Sermon

Southland Times, Issue 19264, 30 January 1904, Page 2 (Supplement)

Sermon

The Future of our Country . .i ."7 :'m : ' "1 A NEW YEAR'S SERMON, BY THE J REV. JAMES AITKEN, M.A., < WYNDHAM. * ." Open ye the gates that "the righteous i nation which keepeth truth may enter j in."~:L__i___ 26c. 2v. I spoke last Sabbath morning of tho' 1 goodness of God. We were looking back then" on the year which has gone from J us, and tracing in all the varied ana '■ changeful experience of life— and especially : in the common experience, the experience of common things, the hand of a divine Helper and Friend. Turning our faces then from the past to the future we resolved that the spirit in which we aught to meet this New Year was the spirit of gratitude and trust and devotion. In the future that concerns our own life, in the common experiences of the days to come •with their as yet hidden burden of toil and laughter and tears, the sauna Hand will help us, the same God will care for us, tho same love will enfold and overshadow ue. W* should go forward with confidence thon, putting our faith implicitly in Him, and wc should go forward to serve Him, and to do His will with unfaltering and unswerving resolution, to glorify Him in oiir hearts and in outlives. May He Himself grant us, every one, grace and strength so to do. Tu-nlght as we look into the future, 1 want you to take a wider view.- Let us think not of our own individual affairs, but of the affairs of our country ; not of the circumstances and prospects of our own lives, but of the problems and the possibilities that lie before the whole people to -whom we belong. "We stand today not only at the beginning of a new yeaj, but at the beginning of a new history. If for ourselves the few days that have passed have scarcely taken the freshness off the year, for this colony and its people the fifty years that have gono by are but as the earliest morning of its career. The future stretches before New Zealand, and it is a future of great po- . tentiality. New Zealand has her history to make, and it is difficult to over-esti-mate her opportunity. The rudiments of empire here Are plastic yef_£and warm ; The outlines of a mighty world j Are rounding into form. Here is a country of vast natural resources. Not only is there beauty to giadaen the heart of man, there is a fertile soil to respond to his labours, and a temperate climate to bra.ee his energies. There are both water power and mineral wealth upon which to build up great industries.' The geographical situation oi these islands is more promising than at first appears" and much more promising than we yet clearly realise. Wo are far just now from our markets, but the markets of the future for us lie not in thu West but in the East, and our proximity to lands of such vast and 1 diverse riches as India and China and Japan and North and South America, mokes possible for us just such ap. extensive and varied commerce as brings opulence to any people And if there is the possibility of industrial and commercial development, tbere is still more a possibility of influence and honour. No people capable of exploiting the resources of theso lands of ours, and of opening up, trade with the countries round abput us can fail to exert a powerful influence on these other lands and on the world at large, or can fail to earn just such renown, such glory as is her .due: But here, let us pause a moment to ask, What is the glory of a nation ? What is it which , keeps a people's memory green in the -. history of the world and enwfeathes her name with honour in future Ages . Is it the extent of her dominion, or the magnitude of her achievements or the greatness of her attiuence ? No, it is none of these things. It is the service .she renders the world. With nations as with individuals, whoso would be great must minister. The glory of Rome is not the wide sweep of her conquests. She was mistress in her day of the wholo Western world, and no armies were able to overthrow her legions. But we look back to her with gratitude not for any reason of that kind, but because it was fihe who taught us the secrets of law. Htr truo (glory was won not by her generals and commanders, but by thoso great lawyers and governors who laid an upward progress of mankind. Don't think she comes too late in the world's history. The ages to come have need of hor. There is work for her to do. But the future of any country— the future of its own. fortunes and of the career it runs among the other countries of the world— depends entirely upon the character of its people; Natural resources will not make a courtry ricjj, nor will _tographical situation make it powerful. No peoples have been more favoured uy natural advantages than the peoples of ftouth America, yet not one ot them are opulent. No geographical situation could be more favourable than Italy's, yet it is only by courtesy that she continues to o r_i_<d with the Powers of Europe. >ur ftitt're will depend on ourselves, upon what wo are, upon the things we care or, i pon the ends we seek. Now the English race from which we are Sprung has had certain outstanding cl-er-acteristice of which we may well be proud. It has had an indomitable energy. ; Without much bluster or boasting it has done things. '.' We • are descended rom no idle. people,- biit a -people whose Joy it^as to do. There has marked us in the past . also a certain skill or wisdom in tne i.tnnagement of things. We have slowly developed systems of government that work more smoothly' ; thian any of our neighbours' systems do, and we have displayed in all the relationships of lite/ a focul.y of adjustment, accommodation, 7 comproarlM, management which . fonn 7the founflatfon oa which the legal systems of two

