SUNDAY READING

Taranaki Daily News, 20 July 1929, Page 11

SUNDAY READING

By

REV. A. H. COLLINS

ABRAHAM’S SORROW. “And the life of Sarah was an hundred and seven and twenty years; these were the years of the life of Sarah, and Sarah died in Kiria th-Arba, the same is Hebron, in the land of Canaan; and Abraham came to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her.” —Gen. XXIII., 1,2. Sarah was one of the nobodics of the Bible, who nevertheless attained to immortality. How little yj-e know of this godly woman, and yet how much! We know her age; we know she was “comely” in face and form, and that her beauty was a snare to her husband: we know she had a jealous heart and a testy temper, which sowed teeth for Hagar. Ah! but Sarah was the wife of Abraham, and the mother of Isaac, and that links her fortune with two of the noblest names in Hebrew story, and gives her place in the prophetic line. Jesus had not been born if Sarah had never lived. There had been no Calvary if there had been no Makpelah. How large an oak springs from how small an acorn!

And now the river of years Lad readied the sea. A hundred* and seven and twenty years had run their course, and Sarah died at Kiriath-Arba. The Arabs stepped softly past Abraham's tent. The Arabs saw their chieftain’s grief—■ stricken in the presence of his holy dead, and in their rough way tried to console him, Even the Hittities were softened at sight of Abraham’s sorrow. Love that is ninety years old cannot give up lightly. It is a hard thing and bitter to part from those we have known longest and loved best. Memory is quickened into strange power, and ghostly presences come trooping out of forgotten graves. The Arabs would point to Isaac, young and strong, but the old man would only answer, ‘’There are eighty years or my life of which Isaac knows nothing, and Sarah and I know so much. We wondered and dreamed through the long summer days. Wc planned for the | future. We had no secrets and no re- j •serves. We linked hands and loved, I and lived, and suffered together, and i now she is marble cold and crimson I veined in a land of strangers'” And | Abraham wept’ ! A MAN OF FEELING. < The man who slew great kings wept. I The man whose name shall endure for- j ever wept! You say, “But was not Ab- | raham a man of faith?” lie was, ami; he was a man of feeling, too, and it I is no part of religion to stifle feeling ! and make men stoical. “Jesus wept.” When He came to the house of mourning in Bethany, though. He proclaimed Himself, “the Resurrection ami the life,” His words were jewelled with the tears of Divine compassion. Vie should think not lose but more of “Abraham the friend of God” that he sobbed by the sepulchre of Machpelah. Tears may be telescopic and bring into our range of vision worlds that dry eyes never see. The way wc carry ourselves in hours of devastating sorrow reveals the worth of our religion. 1 I have said Sarah was a nobody, and the same is true of the vast majority of men and women, in the Bible and out of it. There are a few far-shining names, and the rest are indistinct as the Ncbulea of the milky way. “He made the stars also.” But obscurity does not mean uselessness. Notoriety and fame are not the same. What dowe know of Hannah, the praying mother? Yet she was the mother of a long line of prophets.' No one knows the name of David’s mother, but some obscure woman in Israel nursed him at her breast, and in so doing nursed the book of the Psalms i of David, Andrew was not a great Apostle, but he brought Simon Peter to Christ, and prepared the way for Penticost. Who g ;, ve birth to Paul? Do you know? Whoever it was she gave to the Clr.ireh its greatest Apostle. Three flat miles stretch between Geneva and Chamcunica, and the three flat miles said they would lie there no longer to he culled "flat’’ and “dull” by tourist.-. So the three flat miles went off in a hull'. Then Mont Blanc bowed his noble head in remonstrance, to say that wore it not for the three flat miles he would never have been known. So the '■ three peevish miles came back again, proud to be a roadway leading to the j < monarch of the hills. If all the stars; were of the same size and brilliance■ the sky would look very odd. j

GOO DNESS BEECR.I I BU 1 L! ,lANC E. You may r.-ot be a great man. but you may help your son to be great. We make too much of brilliance and too little of goodness. When your little child is sick, he needs kindness more than genius', and it will be small comfort that his mother is “a blue .stocking” if she cannot shake the creases out of a hot pillow or make a poultice. There is a disease that craves for novelty and extravagance, which bodes no good, for, as Dr. Parker says, Guy Fawkes is known the world, over, but your honest father who set you a good example and I gave you a start in life is not known i in the next street. Jesus of Nazareth J was nurtured in a one-roomed white-1 washed cottage, but He is King Immortal and the Saviour of the world, i Patient service, quiet- heroism, dogged endurance find small notice in histories, yet it is by such things the Kingdom of God is speeded. There, arc lilt!? eyes upon you, and they’re watching night and day; There aro little cars that quickly take in every word you say;

