SUNDAY COLUMN.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 36, 5 October 1912, Page 8

SUNDAY COLUMN.

ARROWS AT A VENTURE

(By the Rev. E. J. Watts-Ditchfield M.A., London.)

Yini remember, i suppose, the story of Ahab, who rode disguised into hattie against the King of Syria, and was shot hy an archer, who drew a bow (apparently) at a .venture. Now, I am like that man with his bow and arrow. I know little of you. J must lire at random and rely upon God’s Holy Spirit to apply the shots.

1. 1 want to aim, first, at the man who is disguised. The one who appears tq. he something thlat ho is not. The one with a life behind as well as at the front. The one who is not real, who has a veneer of respectability. A man died in England

and 1 called to sec the widow. While showing mo the body the widow, in broken-hearted tones, told me that he had been a good father apparently, but that even while the body had been lying in the room the man had been discovered to he an imposter. He had another “home,” another “wife,” other children. The cry of the widow was, “It is not that you are dead, but oh! the hypocrisy!” Ho had been pretending to he true when he was false all the time. Arc we like that—any oi us? Oh, for sincerity, true reality. J)c we feel secure in our sin? God can see our heart. God can see through a man’s waistcoat The Greeks in their carving used to carve the hacks as well as the front, remembering that God sees all behind as well as in front. In God’s name I do appeal, throw oil that unreal life and stand before God genuine. If. The next man is the doubter. He does not throw Christianity overboard, but ho does not accept it. Hr nays there are so many things In ' .moot understand. A little boy of ■-! cannot understand about his or gin. Of course he does not, and while he is four he cannot. The doubter telh you that science is divorced from Christianity, and has proven it to be untenable. If this be true how then does he account for what is to follow: The following men believe in Chrlsti ia:ty and they are first-rate tip-top men of science: Sir Isaac Newton, Clerk Maxwell, Horschell, Sedgwick Howell, Dalton, Shirley, Young, James Faraday. How, then, do all these believe in God and Christ? Hersehell • rote a book on the evidence of Christianity, Faraday used to read oiod’s word to the sick and dying. Sir

George Stokes, Sir Wili am Huggins, keen Christian men. Lord Lister, the discoverer of that great blessing tr. humanity, anaesthetics, was an earnest, praying man. Lord Kelvin, the greatest scientific authority in the world in his department. I knew him,

and he once said to me: “The older I grow, the more firmly I believe in Jesus Christ,’ and rely upon him.” Now, think again of the intellectual forces of England. We are proud of our Bar. It is the greatest and cleanest in the world. Our Judges are a model of the world’s Judges. The Lord Chancellor is the head of the Bar. Going hack for fifty years you will find that every Lord Chancellor has been an. earnest Christian man. The late Lord Loreburn, >Lord Halsbury (on every church committee in London), the Earl of Selborne (a dutiful son of the church), Earl Cairns used to preach in the open air, Lord Haverleigh was a Sundy School teacher. Everyone on the Woolsack in the House of Peers has been a keen man for God and his church. Now, honestly, docs that look as if the intellectual forces of the ago have thrown Christianity overboard? j

Now, see the greatest political leaders of to-day. Gladstone and Salisbury were devout communicants every Sunday morning. Asquith, the present Prime Minister, last November in Albert Hall, spoke of the influence of the Bible in every way. It had influenced Ids own life. Mr Balfour, the great philosopher 'and statesman, wherever he is on God’s day always attends a place of worship, no matter who the preacher or what the building. Now ,with regard to the labour leaders. In England thirty-three out oi forty-two arc active members of <klforent Christian bodies. We can prove these statements up to the hilt. Today, Christianity does appeal to the intellectual force of the British Empire. In it is the one power that is going to put the world right. It makes a man do something to upkft humanity. Every great movement that has resulted in any good has had at the hack of it a Christian man. AH Christians arc keen for social reform everywhere.

Who aroused England originally, and taught that social Hfoj must he studied and elevated? Not an infidel. It was Shaftesbury, a Christian. Again, when slavery was in the British Empire, who used his life’s energies to get that curse removed. Not an infidel! It was WHherforce, a Christian. Livingstone, a Christian opened Africa to civilisation. Who was the first to makc | men think of saving little children? Not an infidel, hut Dr. Barnado, a lover and follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. .Who wore they who, years

ago, said that they must go to Fiji and the other Pacific Isles to help the benighted folk there, and tell them of the joy in Jesus Christ? Christian men! Infidels don’t do work like that. Infidels don’t go to cannibal islands to raise humanity. When Blatebford wrote that hook, “God and my Neighbour,” I challenged him to find, out of the men in this world, ten men,; who had been down in the gutter ami

lifted up :i!id set on their feet •hy any other power I han that of Jesus Christ. He could not find them, and neither can vnu, Xow ye think over these facts, 'there may ho questions vnu cannot answer, hut concentrate on Christ, and you will he secure. Hold on to Chr’st, and the questions will all he answered in time.

(To he continued next Saturday.)