SUNDAY READING

Taranaki Daily News, 12 October 1929, Page 19 (Supplement)

SUNDAY READING

By

REV. A. H. COLLINS

QUEST AND CONQUEST. “The Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost.” —Saint Luke XIX. 10. The names given to Christ are' many —“Shepherd,” “Physician/’ “Friend,” “Saviour,” “Lord” —and each title has its value.. Jesus was so many-sided that no single word can cover all the facts. But “Son of Man” was the choice and chosen;' name . by ' which He willed to be known. .It is used more frequently than any other, "and it links Him with our nature and our need in indissoluble bonds. He is not only “the Son of David,’.' or “the Son of Mary,” but “the Sdn of. Man.” He is not a Jew or a Gentile, not- Eastern or -■ Western, Semitic, or Saxon. He is the Representative of the 'whole' human race. “The Son .of Man came.” He was born in a barn. He chose a hard lot and linked His life with the obscure and the humble-born that, He might teach the world the naked fact that each baby born in a slum is as dear .to God a,s a. prince born in a. palace and clothed in purple and fine linen. His advent forms the watershed, of history, and has changed the currents and the climate of the world. . B.C. and “A.D. are more than date signs; they describe different worlds of ideas and ideals.. The coming of “the, Son of Man” was the birth of new conceptions of God and man, of life and death, and the vast forever. TO 'SEEK AND TO 'SAVE. , “The Son of Man came to seek and to save?’. That means quest and conquest. It means 'the- long, patient, perilous tracking of the wanderer until he is found, and it means the equally long and wearing ministry of healing until convalescence and . perfect health have been reached. “The Son of Man came to seek,” Zacchaeus the chief of customs in Jericho, a man exiled from society and doomed to isolation; shunned, scorned and “lost,” a man whose Goul was shrunken and shrivelled like his undersized body. In what subtle and delicate ways the quest began and was continued we are not told. It cannot be this was the first time that Zacchaeus and Christ had met. The seeking had been going on for weeks and months in friendly smiles and nods, and looks of recognition, as Jesus passed the receipt of custom until those two souls were “en raport.” Perhaps the story of Matthew’s call had reached Jericho and wakened the interest of this other, tax-gatherer, and now the seeker and the sought had touched. The lost “son of Abraham” knew the meaning of the Psalm he had chanted in the outer courts of the Temple. “He restoreth my soul; He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name sake.” Men find, Christ along diverse paths as they walk the spirits viewless way. The value of the story lies in this, that it supplies one example of Christ’s quest and conquest; a brief and memorable example of all Christ ever said and did. It is an epitomv of the ministry of Christ from Bethlehem to Calvary. May we not add that it expressed the eternal activity ’of the Christ of Glory? For He is still seeking and saving that which is lost.

“SAVED” AND “LOST.” But I want to regard the passage from another angld. We lump men together in the mass and roughly classify them ao “saved” or “lost.” What do we mean by these terms? What is it to be “saved?” What is it to be “lost?” When we say of one man that he is a “saved” man, and of another that he is a “lost” soul, exactly what do we mean? ’Some whom we label as “lost” are upright, friendly, lovable folk; good fathers, kind neighbours, and honourable citizens, and some who are labled “saved” are neither lovable nor capable. They are poor fathers and poor neighbours and poor citizens. I have never met a bad man who had not some redeeming quality or a good man who •vvas free of some glaring fault. Zacchaeus was “lost” and yet benevolent, and gave half his goods to feed the poor; Simon Peter was “saved,” yet how lickle and hot-headed he was! I know men ■who are written down as “lo.st” and yet they are pleasanter to live with than some described as saved. The truth, is that our catalogue of men needs revision, and the terms “saved” and “lost” are too loose and general. There are “sheep” and “goats,” and there are “Angoras” too. “Lost” may mean not yet found, and “saved” may mean “being saved.” We need to discriminate. The saved are sometimes ' mean and crotchetty, and ill-mannered, and the lost are the reverse of all this. Man i« a composite, and we need to think of him in sections, faculties, parts, and powers. He is body, mind and spirit. It is not' his spirit alone that needs redemption. His mind needs to be saved from ignorance, his will from flabbiness, his imagination from stain, his flesh from corruption, his habits from depredation. For “the Son of Man came to°save” lost tempers, lost dignity, lest patience, lost modesty, lost self-respect. He came to save the whole man. RESULT' OF RETARDATION. The Japanese are great gardeners with a fondness for dwarfing trees. Count Okimas has a garden in J’okio with pine trees planted in the 17th century, yet growing in pots you could carry in your hand. There are groves of plum trees, knotted and gnarled by centuries of wind and weather, and some of them were planted about the time Columbus sailed in search of America. There are trees sixty years old, growing in cups no bigger than a thimble. How is it done? They nip the roots, starve the plants, and so have little mannequin trees, with wrinkled faces on the leas of a bovl-That is curious, but it is tragic when’' men starve the mind, and dwarf the soul. We belittle great words and empty sublime doctrines of their ■sublimity bv our peddling and petty interpretations. In heaven’s name do not dwarf the' Bible into a celestial almanac, the cross into a coward’s refuse from a ‘culprit’s doom, and Jhe Kingdom of God into a narrow sect. Interpret the Christian redemption in a way worthy of Jesus Christ. Live in a universe and n °t a ca ' e> , “The Son of Man came to seek and to save.” Save what! Wellfor one thin". He came to save our lost ideals. Wha't is an ideal? Look at the word and you will see that “ideal and ‘idea ~r e related. An i<l™ “ » P' c ; tnre It i« something imagined before it ii worked out. It is the architects plan before the workman turns the first

