A CHURCH NOT BUILT WITH HANDS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1243, 25 September 1875, Page 4

A CHURCH NOT BUILT WITH HANDS.

As these May Sundays increase in •warmth, the churches seem to recen o an access of religious zeal ; pews left empty during the Winter are now filled to overflowing ; the anniversaries crowd the city with strangers ; the clergymen, roused to new energy, bring out their weightiest logic, or rise to unknown heights if eloquence ; ch'iira are inclined to emulation ; while each sacred building glows and brightens from nave to transept with dainty, delica f e dresses in all the fresh colours of the Spring. The ■übjects of thought presented by the different pastors are very much the same &3 those of other seas-ins of the year ; Man's Depravity, Faith, Predestination, the necessities of some missionary or charitable organization, &c. We are all apt to look übout us complacently from our luxurious pews sometimes, and contrast our condition with the wild, groping faith of the heathen. Apart from our knowledge of Christ, the dogmas of our own especial sect appeal' to us so compact and perfect, our favourite preacher is eloquent, the church magnificent, the music the best that high salaries can secure. Our poor Saxon ancestors betook themselves at this season to the mountains, as if by searching to find out God there. Instead of well - ordered doctrines concerning foreordination or immersion, what absurd fables they believed ! The earth to theso ignorant pagans was a great giant, Ymir by name, the sea was his blood, the mountains his bonsß, Summer and Winter followed his fever and his chills ; when he was fed with divine milk from the breast of the dreadful Andhumbla, new life stirred in his heart, the green leaves appeared, roses covered the e*»rth, bird 3 and beasts began to pair— the Spring had come. The Egyptians had th«ir fable about it, too ; Nature was Isis or Pasch, the awful, eternally- veiled Mother of us all ; during the first days of Spring they watched, breathless, as children might, for some token of her good or evil humour toward them ; they studied the colour of the Boil, the goings of the cloud 3 and the birds, the noises of cattle, to find messages from her ; their anemone or wind fiower carried her especial greeting to them. Even the old Hebrews, too, found the earth a live creature, instinct with God. It was the Spirit of God that moved (or brooded) upon the face of the waters, that by a miracle divided the firmament, brougnt forth from the sea the great whales, and from the earth the herbyielding seed and every living creature thereon. Mose3 went up into a high mountain when he would speak with God; he saw Him in a burning bush, he followed Him for forty years in cloud by day and fire by night. In that most ancient of all books, Job, a fragment that has come down to us from the dusky ages ■when the world was newly made, and the sons of God, and Satan among them, walked among men, there is the story of a man set apart to be tried as by lire with calamity. He sits alone in the wilderness "with his aorrow ; God suffers disease, disaster, and death to bar him in on every aide ; and gives him no comfort except to lead him out to Nature, and bid the poor wretch, brooding over his own selfish pain, search for him there ; to consider who it is that breathes order and love through this great mystery, the earth; -who makes the morning stars sing together, and the cloud a thick garment for the sea and darkness a swaddling band for it, and yet forgets not to cause the bud of the tender herb to spring forth, or to mark the time for the hinds to calve. And Job is lifted above himself and above misery and death and comes near to God, and departs from him no more for ever. Through the whole Bible it is curious to mark how Nature became vocal with the utterances of God to his chosen people. The old Jew in trouble d:d not shut himself up in hia house, but went out and laid his mouth upon the ground ; he did not argue about his creed, but made it real to himself by sacrifices of his cattle and first-fruils ; he did not go to prayermeetings, but walked apart in the fields at eventide questioning his own soul. The prophets dwelt in the wilderness ; they evidently were men abnovnia'ly sensitive to Nature's voice and bundling ; it was after the storm nnd the whirlwind that they heard the still small voice ; it was in the snow and winds of the great heights of Libanus that the prophetic words were given to them which have carried hope through all ages. One Hebrew poet has furnished hymns for the whole Jewish and Christian Church ; but it is the earth praising God through them which gives th«nn their immortal force. One psalm alone, as Humboldt noted, is a complete co3mos ; on them all the wintl blows, the singer lies down in green pastures, or vatches the heavens declare the glory of God.

Our systoin of worship now is different. We approach ourMakerin crowds, through sermons and prayers under a roof, a bunch of flowera on the pulpit the nearest connection between religion and Nature. Our religion is largely doctrinal ; we depend on logic, not emotion, for its support, or if an appeal to our emotional nature is attempted at all it is through music, colour, orcereinony in the churches. The earth is no more a living creature to us, through which God will speak if we "will listen, but a collection of molecules. We shall all go to the mountains or sea in a few weeks, not like the Jews to question our souls, but for salt bathing or to Jool?

for game or indications of coal. All these things ought we to do, but not to leave the other undone. Tn church sometimes, let us confess, the Lord and giver of life i 3 hard to be reached ; the crowd (especially a well-dressed crowd), the mood of the preacher unlike our own, a thousand jarring memories out of the week perplex U3. In town are display, the love of money, countless human beings at war with each other and with Him. What if we should go out into the country— the church which God has built I

Giants and gods are gone long ago ; even mighty Isis is known only by the wind -blossom which the Jersey farmer cuis with his plough, and calls, not knowing why, Pasch flower. But overhead, as in creation's day, still are found the sweet influences of the Pleiades and the bands of Orion are loosed ; the rain is over and gone ; the tender grapes give a good smell ; the time of the singing birds has come ; here is the same south wind that quieted the earth when J<>b was living. These things fulfil His word age after age, without hastf. and without rest. We remember reverently how the Master led His disciples to field and sea and mountain when He would reach them; how He went into solitary places to bear His temptation and His pain, and question whether Nature may not have some comfort for us also ; whether it would not be better to turn away from even the wisest preacher sometimes and find God's message for ourselves in the sparrow's call or the lilies of the field.— JV. Y. Tribune.