SUNDAY READING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9082, 16 June 1888, Page 5 (Supplement)

SUNDAY READING.

LOVE : THE SUPREME GIFT. [an addrkss by professor henry drumMONU.] Life is full of opportunities for learning love. Every man and woman every day has a thousand of them. The world is not a playground; it is a schoolroom; and its great lesson that we are always to learn is the lesson of love in all its parts. What makes a man a good football player? Practice. What niaTkes a man a good artist—a good sculptor—a good musician? Practice. What makes ;i man a good athlete? Practice. What makes a man a good man? Practice. Nothing else. There is nothing capricious about religion. We do not fret the soul in a different way —under different laws—from that in which we get the body. If a man doesn't exercise his arm, he pets no biceps muscle; and, if a man doesn't exercise his soul, he lias no muscle in his soul—no strength of character, no robustness. Love is not a thing of emotion and gush. It is a robust, strong, manly, vigorous expression of the whole character and nature in its fullest development. And these things are only to be acquired by daily and hourly practice. Don't quarrel, therefore, with your lot in life. Don't quarrel with the quality you have of life. Don't be angry that you have to go through a network of temptation—that you are haunted with it every day. That is vour practice, which God appoints you. That is your practice; and it is having its work in making you patient, ana humble, and sincere, and unselfish, and kind, and courteous, and guileless. Don't grudge the hand that is moulding the shapeless image in you ; it is growing more beautiful; and every touch is adding to its perfection. Keep in the midst of life. Don't isolate yourself. Be among men, and among things, and among troubles, and amongst difficulties and obstacles. You remember Goethe's words, Ein Talent bihlet xirh in der Slille ; KaraHtr in den Strom von Ltbtn" —"Talent developes itself in solitude ; character in the stream of life." That is where you are to learn love. How ? I might again go over all the things I went over last Sunday night as the futile means of becoming like Christ. We iipply them all to love. We strive for it. We brace our wills to get it. We make laws for ourselves. And we pray for it. These things will not bring love into our nature. Love is an effect. It is a question of cause and effect; and, if you fulhl the right condition, you must have the effect produced in you. Shall I tell you what the cause of love is ? If you turn, when you get home, to the Revised Version of the Epistles of John, you will find there these words:—"We love because He tirst loved us." "We love"— not, "We love Him." That is the way the Old Version has it, and it is wrong. "We love because He loved us." Look at that word " because. " There is the cause of which I have spoken. " Because He first loved us." The effect follows that we love Him—we love all men. Our heart is slowly changed. Because He loved us, we love. Contemplate the love of Christ, and you will love Him. Stand before that, and you will be changed into the same image, from tenderness to tenderness.

There is no other way. You cannot love to order. You can only look at the lovely object, and fall in love with it. You cannot command yourself to do it. And so look at the great sacrilic-e of Christ, as He laid down His life all through life, and at His death upon the cross of Calvary; and you must love Him. Love begets love. It is a process of induction. You put a piece of iron in the mere presence of an electritied body, and that piece of iron for a time becomes electrified. It becomes a temporary magnet in the presence of a permanent magnet, and, as long as you leave the two side hy side, they are l>oth magnets. Remain side by side with Him who loved us, and gave Himself for us, and you, too, will become a permanent magnet—a permanent attractive force ; and, like Him, you will draw all men—be they white men or black men—unto you. That is the inevitable effect of love. Any man who fulfils that cause must have that effect produced in him. Gentlemen, give up the idea that religion comes to us by chance, or by mystery, or by caprice. It comes to us by natural law; or by supernatural law, for all law is Divine. Edward Irving went to see a dying boy once, and, when lie entered the room, he just put his hand on tho sufferer's head, and said, " My boy, God loves you," and went away. Ami the boy started from his bed, and he called out to the people in the house, "God loves me ! God loves me !" One word. It changed that boy. The sense that God loved him had overpowered him, melted him down, and begun the making of a new heart. And that is now the love of God melts down the unlovely heart in us, and begets in us this new creature, who is patient and humble and unselfish. And there is no other way to get it. There is no trick about it. Oh! truth lies in that—we love others, we love everybody, we love our enemies, because He first loved us. LOVE DEFENDED. Now, lastly : I have a word or two to say about Paul's reason for singling out love as the supreme possession. Love defended or justified. It is a very remarkable reason. In a single word, it is this : it lasts. It is a thing that is going to last. "Love never faileth." Then Paul begins again one of his marvellous lists of the great things of the day, aud exposes them. He runs over the tilings that men thought were going to last —the things that men accounted great; and he shows that they are all Meeting and transitory. He says. "Love never faileth ? but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail." It was the mother's ambition for a boy in those days that he should become a prophet. For hundreds of years God had never spoken by means of any prophet, and the prophet was greater than the king. Men waited for a prophet to appear, and hung upon his lips when he did. Paul says, " Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail."

