SUNDAY READING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 9010, 15 October 1892, Page 4 (Supplement)

SUNDAY READING.

SIT DOWN AWHILE! [BY rev. THEODORE L. CCYLER, D.D.] The core of all piety is to obey Christ's command, " Follow Me but our Divine Master when on earth was not continually in motion. He had His working hours, His watching hours, and His resting hours. His disciples shared them all, and it ought to be so with every true Christian now. The cry of the times is for Christian work. This too is in obedience to the Master's orders; but all genuine labour consumes strength. The ploughman must halt his team occasionally, and allow both his horses and .himself a "chance to blow." The harvester goes in from the hot held at noon to refresh his weary frame. An army is never in so good trim "for battle as after a sound sleep and a square morning meal; it is not easy to fight on an empty stomach. So every ser vant of Jesus must often recruit his or her spiritual strength by sitting down at the Master's feet, in meditation, in prayer, in reading Christ's words, and thinking about them. The disciples were not wasting their time when they sat down beside their Lord and held quiet converse with Him under the olives of Bethany, or by the strand of Gennesareth. Those were their school hours, those their feeding times. The healthiest Christian, the one who is bsst fitted for godly living and godly labours, is he who feeds most on Christ. Here lies the benefit of Bible reading, and of secret prayer. Luther said that he could not get on without two good hours each day for his private devotions. That busy and valiant preacher, Dr. Edward I*. Kirk, set apart days for fasting and prayer, and he observed them carefully amid his "most arduous duties. His power depended upon the degree of his communion with his Divine Lord. Here lies one meaning and purpose of the Lord's Supper. The very act of sitting down quietly with our crucified Redeemer at the table which is fragrant with the atmosphere of love has this profound signification. Let us not forget that to be instructed we must come often to the feet of Jesus. The transcendent truths of the Atonement and of the new birth were revealed to Nicodemus while he was sitting as a humble enquirer beside the Great Teacher. The woman of Sychar found a deep well-spring of truth while she was listening, in the hot noonday, to a person who told her the story of her shameful past life. We need to have just such discoveries of our inner selves, and of damage which sin has been doing to us. Halt the train often, and tap the-wheels and the axle with the hammer of self-examination ; it may save us from a broken axle, and a crash of character. Especially should selfstudy be mingled with Christ-study. When He saith to us, " Come unto Me." He does not only mean that we should come for pardon and for needed grace, but also for instruction, for communion, and for letting His blessed image impress itself more deeply on us. There are two sides in the best developed Christian. There is a Martha side, which is employed in benevolent activities, in going about doing good. Some Christians overwork this side and neglect the other side. They are perpetually on the go. They do not sufficiently develop the Mary side of character—which only can be attained by sitting quietly at the feet of Jesus in prayer, Bible study and converse with the Master. Shallow brooks are noisy ; there are stiller waters that run deep, and do not run dry. The busiest and most beneficial Martha must sometimes take Marys place beside the Master, both to learn His will, to drink in His spirit, and to replenish exhausted strength. We do not read much about Paul's quiet hours and secret devotions. If he kept a diary he did not publish it. Yet the grand old hero must have had constant and close fellowship with his Lord and frequent filling up of his spiritual tanks, or he never could have stood the strain and the drain of his immense public labours. All the most effective toilers, the Bernards, the Luthers, the Brainerds, the Payson3, the Banyans, the McCheynes, and the Spurgeons, have drawn their power and their holy inspiration from frequent sitting down awhile with their omnipotent Saviour. When trouble comes there is no place for consolation like that in which we feel His everlasting arms put underneath our aching hearts. O, how His Arms do rest us ! There is room for us all on that bosom of infinite love ; and as we recline there we hear His voice sweetly whisper, " Let not your hearts be troubled. Peace I give unto you. Abide in me, and ye may ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you." I am not contending for dreamy indolence or sentimental reveries or morbid introspection. But I am contending for a proper alternation of work and conflict and seedsowing with the due exercise of our faculties in meditation, prayer, and, waiting on Christ. During a recent visit to Florida, I noticed that the king of all prolific fruit bearers, the orange tree, does not begin to bear until it has got some growth and stability of fibre. It knows where to put its roots. It runs them deep down, and pumps its resources of sap and moisture from far down beneath the surface sands. God send us more such mighty bearers of the " fruits of the Spirit!' But they have got to be rooted into Christ, and their inner life must be hidden with Christ in God. My brother or sister! if you desire to be such a Christian, you must take time to eat, and time to sleep, and time to think, and time to pray; and before you go into the toil, or, into the grapple, sit down awhile with the Master, and let Him fill you out of His own fulness.

