THE SABBATH HOUR

Northern Advocate, 15 June 1935, Page 6

THE SABBATH HOUR

TEXT FOR TODAY. KNOWN BY FRUIT. Every tree is known by its own fruit, for of thorns men do not gather ,figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes.—Luke 6:44. THE HOLY GHOST AND WORLD PROSPERITY. Sermon preached at Maungakaramea on Whitsunday by Rev. J. Sands. Text: Joel 2:28. Joel is daring enough to tell his people that their material miseries had a spiritual cause. He tells them that their outlook and temper had been wrong, and they must change both. That once their spirit is changed and harmonised with the Eternal Spirit, the human failure will cease and be transformed into a real success. That when they see clearly and act upon their cleared vision, prosperity will return to them. What you mainly need, he says, is a new contact with God, Who will, if you permit it, pour out with the abundance of rain His spirit upon you. You need to be soaked, he would say, with an energy not your own, so that all the fibres of your being will be devitalised, and you will stand up to life new men and women, disdaining your present miseries, because you see ahead of you, with your cleared eyes; a life worth working for. Amazing Message. Listen to his amazing message; This new force of regeneration is available, not only for the elite, but for the masses of the people. Women and men alike, young and old alike, a. classes alike—even the humblest —• may share it. And not only the favoured people of Israel, but all humanity is included in the prospect, No greater height was ever scaled in human thought than this, reached by an obscure Hebrew prophet four centuries before Christ. There is an ideal of prosperity, infinitely grander than that which holds captive the minds of the majority of the men of our own tiipe. It is an ideal which leaves no room for those artificial inequalities which are the pitiful advertisement of our failure and folly, and which stain our humanity with a crimson that no chemistry can erase. Fix your mind on this great conception. A humanity inspired by one Divine Spirit; a great human family, friendly, co-operative, prosperous and progressive. It is a new idea for you, perhaps, to connect true national prosperity—and human prosperity as a whole—with what is called an outpouring of the spirit of God. Pentecost Anniversary. ' This is the anniversary of Pentecost. If you would know then what an outpouring of the spirit means, see what happened oh that day, and immediately after. St. Peter quoted the words of Joel and claimed that then and there they came to fulfilment. The men and women present were swept as by wind and fire. Just as wind passes all frontiers erected by man, so did the new spirit carry these people beyond the petty frontiers of their own nation, and make them kin with the whole world. And as fire joins cold §nd separated elements into one element, so did the new spirit create a glowing unity which expressed itself in a new brotherhood, marked by a radiant community of interests. The spirit of Pentecost created a new society, the type of what all society was meant to be. Rich and poor vanished as such. There was neither bond nor free. They were all one in Christ. And that was a miracle of the spirit.

Can you now say that there is no connection between true prosperity and the Holy Ghost? There was a connection at Pentecost, on a very small scale. But the Will of God is that what happened then should be extended until the whole of humanity is embraced in a great family which needs no force to keep it together—save the force of the Divine spirit of charity. The principle and the promise remain intact. There can be no true prosperity worthy of the name, unless it be founded upon the life of the spirit and embrace the entire human family. What the World Lacks. Friends, it is just that spirit that the modern world lacks, and denies, at a moment when it is disquieted and disillusioned. We are lacking, all of us, in great hope and enthusiasms. Even in the church there is little fire and no conquering note. The ancient Hebrew predicted that “vision” would follow the effusion of the spirit, and it is just vision that is lacking in our modern life. I know there is plenty of vision and dreaming of a kind, but it is the wrong kind. How blind are the people to the real meaning of the delicate situation which confronts Europe today. Seventeen years after the Great War we are still confused and in the grip of a great fear. A cataract is upon our eyes. Let our prayer be: "Lord, that we may recover our sight.” No worthy vision will be ours until we are inspired by the Divine Spirit. We need to see things as God sees them, “to change eyes with Christ.”' An outpouring of the spirit will enable us to see a new world; not the world of the financiers and the politicians. but the world of the beatitudes. the world of the Sermon on the Mount, the world of the apocalyptic seer. Until we see such a world we shall never desire it or work for it.

