THE QUIET HOUR.

Mt Benger Mail, 7 March 1934, Page 2

THE QUIET HOUR.

CAN WE FIND GOD f The great religions systems that we see in. the world to-day are an impressive evidence of the desire after God. When Job, tormented by his friends, cried out, “Oh that 1 knew where I might hud him!” hj >had no doubt in his mind of the real existence of God. Indeed the Bilile hard! y conceives of such an attitude as that of the thoroughgoing atheist. What Job wants is that he might meet God face t'» face, and plead his cause before Him. The age-long quest after God has manifested itself in many different forms. There is an immense range between the superstitious gropings after the Divine in an ignorant and superstitions pagan, ami the lofty reasonings and mystic light of the highest type of Hindu. !' is altogether a mistake to imagine that the higher man rises, the more he outgrows religion. The eon!rare, indeed, is the case; the highest types of humanity are those who are most profoundly ■moved by it. No doubt there ai l ' 1 many who would echo the cry of Jolt. They have sought God, but they have not found Him. More ami more, as the world moves on do men come to the conclusion, that either God is to he found as lit- has made Himself known in Jesus Christ, or else the quest is vain.

i No! an uncommon attitude towards Ihr Divine is that of which (‘onfacias, the great Chinese sage, is the most conspicuous example His teaching concerns the relations lift ween, man and man, and is full of high wisdom and practical sagacity. Hut though ConI fueiiis would by no means deny 'the existence of Cod. yet He was |so vague and remote that Confucius paid little attention to the I relations between man and Cod “We cannot yet perform our duties to man/' he said: “how can we perform our duties to spiv--1 i's?” About life after death he i n fused to say anything. Of many to-day it would not be uu- ! fair to say that while they would I lx* shocked if they were described 'as unbelievers, they are lik" i Shakespeare’s clown Autolycus j“As for the life to come, 1 slce]> t out the thought of it.” 1 The faith of a modern man in 1 tin* Divine is often sorely jCsted. It is true as of chi that “clouds and darkI r.ess are round about Him.” ! There are times when we can sympathise with the erv of Carlyle:

“ After all He does nothing.” “Careless semis the great Avenger; History’s pages but record One death grapple in the darkness Twixt earth’s systems and the Word.” We remember that poignant cry of anguish that rose from the lips of the Crucilied Redeemer; “AD Cod, My Cod, why hast thou for-

sakeil .Me?” We may try to find God by innib dual search, lu our day the recognised *‘arguments for the existence of God” have tallea somewhat into disfavor. Certainly they don't carry us all tit*' way to belief in such a Cod a. Chris* lias revealed., But they haw (heir value notwithstanding. Let any man seriously ponder such great, arguments as those from ef Ud to cause, with the ivwvitnbV. conclusion that there is a First great ('ause; from the design that is everywhere observable in Nail re, pointing to the Croat Architect of the universe; from the absolute imperative of conscience whose awful authority can have its foundation only in Cod Himself; and while it is true that he may

not, be able in any final sense by such search to find out Cod, yet 1m will see that it is still .mure difficult to conceive of such a universe without God. Studious minds arc likely enough to have their seasons of “honest doubt”; and we may well be very patient with such, “ft is a sound instinct,” says Leslie Weatherhead, “that nothing should be received as the truth until it is seen to be true.” The great matter is to have what Jesus calks an honest and good heart. One of the greatest of American thinkers and preachers in his student days passed through such a storm of doubt that no certain*) remained to him but the distinction between right and wrong and the absolute duty to obey the right and refrain from the wong. In his distress of soul he prayed like this: “0 God, if there be a God, teach me it Jesus Christ is Thy Son and if He is Thy Bon, 1 will follow Him.” He was true to the light lie had, feeble as it was; and so he came into the fullness of light. The experience of others and ot ourselves is one ouf the roads by which we may most surely find God, The intellectual quest A not sufficient. God makes Himself known to man in tin* depths of His personality. So Tennyson st! vs:—

“I found Him not in world or sun, Or eagle’s wing , or msec’s eye; Nor thro’ the questions men may try, The petty cobwebs we have spun. "If e’en when, faith had fall’a asleep, 1 heard a voice ‘Believe no more,’ And heard an ever-breaking shore That tumbled in the godless deep.

“A warmth within the breast, would melt The freezing reason’s colder part, And like a man in wrath the heart Stood up and answered: ‘I have felt.’” We cannot believe that all that is highest and best in our lives has sprung from an illusion. The more w.e read the story of Jesus, the more we realise that greater than man’s quest after God, wonderful as it has been, is God’s quest after man. The true picture of the Father in heaven «s given us in the shepherd who seeks after the lost sheep until he finds it ; nay, in the Christ Himself, Who in His infinite love and pity went even In the Cross for our redemption. “Lord, whence are those blood drops all the way That mark out the mountain track? They were shed for one who had gone astray Mre the Shepherd could bring him back.” If any one ask on what ground we accept this revelation, it may well he that our best answer is to say that it has a self-convincing quality in it; that like the light, ir reveals itself by shining! Can we find God? We might well despair in our quest were it not that He Ls seeking us. and in Jesus Christ Tie meets us face to face. “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.”