SUNDAY READING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12818, 18 March 1905, Page 4 (Supplement)

SUNDAY READING.

"GOOD FOR NOTHING."

(Matthew v. 13.) [BY THE IIEV. F. E. METER.]

The terror of the Lord which has been upon my soul is, lest in this life, to say nothing of the life to come, God should pronounce the verdict in Matthew v. 13: " Good for nothing.'" There is terror in that thought. It is not improbable that there are Christian people who are good for nothing but to be cast on the rubbish heap and trampled under foot. God can make some use of almost everything. Out of a bib of smoking flax He can make a great flame; out of a bruised reed He can mako a pillar of the temple; out of a, bit of clay Ho can make the socket of an eye; out; of a bit of bread He can make a meal for thousands; out of a man like Peter He can make the- chief apostle. He is the great utiliser of waste; and yet from some of His own people He can make nothing, for they are fit only to be cast out. This is tho terror of the Lord. I want to burn this home upon thy soul. God has a purpose; it is to search thee, that even now the process of decay may be arrested, and Jesus shall tako thee in His hand and make thee good for something.

THE VERDICT OF CHRIST. Why is it that this salt is counted good lor nothing? It litis not become a poison, a hurtful substance. You can onlv say it had lost its savour, ceased to fulfil the vocation for which it had been created, just as you and I may cease to fulfil the purposy lor which we were redeemed. When we do not fulfil Christ's purpose, then the tears, the blood, and the passion of His cross, so far as wo are concerned, go for nothing. And if you have rendered futile the whole work of Christ, if you have ceased to be a power for blessing and help in this world of corruption, Christ pronounces this verdict over you. Note what is extremely interesting in all Christ's teaching. The Old Testament condemns men because they do wrong; Christ condemns us because we fail to do right. There is a vast difference between the man who keeps from doing wrong and the man who keeps from doing right, Follow the words of Christ. Take the parable of the debtor. Thy old covenant would have condemned the man for incurring debt; but Christ condemns him because he did not forgive his fellows. Or take the parable of the man who fell among thieves. The old covenant would condemn the man who stole his property, and not specially the priest and Lpvite who passed him by; but Christ condemns the two who looked on and did nothing 1 more. It is the people who do nothing in His kingdom whom He condemns. Or take the story of the judgment-seat The old covenant would condemn the man who plunders the poor; but Christ condemns those who do not help the poor. The fact that you go through the world without hurting people is not enough. God expects you to give water to the thirsty, bread to the hungry, help to the helpless. If you do not this, then the salt has lost its savour.

AN UNFULFILLED PLAN. If ever tears are shed in heaven they will be shed when you and I reach its golden streets and arc conducted by some angel of God to look upon the chart of our life. He will say: 'That is the draft plan of your life; that is what God intended you to be in saving and helping others." I want to read your heart by my own. I am prepared to believe that you are not absolutely impure in your life, that no one ran point to you and say you are demoralising them. But is your purity a positive quantity, which not only keeps your own heart pure, but acts as a purifying influence on the hearts of other men and women? I am glad to think you are true in your commercial life, and have told the manager you will have nothing that is not perfectly straightforward. But the question is, do the people who know us see that wo are prepared to make any sacrifice in the cause of the truth we profess? Do we stand for the truth in the midst of this generation? Are we willing to bo pilloried for the sake of that truth?

POSITIVE CIIRISTIAKITT. To come once again to love. How is it about your love? Are you always an influence to promote love? One "not only wants to go through the world not doing wrong, but to bubble over like a fountain. It is not enough co say I have not done wrong; _ but am I as thoughtful of others as I might be? Is there in me an inexhaustible fund of treasure for those with whom I live day by day? Do I know what it is to bo a living stream, making glad the desert places? Where my heart broke in thinking of this subject was'in that word "lost." If the salt have lost its savour; that is the point. The other day I took up a bottle ( in which I had been keeping some spirits' of wine. The cork, however, was defective, and the spirit had gone, the liquid only remaining. Have you lost anything you used to have? You remember the unction of your first sermons. You spoke with tears running down your chocks. There was an unction, and people went away, saying, Was it not wonderful? Have you lost that power? Arc you just what vou were? Has the aroma and sweet fragrance of Jesus gone from you? Thou hast lost thy first love, thou hast lost' the bloom of thy purity, the sweetness and delight in the friendship of Jesus. Remember Samson lost his strength as he lay on Delilah's lap. Lot lost his first love as he became an alderman or a mayor of Sodom. The Ephesians lost their first love. I-take

