SUNDAY READING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 8354, 6 September 1890, Page 4 (Supplement)

SUNDAY READING.

CHRISTIANS LIVING TOO LOW. [BY THE REV. JAMES CRAIG, D.D.] When* a Spaniard welcomes a stranger to his house he sometimes says, in his excessive politeness, "This is your house; there is your carriage; these are all your servants." He does not expect to be understood too literally. But when God makes a declaration like this, All things are yours ! He means it. Even the prodigal sou in our Lord's parable, returning home to his father's house, is represented as having the best robe put on him. The father does not say, Poollad, he has nothing on him, bring anything that is lying about to cover him, but he says, Go, bring the best robe in the whole house.

It was the fatted calf that was killed : not any calf that was handy, but the calf which all the servants knew that the master of the house had fed with special care, and which was the best of his stock. Even the elder brother thought there was too much fuss made 011 the occasion, but that was not the opinion of the father. The ring, the hoes, the music—all were in perfect harmony with the father's joy. _ _ I There was an eminent Christian lately lying on his death-bed, when he was visited by a friend, who entered the sick-room, saying, " I am sorry to see you lying so low." The dying man replied, " Yes, we lie too low, we lie too low. When will Christians learn to live up to their privileges, as children and heirs of God, so that they may pass away as becomes the heirs of glory ? _ Having accepted the declaration, 'All things are yours and ye are Christ's and Christ is God's,' our life ought to be far higher and our departure far more joyous." What does the apostle mean when he says, "All things are yours?" Does he mean that all which he, Paul, had attained through Divine favour is also at the disposal of all God's saii/s, in as far as it would be really good for them? Does he mean that the same full, immeasurable love which God had fixed 011 the chiefest of the apostles is the portion of every child of God? Would he really wish to see everyone of us not only | almost but altogether such as he hims was? Acts xxvi., 29. Does he even go a step further and wish that the same mind be 11 us which was also in Christ Jesus? Had lie bathed in the joy of that word, As the Father hath loved Me, so have I loved you and then, realising the " as" and the " so," had he gone on to John xvii., 23, and there learned that the Father loves His disciples as fully, as truly, as completely as He loves His own blessed Son ? If so, then verily we lie too low; we live too low ! What are some of the special points in which Christians that have the grace of God in their hearts live too low? Let us look more closely at what the apostle says expressly is ours, belongs to us, to which we have a right, which in some way is become our property. He names the world. The sun, the moon, the stars are mine, for they are my Father's, and I am an heir of God's. The mountains and valleys, the trees and plants, the flowers and fruit of the earth are all mine. But I am not yet of age—am not yet come into possession : and my Guardian gives me and each of my brothers day by day what He knows we need. I live too low if I envy mv brother what the Father has given him ; if I will not joyfully share with him what I could well spare; if 1 will not gracefully accept of my portion, being content to say to the Father that if He please I should like more, but if He has some reason for withholding it from mo, I am content. We live too low when we repine at our lot. The world is yours to use, but not to abuse it. When God rained manna from Heaven in the wilderness, if the Israelite did not go out before sunrise, he found no manna. If you have little of this world in your hand, perhaps the Father has laid more somewhere for you to go and seek, and has told you where. But you did not understand His voice, though He says tlv.t all His sheep do, and follow. We live too low when we are so full of fears for the future. How often floes the Father say, "Fear not." The word, "My God shall supply all your need;" and the other word, " It is your Father's good pleasure to give you (not some trille, but) the kingdom," ought to drive away all fear. It is His good pleasure ! He likes to do it. The apostle names life and death as being ours. He was not a foolish or a thoughtless man who said, " I can live as long as I like," for, he added, "I always ask my Father what He would like, and that becomes my pleasure, too—exactly what I wish." The children of God sing, " My times are in Thy hand, and I would leave them there," and they then fall back on the assurance that, neither death nor life shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