hemispheres are built.. The glory of Israel is not in ar>y material achievement. Hers were no groat conquests, no s_eat riches. She was an obscure people in art/ obscure corner of the world. From the material point of view her history, like that of Home, is the long record oi decline and fall. But it was she who gave to the world tho knowledge of G-od. it was she who taught the world that Ood is one and that God is righteous. And that is her glory— the glory of service, the glory of usefulness. Of Eng- , land and her glory what shall we say ? Think you it lies in tho vast empire she ' has built up, or in the enormous wealth she has accumulated ? Is it in the long roll of heroes who have toiled for her and fought for her, and died for her '! No ! it is in this great service she has done mankind, she has taught the love 01 freedom and tho love of justice. When in distant age. her story is told sha will not be hor.oured as mistress of the sea, or as head of an empire on which the sun never sets. Her sons who died for freedom and truth shall be her glory. She will be reverenced as a free nation and the mother of freo nations. The glory of a nation is the service she does the world. There lie before the people of New Zealand opportunities of vast wealth and vast influence, opportunities therefore, of vast usefulness too- Neither Israel nor Rome nor England was greater m her beginning than. New Zealand is today, She may yet become one of the honoured nations of tho earth, through tho part she takes in tho onward movement of things though often illogical hae proved wonderfully practicable. And ours } has been a people tbat loved righteous- | ness. Wo have a good record to look back to. The struggles of tho Covenanters in Scotland and of the Puritans in England, speak much for us, and so in more recent times, do the removal of the Catholic disabilities or.d the emancipation of the slaves. Wo hero in New Zealand, the children of that J_nglish race, havo inherited their energy and their resourcefulness. No one can look even cursorily at thoso lands ol ours and mark the change that half a century has wrought on tho onco farstrotching bush and fern and tussock and llax, without wondering at tho vigour of a peoplo who have done so much in so short a time. It has not been done without sweat of brow and sweat of brain. And we here lovo freedom as our fathers loved it. Wo rejoice in the freedom of our laws and institutions, and we even trample on the bonds of old custom and conventiality. 1 believe wo prize our freedom as much as any generation did that went before us. Energy, skill, freedom vie still value, but — and here I want to utter a solemn warning— the danger we aro in ia that we lose our sense of the importance of righteousness. I do not mean that in. this matter we are worse than our neighbours, worse than our brethren, in other colonies or in the Mother Jrini-'-y-The danger of tho time throughout cur whole empire is just this, that tn the affairs of state and in the life of the community, we forget that righteousness is supremely important. We seem '.o be prone to consider other things *. sof greater moment, and in every question wo discuss, to ignore its moral beavia^s. We look on and seo iniquity done and are scarcely moved to indignation. Kvery question ir politics and social life is approached first of all with the enquiry, " Will it pay ?" Last year, my friends saw an ominous sight. It saw the British Empire listening to the cries of tortured Macedonia without a Bhudder, while she discussed with feverish interest whether it would increase her material riches to substitute self-interest for affection as the bond which should keep her numbers together. I call that an ominous sight because it seems as if our Empire had forgotten that in the ordering of her affairs and the shaping of hor course there were no moral considerations to be taken account of at all. I do not say that we here in New Zealand are worse than our brethren in this respect, but I do say that wo are in the same danger. It is • rarely that you hear any course of conduct in public affairs discussed from a moral point of view. I do not say that you " never " hear it, but the tendercy to ignore tho moral aspects is far too strong. Whether it be the affairs of the colony at large, or of a city, of a township or of some small committee, considerations of justice, of truth, of right, seem always to come after considerations of profit and expediency. But every question of conduct or policy has a unorul side. Whether it bo in thu ordering of the affairs of your own private life, or of your town, or of your societies, or of tho colony, or of tho Empire, there is no possible question in which the moral element is wanting. There are no issues of mere expediency, there are no issues of mere profit, there is a right and wrong in every issue, and [the matter of right and wrong is always the most important matter V* settle. Let questions of profit and convenience come second, put the moral question first. " That which is signified by tho words moral and spiritual is a lasting essence," says Emerson. " I know no words that mean so much. In our definitions we gropo after the spiritual by describing it as the invisible. The true meaning of spiritual is " real." No nation con ever prosper that loses sight of that truth. It is righteousness not policy that exatteth a nation. If our people in the generations to como are to rise to a position of honour and glory among tho peoples of tho earth, if they aro to take tho place that belongs to them in virtue of natural advantages and inherent energy and skill, if they are to do that servico for tho world to which they aro called, they must cling fast to their faith in the supreme, absolute importance of righteousness in all things small and 'great. " All the great ages," says Emerson, again, " have been ages of belief. When ther. was any extraordinary power of

