THE ROAD TO BY AND BY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21040, 31 May 1930, Page 27

THE ROAD TO BY AND BY

Written for the Otago Daily Times. By the Ecv. D. Gardner Miller. The Bible is rich in drama. I have never yet witnessed a play that came within measurable distance of almost any of the great dramatic scenes and incidents you find within the covers of the Old Book. Much of the movement and tenseness of the drama in the Bible is lost in ns because of the artificial divisions of chapters and verses which, in my opinion, are arbitrary to the point of being almost futile. Drama is always and only concerned with personality. We sometimes speak of a spectacular drama and by that we mean a eblourful gcene serving as a background to the pull and play of circumstances producing a crisis in the life of a man. How the man acts in that crisis la drama. The same principle is operated in Biblical drama. Always it is concerned to picture or reveal a soul facing a crisis. There is that difference between Biblical drama and what we call, for want of a better name, secular drama that, in the Bible there are only two ” actors,” a man and his God, while in secular drama, as a rule, God is displaced by the inevitable arising out of a given set of circumstances. It is this difference that makes the Bible as a record of human strivings, defeats, and victories so intensely alive and human. In no instance is the supreme moment of the crisis overlaid by ingenious literary artifices, but always the stark—and therefore dramatic —situation is recorded in that artless simplicity that has made the Bible the supreme literary structure of the ages. When the man fails in the crisis, the poignancy is such that you can almost hear the angels weep. Read the twentyfourth chapter of Acts and you will see how one man acted in - the supreme, crisis of his life. It is a chapter steeped in the brine of tears. The man is Felix, The records. of history reveal that he was a bad min. But the glory of the Bible is that' it broadcasts the glorious truth that a bad man can become a good man; the honesty of the Bible reveals the awful possibility of a man preferring to remain bad, and when a man does that God. has sorrowfully to stand aside., Felix came face to face with God —and he. shut his eyes. Paul stung him into a realisation of his condition of soul—and he was afraid to .face the issue. This manacled prisoner dared to make his judge pass judgment on himself —and he hadn’t the moral courage to do it. Get down to grips with this scene and you will find that it hinges on one word, which is poorly translated “ temperance.” The word Paul actually used meant “self-control." Paul never minced matters; be knew Felix was ridden by his own passions. So there is the crisis—the dramatic moment—could this man curb himself! The curtain rings down on a man afraid of the footlights of his own conscience. Ha had been married three times—his present wife, Drusilla, he had enticed away from her. husband. She was the great-granddaughter of Herod the Great and was only 18 years old and very beautiful. Likewise—like all the Herodean women—she was very wicked. History tells us that Drusilla perished with the child by this union with Felix, in the eruption of Vesuvius in aj>. 79. They were a guilty pair, and Paul, who never feared the face of man, opened their eyes to the enormity of their guilt. Felix, so the unfolding drama reveals, was shaken and promised to think over, at a later date, what the prisoner Pant had said to him about the new way of life. Some other time! So the cowardly streak in the man’s make-up emerged. By and by! Just the old, way of staving off an awkward situation. But, as an old Spanish proverb has it, “THE ROAD TO BY AND BY LEADS TO THE HOUSE OF NEVER.” He dilly-dallied, with conscience and finally put conscience to sleep. He was afraid to come to grips with life, and so hia base nature gripped him for Keeps. Tub crisis in his life offered him the opportunity of becoming a man, but he chose to remain a slave. He was undecided, but indecision is fatal, for not to decide is to decide against. The by and by road offers, in plenty, opportunities for meandering, but yon end by losing the way. You remember, in that classic for all time, Bunyan’s “ Pilgrim’s Progress, that the pilgrims climbed over a stile and wandered down by-path meadow! It was so comforting to the feet, but it was almost fatal to the soul, for it led them to Doubting Castle and Giant Despair. So, in the dramatic moments of lue, the_ choice of the easy way out ends in the imprisonment of the soul. When we make a choice we pass sentence on ourselves, for we are both judge and prisoner. One cannot ponder over this dramatic scene without realising something of THE INEXORABLE DEMAND OF CHRIST. He parleys with sin, never plays up to it,, and never glosses over it. His demand is that the unholy thing in your me must be put away. He makes you realise that once the alternatives are in aiwu you ’ you must make Your choice. All the power and goodness of God are at your disposal—but God cannot make mind for you. He has to stand aside but always near you—as you face your crisis. There must be no^subter- •«!> y SV fo ,F . rae - to whimper and say By and by ’ is just another way Hf 0 B ” yi ri 3 ( T od ’ ••? eep outsid « of my life. Don t play with sin—cut it out.