"11 THE RED CUP."

New Zealand Herald, Volume LII, Issue 15949, 21 June 1915, Page 5

"11 THE RED CUP."

STIRRING WAR SERMON.

A sermon dealing with an interesting aspect of the war was delivered at the Pitt Street Methodist Church last night, by the Rev. C. 11. Laws, who took as his text the passage, "Is not this the blood of the men that went in jeopardy of their lives?"

These words, the preacher said, were taken from a brave verse, which told of Homeric deeds in the days when men stood or fell by their own valour They were men of an age rich in men, and the elemental man within us gloried in their deeds. When David, lying on the heights that overlooked Bethlehem, then held by the Philistines, longed for a cup of water from the well of Bethlehem, that, was by the gate, three of his knights planned to gratify his wish. At peril of their lives they did. so. But David, instead of drinking it, uttered the words that formed the preacher's text, and poured the water upon the sand as an offering to God. Tho cup, to David's eyes, held blood, not water. It was the red cup of sacrifice. On all tho priceless gifts of life, Mr. I<awß, continued, were the red stains of blood. The freedom of. conscience, tho right to live honourable lives, and our liberty as citizens when half tho world was washed in blood, were marked with the stains of blood-Ted paces of history, from Magna Charta to Marsden Moor. Ridley, Latimer, and others had bled that we might go unwounded. Everyone of the scarves and comforters which women knitted for the men in the field were sacrifices. Through each, us they were knitted, ran a crimson thread. The kittens playing"with the wool dragged the knitters' thoughts back from tho redrimmed hell wliere the battles raged. God understood how women longed to be doing something— rather than wait idly for a clicking gate; and the comforter was to the boy in tho trenches like the touch of a mother's hand.

The soldiers of to-day were liko David's knights, rescuing from the foe the, red waters of life for the world to drink in ages to come. Men must take it in their hands reverently as the blood of thoso who stood between them and a coarse and vulgar thing that was trying to play the part of a god. ' Each man and woman remaining at nome must make sacrifices, and not take as for themselves alone the peace and freedom bought by the soldiers' lives. And none could do more than the Christian man who took his Christian principles into the questions and problems of tho hour.