DEVOTIONAL COLUMN.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIV, Issue 806, 8 September 1923, Page 12

DEVOTIONAL COLUMN.

PRAYER. O Thou Divino Spirit that, in all life's incidents, art knocking at the door of the heart, help us to respond to Thee that God's will in us might be done, for without Thee we can do nothing.—Amen. READING. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that Ho loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.—l John 4-10. "HALLOWED BE THY NAME." First, in my heart O Lord! That, with a holy reverence, I may bow,' In my hushed spirit low before Thy Throne; , " v Thy' greatness and Thy holiness to own! And hence my praises and my prayers shall flow, Since then Thou art adored. Then in thy Church 0 Lord: That she, with prayerful watchfulness, Shall aye Walk circumspectly, in thy searching sight; Since "secret things shall soon bo Drought to light.": Till then, may all her conduct on life's way Praise to Thy name afford. Then in the world, O Lord; By those, who now Thy name blaspheme and scorn; / Send thou Thy Word of Truth, with utterance clear. That sinners may be filled with holy fear, And through that Truth, myriads shall be new-born, And Thy name spread abroad. -WILLI AM. OLNEY. THE WHITE FLAG ON MOUNT GRACIOUS. "Yield yourselves to God."—Authorised version. "Surrender your very selves to God. Dr. Weymouth (Romans vi, 13). (An address by the Rev. A. H. Collins, New Plymouth). First of all will you try to recall the history of this passage. Think yourself back twice a thousand years. It is A.D., 58. It is the gay city of Corinth, "the eye of Greece ; it is the home of "Gains mine host." Two men are present—one of them is undersized, a man whoso face is scared and seamed, with arch, dome-like forehead; and thought-tired eyes, that burn with inward fires. It is the man Kenan called "that ugly little Jew.'' The other is Tertius the Secretary, who with reed pen and strips of papyrus is writing at his master's dictation, word by word, sentence by sentence. All this immortal letter is finished. Now change the scene. It is still two thousand vears ago. But instead of Corinth it is Rome, "the eternal city." Rome, around which so much that is best and worst in the history of the world has gathered. Rome with its splendour and squalor. It is the first day of the week, and we are standing in an obscure meeting house, in a back street of "the city of tho Seven Hills." The congregation consists of a handful of converts to the new faith, men and women who have been fished up out of the awful cesspool of moral putridity; and are trying to live clean lives, trying to be men and women and not simply animals. They are "singing hymns to one Christos." Listen! and between the snatches of'the song you may catch the snarl of hungry lions, caged over yonder in the colosseum, and through the open window comes the smell of burning pitch ! Hymns and prayers being ended, the presiding elder rises to announce the presence of a visitor from Corinth, the bearer of a letter from the beloved Paulus. Then he proceeds to read from strips of parchment. "Paul the bond-slavo of the Lord Jesus to all that are at Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints." The writer knows his audience perfectly; not because he has ever met them; for as vet he had not visited Rome, but because ho knows his own heart and knows the grace of God. Ho knows that all the misery and shame of his past life had been due to the surrender of his nature to the powers of evil and that any better things that had come to him in recent days were due to the reversal of that evil habit, so that ho had resisted where once ho had vielded and yielded where once he had >ejisted. Hence ho is able to say to those new converts that if they would experience a full salvation, and if they would make progress in the new life, they must devote themselves to the service of God, with the ardour that once they gave themselves to the service of sin. "Yield yourselves to God." "Surrender your very selves to God."