BEGINNING. The word Bible means book, and it is as one volume or book, that most of us possess it. Yet this volume really consists of sixty-six small books bound up together, books of history, of prophecy, of poetry, and some others. in the form of letters. In the historical books may sometimes be found statements which seem to contradict each other, and there is a temptation to say that both cannot be true. Yet it is often the case that when one person tells another of something which has happened to himself the listener interrupts with, "But I thought just now you said so-and-so." "So I did,' answers the narrator, and proceeds triumphantly to show that there is no real contradiction in what he has said. Even allowing, however, that difficulties may be found in the brief histories of the Bible, all the writers, historians, prophets, and poets alike, agree absolutely in the great lessons which each, in his own way, aims at teaching. Ages apart in time, widely separated in position and circumstances, all point unswervingly to the same great truths. We find them at the very beginning of the Book, and may trace them right through to the end. " Whence, but from Heaven, could men uuskill'd in arts, In several ages born, in several parts, Weave .such agreeing truths ? or how, or why Should all conspire to cheat us with a lie ? Unask'd their pains, ungrateful their advice. Starving their gain, and martyrdom their price." " In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." These are the first words of the first book of the Bible, words so well known to us all that it seems as if we may as well go on to something with which are not quite so familiar, and this may very possibly have been also the opinion of those for whose instruction the history was first written. Yet there is reason to doubt whether they knew, and whether we now really know, the truth so shortly and simply set forth in these ten words. Anything whatever which we really know becomes a thing of life; it throws fresh light on truths already partially known,, and helps us to Bee others which before were ■

oat of our sight it changes our thought*, and through them our actions. Also, if we really know a thing, we can tell it; if it i* not so clear to our thoughts that we can cut it into words, we do not know it. If we take the three words, " In the beginning,' the question at once presents itself: the beginning of what!., Of all that we can see,— sun, the moon, the stars, and planet!!, or merely of this world on which we live ? In Proverbs viii. there is a noble poem in which Wisdom, .spoken of as a person, "cries, and understanding pats forth her voice' (ver. 1). Verses 22-26 speak of a time before the earth was, or had even begun to be made, and in John xviL 24, the Great Teacher makes mention of the same time. We may turn also to Hebrews L 10, where the writer quotes from Psalm cii. 25. We are not left to suppose that other world* had other makers, for in Gen. i., 16, it is said that " He made the stars also," bat it is the earlv history of the world inhabited by mankind which is about to be told, and the historian goes back to the very beginning, First in point of time in the history, God created the heaven and the earth. But that is not all. The Old Testament as we have it is, as we all know, a translation from the Hebrew, in which language these books were written, and the word which we have as "beginning," is sometimes used in the Hebrew for first, as in Dear, xxxiii. 21 ; Lev. ii. 12, and in other passages. 'Sow', that which stands first is very generally of most importance, and in Amos vi 1, 6, this same -word is translated chief. We may ask how this can be To answer that question, we must go far back, and think a little. When we came into the world, the names of all tlj§ things around us had long been given, and we learned them by degrees from hearing them used. But with the first man this was not so, and we are told that he gave names to the animals (Gen. ii. 19-20), and that when his helpmeet was given to him, he at once gave her a name, and had a reason for it. (Gen. ii. 23). Then, no doubt, together they would name the trees, the flowers."' the fruits, in fact everything they saw, and these names would be given for a reason, just as a child, before it can speak the language of its elders, will give names of its own to things which particularly excite