DEVOTIONAL COLUMN.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVI, Issue 176, 26 June 1926, Page 6

DEVOTIONAL COLUMN.

PRAYER. Almighty and eternal God, Who hast sont ns into this world to live according to Thy laws, look in mercy upon us, we beseech Thee, and enable us to do our duty wisely hour by hour. Grant that having served our generation wo may be gathered to our fathers with the comfort of- a reasonable hope in Thee, and in perfect charity with all men ; so that neither life nor death, nor principalities nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature may bo able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen. Beyond this softly closing door I shut tho world away, The din of sounding street, the cry And clamour of the day. As one within a cloister hears The vesper bells repent The old refrain of love and peace, So her© the dusk is sweet. No dials record the speeding hours, No time or change is here, No seasons wane, no blossoms blow, Eternity is near. Hero is tho peace that long ago Lay hushed and tenderly Upon the soul of Him who knelt In dim Gethsemane. THE ELEVENTH HOUR MAN. “And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing idlo.”—Matt, xx., 6. By the eleventh hour man I mpan the man who at five o’clock is still outside the Kingdom, and one would notice first that in the parable there is no hint of this man being bad. There was another eleventh hour man, who had taken to evil courses on the highway. He had left home, and broken his mother’s heart, and we see him at last hanging on a cross. But this man was a much more usual type, haunting the market-place in search of work, not forgetful of his wife and children. If you want the prodigal, go to the far country. If you want tho brigand, take the road to Jericho. Our Lord, in that most masterly way of His, has always a fitting background for His characters. And this man, against the background of the market-place, stands for the ordinary, well-intentioned person—yet at the eleventh hour he is still outside the Kingdom. One notes, too, that he was not without excuse. It is so like our Lord to touch on that. When the man was asked why he was standing there he could truly say that nobody had hired him. That this excuse was not entirely valid is, I think, embodied in the parable. For at the third hour and the sixth and ninth hours the householder had been out looking for workers. Now had this man been tremendously in earnest he would have thrown himself in the employer’s way : but there is not a hint that he did that. Probably at nine o’clock he was abed; men out of work are prone to oversleep. At twelve o’clock he would be having dinner, and at three enjoying his siesta. But the beautiful thing is that, though this be true, the Master sees, and is at pains to show us, that this man was not without excuse. There nro men outside at the eleventh hour who are utterly without excuse. Deaf to every call, they have resisted the inviting Spirit. But there are other who are different from that, and one of the charming things about our Lord is that He finds room for that suggestion in His story. Such may have sat under a sapless ministry, or had the Gospel presented in repellent ways. They may have been plunged, when little more than boys, into dubious or soul-destroying businesses. Someone they loved, who made a great profession, may have proved (long years ago) a whited sepulchre—and at the eleventh hour they are still outside the Kingdom. Now the wonderfully hopeful thing is this, that this man was called at the eleventh hour, for tho eleventh hour (as Bible students know) is an hour when nothing ever happens. With the exception of this single parable I am not aware that tho eleventh hour is mentioned from the Book of Genesis to Revelation. The third hour is a great hour of Scripture, for then (according to St. Mark) our Lord was crucified. And the sixth and ninth are both great hours of Scripture, and all three are Jewish hours of prayer. But the eleventh hour is an hour unchronicled —it is an hour when nothing ever happens—and it was just then that this man was called. Nobody had ever heard of such a thing. Nobody ever

: expected sucli a thing. The oldest fre--1 quenter of the market-place had never known anypne called at five o’clock. And yet that is what happened in the story, and our Lord wm'M never have told the story if it could not happen now—u;.. i.o' you. For this employer is an extraordinary person. It is that which Jesus is eager to impress on us. Had the employer been thinking of nothing but his grapes he would never have acted in this amazing fashion. What! to hire men when the working-day is closing, and to pay them with an insane extravagance ? Whoever heard of a business man like that ? Such conduct in an i employer is unthinkable. And then our Lord would smile, and flash a glance at them, and say, “Children, that is exactly what I am driving at, for remember that My householder is God.” “My wuys are not your ways, neither are My thoughts your thoughts.” This is an extraordinary householder because God is an extraordinary God, giving His only begotten Son to dio for us, waiting and watching and yearning for the prodigal, putting a ring on his hand and shoes upon his feet, when in the evening he comes i home. I And then this eleventh hour man got far more than he had ever dreamed of. !It was almost incredible, but it was true. The men who came at break of day were bargainers. They began by ' driving a bargain with the master. They said, “Let us settle the wages question first,”-and he settled it, and gave them what they bargained for. But the eleventh hour man did not drive a bargain; filled with gratitude, he left things to the Master, and he got move than he had ever dreamed of. That is the kind of faith which God delights in, not the conditional faith that drives a bargain, not the faith that says: “If Thou wilt do so-and-so for me, I will do so-and-so for Thee” : but the faith, born of a wondering gratitude, that leaves all issues in the Master’s hands, perfectly certain that His name is Love. Think of the amazement of the eleventh hour man when the whole penny was lying in his hand. “What! all this for me! All this for me?” Yes: “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.” (1 Cor. ii., 9.) THE CERTITUDE OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. The human intellect has never been able to coin into language any definition of faith that satisfies the human mind. No crystallisation of words can compass it, no crucible of the mind clarify it; faith has no experimental laboratory. There are a hundred definitions of faith, but not one gives a true and complete understanding of faith to our minds. Faith in ourselves is the rose-window of our hopes; faith in our ideals is the wine-cup of life. But | Christian faith is the oxygen of Chris- ; tian life. That which makes Christian i faith real is the object of faith; that | which makes it convincing is its per- , manence, for Christian faith is rooted and grounded in the eternal verities of God’s word. The purest metal that comes from the crucible of men’s lives comes through Christian faith. Yet, while faith is a reality and reaches the deepest undertones of our being, it has its ebb and flow, its heights and depths; but beyond its surging and receding there is ever a deep abiding trust in God’s promises. The greatest wish of the human heart, the strongest desire of the human mind, is to break through the bars of mystery that divide man from his Creator, and to throw open wide the shutters through which lie now gets only a faint vision of that inscrutable power which controls his destiny. Man longs to come into closer relationship with that infinite Being on whom lie can rest his hopes, repose his doubts and build his faith. Science has no key and draws no bolt that lets the light of His countenance shine in upon us. Our intellect beats its timbal in vain. Knowledge closes her book with no answer; neither is philosophy a drawer of the deep, living water for which the soul thirsteth. Christian fpith through God’s Word is the only pathfinder that lends man to the cloistered door by which he may enter and commune with his Creator. Christian faith creates faith ; _ faith in ourselves, faith in others, faith in God’s promises. Faith is the only physician who can minister to the loneliness of sorrow, for you cannot bind up the heart of sorrow with the bandage of unbelief.