RELIGIOUS LIFE

Southland Times, Issue 24106, 20 April 1940, Page 19

RELIGIOUS LIFE

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ICHTHUS]

REDISCOVERING THE STARS

It is impossible for us who are living securely in the safe remoteness of New Zealand to realize fully the effects of war conditions on the ordinary course of daily life in Britain. We have but the faintest notion of the dislocation, inconvenience, expense, and constant sacrifice involved. Take, for instance, the nightly “black-outs.” They have resulted, for one thing, in a heavy increase in motor accidents.

As I write, the radio announces the death of Mr H. A. L. Fisher. “Mr Fisher,” says the announcer, “was gravely injured a few nights ago when he was run down by a lorry.” I read yesterday a letter from the superintendent of an orphanage in Scotland. He described a long and wearing day. About midnight he got home and sat down by the fire for a cigarette before going to bed. Suddenly three loud knocks on the door sounded through the house. It was too late for ordinary visitors. “Who is there?” he called. “Police,” was the reply. “Put out that light!” He went outside and was horrified to see a beam of light that streamed from a thin gap in a window cover. It seemed to shout aloud in the surrounding darkness and silence. What a story it would tell to a raiding aeroplane. So the black-out arrangements, painstakingly and expensively made by the Matron, were ineffective after all, and the whole thing would have to be done again. More expense, and more work. He went inside and found his way to bed in the dark, not daring to turn on a light. But it was another story of the “black-outs,” and quite another aspect of them, that moved me to write tonight. A well-known writer of religious books I writes that he was walking home one dark night recently, and stopped to talk with a man who was doing special service and was on night duty. Everything was black. The houses were in darkness, and there were no street lamps. But above them the stars were brilliant. The man on duty in the darkness was thoroughly enjoying his job. “There is one thing about this black-out business,” he said, “it has 1 given us back the stars.” 1 thought that a notable fact, and a fine saying. AN UNREALIZED LOSS This volunteer night-worker told his visitor that when the black-outs become necessary, and he was on duty in the darkness, and there above him night after night the stars shone, he suddenly realized something he had lost. “I used to be very keen on studying the stars, and learning the names of the different constellations, when I was a boy. But since I went to work my holidays have always been in the summer when nights are too light for tire stars to show well. And here in Salford I don’t think I’ve seen the stars for five and 20 years. I suppose the glare of the city lights prevents our seeing them.”

He had lost the stars for 25 years without ever realizing it; and the reason was not darkness, but excess of light. I thought that very suggestive and very instructive. There are more of us, I fear, who without realizing it have lost the light of the stars. Some of us, too, may likely enough scarcely have seen them since we were children. We used to read the good Book then, and learn its great passages by heart. And we used to kneel by our beds to say our prayers. Yes; there were stars shining above for us then. I heard not long ago a story that moved me deeply. A work-ing-man and his wife sat in the early hours of the morning by the bed where their one little child lay fighting for its life. The doctor had just left saying that there was no more he could do. “Oh, John,” said ;'_e wife, “we must pray. You must pray.” “I can’t,” he muttered. “I can’t remember any.” But by that time they were on their knees together by the bed side. There was a painful silence for a while, then the man’s voice came brokenly, “The Lord’s my shepherd—l’ll not want—He makes me down—down—to lie,” —. The fragments of the Twenty-third Psalm, learned in childhood, was all the prayer he knew. Here were two plain people, just like ourselves, who had lost sight of the stars, not because it had been too dark to see them, but because it had been too light. Then, when trouble and need came, neither of them knew how to call on God. Still, I think some-

how that that broken prayer would be heard in heaven, and understood. OBSCURED BY THE LIGHT Another point in the night-worker’s experience is curious and true to life. It was not the dark that obscured the stars, but the excess of light. In summer holidays there was too much light for them to show clearly, and at home in London “the glare of the city lights prevents our seeing them.” That is another point in the heavy count against city life: you cannot see the stars for the glare! It is never too dark to see the stars. The darker it is the clearer they shine. They may be obscured by clouds, or they may be hidden by light. In fact, it is only the light that prevents us seeing the stars by day. If you are far down a deep well, so that the light is shut out, and look up to the skies, you will see the stars shining by day. What puts out the stars for us is not sorrow, but the absence of sorrow; not pain and trouble, but freedom from pain and trouble. The light of this world’s comfort and prosperity about us hides the light from heaven. There is a verse in one of the Psalms which I have often read and noted. “Because they have no changes therefore they fear not God.” A life immune from upheaval and storm may not be so good as it appears. The glare of street lights is a poor recompense for the shining of the stars. I never heard that anyone got much inspiration from contemplating a street lamp. But it is different with the stars. Their light is so clear, and so intense though distant, they seem so remote from our fevered chaos, so calm and untroubled, that merely to gaze upon them is to find peace. It is instructive to read that the late Sir Edward Grey, when Foreign Secretary in the first years of the Great War, and unable to leave the Foreign Office, would sometimes spend the whole night on the roof with only I the stars above. One begins to under- I stand his unruffled calmness, and the depth and clarity of his wisdom. The counsels of this world at their best are but a poor substitute for the counsels of heaven; and even the best of wisdom I of men—and most of our actions are on a somewhat lower plane than that —is but a poor exchange for the wisdom of God. He is a wise man, and she is a wise woman who, like Sir Edward Grey, makes some sacrifice of ease and comfort to calm their spirit and see the true light clearly by giving the stars a chance to speak their message in the deep heart’s core.

REDISCOVERING THE STARS I can quite understand the joy of the London special-service nightworker who found that “this business of black-outs” has “given us back the stars.” He was like a man who after long years has found again and renewed the old, close fellowship with dear and trusted friends. Or like a traveller in a strange land who having for some time lost the mountain peaks by which he was steering, and, wandering in bewilderment and uncertainty, suddenly finds them again, standing out clear and sure, above the clouds. Such a man does more than rediscover the stars. He has rediscovered himself and life’s lost ideals. It has been long dark, but he has found the light again. The desert has been weary to travel through, but he has found the oasis and the well. .1 wonder if the thought struck our Londoner that during all those twenty-five years the stars had never been lost at all. They had been there all the time. It was he who had been lost, hidden from God’s stars beneath the glitter of the little, uncertain lamps that men have made to see by. Well, our little lamps, of course, have their place and use. But they are not, and never can be, the stars. And it is very unwise to mistake them for the stars, or to think that because we have them we can do without the stars, or amid the nearness and seeming sufficiency of their glare to lose sight of and then all but forget that there are stars above. And after having long lost the stars how good if is to rediscover them, even if it takes war and a “black-out” to give them back to us. All of which the Master of all men knew and told us of long ago when He said: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”