SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, 25 November 1922, Page 9

SUNDAY READING.

RELIGION ANO REFORM. “The Kingdoms of the Heavens is like yeast which a woman takes and bqries in a bushel of flour, for it to work there till the whole mass has risen.” ■Saint Matthew, xiii., 33. (Weymouth translation. (By Rev. A. 11. Collins, New Plymouth.) lhe main point of the parable is sometimes misled. Yeast is an active, pungent, penetrative influence which silently transmutes the soddened, heavy, indigestible dough into wholesome and nourishing bread. It works by contact, touches the particles that lie nearest, and transforms them into vehicles for the further transmission of its influence. Each particle touched by the ferment in turn becomes a ferment, and so the process continues Until outward, and ever outward, it permeates the entire mass and the whole is leavened. In the same way the sublime truths Christ taught work with noiseless and irresistible energy. Each Christian man becomes a propagandist. Each individual disciple is to transmit the influence that •changed him until the man next to him its changed. That, I say, is the truth usually found in the parable, and, of course, that is true. That is how any truth spreads.

Phillips Brooks defined, preaching as “truth plus personality.” Some great, commanding principle grips the preacher’s soul, and demands utterance, and so he becomes a flaming herald. A man will accomplish little until the truth he holds holds him, and he speaks with passionate, quivering energy. “It needs a soul to lift a soul e’en to a cleaner sty.” Tepid, calculating, prudential' folk never achieve much in “this naughty world.” The yeast must work, or what is the good of it? Reform lingers because reformers loiter. J say this is true of any form of truth.

TRUTH AND PERSONALITY. “Truth plus personality” explains the influence of Mazzini in modern Italy, Tolstoi in Russia, Luther in Germany, and Gladstone in England, and if we are ever going to build a pure, free, virile nation under the Southern Cross, we tshall have to catch the sacred, infectious enthusiasm that glowed in the heart of these Empire builders. We, too, must be propagandists. The Kingdom of Heaven grows by the silent penetration of society with the leaven of Christ’s influence and teaching. But I have said that the main point of the parable is sometimes missed. What do 1 mean by that challenging •word? Did Jesus Christ mean to illustrate the silent, transforming, influence of religion? Not that alone or chiefly. What He did was more than that. He fastened on the simple, suggestive, wonderful fact that in bread-making the housewife takes that which by itself is dry, insipid, choking, and out of these two things produces a third thing, bread, which is wholesome and good. Leaven alone is sour, meal alone ie tasteless, but leven and meal make bread.

A FORM OF RELIGION USELESS.

That is the point of the parable. “The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto leaven,” in this, that religion by iteelf, religion out of contact with daily life, is useless, offensive, nauseous, and daily life divorced from religion is insipid. To put it another way, religion that is out of touch with public questions and public needs is useless, and social and public ’’ife that is not quickened and corrected by religious principle is progress o\sr a precipice. Religion must touch life on all sides. The whole life of man belongs to the realm of religion, hence it includes questions of social betterment. The leaven must be in contact with the meal, and not simply in a bottle on the shelf, or it is powerless for good. That looks simple enough, yet the constant application of that simple principle would work wonders. Think of it. The orthodox religion of Jesu« Christ’s day was religion out of touch with life and reality. To offer sacrifices, to keep feasts and fasts, to tithe the anise and the cummin, to observe the new moons and Sabbaths, to repeat daily prayers, to avoid ceremonial uncleanness, made up the sum of religion, and religion, thus constituted, was held to be the all-important thing in life, and Jesus Christ loathed it. THE MISTAKEN MONASTIC IDEA. Later still you have the monastic idea, when men and women withdrew from contact with their fellows, lived in nice damp cave, wore rough hair shirts or no shirts at all, practised pains and penances and let the wicked world rip! They were devout according as they were dirty, and saintly in proportion as they were cadaverous. I am not saying there were not good men in the monastic orders. To say that were not true. But the conception of religion -was mistaken, and the effect mischievous. A lie like that dies hard, but it is a lie, and one of the greatest. Yet it obtains to-day, though it clothes itself in pious phrases and venerable formula. There are still those who regard themselves as ultra Protestant and ultra Evangelical, who hold to the monastic idea, and believe that Christian people should be very tepidly interested, or not interested at all, in anything save what they call preaching the Gospel and saving souls. No one who knows me, and the trend of my ministry, will change me with undervaluing these things, hut these things do not exhaust the duty we owe to men. We need to keep this parable in mind. The leaven must not be kept on one shelf, and the meal on another. The leaven must be plunged into the heart of the meal and kneaded in the pan, till the whole is leavened.