perfonnancc, wheu great national movements began, when arts appeared, when heroes existed, when poems wore made, tho human, soul was in earnest, and ha--' uxod its thoughts on spiritual verities with as strict a grasp as that oi the hands on tho sword, or the pencil, or the trowel." And that has been no mere coincidence, but becauso there can be no grealuesa apart from righteousness, noi can any nation rise whoso eye is blind to tho moral aspect of things. This is i» deep-lying ard universal law of life, an- . bo sure it will operate in the future course of New Zealand, as it has operated, and still operates in the course of all other nations. Now it is important and specially important that we should recogniso all this, for, as I have said, we stand at the dawn of history. We have no past to look back upon. It is still morning with us, and the freshness of morning is still round us. But the life of a nation is like the life of an individual, you can do what you will with't if you take it at the beginning. It is plastic in its childhood, and one man, one law can do more for good or ill to-day than a hundred men and a hundred law9 can do when once its course is set and its character is fixed. See how the impross of the Pilgrim Fathers is still to be traced in the republic of the West. In spite of all the heterogeneous populations that have thronged to her shores. America owes more to that small company than to any or to all of tho others. Tho law_ they made, the customs they preserved, tho atmosphere they breathed are still vitally present in the States they founded. So will it be with New Zealand. Our laws, our customs, our opinions, our principles, will mould tho future. We shall not live to see it, but our children in the centuries to come shall bless us or curse us for the legacy wo leave behind when wo are gone. Oh ! brethren let us seo to it that we leave them a good legacy. Terrible, terrible is the children's curso. and terrible will it sound in our ears as wo go about our business in the wide spheres of the hereafter. But gracious and grateful to us will be our children's blessing when we hear them thank us for all wo were and all wo did. What then shall we do for our country that she may advance not only to a position of material prosperity, but to a position of real and lasting glory ? What shall we do to ensure that she shall yet do some great servico for mankind, some great service for God ? 1. Let us see to it that we ourselves livo for high ideals. Let us not measure our own progress by the growth of our wealth or of our reputation. Let service be our object, usefulness our ambition, righteousness our passion, character our goal. 2. Let us take an interest in all that concerns our country's good, in her laws and in. her politics, and iu tho various impulses and movements that mark our time. Let us havo our opinions upon them, opinions intelligently formed, and intelligently held. You say what is the value of an opinion ? Why, tho world is governed by opinion. Public opinion is the strongest forco in any community. Wo speak of the '*righf of having our opinions— let us think of tho "duty" of having our own opinions. And — here is the important point, the point I want you to carry away with you to-night and to think about— let us never form any opinion on any matter without having regard to its moral aspect. Lot us try to see in our laws and institutions and customs, and movements, and in all tho changes that ore continually being mooted in them, not merely the expediency of them, tho convenience of them, but whether they aro right or no, whether they are just and fair and kind. Bo sure nothing is ever expedient in the long run that is not right. Nothing is ever profitable in the long run that is not just. •' You may build your capital on granite," said Wendell Phillips, " and pile it us high as the Rocky Mountains, if it bo not founded on justice, the pulse of a girl will beat it down." Nothing will ever do our country lasting good, or make for true glory that does not breathe the spirit of love. Let US work for our country, let us think for our country, let us pray for our country, and let us pin our faith to this great principle that, despite every appearance that would mislead us, love, truth, righteousness are tha greatest forces in history — tho greatest forces in tho history of a township, of a country, of a people, for they are the will of God and of his Christ.