There are little hands all eager to do everything you do, I And a little boy who’s dreaming of > the day he’ll be like you. i Aon ie the little fellow s idol, you’re the wisest of the wise; In his little mind about you no suspicion ever rise; i He believes in you devoutly, holds that I all you say and do He will say and do in your way when he’s grown up like you. There’s a wide-eyed little fellow who believes you're always right, And his cars are always open and he watches day and night. You are setting an example every day in all you do, For the little boy who’s waiting to grow up to be like you. You may not be great, but you can be good and true. The story of Sarah suggests a second thing, 5 iz., that some people shine in reflected lustre. They are not much in themselves, but they belong to a famous Hue, and, maybe, they can trace their name to the Saxons or the Danes. They are not great citizens, but they are born of British stock, and claim proud alliance with Milton and Cromwell! Sarah was one of ten thousand mothers in Israel,’but she was Abraham’s wife. Boswell was a plain man, but he was servant of Dr. Johnson. I am a poor missionary advocate, but Dr. Carey, “the father of modern missions,” belongs to me. It is a great thing to be a Britisher, and a greater thing to belong to tho race for which Christ died. It is twice a thousand years since He toiled aloii" our pathway rough, but we can still touch the hem of His seamless robe, which has eternal healing. Nameless and tameless, yet if we are joined to Christ we come to “an innumerable company of angels, and to the spirits of just men made perfect.” Through nothing in and of ourselves our torch is kindled at the sun, and we are made “kings and priests unto God.” BLESSINGS BLOSSOM LATE, This also is true, that some blessings blossom late. Sarah was 90 years old when Isaac lay in her lap, and she looked love, into his bright dark eves. She had abandoned hope and refused to believe the promises. Then the impossible happened, and God “rolled away her maiden blame among the Hebrew mothers.” Do you understand my parable? Your golden ago may yet to be. You have not done your'best. Physically your powers may'be declining, but you need not have thought your best, or loved your best, or done your best. Do not stop praying and believing.

There are two points in the adventure of the diver; One when a beggar he prepares to plunge One when a prince, ho rises with his pearl.

keep your heart young, keep dreaming, and keep aspiring. The miracle of Cana of Galilee is repeated in our lives, for “God keeps the 'best wine till the’ end’’ of the feast. “Down to old am? I Will be with thee,” is the promise. Death itself need not mean defeat, 'but emancipation. I can set no bounds to the discoveries and developments of the future life. We sometimes sigh for “the good old times,” which in truth were the bad old times. We -wish mon were as good as holy men of old, good as the patriarchs' and prophets °and apostles. It will be a poor thing if we are-not better than they, seeing we have not only Moses and*the pro” phots lor our example; we Lave Jesus Hinisell. I will dare to say that “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob ” never had more or better sons and daughters than in this generation, and never was His .Kingdom so near. In a Welsh graveyard stands a headstone over the dust of an old man, converted late. You ask me how old I am. I'm old, I'm very old. You ask me what is jny age, It can very soon be told. Past eighty years of age, But only two years old. A man's true life dates from the day of Lis devotion to Ged.

PATHOS AND BEAUTY'. The final fact of the story is the greatest. Read over the chapter quietly and alone. Read it slowly and mark the pathos and beauty of it, . ''‘But Sarah died and Abraham wept.” The father of the faithful shared the common lot. for he emptied his heart to fill a grave. But he went about it in a brave and noble way. Sarah was no ordinary woman to Abraham, and a common grave would not satisfy him. She must have the best. Sarah must have the best. Sarah must sleep where the flowers blossom and the palms whisper. A borrowed grave in a land of strangers will not satisfy Abraham, so he 'bought tho field of Mahpelah, and paid the price to the children of Heth. I remember, too, that Jesus slept in a rocky tomb, but “in the place where He was crucified there was a garden.” i Sin dug a grave in heaven itself, and j in tire very heart of God. He shared the common sorrow. Jesus did not escape the cross and the grave. Neither can we, but- the cross and the garden are near neighbours. “There is no song of all our hearts are singing, But has some note whose haunting sadness grieves;

There is no rose of all the year is bringing, But has some thorn un.-Ten amid the leaves. There is no garden but some cross encloses, There is no day but hath its hour of pain; Yet, still we sing and gather earth’s bright roses, Walk in the sunshine and forget the rain.

Sing on, 0 heart although the teardrops glisten, Gather earth’s roses though the ram be rife; Earth is not all, His angels ever listen. Heaven shall make perfect our imperfect life.” Ah! yes, it is a noble sentiment to make the- grave of our dear dead country. But do not keep your love for the dead alone. Spill the sweetness now. Smooth the path of the living. Be kind and thoughtful to-day. We never regret our to-morrows. It is the harshness we regret. There are no tears so bitter as the tears distilled out of remembered neglect.