THE SUNDAY CIRCLE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20448, 30 June 1928, Page 5

THE SUNDAY CIRCLE.

By La Zelle Cro£t.

RELIGIOUS READING FOR THE HOME. CHRIST'S COHORTS OF PEACE.

Cohorts of peace, stand forth, Clothed in thy lovely light, And give the world the Love of God For tlie dread Power of Might. All ye who love mankind Show forth the Lord’s comand, And give the world true brotherhood Through every warring land. Love as the angels love; Be patient, wise, and true, And God will crown with victory All that His servants do. Ppace may come to the earth By bitter wars and tears, , But let us try the power of love That lasts throughout the years. Haste, then, to strive for peace, Loving both God and man, And God’s great'gift of peace will come, As only His gifts can. A PRAYER. By Harry Emerson Fosdick, D.D. Eternal God, our Father, wellspring of all that is excellent and beautiful within / us, we worship Thee. We come into the courts of Thy sanctuary because we need Thee. We, too, would see One high and lifted up, whose train filleth the temple. Through another week bur eyes have looked too much on things below. We have watched too much the instruments of life, saying to some. Go, and they go, and to others, Come, and they come, and once more as Thy day arrives wc understand afresh that the glory of our life is not in the things that serve us, blit in the One whom we serve. Give us a fresh vision, we beseech Thee, of the Highest. Let Christ dawn upon us anew this day, Make everything that is excellent and august, beautiful and true in life real to us. Break upon our dull sight with the vision of the ineffable and the beautiful that we may delight in life again and be thankful. We would not come before Tnee in formal praise alone,: but would speak our spontaneous gladness. Give us a fresh delight in the beauty and loveliness of life. Too easily we, learn to despise life. We would learn to love it again this ■ morning, to see that it is good, and to cry once more with all our hearts:— Bless the Lord,_ 0 my soul, And all that is within me, bless His holy name. Too often, to our downward gaze, life has grown dull and drab, tame, mean, and selfish. To-day, looking up, we would see life steadily and see it whole. We would understand God’s purpose at the centre of it. We would comprehend' once .more its spiritual significance. Wo would praise the Lord our God, for that He is good, and His loving kindness • endureth for ever. We beseech Thee that Thou wilt give us this vision of. Thyself that we may repent. Stand us once more against the white background of Thy purpose for our lives that we may be stirred from bur too easy complacence about ourselves. Let not the vision crush us, but let it humble us. May we grow modest and ashamed in Thv presence that so often we have wrought in insincerity with ourselves and in uubrothcrlincss with our neighbour, that we have cherished grudges and embittered life with vindictiveness, that we have surrendered to the passion of hatred, that we have been blind to our duty when we might have seen it, that we have been ungentle and unkind. 0 Spirit of Ghrist, make Thyself real to this people that souls here sincerely penitent may find Thy pardon and Thy peace. “ J.D.” AND SIR ARTHUR KEITH. Dr J. D. Jones replied, at Richmond Hill Church, Bournemouth, on a recent Sunday evening, to the statement made by Sir Arthur Keith that he could find no such thing as a soul; that all he could find was a brain, and that when the man died the brain ceased to function, and therefore there was a complete end of him. This statement, said Dr Jones, was really involved in what he said last year from the chair. of the British Association. In a mechanical universe there is no room for God and there is no room for soul.. Seeing that the more sweeping assertion of a year ago left people practically undisturbed, the narrower statement of this past week is not likely to frighten them any more. Sir Arthur Keith and Sir James Bland Sutton, the eminent surgeon, who evidently supports him, are both of them distinguished men, and, when 'they are talking of their own subjects', are to bo listened to with respect. Equally great names, and many more of them, can be quoted on the other . side. Sir Oliver Lodge at once repudiated the assertion. Really, Sir Arthur is more or less of a survival. He is back at the mechanical idea of the universe, and scientists are leaving that position behind. Dr J. S. Haldane, of Oxford, one of the most brilliant of modern scientists, says this: “The material world, which has been taken for a world of blind mechanism, is in reality the spiritual, world seen very partially. The only real world is the spiritual world; And a biologist like Julian Huxley, though he does not accept revelation, knows well this is no mechanical universe, and is therefore keenly interested in psychical phenomena. “It is only belief in the survival of | personality,” continued Dr Jones, that j enables us to believe that there is purpose and meaning in our individual lives | and the life of the world. Unless there i is some other life, then this world of ours is a mad and insane world, and our individual lives are just tales told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, But though all the facts point to the reality of survival, perhaps we should have remained hesitant, doubtful | about it, but for Jesus. Jesus taught | that man was more than body—that he was spirit. He talks about man surviving death. Now, was Jesus right? And that, again, drives us back upon another yet more searching question: Who and what was Jesus? Was He just a good man, or was He something more? Were these words of His, in which He talks about, the Father’s house, just guesses, or were they revelations ? The more I live the more strongly I feel that almost everything depends upon the view we take of Jesus. Now I will say frankly to you that I believe in Jesus that stupendous happening took place: God came down to earth and dwelt amongst men. I believe in the reality of the Incarnation. I know it is a tremendous belief to hold; I know it sounds an almost incredible thing; but I believe in Jesus the Word became flesh and tabernacled amongst us. I know there is ah element of venture in that belief, but what is faith but venture? I make that tremendous venture of faith because I can explain Christ in no other why. That being so, I accept What Jesus says as being God’s own disclosure of truth to us—the truth about things which we could never discover for ourselves. The riddle of death and the beyond, for example. Science ' cannot help us there. It has no facts upon, which to proceed. It can only say, ‘I do not know.” NEWS ITEMS. Another proof of the energy and initiative of the Baptists in Scotland is to hand. Recently a large bazaar was held at Glasgow in which all the Baptist churches of the city co-operated, and they realised £4OOO for extension purposes. Already they have in contemplation several schemes of extension in the growing districts around Glasgow, and so far, in this matter, they have shown a distinct genius in finding fitting places and in making their ventures successful. The Bishop of - Birmingham, who presided at a lecture given by Dr Schweitzer in Birmingham, said: “In my own mind, he stands out as one of the world’s great men. A great man is a sort of magnet to bis fellow-men. I think if I were asked to name three gi’eat men of our era I should put in alphabetical order Gandhi, the Hindu, who has learned from the New Testament more than most of us Western Christians; in the second place, Grenfell, of Labrador; and, thirdly, Schweitzer, of Lambareno.