RELIGIOUS LIFE

Southland Times, Issue 23793, 15 April 1939, Page 21

RELIGIOUS LIFE

[Conducted by ICHTHUS] HE MAKES HIS BOW I walk on to the stage, kind friends (I feel that you will be kind—and friendly), and, looking across the footlights into your faces, I make my bow. No, I thank you, I am not nervous, although this is my first appearance before you. Yet there are thrills running up and down my spine. For I believe in my job. I have many things to say to you, and I expect to find great happiness in saying them. I am hopeful that you, too, may find happiness in them, as the Saturdays come and go. Who am I? Ah! that is an intriguing question. I have often asked myself the self-same question—“ Who am I?”—and a voice from within has answered: “You are Mystery.” Ah! indeed. Who is any one of us? You, sir, in the front row there, I know. you. You are my brother. Madam, sitting beside you, is my sister. Our family name is Mystery. Oh, of course, we have our labels and tags. We call this one Brown, and that one Jones, and another Smith. But what do these names tell about us? Nothing. They are merely labels by which people identify us. But whence come we? Whither do we go? What are we? Ask of the winds. We have one family name, all of us, and it is Mystery. Still, members though we be of that great mysterious family which includes our whole race'of shadowy mortals—or should we say, immortals?— if you and I are to recognize each other when we meet, we must have names. If you are to find me when you take up The Southland Times on Saturday mornings, I must have a name. But, I pray you, not the name I am known by at home and in the town! I beg you will permit me to wear a cloak. When Sir Walter Scott first published the Waverley novels he wore his cloak. All Scotland and England buzzed with excited questionings as to the identity of “The Great Unknown.” No doubt Scott was the better writer for the cloak he wore at the beginning. What, freedom it gave him; and it must have added spice to his style—to say nothing of the interest it created in his readers. And what is any writer if there is no interest? With your friendly permission, then, kind folk across the footlights, I shall take and wear a name you shall know me by while I play my part and speak my lines from the stage of this column. THE MEANING OF A NAME

But to select a name: there’s the rub. Are you, perchance, a father, oi a mother? Have you known what it is to select a name for your first—worse still, for your fourth or fifth—child? Read A. G. Gardiner’s essay in “Many Furrows” on “Naming the Baby.” Mine is more than a parent’s difficulty, for I want a name that will hide me while I reveal myself. You are the fisherman, and I am the fish. You dangle your bait and hope to catch me. I sidle up and seem to touch it with my nose. Swiftly, you strike. But, more swiftly still, with a flick of the tail, I am gone. Eureka! I have my name. It shall be “Ichthus.” When Christianity was still a proscribed religion in ancient Rome, its followers buried their dead in underground galleries which today tourists visit. The catacombs, we call them. The visitor will see there again and again drawings of the outline of a fish. What does it mean? The guides tell you the story. It was a sacred—and a secret—symbol among the first Christians in those days of persecution long ago. It told nothing to the Roman officials, but it told everything to the fellow disciples of the deceased Christian. Greek was the common language spoken in the streets of Rome, and the Greek word for a fish was ichthus. “I” was the first letter of the word “Jesus”; “ch” the first letter (one letter in Greek) of the word “Christ”; “th” was the first letter (again one letter) of the word “theos” (God); “u" was the first letter of the word “huios,” the word for “son”; and “s” the first letter of the word “soterios” (Saviour). Jesus, Christ, God, Son, Saviour: I.C.H.T.H.U S. A secret symbol. How little it told; and yet ’how much. Yes, Ichthus shall be my pen-name. And what am I going to write about in this column? I will tell you. I commenced with the stage for my simile, did I not? I was wrong. This column is not going to be my stage, but my pulpit. Why should the ministers do all the preaching? It is not the laying-on of hands, or the wearing of a gown that makes a preacher, bless you. It is having something to say, and saying it interestingly, and so that the plain man and woman can understand; Specifically, it is proclaiming the truth. I have long felt that I would like to preach. I suspect that there is a latent preacher hiding in most of us. Have you never heard the Rev. Mr Grass-seed preaching from the chair of the Farmers Union. Or his lay brother, Moses Butterfat, laying down the law of the rights of the man—and the cow—or the land? Have we not heard the Rev. Mr Ledger holding forth at the Chamber of Commerce, and worthy Mr Booster preaching on the glory of Southland at the Progress League? And as for the ladies, God bless them, what preachers they are! _ , NO PARTISANSHIP HERE

What shall my subject be? Why, everything on the earth, and in the heavens above, and in the waters under the earth. But I shall not always preach. Sometimes I shall be a newspaper man and give you news. And occasionally, perhaps, I shall poke fun, and evoke the salutary discipline or laughter. When folk get too serious about small matters, and when, as all too often we all do, we get heated, laughter is God’s good gift in the light o which, as in clear sunlight, we see ourselves and all things truly and in proper proportion. I shall impose no limits on myself, or if you prefer Mr Savage’s way of putting it, “The sky’s the limit.”. Though, of course, I must keep within the limits imposed by that Mussolini, the Editor. And that reminds me of something I had almost forgotten. This is to be a religious column. Not a denominational column —oh dear no! There will be no partisanship here, except that we shall be on the side of the angels. Ana not a dry-as-dust column, I hope and pray; and not a narrow and restricted column. For religion is the broadest thing under Heaven, and the deepest, and the highest, and the most human as well as the most divine.. Religion has to do with all men, for “man is incurably religious,” and religion is not dull, but the most interesting and romantic of all the subjects of human interest. But there, if you really want to know what this column will deal with, I can only fall back on the late Mr H. H. Asquith and say, Wait and But all that is for the future. Today—and you see that now I return to my first figure—today, kind friends across the footlights, Ichthus looks into youi faces, and makes his bow.