A SERVICE FOR SUNDAY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17474, 16 November 1918, Page 5

A SERVICE FOR SUNDAY.

ARRANGED BY THE COUNCIL OF CHURCHES.

[in -view of the dosing of the churches to-morrow we have been asked by the United Christian Council to place a portion of our spaco at its disposal for the publication of a service which ' it has arranged, and which, it is suggested, may bo used in the homca of our people The circumstances are unprecedented, for no such necessity as the prohibition of divine service has at any previous timo been laid upon the community.] Prateb. Most Holy and Most Merciful Son, the Strength of the Weak, the Rest of the Weary, the Comfort: of the Sorrowful, tho Saviour of tho SinfuL, and the Refuge of Thy Children in every timo of need, hear us whilo we pray for Thy help when the uruipown future troubles us, and amid our fears and anxieties we forget the Eternal Lovo and Care. 0 God, Who knowest ua to bo set in the midst of so many and! great dangers, that by reason of the frailty of our nature wo cannot always stand upright, grant to us such strength and' protection as may support us in all dangers, and carry us through all trials: We ask it in tlie faith and spirit of Jesns Who came that we might have life more abundantly; and to His name be tho glory for over and over. Amen. Lessons. Suggested) passages for reading: Psalm xxvii, 5-9, 13-14: Lam. iii, 22-26, 31-33; Hosea, n, 1-3; Romans, vii, 18-21 and 35-39. The Victoeiotjs Lite. Pealm xci, 13: ** Thoa ehalt tread upon the lion and adder; the young lion and tie dragon shall thoa trample nnder loet" In the great stress of the last few years tho Psalms havo been discovered again. No other literature has been found so expressive of tho deep needs and the great hopes of the human souL Of these Psalms none is more beautiful than tie one from "which thfq verso is taken. It is full of the loveliest imagery, tho noblest faith, tho sublimest comfort, and courage. It is a string of the most precious pearls. Let us take one of these pearls—tho 13th verse— and set it in the light of our needs to-efcay. It presents us with a very ( complete summary _ of all the trials of life, and tho promise of their conquest.

(1) " Thou shalt tread on the lion." "We may take the lion ta mean the animal T>art of us, the untamed, insurgent, masterful passions. Or we may interpret it as the forces of sin or Borrow advancing upon us from without. Tho devil is spoken of as "a roaring lion." Sometimes ho comes in that form. He comes as Bunyan saw him " straddlinjr over the whole road." He comes in the form of a great catastrophe. Wβ have just emerged from one sucli. Tho forces of evil leaped upon us in the war just ended like a rampant wild beast, seen and understood of, everybody. So also in the individual life there are disasters andl ' overthrows imperious and visible to all. But it is not always or even oftencst so. (2) There is another kind of trial, "the adder." The name suggests its significance. The lion approaches openly, but*the eerpont is concealed in the grass. The lion claws and mauls his victim, and the results cannot be hidden. But the adder secretly inserts its poison in the blood:. And there are troubles and sorrows of that sort. They steal upon us invisibly, quietly, subtly. In the old Eden story the serpent came suggesting doubt—doubts about God and His goodness, whether He had ever really spoken or not; or if Hβ had, surely not so harshly, not in the way of curtailing people's pleasures or limiting their freedom. The adder also suggests not a visible Jrontal attack, but a creeping up from behind, or from among- our feet. Another psalmist speaks of the "iniquity of his heels. There are many temptations, as Percy Ainsworth says, "that never give us a chance of facing them; they follow us; we turn round upon them, and they have vanished They are the thoughts that a-, man will not cherish and cannot slay. They may never enter the programme of life; but there they are, haunting him. waiting, so to speak, at the back of his oram till he gets used to them." The adder, the iniquity of his heels," oomino-' up behind, suggests again the sins and complications that emerge out of our past, that snare us and sadden us and slay us. And at this moment is it not these poison adder thrusts that are so dismaying to many? Here is a microbe so minute that thousands of them could dance on the point of a lancet. Yet they have the power to devastate nations. We can see the rifle and the cannon, and face them and fight them. But what axe w& to do in presence of foes so invisible that swarm, in the air we breathe? At this very hour they are bewildering our Government, holding up our shipping and commerce, terrifying the living, and crowding the cemeteries with dead. The war just ended was dreadful enough, but this is a more fearsome fight by far, for our assailants are unseen. (i 3. And then there is one other things " the dragon." The dragon was a fabulous monster. It had any real existence, save in the mind or the. imagination. And so there emerges another kind of trouble and trial. They swarm up out of the fancies of people, like the midges oat of the swamp in a midsummer noon. Dickens, in one of his books, tells of a woman who, if you had asked her how she was. would probably have answered: I think there is a pain somewhere in the room, but I couldn ; 't. exactly say that I have got it." So, many are hag-ridden by needless anxieties of one kind and another. We say the worst fears are those that never happen. Yet it is these very fears that plague so many lives. It is no use to try to .convince the victims of them that they are baseless or unreasonable; to tell them that they are all imagination. That does not help them a bit, for they are just as wasting and terrible to them' as real ones to you. We recall Bunyan's wonderful portrait of Mr Fearing. He was frightened at things which he had heard had befallen other people. If he heard that they had a sickness or misfortune he was quite sure that that was what was going to happen to him also. He was always so nervous, so ready to cop jure up ghosts of possibilities and anticipate the worst. It is no ■wonder that old Mr Honest described him as " one of the most troublesome pilgrims that ever I met with in all my days." And there are lots of such folk living close to us all, and especially just now , when this epidemic is upon us. Maybe we ourselves belong to the company. I have only been able to throw out the merest hints of the enemies that the lion, the adder, and the dragon suggest; but I think we may see how very complete a picture they give of the enemies of life.