When Dr. Welsh was dying he asked his wife to open the Bible and lay his finger 011 the last two verses of the eighth chapter of Romans: " For lam persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." "Is my finger on the place?" he asked then repeated the words slowly, and as he had pronounced the last word he passed away to the full enjoyment of the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord, which had been the joy of his whole life

The true Christian is described as one that loves God; and the measure of that ' love ought to grow on till it has cast out all fear about the affairs of this life. There is no fear iu love ; but perfect love castetli out fear, because fear hatn torment. But if all this enjoyment is our portion in .temporal things, how much more ought the true Christian to realise that in spiritual things he lives too low if he does not claim all that Christ has provided for him. How dishonouring is it to God when He writes in His Word, "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life;" and we, while professing to believe most firmly in the Son of God, go mourning and bowed down as though not sure whether we have obtained pardon or —that is, not sure whether Christ is to be trusted. To have a fixed and abiding assurance of pardon, after having accepted Christ, is the greatest honour we can pay our Lord. | To be confessing sin and committing it is living far too low. This is utterly unworthy of a child of God, who has been told that sin shall not reign in his mortal body. The true mark of a child of God-is to be daily making new discoveries of the depth of his guilt and sin, and at the same time of the wondrous and unspeakable grace that makes him more than conqueror. Such a higher lite and closer walk with God is of the utmost importance to ourselves if we would enjoy the foretaste of Heaven on earth; to our fellow-Christians, if we would desire a greater amount of happiness and usefulness in the Church of God ; to the meu of tho world, if we would have

them assured that it is good to belong to - Christ. It would give .our friends ctimfor., when we have passed awayj and it would be adding honour to our Saviour: yvho has made us His children. Besides all, this higher walk with God and realising sense that all things are ours is, by the of the Holy Spirit, attainable, and is to be had for the asking. How very serious, then, is the case of those who live so low and will not appropriate what Christ has purchased, as though it were not necessary; we keep on crying after other things that He has not seeu meet to promise or bestow. RULES FOR MORAL WARFARE. [by rev. T. l. cuyler.] A simple " Yes" or an emphatic " No" may cost you a fortune, may cost you a troop of friends, may cost you political promotion, may cost you your character, may cost von your soul! How many a public man has hail his whole career decided by his course in some trying emergency or on some one great question of right! He is led up into tin; mount of temptation, where some gigantic ■ iniquity bids him bow down and worship it, and promises in return " all the world and the glory thereof." From that mount of trial he comes down a hero or a fool. The die is cast. If he has honoured justice and truth, then justice and truth will honour him; if not, his bones will be left bleaching on the road to a promotion he can never reach.

