THE SUNDAY CIRCLE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22066, 23 September 1933, Page 21

THE SUNDAY CIRCLE

RELIGIOUS READING FOR THE HOME A GUEST OF MINE. I used to push the door aside With timid, questioning hand, And softly tread the sacred ground Of a dreamed-of Holy Land. “ Christ will come by," I made believe, And eager there to see The Lord, I climbed, as he of old, A spreading wayside tree. Then waited I His drawing near! How anxiously I tried To hear “ Zacchaeus,. in thy house This day I do abide.” Alas! how little need it was To climb, in dreams, a tree To see the Lord approach, and hear, “To-day I sup with thee,” In love Christ stands beside the door Of every human heart, Which, if we hope, He’ll enter in, And never more depart. My life is now a Holy Land, And every day I see .The Blessed Lord, Who is my Guest, — Who walks and talks with me! ■—Adclbert P. Caldwell, PRAYER. 0 Lord, we draw near to Thee now, as becomes us, with the lowly; remembrance of our manifold infirmities and the deep consciousness of our unworthiness and alienation from Thee. And we pray for Thy forgiveness that our hearts may be set free trom the weight of evil, that our consciences may be purged from dead works, that our habits may be broken in so far as they draw us away from Thee, and that all hindrances that lie in us to the inflow of Thy mighty and transforming grace may be swept away by the flood of Thy love and life. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. THE WAY TO UNITY. (With due acknowledgments to T. R. W.) Now once upon a time there were two tribes who were very disputatious as to the best way to climb the mountain of Christian Truth. And in the jungles at the bottom of the mountain they quarrelled like anything, hitting each other heartily upon the heads with heavy tomahawks. And halfway up, upon their twisting paths, they hallooed to each other from the mountain sides in a very distant manner. But when at last they reached the summit of Christian Truth —their noses were touching.—M., in the Christian World. A TEXT FOR EACH DAY’S MEDITATION. “Good Cheer” Sunday.—“ The Lord is my light, and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life: of whom shall I be afraid?—Psalm 27:1. “ God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all.”—1 John 1:5. Monday.—“ Who is so great a God as our God? Thou art the God that doeth wonders. Thou hast declared Thy strength among the people.”—Psalm 73:13 and 14. “I am the Lord thy God, open thy mouth wide and I will fill it.” —Psalm 81:10, Tuesday.—“ln the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider. God also hath set the one against the other, to the end that man should find nothing after him.” —Ecclesiastes 7:14. Wednesday.—He will be very gracious to thee at the voice of thy cry: when He shall hear it, He will answer thee;” —lsaiah 30;: 19. “I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil to give you an expected end.”—Jeremiah 29:11. Thursday.—“ Call unto Me, and I will answer thee, and_ show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not.” —Jeremiah 33:3. _ “It shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the Name of the Lord shall be delivered.” —Joel 2:32. Friday.—“My grace is sufficient for thee: My strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”—2 Corinthians 12:9. Saturday.—■“ Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice, . . . Be careful for nothing: but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.”—Philippians 4:4 to 6, —H. R. Higgens, in A.C.W. DO YOU AGREE?. x The difference between a religious and a scientific truth is that the former makes people happy. In marriage there is no_ delusion that was not there before marriage. The smallest, flower is a theology in itself. The larger a man’s mind the less room he finds in it for hig own troubles. The darkest shadows are those thrown by scandal-light. So long as you are “up to the eyes” you will never be “ down in the mouth. THE MIRACLE OF MIRACLES.

The most stupendous miracle in history is the failure of all the attacks made on Christianity throughout the ages. Christianity has defied all the assaults of all the atheists, century after, century. Mighty intellects have hurled themselves against it, but it is stronger than ever. It has survived the schisms of its churches and the vices of its prelates. It has outlasted ecclesiastical bigotry and corruption. Even the great wars waged between Christian nations have not destroyed it. Its strength is stronger than its Origin. Christianity is almost more miraculous than Christ; for although mankind cannot live up to His teachings, it cannot live without them. It measures its conduct by the faith it fails to follow. Even the morality of the atheist is founded on the religion he repudiates. He can no more escape from Christianity than he can escape from his own shadow.— Sunday Express. THE DEMOCRATIC HERESY. “We must beware of the democratic heresy—that of deciding great questions by counting heads. ‘ Strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.’ So it has always been, and so it always will be.”—• Dean Inge. A PARSON’S DILEMMA. “ Some weeks ago,” writes Archibald Ray in an article on “What to Preach” in the New Outlook (Toronto), “it was my privilege to attend the Sunday morning service in a large city church. Of course, I was deeply interested in what the minister might say. He was an impressive man with strong features, a wellmodulated voice and an ease in the pulpit that made it a pleasure to sit in a pew beneath him. His sermon, however, surprised and disappointed me. It was so extraodinarily vague and detached. Ihe Fall of Jerusalem in a.d. 70 represented about its closest approach to the twentieth century, or to present-day problems. It was carefully prepared, by the use ot fine phrases, to sav nothing of importance whatever and, in this respect, so far as 1 could discern, it was quite successful. WHAT ARCHIBALD RAY OVERHEARD. “At the close of the service,” he continues, “I walked slowly up the street rather bewildered. Two old gentlemen—evidently elders of the church—were walking a few paces behind me. I could not help overhearing their conversation. They were discussing the minister, and particularly the morning’s sermon. “ ‘ He is just splendid,’ I heard one of them say. “ * That sermon wag grand. I like his voice; I like his manner. In fact, I like everything about him,’ the other broke in with warmth. .“My dilemma deepens, In view of the present world-need and the opportunity represented by even a half-hour in a Christian pulpit. I would consider myself morally guilty in preaching such a sermon.” THE CONDITIONS OF UPLIFT IN WORK. The great things which we must revive in our hearts and minds, if we are to get any spiritual uplift about our work (said Professor P. Carnegie Simpson, in an address), is to realise more deeply our personal relationship to our Master Himself. “We shall not get that,” he said, “by producing fine ideas out of our heads

about service, or anything else. We shall not get it by discussions about methods and plans. We shall not get it by straining ourselves to new effort. We shall get it when we recognise and realise that, in all our work for His Church, Jesus Christ, our Lord, is Himself beside us. . . , This realisation of Jesus Christ beside us in our work is at once what makes us ashamed of our shortcomings and failures, and what is our encouragement and inspiration. It makes us ashamed of our shortcomings and failures —of, indeed, our sins in God’s service.” NATIVE STUDENT’S STRIKING SUCCESS. . The South Africans Federation of the League of Nations Union announcing the result of their Essay Competition for 1933 have intimated that the winner of the first prize in Class I is “ Rcdgauntlet,” which is the nom de plume of Paul Mosokn, South African Native College, Fort Hare. This particular class of the League of Nations Union competition was open to all students of universities and training colleges in South Africa, and the subject of the essay was, “ Discuss the meaning of patriotism and its relation to internationalism, showing how this affects the question of national sovereignty and the League of Nations.” THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. A Methodist parson tells of a conversation he once had with one of his people touching certain difficulties of the latter’s religious tenets. “ Parson,” said this naive member, “I do not refuse to believe the story of the ark, I can accept the ark’s great size, its odd shape, and vast number of animals that it contained; but when I am asked to believe that the children of Israel carried this unwieldy thing for 40 years in the wilderness, I must confess that my faith breaks down,” which explains a great deal.