And when we see it, power to work lor it will be given to us; for inspired vision commits us inevitably to a full co-operation with Christ. It is not the visionary, the dreamer, who can help the world. Only they can help who are one with God. They can never be discouraged at any setback, for they are leagued to the eternal power. At midnight they salute the dawn. In spring they already behold the harvest, not because of their human optimism but because of their alliance with God. Nation Bound. The mass of us are nation bound, or at the best, planet bound. We do not see high enough or far enough, because we have forgotten the inspiration of the Eternal. Our notion of prosperity is too low, too limited. We are grasping after the shadow and missing the substance. In your hearts you know that I am right in saying this. The question is what do we mean to do about it? The first Pentecost came in the spring of the year when the earth was stirring with new life. Beauty everywhere. Sunshine everywhere. Which is not simply history; it is also a parable. It cries out to us that the winter of our content may end if we will, and a new springtime set in for the world. God is ready. The promise of the spirit is to us and to our children, but we can refuse to believe in it, and continue to walk on the old levels and in obscurity. It is natural and right that we should desire prosperity, but not that base sort which has. brought the world to misery. The only prosperity right and enduring is that which embraces the entire race of man and gives dignity to every member of the human family. Nothing but an entire change of spirit can ensure this. Magnificent Thought. There is something magnificent in the thought of a world prosperous and at peace, but remember the world is made up of individuals, each of whom can help to advance or retard progress. Whatever others do, let us make pur vital contact with God. Open your nature to the Divine Spirit and the transformation will begin at once in your own soul. There were only a handful at Pentecost, but through them mighty world changes were wrought. Why .should there not be through us and people like us today who are also but a handful, the inauguration of a new epoch? The mightiest river begins with a few threads of water. And a new world movement of prosperity will begin vpth the few who are courageous enough to follow the way of the Spirit of God. THE CREED OF THE SCIENTIST. By Silent Peter. Dear People, “I believe!” declares the scientist. “I believe in the world immaterial, for the search for truth takes me daily into its domains. I believe in the law of gravitation, which ordains for each unit of the universe its ordered and harmonious course. I believe in the law of heat and light, twin sources of physical life. I believe in the law of magnetism,- whose ordinances produce the infinite variety of forms of activity which go to the make-up of life. I believe in the mightiest law of all, the law of cohesion, whose power prevents from moment to moment the disintegration of all which at present is regarded as matter. I believe in the law of unity which makes of all laws one great and universal whole and from whose ceaseless operation emerges that unity in diversity which is the key to the pattern of the universe, both seen and unseen; and therefore I believe in the actual existence of the Maker of heaven an earth. I believe in the all mighty and everlasting power' of the Creator and in the eternal kinship and universal brotherhood of all peoples of the earth, His children.” It is thus that our present age witnesses the inevitable but long delayed rapprochement of those two schools of earnest belief in the spiritual basis of things—the scientist and the religionist.' Somewhere between the two stands Ihe theologian, well disposed to either or both of them, and now rapidly bringing himself into line with the fusion that is taking place of the many and varied aspects of the modern search for truth. The scientist, on his part, distinguishes keenly as between religion and theology, and he realises clearly that the limitation of scientific enquiry which retarded 'the evolution of knowledge in past centuries was under the domination of the latter to the detriment of the former. “Give me the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth!” is the cry both of pure science and of pure religion. While the religionist and the scientist have long ago discarded the quaint dictum that “seeing is believing,” they know how to steer a clear course between the Scylla of traditional theology on the one hand and the Charybdis of atheistic ration- j alism on the other.

Transcending the miracle of the sight of the eyes is the still greater miracle of the vision of the mind — insight, aptly so called. By means of the powers of the mind, the scientist and the religionist “see” in common that there is no “up” about heaven and no “down” about any mythical lower regions. The ancient physical theory that the earth was a fixed, flat and illimitable plain, with heaven stretched above it in space, has for ages been responsible for the chimerical idea that heaven is a place, not a condition. “The kingdom of God is

within you/' not above you, in some reserved portion of stellar space, nor upon one or other of those great orbs which in company with our own small globe travel around the sun of our universe. Yours sincerely,