That was a hard struggle for Nathaniel Ripley Cobb, of Boston, U.S., when lie decided to accumulate no more than £10,(XX) during his life, and to give all the surplus to the treasury of the Lord. But after the noble resolution was once taken, selfishness was a conquered lust in that man's breast for ever. He had come off more than conqueror. How many a minister of Christ has been charged upon and overcome by this accursed spirit of "worldly wisdom!" He was put to the decisive test, not in Nero's judgment hall, or before Agrippa's tribunal, or in sight of Smithfield's fires of martyrdom, but in his quiet study, when some timid friend counselled a treacherous silence n his pulpit on some vital question of right, his "Yes" or his "No" has either called from his Master the precious benediction, " Well done, good and faithful servant," or else the fearful anathema, " Yc were ashamed of Me and of My truth, and of thee will I lie ashamed before My Father and His holy angels !" We all have our moral Marengos and our Waterloos, where we win or lose the crown of Christian character. When these decisive conflicts come on between our conscience on the one hand and some selfish scheme or Satanic iniquity on the other, then try to remember a few simple rules of moral warfare: — . . . . 1. Never change your position in sight ot an enemy. This was a fatal policy to the allies at Austerlitz. It has cost many a disgraceful defeat in spiritual warfare. 2. Never place on guard a doubtful or a questionable principle. Your sentinel will be sure to betray you. . 3. Never abandon the high ground of right for the low lands of expediency. Before you are aware you will, be swamped in the bottomless morass of ruin. 4. Get your moral armour from Cod a W. rd, and " put on the whole armour." An exposed spot in character may admit tin: fatal weapon of the foe. Ahab was wounded through the joints of his harness. Do not mind blows in the face. Heroes are wounded in the face; cowards in the back. «■ . WHAT MR GLADSTONE BELIEVES. William E. Gladstone is to-day the most conspicuous man in the English-speaking race. No other mail in Great Britain or her colonies or in the United States is more eminent, more distinguished, or bettor known to all the 90,000,000 who make up the world's foremost race. The personal opinions of such a man are of interest on any subject; on religion they possess to everyone an absorbing imp >rtance. His personal profession of the Christian religion has long been known, and his habitual participation in the worship of the Church is familiar. But these things may mean little or much. Yet Mr. Gladstone has never laid bare his personal creed as fully and uncompromisingly as he has in the papers lie is contributing to the Philadelphia Sunday-school Times. In a day when much is denied and more is doubted Mr. Gladstone, in the last of those articles, published a few weeks ago, expresses his unquestioned belief in the personal creation of Adam, in his probation, temptation, and fall, in the original sin which he bequeathed thereby to his descendants, and in the impossibility of human salvation or the reconciliation of man to God, save by the redemption offered by Christ. The strong tendency of the day in and out of the Church is, as we are all well aware, to modify and minimise these leading dogmas of Christian theology. More than one clergyman seeks to veil them in the pulpit, and prefers to preach the love of God rather than the fall of man. The Presbyterian Church decided very recently to withdraw on this and kindred issues from an aggressive utterance, which it is plain would give Mr. Gladstone no trouble whatever. His robust faith sees in the Jewish nation the sole depository of the knowledge of God conveyed in a record "framed under special guidance from above." To Mr. Gladstone, in the light of this record, all history is but the spread and expansion of the great message first committed to Abraham, whose near and present triumph he deems beyond perad venture, as " Christendom is at this moment undeniably the prime and central power of the world, and still bears written upon its front the power to subdue it." We commend this utterance from a man ripe alike in scholarship and in affairs, distinguished for his eloquence as he is eminent in letters, to that multitude of lesser men of ebbing faith who think that Christianity has seen its day. One might as well stand by some estuary left bare in its slime by the departing tide, and imagine because it was empty that the ocean also had ceased from the face of the earth ■, that its waves no longer lifted up their voice in thanksgiving or its depths in praise, full of the might, the glory, and the everlasting power of the I Almighty.

Mr. Moody recently said :—"I do not fmd as much infidelity now m a month, in the questions which are asked by the young men after a meeting, as I used to find five years ago in a day. Then the young men were full of Ingersollism, and thought that Christianity was worn out. But they have found that there is nothing in infidelity. It tears down, but does not build up. It does not give anything."

NOT LOST. The look of sympathy, the gentle word, Spoken so low that only angels heard ; The sacred art. ot pure self-sacrifice, Unseen by men, but marked by ngels' eyes These are not lost. The sacred mu>ic of a tender strain, Wrung from a poet's heart by urief and pain, Ami chanted timidly, with doubt and fear, To busy crowds, who scarcely pause to hear— It i:. not lost. The silent tears that fall at dead of night, Over soiled robes which once were pure and whits *, The prayers that rise like incense from the soul Longing for Christ to make it clean and whole— These are not lost.

The happy dreams that gladdened all our youth, When dreams had less of self and more of truth; The child-like faith, so tranquil and .so sweet, Which silt like Mary at the Master's feet— These are not lost. The kindly p'.ins devised for others' good, So seldom guessed, so little understood; The quiet, steadfast love, that strove to win Some wanderer from the woful ways of sin— These are not lost. Not lost, O Lord, for in Thy city bright, Our eyes shall see the past by purer light; And things long hidden from our gaze below, Thou wilt reveal, and we shall surely know They were not lost.