THE MINISTER’S BOOKS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3775, 20 July 1926, Page 6

THE MINISTER’S BOOKS.

THAT UNIVERSAL AND PUBLICS MANUSCRIPT. By W. H. Sir Thomas Browne wa9 a doctor who was born more than 300 years ago. He said that he dared '‘without usurpation assume the honourable stile of a Christian." though there were several circumstances that might persuade the world that he had no religion •t all Among these circumstances he names "the general scandal of my profession and the natural course of my studies.” It seems that many people in his day thought that his profession and his studies tended to unbelief. To-day many, even of his admirers, think be believed too much rather than too little,—that credulity rather than unbelief was his tendency. Browne says in the book in which he gives an Account of his religion: "There are two Books from whence I collect my Divinity; besides that written one of God, another of His servant Nature, that universal and publick Manuscript, that Ties expens’d unto tho eyes of all.” I have written recently of the first of these books, and of the extreme difficulty I find to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest it, especially to digest it. I am very sorry to confess now little I have read in Browne's second book, Although I foe! that a minister who is to be unashamed ought to read it carefully. A Hebrew poet wrotd a poem on the condescending care of God, which was inspired by reading this book at nights, and the most eloquent of the prophets preached a Btrmon on the unequalled power of Jehovah, ■bod on the contemplation of the heavens.

To come down to Christian times, an apostle says that in Browne's second book we may read the Creator’s eternal power and Godhead. Except when I go to tho oratorio I seldom hear that "The Heavens are telling the Glory of God.” I cannot blame our climate. and say that here the heavens are often invisible, but I must take the fault to myself that I, one of God’s ministers, whoso duty it is to speak of His ways and His works, have so neglected one of His books. Charles Kingsley did not do it, neither did Robertson of Brighton, nor did Norman M‘Leod. I see that the largest of the American Universities is planning a course of studies in this second book of Browne’s for those who are thinking of the ministry, but nothing of that kind was done in my student days. In acknowledging a book by Sir Alexander Simpson, Principal Denney wrote: "It made me wish, what I had often wished before, that we had more men among our ministers whose preliminary training had been scientific rather than ‘classical.’ Tho Church as a whole has never recognised that for the vast preponderance of human minds science is now and must be for long, if not for ever, the main organ of education.” I am not sure who is the best teacher of this second book of Browne’s, from the point of view of the minister’s purpose—the science professor, a man of facts, or the , poet, a person of imagination. I enrolled I myself some time ago as a student of Professor J. A. Thomson, and bought his textbook, but so far I have not done any work in it Years ago I enrolled under Wordsworth, often called "the High Priest of Nature,” and have at times taken “refresher courses” under him. I .have made under his guidance “The Excursion,” “Whan from the naked top Of some bold headland, he beheld the sua

Rise up, and bathe the world in light 1” I have also wandered with him often on the banks of the Wye and among the woods, and have heard him say that “Nature never did betray The heart that loved her. Louisa May Alcott, from a child, was a reader in "the universal and publick Manuscript” of Nature. She says she "got religion” when she was reading the book early one morning. "I remember running over the hills just /at dawn one summer morning, and, pausing to rest in in the silent woods, saw, through an arch of trees, the sun rise over river, hill, and wide green meadows as I never saw it before. Something bom of the lovely hour, a happy mood, and the unfolding aspirations of a child’s soul seemed to bring me very near to God; and in the hush of that morning hour I always felt that I 'got religion,' as the phrase goes. A new and vital sense of His presence, tender and sustaining as a father’s arms, came to me then, never to change through forty years of life’s vicissitudes, but to grow stronger for the sharp discipline of poverty ana pain, sorrow, nd success.” What a brave, beautiful, and deeply religious soul Louisa May Alcott was! After all Life’s vioissitudes she rests in •» beautiful spot not far from Boston, called “Sleepy Hollow,’* where her grave is marked by a small headstone, bearing the simple inscription: L. M. A. 1832—1888. Emerson and Hawthorne lie there also. I have visited Sleepy Hollow on two occasions, and if I ever so to Boston again I shall go out to Sleepy Hollow once more. I find pleasure in visiting a cemetery. I have-stood by tho craves of (X V.

Holmes and Phillips Brooks in Mount Auburn, of Mrs Browning in Florence, of Keats in Rome, of Wordsworlh in England. I have wandered about Greyfriars and often lingered in Westminster Abbey, the great national mausoleum—to me the most interesting building in London—and by day and bv night I have gone to gaze on the Taj Mahal, which is, really, a splendid tomb. I have looked upon the place where William Carey lies, and gathered a violet from John. Nicholson s grave. I do not think it is a morbid taste. Some of our beautiful poems are on graves. Mrs Browning’s on Cowper s grave, Sir William Watson’s on Wordsworth’s, and others occur to me as I write. Addison was not morbid, and yet it was his habit to wander through our great national cemetery. "When I am in a serious humour,” he says, "I very often walk by myself in Westmin** Abbey. I yesterday passed a whole afternoon in the churchyard, the cloisters, ami the church, amusing mvself with the tomb, stones and inscriptions that 1 met with in thoee several regions of the dead. I like the name of Concord's graveyard “.Sleepy Hollow.” Longfellow says ot him--661 like that ancient Saxon phrase, which calls . The burial-ground Cods-Acre! It is just; It consecrates each grave within its walls, And breathes a beoison o’er the sleeping dust. “God’s acre” —it is good, and so is “Sleepy Hollow,” and so is “cemetery,” with its kindred meaning. “Cemetery” is good Greek, and it is good Scripture. Death in the Scriptures is a sleep, a comforting, hopeful way of speech. It softens the fact of death, for it is suggestive of taking rest in sleep, of re-creation of powers, and of awakening at the dawn. It reminds me of one of Stevenson’s prayers. Very human are those prayers, but just a little eloquent and self-conscious, perhaps: “Our guard is relieved, the service of the day is over, and the hour come to rest. We resign into thy hands our sleeping bodies, our cold hearths, and open doors. Give us to awake with smiles, give us to labour smiling. As the sun returns in the east, so let our patience be renewed with dawn: as the sun lightens the world, so let our loving kindness make bright this house of our habitation.” I don’t think Browne, when reading in his second book, ‘that univer al and publick Manuscript, that lies expans’d unto the eyes of all,” was averse to a quiet walk in the nlace where men take their last sleep. If this were so, how could he have written his book on Urn Burial, in which “the jewelled, slow-moving sentences proceed with an impression of extraordinary gorgeousness ai d pomp”? Very venerable is that “publick manuscript” of nature many thousands of years old. Some of its pages have perished, and are now reconstructed imperfectly and with difficulty, but new pages are being written daily. Spring is Nature’s publishing season, and then she has new pages adorned with colours more beautiful than those with which the old monks adorned their missals. Passages in the book that were very obscure have now been deciphered and interpreted. A great many commentaries have been written on the book, and; as is too often the case, I have been content with a commentary instead of reading in the book itself. I cannot say with the astronomer from first-hand knowledge. “O God, I think Thy thoun-hts after Thee.” nor can I say with first-hand knowledge: “We are fearfully and wonderfully made.” All my quotations from this book are second hand, and when I am speaking, if I see a real student .of the book in the audience, I am afraid of my'life to make any reference to the book lest I misquote or miscount my ignorant a grave' defect in a minister, and I often sigh—oh, dear, what a lot there is to learn if on 6 would be a minister unashamed. There .is a third book of which it is said ministers are often ignorant, but that »s too important a subject to deal with now.