RELIGIOUS LIFE

Southland Times, Issue 23828, 27 May 1939, Page 21

RELIGIOUS LIFE

[By

ICHTHUSI

THE INTERPRETER

There is a deeply-interesting passage in that great writing, the Book of Job, on which I have always wished my minister would preach a sermon. It occurs in the thirty-third chapter, from the nineteenth to the twenty-sixth verses. Verses 19 to 22 give a very vivid picture—l do not know a more vivid one anywhere—of a sick man lying upon his bed ,at the gates of deatm “He is chastened also with pain upon his bed, and the multitude of his bones with strong pain: So that his life abhorreth bread, and his soul damty meat. His flesh is consumed away, that it cannot be seen; and his bones that were not seen stick out. Yea, his soul draweth near unto the grave, and nis life to the destroyers.” If you have passed through desperate sickness and recovered when recovery seemed hopeless, you will recognize yourselt in that graphic portrait as you were in those days of affliction. And many who have watched anxiously by sick beds wifi also recognize the famihar and truthful picture. But there is a second figure in the picture. lhe next verse, the twenty-third, reveals it. Some One is sitting by the sick bed. “If there be a messenger with him, an interpreter, one among a thousand, to sTiow unto man—” read the rest of the passage for yourself. This figure is somewhat shadowy. We are not shown the features of the messenger, only the form. Perhaps that is intentional and not without meanmg. Is tne figure divine? I fancy that that is the meaning. Dr Moffatt makes him. angelic. There is no need to argue the point: at any rate, his ministry is & sub - ect for some inspired painter. That sick man, representative of us all, lying on his bed in his desperate need; and there, sitting beside him, the Interpreter.

NEED FOR AN INTERPRETER The need for an Interpreter as we journey through life, and pass through its valleys of vicissitude, its forest glooms, and climb wearily its mountains ot difficulty, is clear enough. Sickness, sorrow, struggle, temptation, failure, frustration—these all are the very stuff of life; and they all alike call for the Interpreter. What do they mean? Have they any meaning? Our human troubles can be endured if we can see some purpose, some meaning and use in them. It is when they appear meaningless and useless that our spirit breaks. Hence, “if there be with him a messenger, an Interpreter,” how great the boon. Bunyan felt this need, and early in his matchless story he tells how Christian comes to the Interpreter s House.: Then Christian began to gird up his loins, and to address himself to his journey. So the other told him that, by that he was gone some distance from the gate, he would come at the house of the Interpreter, at whose door he should knock, and he would show him excellent things. Ah! we have need to hear those “excellent things.” Well for us when the Interpreter comes m and sits by our sick bed, or at our sorrowful hearth, or finds us amid the ruins of our hopes and happiness, and begins to interpret our troubles to us, and to show us meaning where none seemed to be, and light silvering our dark cloud, till where we saw only darkness and vacancy our eyes begin to catch glimpses of the shining towers of the City Beautiful and the Sunlit Land. Then has the Interpreter shown unto us 4 ‘excellent things indeed. THE MEANING OF LIFE

But behind our questionings about what happens to us along life s road, lurk always those other deep questions about life that never for long leave any thoughtful mind. What is the meaning of life itself? Why are we here? What is life? Whither are we going? Or are we going anywhere? Is there anything beyond? Is there Someone whose hand is on the he ta^ e tWnk to cut the Gordian k not s h ar pl y by declaring: “No. Life has no meaning, no purpose. These troubles happen. There «no explanation. There is No One and Nothing beyond. But that is like man. it creates more problems than it solves. It leaves us with all our sorrows and pains, and it has made them worse by casting over them its dark mantle of meaninglessness and hopelessness. But still on every hand our urgent questions rise. How, then, -did everything come to be? Whence all the marvellous articulated order and intelligence of the universe? You cannot imagine a motor-car, or a radio set, or a house coming into being without a maker. Is it intelligible that that still more wonderful creation man, with the breath of life in him, just happens? No one denies that a life ot unselfish goodness is nobler than one of thoughtless and selfish vice. But why . Wherein is it nobler? Has that vital distinction no ultimate basis? Whence comes our hunger for knowledge, our restless quest for truth? Surely it is strange if the wakening of the intelligence is itself a product of a universe that is devoid of ultimate intelligence and meaning? Stifi more strange if the wakening of the moral sense, with its recognition of the difference between good and evil, and its ever-deepening hunger for pure goodness, arises by chance and works to no ultimate end. Do beauty, and our deep feeling m its.presence, point to nothing at all? No. No. Belief may have its; difficulties, but unbelief has a thousandfold more. On the basis of unbelief the universe is a mad-house. But that is just what every bit of our hardly-won knowledge about it proves that it is not. . . . j tx ,„ o ii So we struggle on amid our questionings. And life itself, as well as all that happens to us in life, sorely needs the Interpreter If there be a messenger with him. an interpreter, one among a thousand, to show man Ah! yes; if there be but the Interpreter!

THERE IS AN INTERPRETER I am not sure who or what the Interpreter sitting by the sick man’s bed in the Book of Job, was meant to be. But I know very well who the Interpreter is who sits by our beds of sickness today. “The healing of His seamless dress Is bv our beds of pain.” . . . . I know all-or, at any rate, most of the poignant questions ever arising in the human heart, and the difficulty there is in answering them But I know very well also where the most satisfying answers are to be found 1 open my Bible, and, particularly, the New Testament; and in the New Testament particularly the Gospels. And I find there a Figure like untc> a Sonof Man” who “speaks as never man spake, whom this world of troubled ana ever-questioning men and women can never wholly forget, and never have done with. He has bread to give where others offer only a stone He does not explain everything On the contrary, He says plainly that there are some things we cannot know yet. . He .tells, us, among His excellent | thines” that “we walk by faith and not by sight. If there is any better interpretation of what happens to us in life, and ° f Hi<= 1 havA vet to find it. The excellent things He shows us are such as "these: That there is a God who is the Creator of all things, of Whom the best description we can understand is that He is our most loving Father, that all is in His control, and that His loving and through, and over all His works and every least one o£ . HK t ‘ dld J® l Y is a eoal and an end and that it is peace and joy better far than our best dreams and iXintags dared to hope. When He sits by my sick bed, or speaks to me about the mystery of life—of my own being, and the being of those dear me—l find faith such as He calls for rising within me and r t s as, at the close of Browning’s “Saul all nature answered as it felt the new laW> ’ “And the little brooks witnessing murmured, persistent and low With their obstinate, all but hushed voices— E en so, it is so. Stevenson somewhere tells a story of his grandfather, engineer to the Board of Northern Lighthouses in Scotland. His little sailing vessel was caught m a terrific Tale on that rock-bound coast. A fearful sea rose, and for toree davs and nights they lay at anchor in an inhospitable bay in a most perilous position, unable to beat out. Only the auehor stood bet ween them “ d destruction. Among the guests aboard was Sir Walter Scott. On the ttird nic*F>+ thp seemed to reach irresistible force, and the old engineer, unaoie to dee " strutted u i the heaving gangway to the deck. A wild sky, and white waste of water met his eye. His first thought was that toey w«e doomed Then in a burst of moonlight, he saw his captain, who was taking the watch himself, lashed to the wheel. His oflskins glistened with the winddriven snrav and his bearded face was grey with salt. But, as btevenson looked at that skilled and experienced seaman, he saw a “curity” fell face. He went below satisfied, and with a new feehng of security asleen Well I see the heaving billows of life, and a sky that at times rcsw.sasrewrt Interpreter.