Then Paul talks about tongues. That was another thing that was greatly coveted. " Whether there be tongues, they shall ceaee." As we all know, many, many centuries have passed since tongues have been known in this world. They have ceased. Take it in any sense you like. Take it in its narrowest sense, which probably was not in Paul's mind at all—languages in general. Take the words in which these chapters were written—Greek. It has gone. Take the Latin—the other great tongue of those days. It ceased long ago. Look at the Indian language It is ceasing. The language of my own Scottish Highlands is ceasing. The most popular book in the English tongue at the present time, except the Bible, is one of Dickens' works—hia "Pickwick Papers."

It is written in the language of London street life; and experts assure us that in fifty years it will be unintelligible to the average English reader. Its language is ceasing. Don't covet that. Then Paul goes farther, and with even greater boldness he says, " Whether there be knowledge.it shall vanish away." And the wisdom of the ancients, where is it ? It is already gone. A schoolboy to-day knows more than Sir Isaac Newton knew. His knowledge has vanished away. You put yesterday's newspaper in the fire. Its knowledge has vanished away. You buy the old editions of the great encyclopedias for a few cents. Their knowledge has vanished away. Look how the coach has been superseded by the steam-engine. Look how electricity, look how the telephone, has come in and nut a hundred inventions aside. Ay, and they will have their day, and then vanish away. The greatest living authority on electricity and physics—Sir William 'Ihomson—said the other day in Scotland at a meeting at which I waa present, "The steam-engine is passing away." "Whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away." At every workshop in America you will see out in the backyard a heap of old iron—a few wheels and a few levers, all rusty. Twenty years ago that was the pride of the city. Men flocked in from the country to see this great invention, and now it has been superseded and has vanished And all the boasted science and philosophy of this day will soon be old. It is not going to last. My brother, it is not going to last. Let us pursue it; but let us not make it the chief thing. Let us be humble with it when we get it, because it is temporary. In my time in the University of Edinburgh, the greatest figure in the faculty was Sir James Simpson, the discoverer of chloroform. The other day, just before I left Scotland, his successor and nephew, Professor Simpson, was asked by the librarian of the University to go to the libray and pick out the books on his subject (midwifery) that were no longer needed. And his reply to the librarian was this :—" Take every book that is more than ten years old, and put it down in the cellar." Knowledge has vanished away. Sir James Simpson was a great authority ten years ago —twelve years ago; men came from all parts of the earth to consult him ; and the whole knowledge of that day, within that short period, is now consigned by the science of to-day to the cellar. How true are the words of Paul, " We know in part, and we prophesy in part." "We see through a glass darkly." Can you tell me anything that is going to last? Many things Paul did not condescend to name. He did not mention money, fortune, fame; but he picked out the great things of his time, and then brushed them aside. A great many things that men denounce as sins are not sins; but they are temporary. And that is a favourite argument of Paul. He says, "The world passeth away." That is a great charge against the world. There is a great deal in it that is delightful and beautiful; there is a great deal in it that is useful and pleasant; but it passeth away—all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life. But, while the world passeth away, " he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever."