sod. Saint Paul’s cathedral existed in the mind of Sir Christopher Wren before the first trench was dug, or the first stone laid. He saw the finished pile before the building had taken shape. Our ideal is the plan of our life, and we never build better than we dream. The failures of life are due to having no plan, or accepting an uiiworthy plan, and working to it. Here is a building committee gathered round the plans of a church, and they want to reduce the cost. One man suggests that a. bit of ■carving can be left out. Another thinks the decoration is too elaborate. A third says the Gothic windows should be omitted. A fourth says the tapering spire need not be included. Thus a graceful and beautiful building is cheapened, and instead of a Gothic you have a Effrndoric church! . . IDEALS NOT FOLLOWED UP. ' Something like that happens in our life. We begin with an ideal. We mean to make life splendid-. Then we lower the standard. Something less than the best will do. We accept the dull average and the commonplace. The Son of Man came to restore the original design and teach us how to make our lives sublime, and to supply the power to do it. He sets, before us His own radiant example, and assures us wc need not just muddle along on low levels. ’ So "with our lost enthusiasms and hopes we begin an enterprise with passion and yim. Nothing is too hard. We strike impossible out of our vocabulary, and cry if shall be" done, and these are the people who get things done. Then we cool off. “Ye did run well what doeth hinder?” We are good starters. We are like. a motor that takes the hills.,as easily as the dusty levels. But the pace slackens. The engine ceases to dfive. Progress is changed to stagnancy. One whose name was “Zeal” is changed to “Mr. Ready to Halt,” and the grave word oif the Angel to the seven churches is true of us: “Thou art neither cold nor hot.”

But you cannot run an engine on tepid water or drive a train with a footwarmer. The Son of Man came to revive our, lost interest in sacred things with fire from his own altar. The hearts of stone begin to beat. We need not be the victims of moeds that are fickle as a shadow. It is a simple fact of history that the most alert and vigorous nations are the Christian nations, and the mpst enthusiastic leaders in social betterment are the men ruled and inspired by the spirit of Jesus Christ. “The malady of souls is cold,” says De Tocquivele, “and the cure is companionship with the strong Son of God.” HOW MAN CAN BE SAVED. These are simple examples which might easily be multiplied of how the Son of Man saves men by saving the powers and faculties which make up man. The New Testament is full of Words that begin with the prefix “re,” words like “restore,” “renew,” “recreate” and “reconcile,” all of which mean that our Lord is seeking to reset life according to the divine ideal. The meaning of salvation is just this: the rescue and restoration of lost things which make up the soul of a man, and the process is is not complete whilst any part o-f the man is untouched by the Saviour.

Nathaniel Hawthorn has an allegory called “the intelligence office.” Airy’onc who had lost anything could inquire there —the girl about her lost lover, the youth his Jost ambitions, and the okl man his lost years. The good news of the Gospel is that if you have lost anything the’ Lord of Glory knows where it *is, and can tell you where to find it. Nay, more, He can give it back to you. SHADOWY AND UNREAL.

I am afraid the word “salvation” has seemed shadowy and unreal, for the simple reason that some who have been labelled “saved” seem little better for it. It is vain and foolish for ignorant, ill-tempered, ill-mannered folk to speak of being saved. Christ’s salvation means a restoration of lost things. If you have lost grij) of yourself Christ can restore the grip; if you have lost your temper Christ can restore it to you, and thus save you from those miserable displays of anger; if you have lost your manners Christ can save you from rudeness and make you courteous;-- if you have lost largeheartedness and become narrow and bitter, Christ can restore the liberal mind and broad outlook. When these moral transformations are actually made, they supply the evidence of a saved life, but not till then.

Zacchaeus disappears from the Bible page. Tradition says that a very aged man of small stature was seen in Jericho trading a sycamore tree, and when asked why he tended the tree so carefully his eyes brightened and he seemed to renew his youth as he replied “Because from the boughs of that tree I first saw my Lord.”