DEVOTIONAL COLUMN.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIV, Issue 800, 1 September 1923, Page 10

DEVOTIONAL COLUMN.

PRAYER. 0 Lord, Thou art not worshipped with men’s hands os though Thou didst need anything. Thou art the giving God, and dost delight, to bestow. Thou hast taught us that we know Thee most when we lift up .empty hands to Thy fulness, and bring craving hearts to Thy bounty, and lot ourselves be tilled by Thee and receive that which is .freely given to us of God. 0 Lord, help us to take Thy gift which is Ihyself, and ever to feel, happily .and trustfully, our entire dependence upon Theo and Thine entire desire to enrich us. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. READING. “Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my father, which is in heaven.” —Matt. 10, 32. ■ ■ , i THE DAY OF PEACE. ' Across the fretful thought of strife, The sordid thoughts of greed, Shines brightly one sweet day of life— His thought, who knows our need. What breast could bear its heart of care, Its stress of anguish keen, Without the day of peace and prayer, The thought of God, between? CHRIST, OUR LIFE. {By Professor A. S. Peake, M.A., D.D.) Our bodies assimilate food and are' built up by it. So we must assimilate Christ, rtiliHe becomes part of our very being, the life of our life, and spirit of our spirit; As the Father and the Son live in blessed, fellowship with each other, sharing a com-; mon life and crowning their joy with' mutual love, so may it bo with Christ and ourselves. In this mystical fellowship, wherein the Lord becomes one spirit with us, lies the deepest secret of Christian experience, and the root of all holy life. In the Incarnation we have the supreme manifestation of God’s will that men should enter into fellowship with Himself. The gulf between God and man caused by the sense of God’s majesty and holiness was bridged in Jesus, not by lessening the sense of His greatness and purity, but by the marvellous condescension in which the Eternal Son of God took upon Himself our weak humanity. Thereby lie made it possible that we should dwell in Him and He in us. Ho is the Divine Victim on whom we feast, and find the feast the sustenance of our souls.

Jesus is God’s answer to the needs that He Himself planted in our breasts. He has given us the assurance that we are akin to God, and have a destiny worthy of the source from which wo sprang. And as we have drawn our life from Him, our very nature drives us to fellowship with Him. In Jesus we have the sacrifice for sin. When He died on Calvary He broke the power of sin and made atonement for ogr transgressions. In that death we died and in that resurrection wo rose to newness of life. And so iu Him and in Him only we have the answer to the two great questions of religion; How may the guilty conscience be at peace? and how may man find fellowship with God?

A GARDEN IN THE GLOOM

(By Rev. J. 11. Jowett, D.D.) In one of my garden books there is a chapter with a very arresting heading, “Flowers that grow in the gloom.” It deals with those patches in a garden which never catch the sunlight, the dull corners which at no part of the day ore found with shining faces. And my guide tells me the sort of flowers which ore not afraid of these dingy corners, nay rather like them and flourish in them. There are plants which seem to thrive in apparent adversity. Where others would be pinched for lack of warmth and cheer these draw nourishment and stimulant from severity. It must be a fascinating thing to watch the growth of flowers which have a preference for the gloom. These flowers would not lift their heads to the meridian sun; they are children of the shadow, and they are wooed by the twilight and the shade. . And there are similar things in the world of the spirit. The# only reveal themselves in hard circumstances. They come out when material circumstances become stern and severe. They grow in gloom. For how can we otherwise explain some of the experiences of the Apostle Paul? Hero be is iu captivity at Rome. The supreme mission of his life seems to have been broken. Ills missionary career is ended. He has no longer the stimulus of travel, the joy of his sublime itinerary, the joy of! carrying the good news of grace oyer the highways and byways of Asia and Greece. - The oixm road is narrowed down to servitude. Gloom has settled upon his lot, but it is just in this besetting dinginess that flowers begin to show their faces in bright and fascinating glory. .He may have seen' them before, growing on the open road, but never as They now appeared fn incomparable strength and beauty. Words of pro-: mise opened out their treasures as he had never seen them before. They wore now like the expanded fullness of a rose as compared witli tlio imprisoned mystery of thebud. Even Providence itself revealed new i intimacies iu his penury, and he discovered' deepening wonders in the fellowship. There was a flower named recollection which never unfolded such treasures in the sunlight as it now revealed in the gloom. Forgotten mercies reappeared, and in such a way to disclose new aspects of heavenly grace, i And, strangely enough, the flower called Hope flourished in amazing luxuriance; the apostle named it “Tho Hope of Glory.”) And Human Kindnesses, which once were perhaps seen but dimly, were now clothed m loveliness Perhaps the kindness showed itself in a visit from Onesimus, a runaway, slave, or perhaps in some _ ffiydet remembrance from friends at Philippi or Corinth. In one way or other the gloomy season became the home of spiritual graces, and the dingy corner inspired tho most wonderful experiences of Hia life. But of all these tilings which revealed themselves in this period of gloom there were none which compared with what the apostle called “The unsearchable riches of Christ.”. These riches revealed themselves in amazing brilliance, like the brightness of the stars on nights when there is no moon in the sky. And among these treasures were such wonderful things as the grace of Cffirist, and the love of Christ, and tho joy. of Clirißt, and the peace of Christ, and it seemed as though they almost needed an “encircling gloom” to draw out their secret and their inner glory. At any rate the realm of glory became the home of revelation, and Paul began to realise as never before the range and wealth of his spiritual inheritance, And so while some of his friends were referring to his misery he wosi singing of his joy; while they spoke of his tribulation ho exulted in “a peace which’ passeth understanding,” while they piteously regretted his poverty ho boasted of ; “possessing all things.” “I have all things and abound I”

Some, mon become very poor wheq they are imprisoned in tight corners. Mien’' wo roach tho desert places in life the great question Is this, "What have wo got to live on?’ And our means consist very largely of our savings and our storings. This man' Paul had been laying up treasures in heaven, and these treasures befriended and comforted him m his gloom. There are some folk, who, when they get old, or, when they come to Jonelv pluces, havo a, dismal any wintry lot. They live with very cheerful associates. Their own animosities; crowd about them. They live with theiri own peevishness, and their sourness, and! their fretfulness, and their censoriousness, 1 and their unthank fulness, and their littlemmdedness! What a menagerie of ugly, things! And yet in multitudes of lives they constitute the only company when thesun goes down, and the cold evening wind blows about them, and they are left alone. One the other hand, who has not known men of gloom and solitude put On strength and hopefulness like a robe? They have lovely things to live with. They have their own old loyalties. They have sweet mem-