SUNDAY CIRCLE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22742, 30 November 1935, Page 27

SUNDAY CIRCLE

RELIGIOUS READING FOR THE HOME EVENING, The fleeting day is done; night’s banners are unfurled With pale, uncertain stars. Mankind all toil forsaking Deserts the darkened field. Where late the birds were waking, The giant Loneliness bestrides the sleeping world. The homing vessel spurns the hungry seas’s complaint; Brief as the daylight dies, so in a time unmeasured We pass. Thou, I and all the joys that men have treasured. Where far horizons bend, we run and we are faint. Remember me, 0 Lord, when I am near to falling; Let me not fail, allured by far-off trumpets calling, But let Thy glory shine, to lead my steps aright. Take, when this tired heart is stilled, my soul in keeping; And, when the evening comes, the final shadows creeping, Translate me, gracious Lord, from darkness into light. —Frank Buckland. (From the German of Andreas Gryphiue.) PRAYER. Holy and Ever-blessed, Who hast spared us to this season, when in the natural world life is stftring in seeds and 'trees and in the songs of birds, and Who for us hast appointed this very season'to be the time when we celebrate the rising from the grave of our blessed Lord; settle upon our hearts and confirm in our minds these two tokens of Thy great favour. May we not separate them, as though they were opposed. Help us rather to permit the two to cast light the one upon the other; so that when Nature fails we may give ourselves a reason beyond Nature for lifting up our hearts and standing steadfast until the day break and the shadows flee away: through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. , OUR DAILY MEDITATION. The People Who Find God. Sunday: Those who earnestly try to find Him. —Heb. vi, 6 (Weymouth). Monday: Those who compare their own sufferings with those of Him who endured such hostility by sinners.—Heb. xii, 3 (Weymouth). Tuesday: Those who are free from the love of money.—Heb. xiii, 5 (R.V.). Wednesday: Those who are disciplined in order that they may become sharers in His own holy character.— Heb. xii, 10 (Weymouth). Thursday: Those who cherish thankfulness. —Heb. xii, 28 (Weymouth). Friday: Those who offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually.—Heb. xiii, 15, Saturday: Those who persistently strive for peace with all men.—Heb. xii, 14 (Weymouth). THE INITIAL MISTAKE. We often make the initial mistake of first thinking of the modern world with its difficulties and then of the Church against this background. The true background of the Church is God’s purpose for the world, and, seen in this light, it is clear that nothing can prevent the love of God which once manifested His love in Jesus Christ from showing it through the Church which is His Body. Similarly, .looked at from God’s standard, the world is full not go much of chaos as of possibilities. THE SERMON IN THE MODERN WORLD. The Guardian, London, in a leading article raises the question aa to what place, if any, the sermon has in the modern world, when so many other avenues of information are open to the people. and maintains that “nothing can displace the power of the preacher, properly equipped for his task, surrounded by the atmosphere of worship, and face to face with the actual people to whom he would convey a message from God.” But the preacher can hold his own only when his sermon contains a veritable message from God. What he utters must be from Another. But this note of delivering crucial and momentous truth is largely missing from contemporaneous preaching. “Good advice, topical addresses, bright essays, laborious inculcation of the secondary elements in Catholic teaching, the private views of the preacher on this or that—these are constantly to be heard,” shut such utterances are not sermons. The true preacher is he who feels, in the words of Jeremy Taylor, that “He is in the place of God, and hath received the gift of God and the aids of the Holy Ghost, that by.hia abilities God is glorified.” THE DEFEATIST SPIRIT. “I have often criticised the defeatest spirit which frequently shows itself among the members of our Church,” writes the Bishop of Winchester to his diocese. “We are not likely to win new members _to our Church if we are always speaking of it in apologetic or deprecating tones. There is so much which should encourage us. I believe there is a keener and more intelligent interest among the younger generation in the %vork of the Church than has ever beep the case before. Conferences arranged in connection with the youth movement are usually largely attended by young men and women under 30, and yet I read the other day a statement hy a well-known anti-Christian writer that ‘ young people to-day never take the Church seriously ’! ”