RELIGIOUS OUTLOOK

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 79, 30 September 1944, Page 6

RELIGIOUS OUTLOOK

A STUDY IN HOUSE-HUNTING (By Principal Kiek; M.A., 8.D.) “I will return unto my house whence I came out.” —Luke 11.24 “ Behold, I stand at the door and knock.” —Revelation 3.20. In these days very many people are house-hunting. In all the great cities of Australia it is next to impossible to discover a house to sell or to let. All available housing accommodation is more than occupied. Thus churches without manses are finding it extremely difficult to secure ministers. The whole problem is urgently important, if only because of its manifest bearing on the birth-rate. Couples without homes naturally feel that it is imprudent to have children. So long as these conditions exist, we must expect immorality, divorces and the like. It is, however, about the spiritual equivalent of the housing problem that I want us to think about. Our Lord suggests that many demons are house-hunters. Everywhere they are looking for homes. Christ tells of one demon who, having discovered a vacancy, was prepared to take with him seven other spirits worse than himself. To put this thought into modern language, we say that vices rarely dwell in single “cussedness,” but tend rather to overcrowding. They live in little colonies. Thus cowardice, falsehood and cruelty have a way of dwelling together. So do pride, hypocrisy and inhumanity. The empty life is never empty long: it attracts to itself not one evil spirit, but many evil spirits. Almost inevitably the vacuous person becomes the vicious person. Nor is it enough to denounce and expel the evil spirits. Nothing can keep them out except the occupancy of a spirit positively and even aggressively good. The right tenant must fight for possession, if the wrong tenants are to be driven away. A deserted house is always offering a kind of open invitation to tramps and other undesirables. It is like that with the deserted soul. If we would keep our house of life clean, decent and beautiful, we must be careful about the kind of tenants we admit to it. Where the evil spirits get in, we soon have substandard souls. The evil spirits make a mess of all the fittings and furniture. They turn the house of life \ into a slum tenement. Nor do they pay their rent, for it is true indeed that Satan is a bad paymaster. The only wise thing to do is to put the right tenant in. The seer of the Apocalypse thinks of our Lord as a house-hunter. Unlike the demons. He does not force His way in. We can keep Him out, if we like, though, in so doing, we wrong our own souls. It is a marvellous thing that our Lord, with free access to all the Father’s many mansions, should want to live in such poor hovels as we can offer. It is perhaps even more marvellous that He, to Whom is committed all authority in heaven and on earth, should condescend to beseech admission. But he is too much of a gentleman to come where he is not welcome. Instead of rudely shoving Himself into our lives, He waits for us to be willing to receive Him. But there is one characteristic of the Divine Tenant which must be noted. He is rather particular about the company He keeps: He is not at all willing to share the house with those unmannerly and destructive evil spirits to which we referred a little time ago. If He comes in they have to

go out, and stay out. Some people want to turn the house of life into flats. They will allow Christ to occupy one flat, if the demons may stay in the other flats. Christ won’t accept terms like these. If He enters, He expects to have entire control of all that is in the place. Some will offer Christ week-end accommodation only, but He won’t have that: He wants to stay all the time. Which shall we chose—the evil spirits who pay their rent with cheques that will never be honoured, or the Christ Who pays His rent in the currency of heaven? Always remember, however, that it is no good trying to get rid of the evil spirits, unless we are prepared to receive Christ and to receive Him on His own unalterable terms. I I