DEVOTIONAL COLUMN

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVIII, Issue 205, 28 July 1928, Page 6

DEVOTIONAL COLUMN

A PRAYER. Father in Heaven who loves'all, 0 help Thy children when they call; - That they may build from age to age An undefiled heritage.’ Teach us to bear the yoke in youth With steadfastness and careful truth, That in Thy time Thy graco may give The truth whereby the nations live. Teach us to-rule ourselves ahvay, Controlled and clean by night and day; That we may bring, if need arise, No maimed or worthless sacrifice. Teach us to look in all our ends On Thee for Judge and net our friends; That we with Thee may walk uncowed By fear or favour of the crowd. —Rudyard Kipling. PRAYING FOR THE IMPOSSIBLE. . God wants us to ask Him for the impossible. • God can do things that men cannct do; Ho would not bo Gad if this were not so. That is why He graciously made prayer a law of life. “If ye shall ask ... I will do” ; this inviting promise from the Lord means that He will do for us what we cannot do for ourselves; He will do for others what we cannot do for them — if we hut ask Him. How" little do we avail ourselves of this immense privilege 1 Someone spoke this searching .word at Edinburgh in 1910: “We have lost the eternal youthfulness of Christianity, and have aged into calculating manhood. We seldom pray in earnest for the extraordinary, the limitless, the glorious. We seldom pray with real confidence for any good to the realisation of which wo cannot imagine a wav. And yet, wo suppose ourselves to believe in an infinite Father.” The natural man calculates results. Calculations have no place in our relations with God, and in His relations with us. That matter which has been so burdening us just now, and with which wo can seo no way of cloalinjp;: how are we praying about it? In anxiety, or with thanksgiving f* Worrying prayer defeats its own answer. Rejoicing prayer gets through. , In nothing be anxious; but in every- ’ thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests bo made known unto God.” Then will ! como the answer “exceeding nbund- : antlj’ above all that wo ask or think.” ] —Sunday School Times (Philadelphia). 1

HEATHEN PRIEST CONVERTED. The conversion to Christianity in the Yoruba country, Nigeria, of a priest who spent seven years learning the secrets of an idol priest, and who later obtained a remunerative position, makes interesting reading. A missionary of tho Church Missionary Society passes on the priest’s own story of hi’s conversion as follows: “I often passed the church and heard the reading and singing, and one day I determined to go in. I was surprised to seo grownup people like myself reading, or trying to do so, and when I looked in another day, one of the Christians offered to teach me, and I began to learn. I soon learned to read, and in addition learned about Christ what I never knew; then I began to believe it, but found it would be too hard to give up my living for Christianity, so I kept away for a time. Something impelled me to return to church-, and there one day I decided to give up evil ways and servo God.”

. CRITICS OF CHRISTIANITY. It is becoming increasingly the habit of the men and women of our generation to speak _ ox-cathedra about ■ the Bible and Christianity. Unless these people aro specialists on the. subjects

about which they speak, we are not particularly worried by their criticisms, A man happens to be a great statesman, a successful banker, a learned chemist, or a leading mathematician. He comes out strongly against the virgin birth or tho resurrection of Christ from tho dead. Why should that give the slightest worry to tho disciples of Christ ? What lias statesmanship, or banking, or chemistry, or mathematics to do with such questions as the virgin birth or the resurrection? How docs eminence in these professions fit a man to discuss these questions? Mark Twain was not only a humorist, but a philosopher, when lie said: “Men are usually competent thinkers along the linos of their specialised training only. Within these limits alone are their opinions and judgments valuable; outside of these limits they grope and are lost—usually without knowing it.”—Watchman and Examiner.

“IN THE SECRET OP HIS PRESENCE.” (Psalm 91.) . (By Rev. B. Fagerburg.) Faith has unquestionably great therapeutic power, but none the less many of the best saints suffer most. A belief in Providence does not include a blanket insurance against the common tragedies of human life. But the underlying trust in every Cliristhe underlyingtr ust in every Christian heart —that God cares for his own, his love surrounds them ns the encompassing air, and no creature or circumstance can intervene permanently to harm or separate. One tremendous result in the soul of the believer results from such confidence —triumph over fear! “Thou slialt not bo afraid—Nothing in the world is more agonising and paralysing than fear. What is the secret of this calm confidence in the encompassing presence of God that banishes fear in tho assurance of divine protection? I believe the opening words of this psalm reveal it —“He that i dwelleth in the secret place of the ! Most High shall abide under tire' shadow of tho Almighty.” The promise is not to him who occasionally j visits the holy place, not to him who! desperately cries in the hour of need, j not to the pilgrim who makes frequent i journeys for worship—but he who “dwells in the secret place.” Only tho man who makes God his abidingplace, who makes the Divine presence bis hourly habitation, shall experience the confidence that routs fear.

One of tho tragedies of life is the fine extinguisher type of religion — the idea of faith as “a very present help in time of trouble,’’ but a matter to forget in the ordinary run of tho days. We should be surprised to find how many think iof religion as an emergency force to be called in when all other expedients fail, like the sea captain in Shakespeare’s “Tempest” who calls out at the height of the storm, “To prayers, to prayers, all’s lost!” Do you know men who never think of God except when they are at their wit’s-end ? Tho tragedy is that they miss the very purpose of religion and most of its rich rewards, and lie who has not made a friend of the Divine in the commonplace will find him to seem distant and strange in the hour of greatest need. Think of your religion, not as a light which you burn on rare occasions, hut as a bed in which you sleep, a table at which you eat, a bench at which you work, a room in which you live. Only by constant fellowship with Him does God become a secure fortress and refuge. The “secret of His presence,” where fear is swallowed up in the conviction of His Constant care, is the reward of him who, in prayer and devotion, hourly dwells with God.