THE RELIGIOUS OUTLOOK

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 11 August 1934, Page 10

THE RELIGIOUS OUTLOOK

(Contributed) Three Gifts Wisdom, courage, strength, These three, dear Lord, I ask. Wisdom to sec my way And understand my task. Courage to shoulder up The load 1 know is mine, And singing, bear it 011, Sure of the help Divine: And strength to carry through. Even to Journey’s End, Wisdom, courage, strength, These three, I pray Thee, send. —By Ada Stowell Watters, from “The Christ jail Advocate.” The Gospel of Love “I, too, believe,” writes Weinel, “that the German nature and Aryan humanity are endowed with high gifts. But their deepest and greatest qualities come to life —as in all races —when the Gospel with its message of perfection of grace and of love, enters into these people’s. What makes Gandhi to-day the Apostle of India? The fact that lie proclaims love as the supreme requirement and the true redemptive force. He demands that men should forsake all pride in caste and in their own sanctity and recognise the untouchables, the,pariahs, as brothers. Love is the redeeming motive with which the greatest severity of foreign rule is finally overcome. Is it not clearly manifest —even in a man who is not like Tagore, half a Christian, but a full Hindu—that the Spirit of Jesus brings the last and deepest transformation of this people? For Gandlii deceives himself; even the noblest Hinduism . . . cannot of its own power over come the idea of ‘untouchability.’ For such a change there is needed the Spirit of Him "who went to the lost and rejected of the house or Israel, and therefore of all houses and peoples, who senf forth the parables of the prodigal son and of the good Samaritan as His invincible witnesses into this world of hatred, pride, prejudice and lovelessness.”— “British Weekly.”

The Real Test There was a large attendance at the 09th annual meeting of tho Church Pastoral Aid Society in the Central Hall, Westminster. ' The Bishop of Worcester (Dr. Porowno) presided, and at the outset remarked that, with one exception, he was the first bishop to take the chair at the C.P.A.S. annual meeting. Dr. Perowne referred to the campaigns In the Leicester Diocese, when laymen as well as clergy have gone out to witness to what Christ has done for them. “I think again,” the chairman continued, “how the challenge has been taken up by ..the Bishop of Bristol. who rather startled people a little while ago by saying tliat what we wanted to-day was not more intellect, but inspiration and real conversion in our clergy.” The Bishop spoke of a letter he had received from a friend whom he had ordained years ago, who said that in one of our great towns so many of the clergy did not seem to know how to preach the Gospel of .Salvation,

“The great aim of the C.P.A.5.,” Dr. Perowne reminded ;them, “is to, provide spiritual men for spiritual, needs. What is the real test of a man’s ministry ? The only test is changed, lives—men and women who have been brought into touch with Jesus Christ and have gone out in the lay or clerical ministry of the Church. I do not believe in mass conversion. It can oiily-.be really by individual effort and by complete reliance on the Holy Spirit, Who docs the conversion through our instrumentality.”

Christ’s Challenge There is a very real danger that we may blunt the edge of Christ’s challenge by softening the severity of His demand. In the Great War men heard the call to lay down their lives for a great cause, and they offered themselves in thousands. Science demands the complete and unswerving obedience and loyalty to its laws, and only those who meet that challenge discover it's secrets and realise its energies. So Christ can only commit Himself to men and women who are prepared to follow Him utterly. The irresistible power of Christ’s challenge lay in the life He lived. So absolute was His own obedience to the Father, and so completely did the Father dwell in Him, that Christ could say, “He that hath seen Ale hath seen the Father.” Who of us can say, “He that hath seen mo hath seen the Christ?” The fact that we cannot reveals how lamentably we have failed to give Him the complete control of our lives. The tragedy of this lies not so much in the resultant lack of Cliristlikeiiess in our lives as in the character of the influence that goes out from us. We can isolate the influence of physical disease, but we cannot isolate spiritual influence. Christ said, “He that abideth in Me and I in Him, the same bringeth forth much fruit; for without Me ye can, do nothing.” It is only the truly dedicated life that can say with Paul, “I live; yet not I, but Christ livetli in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Sou of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” Christ demands of all who would follow Him complete selfcoimnittal, but in response He commits Himself to all such in the fulness of His love and iliexhaustable resources.—F. H. L. Paton.

The Bible Society All will rejoice at the record of'successful work presented at the 130th anniversary of the British and Foreign Bible Society held in the Queen’s Hall, London, on flth May last, the Right Hon. the Earl of Athlone in the chair. All previous records for the distribution of the Scriptures were broken. Luring the past year Scriptures had been translated into eleven new languages, making in all a. total of <578, and nearly eleven million copies

had been circulated. The total number issued by the, Society during its existence had reached the amazing figure of 453 millions and the expenditure on this work had beon £24 millions. Dining the year just terminated after expending £373,80(1 there was a credit balance of £7OO. The secretary in the course of his address stated that from 75 to 80 per cent, of these Bibles were circulated by the colporteurs who penetrated the farthest islands of the seas and reached the most inacessible tribes on earth. Some such workers had during the past year each circulated over twenty thousand copies. Special reference was made to the issue of the Africaans Bible and to the intense

eagerness of the people to receive it, 220,000 copies being circulated in one year. A cabled greeting from New Zealand sent by'the Dominion secretary, the Rev. David Calder, was received with applause at the anniversary meeting.