Religion and Life

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23773, 28 September 1940, Page 6 (Supplement)

Religion and Life

FALSE thoughts of God are like bad seed sown in the mind of man. They bring a harvest of ill in the lives of all who receive them. Henry Drummond used to tell of the subtle impression made Upon his mind in childhood by the titlepage of the Hymn Book then in use, where was displayed a searching eye looking out from a dark thundercloud. It was meant to suggest the Divine omniscience and the lad was haunted by the idea of God as a magnified detective, keen,to discover and punish every fault.

The story recalls another told by Dr. .T. H. Jowctt. On the dentil of a scholar in his Sunday schooldays a hymn was invariably sung which contained the linos—"We oannob toll who next may fall beneath Thy chastening rod." The incredibly foolish words left upon the troubled and sensitive mind of tho child a picture of God in anger and of; death as His chastisement. Sterner Aspects

Our children to-day are spared suggestions .so foreign to the teaching of our Lord. Indeed, the danger is that, in the instructions of both old and young, we should pass to the other extreme and maintain a comparative silence about sterner aspects of tho .Divine character which, however unduly they may have found emphasis in tho past, are yet an inseparable part of the truth. Wo hear, in much popular preaching, a great deal about the love of God, but little about His holiness.

A whole range of truth, which permeates the New Testament not less markedly than the Old. is given little exposition, and men are permitted to think of God as an easy-going Parent, in whom there is nothing to fear, who avoids every form of punitive discipline, and who will see to it that all things are brought to. a happy issue'at last. But the apostle spoke of "the goodness and severity of God" and ho is a partial teacher who neglects either.

We shall restore the balance if we turn our thoughts to the Divine holiness. There was a day, incredible as it may seem, when men believed in bad gods. In the great world, through which St. Paul and his preachers moved, there were among the gods deities "false and deceitful, licentious and unchaste, spiteful and malignant toward men, quarrelsome and abusive toward each other." So utterly evil were some of these that the apostle called them "demons." When St. Paul wrote the appalling first page of his letter to the Romans he had not seen the Imperial City, but he had lived for eighteen months in Corinth, the fourth city of the Empire and "a mirror of tho life and society of the age."

And there, as SUrabo tells us, the worship of Aphrodite prevailed and her popular temple had its thousand prostitutes and drew its lustful devotees from far and wide. But Christianity washed the «ky clean of these foul

By PHILEMON

shapes. It set the imagination of men free from a terrible oppression, it flung open tlic prison-vaults of a stifling world, it brought the joy of daybreak after a fearful night. And this it did hv unveiling the true and holy charactor of God. "God is Light,", it everywhere cried, "and in Him is no darkness at all." Without Fault

When we speak of God as holy we men 11, of course, that He is unutterably pure in character, without fault or failing.'He is marked off absolutely in our thought from the bad gods once believed in, and from bad men not less. Hut that is negative, and we cannot be content to think of God in terms of what He is not. Holiness is more than the absence of its opposite. A perfectly holy'man is much more than a sinless man. He is all that, in the realm of character, a man ought to be. And a holy God is all that a God ought to be—perfectly good in Himself and perfectly good-willed toward His creatures.

Here are some eloquent words of a modern thinker which display the Divine holiness in its positive aspects: "The holiness of Goil is the basis of moral significance in His universe. All beings have to do with it,' and to them it is as central and vital as the sun is to the planets. It is the most living and glowing and searching of realities. To the good, the holiness of God is the theme of adoring worship. To all who love the wrong that same holiness, is the most serious and awakening of truths. To sinners who are penitent it brings inspirati' M and hope, for it shows that in seeking the better life, so far from being nlono and unaided, they are joining themselves to the eternal goodness. The holiness which is God's own ideal and standard gladdens all the good, dooms evil to defeat, and is the hope of all who struggle upun rd." In the order of God's unfolding selfdisclosure to man He became known as holy before Ho was revealed as love. His absolute difference from the gods of the surrounding peoples, His inflexible hatred of evil, His high demands; of obedience and virtue, were burned into the thought of Israel '«y judgment and discipline. "Be ye holy, for I am holy," is the reiterated refrain of the Old Testament. And we must believe that any other order of revelation Would have been fraught with peril to human welfare. Men who do not yet know the Divine holiness and all its implications arc not to he entrusted with the revelation of the Divine love

But when, in Christ. God's selfdisclosure reaches completion, the two are soon to blond in perfect accord. The Lovo is holy love, the Holiness is loving holiness. The Holiness is-within the Lovo, making; it strong and triumphant; the Love glows at the heart of the Holiness, so that its perfection is not remote nnd overwhelming to erring men. And Jesus unites the two in the name by which He addressed .God —"jffoly Father."