And Paul's argument here again is precisely that all these things are going to pass away, and, therefore, they are not worth the entire life and the consecration of an immortal soul. Let the immortal soul give himself to something that is immortal; and the only things that are eternal are these : — " Now abideth faith, hope, love; and the greatest of these is love.' You can see that the time will come when two of these things will perhaps pass away. Ido not know —we know so little about the conditions of life in the other world—but it seems to me as if there will come a time when faith shall vanish into sight, and when hope shall vanish into full fruition. Then there will be one thing left, and that is love. Covet that everlasting gift—that one thing which is goinc to stand out —that one coinage which will De current when all the other coinages of all the nations shall be returned from the bank of eternity. Covet that, my brothers, and give yourselves to that. Put things in their proportion ; and let the object of your life be for yourself to have the character defended in these words—and it is the character of Christ—borne into your character, that you may be created into the same image. Did you ever notice how John is continually associating love and faith with eternal life ? I was not told when I was a Sunday scholar that " God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should have everlasting life." What I was told, I remember, was that God so loved the world that, if I trusted in Him, I was to have a thing called peace, or I was to have rest, or I was to have jov, or I waa to have safety. But I had to find out for myself that whosoever trusteth in Him—that is. whosoever loveth Him, for trust is only the means to the end—hath everlasting life. The Gospel offers a man life. Ikm't offer men a thimbleful of Gospel. Don't offer them merely joy, or merely peace, or merely rest, or merely safety; but remember how Christ came to give man a more abundant life than they had, and then you will take hold of the whole of a man—you will give hima bigger life, a fuller lifecurrent, than the life he is living. Then your Gospel will move him, if he has laid hold of it. Instead of laying hold of a part of his nature, you lay hold of the whole of his nature. Christ becomes to him the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.

HOW "THE TWELVE" DIED. St. Matthew is supposed to have suffered martyrdom or was slain with the sword in Ethiopia. St. Luke was hanged upon an olive tree in Greece. St. John was put into a cauldron of boiling oil at Rome, and escaped death ; he afterwards died a natural death at Ephesus, in Asia. St. James the Great was beheaded at Jerusalem. St. James the Less was thrown from a pinnacle or wing of the Temple, and then beaten to death with a fullers club. St. Philip was hanged up against a pillar at Hierapolis, a city of Phrygia. St. Bartholomew was flayed alive by the command of a barbarous king. St. Andrew was bound to a cross, whence he preached unto the people until he expired. St. Thomas was run through the body with a lance at Coroinandel, in the East Indies. St. Simeon Zealot was crucified in Persia. St. Matthias was first stoned and then beheaded. St. Barnabas was stoned to death by the Jews at Salania. St. Paul was beheaded at Rome by the tyrant Nero. BROKEN LIVES.

God even seems to break them sometimes that they may become truly useful. At least, He can use broken lives in His service just as well as the whole ones; indeed, it often appears as if men can never do much for God till they are " broken vessels." He chooses the weak things of this world that no flesh may glory. We ought, therefore, never to be afraid of God's providences when they seem to break up our lives and crush our nopes, and even to turn us away from our chosen paths of usefulness and service. God knows what He wants to do with us, how He can best use us, and where and in what lines of ministry He would have us serve. When He shuts one door, it is because Hβ has another standing open for our feet. When He breaks our lives to pieces, it is because they will do more for His glory and the world's good broken and shattered than whole. —Presbyterian.

READY. Let Jesus take me when He will, His time will surely be the beat, When to my longing soul He'll say, " O enter now, and take thy rest." Above the voices that I love, I'll hear His whisper soft and low, And, leaving all I hold most dear, And, nothing fearing, I shall go. " With Christ, which is far better 1" Oh, My soul lives on the precious thought; My home of " many mansions" has With such a priceless price beon bought. Let Jesus take me when He will: The time must ever be tho best, When my imperfect life tihall in His " finished work" find perfect rest. M. Hedderwick Browne.