THE GARLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 3714, 19 May 1925, Page 60

THE GARLAND.

FOR THE QUIET HOUR. No. 612. By Duncan Weight, Dunedin. GOD! GOD IS! Who dare express Him? And who profess Him ? Saying, I believe in Him? Who, feeling, seeing. Deny. His being. Call it then what thou wilt,—Call it Bliss, Heart, Love, God! I have no name to give it! Feeling is all in all. “The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.”—Ps. xiv. The Anglican Communion comprises the Church of England, the Church of Ireland, the Scottish Episcopal Church, the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States, the Church in the West Indies, the Australian Church, the Church in India &nd Ceylon, the Church of New Zealand, and represents upwards of 20,000,000 adherents. How many millions last Sunday repeated the beautiful ritual and, on bended knees, repeated intelligently and with reverence the words: — “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and earth. “And in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord.” “I believe in the Holv Ghost.” How many millions chanted the unparalleled Te Deum Laudamus: “We praise Thee. O God: we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord.” GOD. The Lord ia good to all; and His tender mercies are over all his works.”—Psalms cxlv: 9. “God’s pity is not as some sweet cordial, poured in dainty drops from a golden phial. It is not like the musical water-drops of some slender rill, murmuring down the dark sides of Mount Sinai. It is wide as the whole scope of heaven. It is abundant as all the air. If one had art to gather up all the golden sunlight that to-day falls wide over all this continent, falling through every silent hour; and all that is dispersed over the whole ocean, flashing from every wave ; and all that is poured refulgent over the northern wastes of ice, and along the whole continent of Europe, and the vast outlying Asia and torrid Africa—if one could in anywise gather up this immense and incalculable outflow and treasure that falls down through the bright hours, and runs in liquid ether about the mountains, and fills all the plains, and sends innumerable rays through every secret place, pouring over and fining every flower, shining down the sides of every blade of grass, resting in glorious humility upon the humblest things—on sticks, and stones, and pebbles —on the spider’s web, the sparrow’s nest, the threshold of the young foxes’ hole, where they play and warm themselves—that rests on the prisoner’s window, that strikes radiant beams through the slave’s tear, that puts gold upon the widow’s weeds, that plates and roofs the city with burnished gold, and goes on in its wild abundance up and down the earth, shining everywhere and always, since the day of primal creation, without faltering, without stint, without waste or diminution ; as full, ns fresh, as overflowing today as if it were the very first day of its outlay—if one might gather up this boundless, endless, infinite treasure, to measure it, then might he tell tho height, and depth, and unending glory of the pity of God ! The light, and the sun, its source, are God’s own figures of the immensity and copiousness of His mercy and ■on i passion.”—Anon. Beyond all dispute tho Scottish Church has been enriched by “the Shorter Catechism,” and the definition of God has never been equalled t “What is God?”

God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.” 1 would have God; God bids me stay; 1 would hu\e worked; God bade me rest, lie broke my will from day to day. He read niy yearnings unexpressed And said them nay. Now I would stay; God bids me go: Now I would rest; God bids me work. He breaks my heart tossed to and fro, My soul is wrung with doubts that lurk And vex it so, —Rossetti. God is not dumb that He should speak no more; It thou hast wanderings in the widerness, And find’st not Sinai, ’tie thy soul is poor; There towers the mountain of the voice no less, Which who so seeks shall find, but he who bends Intent on manna still and mortal ends. Sees it not, neither hears its tlmudered lore —Lowell. “I can do all things through Christ, which strongtherwth me.”—Paul. Let nothing disturb thee, Nothing affright thfee; All things are psssirg; God never ebangeth; Patient enuuiance Attaineth to all things; Who God posstssetli In milling is wanting; Alone God suffioeti. —Longfellow. I have a God that changeth not, Why should 1 be perplexed? My God that owns me in this, world. Will own me in the next Go fearless, then my soul with God Into another room; Thou who hast walked with Ilim here, Go see thy God at home. —John Mason. And Enoch walked with God; and he was not; for God took him.—Gen. v: 24. We are indebted to J. T. Stoddart, in her most excellent and informative book entitled “The Old Testament in’ Life and Literature,” for the following narrative of fact:— The words of Genesis, Chapter 1: “in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” as read by a young Japanese in 1864, were the means of awakening within him a strong desire to learn more of God of whom they soeak. The youth whose name was Neeshima, had got hold of a geography book in Chinese, published by an American missionary, of which the first words were: ‘‘ln the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” “Who was God?” the youth asked himself. He did not live in Japan, but perhaps He was in America, whence the author of the book came, and thither he would go and seek for God. The old law forbidding the Japanese to leave their own country was still in force, but at the peril of his life he made his way to China in a trading vessel, and thence to Boston. Here he found him-„ self perplexed, and said to the Captain of the ship with whom he had travelled: “I came all the way to Boston to find God, and there is no one to tell me.” The captain took him to the owner of the vessel, Mr Hardy, a well-known Christian merchant. This gentleman treated him like a eon, and sent him to college. He soon found the God he had been seeking, and became an earnest follower of Christ. In 1875 he returned to Japan as a missionary, and become Principal of a Christian College in Kioto in connection with the American Congregational Mission. LOVE IS OF GOD. My eyes for beauty pine, My soul for goddees grace: No other care or hope is mine. To heaven I turn my face’. One splendour thence is shed From all the stars above: ’Tie named when (rod’s name is said 'Tis Love, 'tie Heavenly Love. And every gentle heart, That burns with true desire, To lit from eyes that mirror part Of that celestial fire. —Robert Bridges. GOD IS LOVE. God, Thou art Love! I built my faith on that. . . I know Thee Who hast kept my path, and made Light for me in the darkness, tempering sorSo that it reached me like a eolemn joy; It were too strange that I should doubt Thy love. —Browning. By love alone God binds us to Himself and to the hearth And shuts us from the waste beyond His peace From maddening freedom and bewildering light. —W. B. I'eats.