you baGfc.to days long gone by; the .days of \ Charles v S/qx ana Canon' Batt*rsby, when .tie dew of consecration iwas fresh upon yon. %■ But the Baft, has lost its savour. How lias it lost its saltriseg? r "If thy hand offend thefe % cut it off." -That where you have gont wrong. Those sins in your life, those thinsrj in which you dabble again and again—th»t it where you lost your sweet savour. This habit and that aWisemont will have to bo abandoned if you would know Christ's'-' power of cleansing., ; THE TRICE OP DISCirLESHIp. ' ' .. "If any man com© to rue and hate not Ins father and mother, and wife, and chil dren, and brethren, and sister.', yea -md h;» own life also, he cannot be Mr di*cipl"" It is the' Lord's; message. Thou must hit. thine own self-life. Thou must take tl,» active, energetic self ami nail it to the crow Be prepared to take thine own cross a »A allow God's will to take the place of thin*, be prepared to forsake all that thou hast accumulated, and stand alone before Him It is a personal crucifixion of Tbv S which is perpetually going forward in H,, life. So long as you do that you cannot be renewed to repentance. If you will <*~» up crucifying Him. Ha will use you a4i n .Some who have lost the sweet fra-ran™ wonc.er if it will come back. It will. If yl dew- of consecration has gone off your life it will come back if you will but seek ; * V charge you before the judgment seat "' let Christ tell you what it is that causes 'Him to sav you ; are good for nothing. Ween yourself hack into His presence, and ask Him to lay His hand on yon again.

LOOKING TO THE HILLS. [by the kev. ALEXANDER UACIABEX D D I.ITT.D.] *' 'D, "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hill*"— Psalm cxxi. 1. " ■ Now the hills that the psalmist is IhinW about were visible from no part of thai; long-extended plain tdiere he dwelt- and he might have looked till lie wore iii* e *ea out ere he could have, seen them on the horizon of sense. But although they were unseen, they were visible to the heart that longed for them. Just as many Jews still north, east, south, or west though they be' face Jerusalem when they offer then sun! plications— this psalmist in Babylon weaned and sick of tie low levels that stretched endlessly and monotonously round about him. says, ''I will look at tile things that 1 cannot, see, and lift up m v eyes above these lownesjcs about me, to the loftiness that sense cannot behold, 'hut which I know to be lying serene and solid beyond the narrowing horizon before me." And here start up the plain, simple, but tight-gripping and stimulating questions, "Do I see the Unseen? Docs that far-off dim land assume substance and reality to me? Do I walk in the light of it raying out to me through earth's darkness? Do I dwell contented with never a glimpse of it?" Are, to us, the things unseen '• the solid things, and the things visible the shadows and (he phantoms? The Apocalyptic seer, in his rocky Patmos, was told that lie was to bo shown "the things which are;" and what was it that he saw? A set of what people call unreal and symbolic visions "The things which are," the world would have said, "are the rocks that voii are standing on, and the sea that is "dashing upon them, and all the solid-seeming Roman world, and the pow«r that has got you in its grip. These are the realities, and these things that you think you see, these are the dreams." 1 s

But it is exactly the other way. The world and all that is about us, warehouse* crammed with cloth, and mills full of jennies and throstles—these are the shadows, and the things that only the believing eye beholds, that are wrapped in the invisibility of their own greatness, these, and these only, are the realities. We see with the bodily eye the shadows on the wall, as it were, but we have to turn round 'and see with the eyes of our minds the . light that flings the shadows.' "I will lift up my eyes" from the mud-fiats where I live to the hills that I cannot see, and, seeinr them, I shall be blessed. ; V Christian men and women too often walk beneath the very peaks' of the mountains of God, and rarely lift their vision there. They perhaps do so for an hour and a-half on a Sunday morning, .or an hour on a Wednesday evening, when there is no other engagement, or for a minute or two in the morning before they hurry down to breakfast, or a minute or two at night when they are dead beat and unfit for anything. For the rest of the time there are the mountains, and here is the saint,, and he seldom or never turns his head to look at them Is that the sort of Christianity that is likely, to be a power in the world 'or a blessing to its possessor?

the ASSTJRAKCE OP FAITn. '. ; The Psalmist asks himself: "From whence cometh my help?" and then the better s»lf answers the questioning, timid self- "My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth."

There will be no recerjtion of the Divine help unless there is a sense of the need of the Divine help. God cannot help me before I am brought to despair of anv other help It is only when » man says, • "There is noneother that fiffhteth for us, but only Thou, 0 God, that God comes to help. If we recognise, our helplessness God is our help. If we conceit ourselves to be strong we are weak; if we know ourselves to be impotent, Omnipotence pours itself into us We read once that Jesus Christ, healed • them that bad need of healing." Why does the Evangelist not toy. without- that periphrasis. " healed the sick"? Because lie would emphasise, I suppose; amongst other things, the thought that only the "sense of need fits for the reception of healing and help? - * , ,*. it If, then, we desire that Got! should be the strength of our hearts, and our portion for over, ' the coming of His help must be wooed and won by our sense of our own impotence, and only they who say: ' We have no might against this, great multitude that cometh against us," will over hear from Him the blessed assurance: "the Lord will fight for you."