IMPRESSIONS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 690, 15 June 1929, Page 8

IMPRESSIONS

QUIET CORNER

(Written for THE SUN by the Rev. Charles Chandler. Assistant City Missioner)

"'VyHOSE image and superscription is this?” and. they said, “ Cwsar’s!” T Someone drew my attention the other day to the fact that in Nero Zealand we have no coinage of our own, as is the case in Australia, and in the Dominion of Canada. This at once led. me to wonder whether, as a result of this, we are not failing in the matter of creating a definite impression of our own upon the surface of world affairs. As an outpost of Empire, what is our distinct contribution to the progress of civilisation? Personal and national character, like coins of the realm, are a medium of exchange. Character is of universal currency. tVhat manner of coins are being turned out of the mint of our national consciousness, and in the interchange of our ideas with the rest of the world; what insignia is being stamped, upon the specie of our thoughts? Whereas the character of one nation is expressed in art, another in religion, another in music, and, another in sport; in what department of human activity do ice the most effectively express ourselves? Whose image and superscription is stamped upon the sum total of what ice are? Is it Cwsar’s. or is it God's? As with the unit, so with the nation —we stamp ourselves upon our every thought and deed. We can no more hide from the world just what we are. than can an elephant find cover behind a tuft of grass. If we have rendered unto Ceesar the things that are Ccesar’s, and have failed to render unto God the things that are His. then the brand of our one-sidedness will be stamped upon every fibre our our beings. As there are two sides to a coin, so there are two sides to life —the spiritual and the material. When both sides are alike, as is the case with a "double-header.” then the coin is counterfeit and spurious, and is thereby rendered “not negotiable” in the great Bank of the Universe, wherein the currency is character, and the Banker is God. NEXT WEEK: ACCIDENTALISM