wonder of wireless. THAT TS THE WONDER OF WORSHIP. Wireless has given us a new terminology. It has added to the wealth of our vocabulary. More, jt has put a new wbrld in our hands. It isn’t a question of using the radio in religion. It is a question of regarding the radio as a new revelation, a revelation of the reality which has been stored in space from the beginning, a revelation of the ultimate reality of the universe as spiritual. Always there have been celestial concerts. At the creation the sons of the morning sang joy. Over the plains of Bethlehem man listened to the angel overture. Beethoven described bis music as but the empty echo of the music lie heard in liis dreams. Mystic voices were heard by Abraham in his tent and by Samuel in the Temple.

Moses had such a mind that lie could catch the thought-waves of the Almighty. There were forms we have not ' There is music we have not heard. Even the most earth-bound men are aware of certain strange impelliugs, certain mystic monitions, and even the most orthodox unbelievers are occasionally disturbed by spiritual invasions. The suggestion is repeatedly made that the radio is likely to injure organised religion. In some respect it may. But social worship is a sort of everlasting necessity. Broadcasting church services is much more likely, I think, to increase church attendances. In anv case it promises to save religion ‘from its stupid sectarian segregations. And I don’t think free and able-bodied men would regard “listening in” as a satisfactory substitute for actual attendance at public worship. There is a spiritual something in the assembly that can scarcely be communicated to the able-bodied absentee. The disadvantage of the merely broadcast preacher is precisely here —that he is merely a voice. Even to men who come to church simply to dissect a sermon, he is much more than a voice, but ’ a great deal of movement and mariner and the multitudinous things that go to create impression must needs be left to the imagination of the “listener in.” Words find wings and waves beyond the place of worship, but the actual spirit of worship must lie created within the sanctuary of the personal mind and soul. And surely more than the preacher’s voice comes to the receptive mind of the listenerin who is big enough and broad enough to admit the aboveness of life and the withinness of being. Worship belongs to the personal mind and soul. Certain conditions -are necessary. Your aerial must be high enough, your earth wire must have connection. Worship is really a heaven and earth, affair. And contact with a cat’s whisker on a crystal is a question of delicate adjustment. .But- contact with the skies he assured, and this may not be poetry, but it’s true: —

All shall come true as your heart may believe, 1 What is the wave-length your heart can receive ? Can von receive any message from God? Can you make out what He’s casting abroad ? There’s a message in, music —God’s voice may be heard There’s a speaking far off: God is saying the word : There are wireless waves without fetter or girth God in His heaven is speaking to earth. There are two points of contract, one the secret of the soul, the other the pivot of the skies. THE LATE DR. .JOWETT. (From Air. Porrit’s book “The Best I Remember.”) When he was a very small boy—.l once heard Dr. Jowett say —he drew cows on a- slate and always took each drawing to his mother for her to praise it. One day jhe made a daring variation—he drew a house. Off he went with it to his mother for her approval. “There,” she said, “you have drawn a beautiful cow.” Dr. "Jowett declares that his houses are all cows — in other words, if he makes a speech it is always a sermon masquerading as a speech. While it is true that Dr. Jowett has given all his energies and devoted his every gift of mind arid soul to preaching it, it is clear that lie might have been exceedingly versatile. One of the best speeches made in the great education controversy in 1901-1903 was delivered by Dr. Jowett at a Free Church conference at the Holborn restaurant. And I have heard him, on several occasions, make an after-dinner speech rippling with quiet humour and flashing with pretty wit. Wlie n he was a minister at Carr’s Lane Chapel, all the Sunday School teachers in Birmingham crowded his weekly preparation class, when with blackboard and chalk he made fine, use of the pedagogic skill lie acquired as an elementary school teacher in Yorkshire. I was present at Copenhagen in August, 1922, when Dr. Jowett, by a timely intervention in a heated debate, turned the tide of a discussion on armaments which threatened to lead an international conference of Christian leaders into a hopeless impasse. At Edinburgh University Dr. Jowett fell under the spell of Professor Henry Drummond and caught something of that charm which .Drummond diffused around him. Incidentally I may mention that Drummond had two peculiarities. He was an evangelist who wore corsets, and, as he said himself, he could not spell. From Drummond Dr. Jowett learned, I fancy, his supreme tact in dealing with boys and young men. There is a story of Drummond’s being urged by a Scottish mother who was anxious about her undergraduate son’s moral character to allow the young man to call and “be talked to.” Drummond consented, and the lad came, looking sheepish and surly and evidently resenting the whole idea of the interview. Drummond met him with his engaging smile and with the disarming observation, “I suppose you know that this is all a put-up job.” The ice broke, and a month later the undergraduate was acting as a steward at Drummond’s theatre service.

A parallel story of Dr. Jowett is that when he was at Newcastle (where I first met him in 1893) he started some religious meetings for boys and girls. At the first, service four “bad lads” who had hidden away in the back gallery upset the proceedings by playing and obligato on penny whistles while Dr. Jowett was speaking. A steward captured them and brought them to the vestry. There they stood in a row in obvious trepidation; but when Dr. Jowett came into the room he met them with the question addressed in. a contemptuous tone: “Can’t you fellows play tin whistles any better than that? If you can’t I shall have to get Mrs. Jowett to give you some lessons.” The faces, of the hoys beamed hack. A few weeks later —-after they had had some lessons from Mrs. Jowett —the four boys trooped on to the platform at the children’s service an<il played a quartette on tin whistles, with" Mrs. Jowett accompanying- them on the pianoforte. Dr. Jowett has not merely concentrated all his powers upon preaching, but he has almost concentrated all his preaching upon one theme—“ Grace.” r.t is the core of his gospel; he comes back to that theme with inevitableness. And the subject of grace never stales in its infinite variety under his treatment. Within my recollection Dr. Jowett’s preaching has changed in a marked way.