THE BROAD STREAM OF LIFE. Christian people are not doing their plain duty or using their capacities unless they fling themselves frankly and unreservedly into the broad stream of national life, into the political, commercial and civic affairs, and use their influence to raise them to Christian levels. It is oui duty to pray “Thy Kingdom come,” and vote as we pray. “The Kingdom of Heaven is like leaven,” and it must be buried in the meal *to be of any service. Religion separated from life is sour dough. “Beware, of the man whose God is in the sky,” cried Bernard Shaw, in words which seem almost inspired. The teachings of Jesus must ibe applied to public concerns. Do you seriously imagine that the great provinces of trade and learning, and social life, arc nothing to God? Is the nation nothing? is the State nothing? Has the Great Creator no interest in the land and the disinheritance of multitudes of His children, who are being robbed oi

their portion? Is it nothing to the Great Father that crowds live in slums, and drink themselves blind, and bet themselves bankrupt, and breed a race of physical and moral degenerates? Has God nothing to do with the struggle for social betterment, the revolt against oppression, and the straining after liberty, equality and fraterruty? Is He not the God of the whole round earth?

■IP THE CHURCH FAILS. In past times He chose Pharoah and Cyrus to serve His ends, and He may do the like again. If the Church discrown Him and refuse to exercise moral leadership on social questions, He will call other leaders to the front, . and the Church will lose her opportunity. It will happen to the modern Church as it happened to Judaism, as it happened to Rome: she will lose moral leadership. When religion has lost its pungency and force, and become sleek, accommodating, tasteless, the Master comes with His leaven and sets the minds of men in a ferment with new ideas. Religion divorced from life is sour dough. That is my first point. But meal without leaven is dry and choking. It is leaven and meal that make bread, and that is the point I stress now. I mean that social reform which is not inspired and controlled by moral principle is not only powerless; it is perilous. I use the word “religion” in no narrow sectarian sense. Give it wide interpretation as meaning love of God and service of men, but whilst with one foot of your compass you describe a wide circle, the other foot of your compass must rest on Jesus Christ. There can be no sane doctrine of human brotherhood which does not rest on the fact of Divine Fatherhood. You can have no enduring liberty that is not broad based on Divine law, and no equality that is not the fruit of loye. You cannot have a Christian State save as the individuals who make up the State are Christian in spirit and deed. The meal must have leaven in it if it is to rise. Reform must be penetrated by a deep, sincere religious faith, or it will never succeed and does no't deserve to succeed. For what would it profit us to exchange a selfish and irreligious Oligarchy for a selfish and irreligious Democracy? The change of form would matter nothing if the old bad spirit remained. Reform demands the application of moral principles. Economics can do something. Change of environment can do something. But at bottom the problem of social betterment is a problem of manhood, and unless yon change the man your efforts count for nought. You may paint the pump what color you like, but is the spring pure? We need a programme, of course, but the main thing is not a programme but a dynamic. How to get there is the question. For myself I have no hope of ever getting there, save as we catch the spirit of the Cross, and the Cross stands for sacrifice, not only Christ’s, but yours and mine.

A THANKLESS TASK. Leadership is often a thankless task. Leaders are criticised and even vilified and cruelly misrepresented, and it needs a firm grip of Christian principle to endure these things. There is a remarkable collection of papers edited by Mr. George Haw, and called “The Religious Doubts of Democracy.” There is one paper, in the writer, a working man, speaks l of his experience as a social reformer. He tells how, years before, he had given up religion because he felt the churches were anti-social. He flung himself into the democratic movement. After years of work he fell ill, and asked himself why he should continue this service for others. Why should he not think of himself instead of other people? They wore ungrateful for what he had done, and he almost decided to give it up and servo himself. Then he began to think of the religion he had abandoned and 4 he Christ he had ignored, but in thinking of Christ he realised that the Master had not forgotten him. Old convictions came back to his heart. He felt Christ was necessary for the sake of the individual and the world. He was inspired with new enthusiasm. He took up his old work with fresh ardor, and did it for Christ's sake, which is the greatest and the only enduring motive. Nor do I believe that any of us can do this work of social reform as it should be done, save as the passion for humanity is born and sustained of a passion for Jesus Christ Himself.