its interest, and these name have always a reason. Ba-a, bow-wow, tick-tick, are familiar instances of this. Now a crow is a bird with a voice which demands attention, and after which it would be natural to call it. Here are some of the names which have been given to Orev, rav, korax, corvtis. Anyone who will pronounce them will find that they, as well as ; our word crow, are imitations more or less exact of the peculiar cry of the bird. The crow is black; "as black as a crow," means very black. If we had no word for darkness or blackness, we might say it was like a crow, and no one would doubt our meaning. In ancient languages, a vast number oi words expressing darkness, blackness either oi things, of deeds, or of the mind, have been made from the name given in each to the crow —that name is the root of the other words.* The root of the Hebrew word we have beer considering is laa/l, and we see at once how this may stand for beginning, for first, and for chief, or of most importance. " First of all, before anything else, there is one thing you must thoroughly master," a teacher will sometimes say to a learner beginning the study of a subject, and the student, unless he be very wise in his own conceit, understands that he is being pointed to the verv foundation of the knowledge of which he is in search. Here then, in these first •words of the Bible, we are pointed to the foundation. First of all, God created the heaven and the earth: First of all—God. (Isaiah xli. 4; xliii. 10,11,13: xliv. 6; xlviii. 12, 13.) For the children of men, whom " none can deliver out of the hand" of their Creator, for whom there is no other Saviour, it cannot but be of the first importance to know his will and to do it, and this is the teaching of the first commandment—(Matthew xxii. 35-38.) First in our heart's liking, first in our will (for that which is not willingly done is not well done), the first thought in our minds must be the will of God, and only so far as this is the ease can we understand the first sentence of the Bible. The Great Teacher put the same lesson into other words —(Matthew vi. 33; Luke xii. 31). In our lives we make many beginnings. A scheme for gain, for instance, which can only succeed at the cost of loss to some fellow-creature, may be brought before us. K self be first with as we can take it up if God be first we shall turn from it with loathing, for it :s against the second great law of His kingdom which is like unto the first—(Matthew xxii. 39)— and therefore against his righteousness, or Tightness as the word means. For everyone of us there is every morning a new beginning when we wake from sleep— brother of death —to the new life of a new day, to be spent either after the manner of him in whose thoughts God is (Psalm x. 4)— in building upon the only safe, the everlasting foundation : In the beginning, first of all, God—(l. Corinthians iii. 11 : ReveLation L 8, 10, 17 ii. 8; xxii. 13). ( Note.—Errata in the article headed " Search" : In the second paragraph, for Matthew xxvii. 56, read Matthew xxvL 56. For Mark ix. 3, read Mark ix. 31. In the last paragraph, for Acts iii. 38-40, read Acts ii. 38-40. _ FELLOW-LABOURERS WITH PAUL. " Those women which laboured with me in the Gospel, and others of my fellow-labourers, whose name are in the Book of Life." They lived and they were useful; this we know, And nought beside : No record of their names is left to show How soon they died ; They did their work, and then they passed away, An unknown band, And took their places with the greater host, In the Higher Land. And were they young, or were they growing old, Or ill or well ; Or lived in poverty, or had much gold, No one can telL One only thing is known of them : they were Faithful and true Disciples of the Lord, and strong, through prayer To save and do. No glory clusters round their names on earth, But in God's heaven Is kept a book of names of greatest worth, And there is given A place for all who did the Master please, Although unknown, And their lost names shine forth in brightest rayg Before the Throne. O take who will the boon of fading fame! But give to me A place among the workers, though my name Forgotteu be; And if within the Book of Life is found My lowly place, Honour and glory unto God redound For all His grace ! Marianne Far.mngham. •See " Modern Science in Bible Lands." p. 227 b* Sir J. W. Dawson, LL.D., F.K.S.