THE SUNDAY CIRCLE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21988, 24 June 1933, Page 19

THE SUNDAY CIRCLE

RELIGIOUS READING FOR THE HOME ROADS. Your road leads.round the hill, While mine winds through the field; At even-song we’ll find that both Lead home. -—Harriet K. Bean, in the Christian Century. SPARKLES IN THE NIGHT. Tiny amber cloudlets, Like a shaving bright. Clinped from angel’s pinions Just to joy our night! With guch tender sunsets, And such twinkling stars, Surely there is solace For earth’s little jars. B. L. H. (Christchurch). PRAYER. 0 God who rulest the nations in righteousness and through many ebbs and flows of fortune hast led this people to splendour and dominion and hast enriched us with Thy best gifts of freedom and religion; continue Thy manifold and unwearied mercies, we beseech Thee, and grant to our whole people such inward unity and concord that even in times of passion and of divided counsels we may remain of one mind and heart to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with Thee. Give the King Thy judgments 0 God and so fortify the King’s! Councillors and the Houses of Parliament that they together may judge the poor of the people, save the children of the needy, break the oppressor, and cause the way of the righteous to he ns the light of dawn shining more and more unto the perfect day; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. A TEXT FOR EACH DAY’S MEDITATION. “ Encouragement to God’s People.” Sunday.—“ Fear not, for I have redeemed thee. 1 have called thee by thy name, thou art Mine. When thou pasaest through the waters I will be with thee. For I am the Lord thy God . . . thy Saviour.” —Isaiah xliii, 1,2, and 3. Monday.—“Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, aud my servant whom 1 have chosen, that ye may know and believe Me, and understand that I am He’; before Me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after Me.”—lsaiah xliii. 10. Tuesday—“ Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth: but I have called you friends: for all things that I have heard of My Father, I have made known unto you,”—John xv, 15. Wednesday. —“ Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever -ye shall ask of the Father in My Name He may give it you.”—John xv, 10. Thursday.—“ Not many mighty, not many noble are called. But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world, to confound the wise: and jGod bath chosen the weak things of the World, to confound the things which are mighty.”—l Corinthians i, 26 and 27, Friday.—“ According as He hath chosen us in Him . • • that we should be holy &nd without blame before Him in love. Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself,' according to the good pleasure ot His will.”—Ephesians i, 4 and 5. Saturday—" Herein is love, not that we love God, but that He .loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation of our sins. Beloved if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. . . . We love Him because He first loved us. I John iv, 10, 11, and 10. , —H. H. Higgens, in A.C.W. GOOD WORK. Mr A.: I find that preacher very exhilarating. •- , Mr B.: Yes, he always takes the wet blankets for a good trot in the sun-_ M., in C.W. FOUNDER OF MISSION TO LEPERS. On Thursday. April 27, Mr Wellesley C. Bailey, founder and for. many years general secretary of the Mission to Lepers, celebrated in Edinburgh his eighty-seventh birthday. A native of Ireland. Mr Bailey first went to India in 1869. and was for some time headmaster of the American Presbyterian City Mission at Ambala, in .the Punjab. He came early into contact with work among lepers, and it was during his first furlough in Ireland in 1874 that he. in association, with Miss Charlotte Pim, founded the Mission to Lepers. He retired from the- general secretaryship in 1917. AN INCLUSIVE RELIGION. “If all the world turned monk.” said Dr Lee Woolf, in his sermon ot the King’s Weigh House Church, “the world would end in a generation.” There was no room, he went on. for an exclusive religion in practical life. Life was multiform, and its needs were manifold. 1 here was no room for a religion which .shut things out; what was needed was a bigger religion which took things in. “We need grocers, plumbers, lawyers, doctors, bankers, housewives, all sorts of people, but we need the kind who practise their religion in their business. Our labour during the week should not contradict our faith, but express it. Be what you like, a commercial traveller of a finefingered artist, work in a null or in an office, but be a Christian man in what you do; and spend your leisure in the same spirit, whether in the garden or among your books, or how* you will, but do it as one working out his own salvation.

A SURRENDER FOR THEOLOGIANS. “It is a tactical blunder,” writes Arnold Limn in his introduction to “Public School Religion” (Faber), .‘to emphasise the reaction towards theism among modern scientists. A schoolmaster recently remarked to me that every other sermon from his school pulpit contained some reference to Eddington.” “The only effect of this propaganda is to convince the average boy that scientists are tremendously important people. It is a surrender for theologians to giyt? the impression that they accept the authority of science in the sphere of theology,' What scientist would quote a bishop, qua bishop in support of relativity? ” THE CROSS OF GOLD. “ The world has been wandering in a wilderness of disillusionment these past four years,” said the Rev. Roy C. Helfenstein, of Dover, Del., in a sermon published iu the Congregationalist (Boston), “ for no other reason than that men have put gold above God in their thinking, Thousands have worshipped . the god of gain instead of the God of righteousness, and when they found their god of gain prostrate and dead before thorn, mocking their every hope and appeal, hundreds destroyed their own lives. A And because countless thousands have forgotten and denied’ the God of righteousness, humanity has to pay the penalty. In the stream of human relationships, the innocent have to suffer along with the guilty.” THE TULL OF THE DEVIL. The occasion was a meeting for the presentation of Connexional Long Service Certificates to a number of veterans of the pulpit, says “ Questor ” in the N. -thodist Times and Leader, Each of the honoured brethren was permitted to speak within n time limit of five minutes, and the secretary constituted himself “coat-tail puller.” Now five minutes isn’t long for reminiscence, aucl one good brother was only midway through the recital of an experience of 50 years ago, when there came a tug at his coat, but he kept going. He was describing, as it happened, how lie had “ felt something pulling, pulling, pulling, and friends—” here came another insistent tug—- “ friends,” he concluded. “it was the devil! ” The one who presented the certificates lost no time in enlightening the congregation on the coincidence, ai ‘ there was loud laughter, in which the quite unMephistophelean local preachers’ secretary could not but join.