That is the open secret of the life. Salvation is not a trick. Salvation is a miracle of divine grace. We are not mesmerised into goodness. Conversion is a perfectly rational experience duo to the right use of our God-given faculties. Conversion is not the result of "a brain storm," or a spasm of excitement. Conversion is yielding yourself to God. We arc surrounded by influences that coarsen, corrupt, degrade, and by surrender to these we degenerate. Wo are also enswathed by influences that elevate, refine,' redeem, and by yielding to these we regenerate, By yielding to sun and rain and dew and soil, flowers unfold.By yielding to spiritual influences souls expand, and grow Godward. The explanation of an irreligious life is resistance to God; the explanation of a Christian life is non-resistance to God. Would you bo a Christian? ."Surrender your very self to God.'' Give in, cease to resist. End _ the habit of fighting off religious impressions. Let God rule you. Professor Carpenter says that wrinkles are the, result of the unconscious contraction of the facial muscles in resisting repeated mental blows, You receive a mental shock, and the muscles of vour face automatically contract and the repeated, contraction ends in wrinkles! Something like that happens to the soul. You harden yourself against the blows of truth. You resist the pressure of serious convictions, the voice of the spirit, the thrilling touch of God. "Not yet." "Wait a bit." "By and by." "Presently." You do not begin the day with the deliberate resolve to go wrong; you yield to circumstances of the hour. But "no man becomes a saint in his sleep"; and no one becomes a scoundrel in his sleep. lie yields to God, or ho yields to evil, Seems now some soul to say, Go, spirit, go thy way, Some more convenient day On thee I'll call. In the Midlands of England the are famous dripping wells and any article left in the drip of the water slowly petrifies. Books, sponges, and birds are gradually turned to stone. The water is perfectly clear, and tasteless; but every drop is impregnated with lime, which hardens each object exposed to its influence. In some such way we are exposed to the constant drip of influences that steal away sensitiveness of mind, and heart, and leave us cold and hard; and our safety lies not only in resistance to these wrong things, but in surrendering to other and better things. Not in dreaming and drifting, but in the deliberate and whole-hearted "surrender of your very selves to God." Those early converts in Rome were exposed to sights and sounds that stained and coarsened the soul; they breathed an atmosphere of lust and cruelty and to yield to it meant to go down physically and morally, and the only effectual guard was to devote themselves to the opposite, and the same is true of us. "Walk in the spirit and ye will not fulfil the lusts of the flesh." Now I turn to tell you why. There are somo motives I do not name. I could conjure with words that would fall on your heart like flakes of fire. I might paint pictures of Bible men like King Saul or Judas who resisted God and yielded to evil until nearly every line of nobleness was obliterated and they became well nigh beastal, almost satanic. If you will recal. the worst man, or woman, you ever met you will sec an extreme example of results following the surrender of human powers to evil; and if you reverse the process and think of the best man or woman you ever saw then you have an example of the result of a life yielded to God. For, say what you like, religion is the main factor in making character; only by religion 1 do not mean this or that set of opinions or church attachments. By religion I mean «. life devoted to the will of God. No one

will deny that we owe it to ourselves—to be and to do the best we know. But there is something else, Religion is not only our private concern. We are not so many Robinson Crusoe's, living on an island alone. There is Man Friday. You know what I am driving at. Wo are living in social relations. We belong to homes, classes, churches, . towns, and these are better or worse for our presence. We are for or against tho things that uplift or down drag, the community. Religion means good citizenship; irreligion means bad citizenship. You cannot be irreligious and a good Britisher. What is the matter with this mad world? The answers are manifold, hut the only answer that covers all the facts is that the people are not yielded to God. Do you know Tennyson's "Gareth and Lynette!" If you do you will remember how the seer says to Gareth: Yet take thou heed of him, for, so thou pass Beneath this archway, then wilt thou become A thrall to his enchantments,.for the king Will blind thee by such vow 9 as is a i shame A man should not be bound by, yet the which No man can keep; but, so thou dread to swear, Pass not beneath this gateway, but abide Without, among the cattle of the field. There you have the truth in a nutshell. The individual and the nation that refuses to pass under vow to God must "abide without among the cattle of the field." Oh! Not for your own sake alone, but for the sake of your family and neighbour; for the sake of New Zealand and the Empire, "surrender your very selves to God." You belong to God.' He gave you your being. He holds you in life. He has redeemed you. No laws, no cleverness, no statesmanship Of man can. save tho world and with new life equip; One power alone—come back to God And His allegiance own, * Cast out the evils that our soul debased! Cleanse out Life's temple! Sweep it clean and chaste! Let His fair image be no more debased! Come back to God. Tho only road by which the coming ill May yet bo turned to good,— Come back to God! Come back to God! •In his Holy War, John Bunyan says that at the siege of "The Town of Mnnsoul," Prince Emmanuel hung out "the white flag on Mount Gracious." It is still there, "Surrender your very selves to God." BIBLE IN A POLICE COURT. v The 133rd Psalm was read out in Court by Magistrate Cairns, at North London Police Court, recently. A number of Jews were concerned in a quarrel which culminated in summonses for assault. After hearing the evidence his worship had all the parties lined up in front of I'-* dock. Addressing them he said—"Yc .all Jews, and I commend you to J3rd Psalm, wjaich reads as follows: diold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell 'together in unit}'! It is like the. precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard: that went down to the skirts of his garments; as tho dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion; for there the Lord commanded the blessing; even life for evermore." "Take that to heart," added Mr Cairns. "Go away, and don't quarrel any more."