But tKo important thing is the promise of conquest—"Thou ehalt tread upon the lion, adder, and dragon." What sort of character is it that shall do that? Tho writer of the Psalm indicates it. But we turn to Christ to get it clearest and fullest "These signs shall follow them that lieve in Me. 'They shall tako up serpents and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not harm them." "Them 'that believe in Me"-H&ere. is the secret of victory. It is faith in Jesus Christ. Why? Because faith is the channel through which His vitality flows in and fulfils ours. Wo quail before these foes because we lack life Flush the body with vitality and it is immune against disease. Wo never hear of Christ being ill. A groat soul is master of its physical environment. A passionate enthusiasm deadens pain. Soldiers in tho heat of battle aro unconscious of their •wounds. The intensity of a mother's lovo for her suffering child drinks up her own as njorning drinks the morning star: Flood tho soul with life of the purest and loftiest quality, which is Christ's, and it conquers its lions, adders, and dragons. Nay it more; it treads them down and stands upon them. It uses them ;as tbc bather uses a spring-board, to get height and momentum. Is &is a mere preacher's platitude?

Was it not so with Chri&? with His Apostles and with multitudes of His believers all down the ages? And for tho plain you and me with our lions and dragons? Is it true? Yes," assuredly. "Them that believe in Me " "Them " 'Thou"-Who? Ah! 'there is just the beauty of tho thing. There is no name given. Why not? Lest you might think you were not meant You .can strike out the word Thou and insert your own name in its place, and it will be trap for you on • tho same condition as tho others On an August day 310 years ago the groat scholar Casaubon nnd his wife wore goin" in an open boat on tho Seine to CharerTton to worship with the Huguenots. They wore singing Psalms as they went. This 91st Psalm was one of them. He writes in his Journal, "I could not but remember that place of Ambrose whore ho savs 'This is the peculiarity of 'the Psnltor, that everyone, can use its words as if they were cornplctelv and individually his own.' " Just so. ATI its promises aro "Yra and Amen" in Christ .Tesus. It is all a matter of faith Listen. "Theso siims shall follow." Foil low whom? The woatthv. tho scientific tho learned, 'the rn'turwt? No. but "thorn that bolicvo." "They shall cast out domons; thoy shall tako tip serpents, and if they dnnk any deadly firing it shall in no wise-h-trrt them; they shall lay their hands on tho stck. and they shafl recover." What a nromiso ! _ But is not Ruslrfn ripli't? "I do not wonder at what men suficrj I -wonder at what they lose."