SUNDAY READING

Taranaki Daily News, 18 January 1930, Page 3 (Supplement)

SUNDAY READING

By

REV. A. H. COLUNS

OUR LORD’S EULOGY OE JOHN. “Verely I say unto you, among them that are born of woman, there hath not arisen a 'greater than John the Baptist; yet he that is but little in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he.” —Saint John XL 11. Our Lord was sparing of compliments, even to Hia most intinlate and trusting friends. He was generous in His appreciation and quick to see the beet in faulty people. But He spoke with sobriety and reserve, as one who felt the morality of words, and would not use wordd lightly. The text is probably the greatest compliment Christ ever paid to any man, and gave John the Baptist rank with the foremost men of the human race. Jesus Christ expressly states that the forerunner was not only the peer of the shining rank of the Hebrew prophets, but greater than the great men of any age or nation; greater than Plato or Socrates and the rest of the pagan worthies. It was an amazing thing to say of this rough, skinclad son of the wilderness, with cloak of camel’s hair and girdle of raw hide. Yet the words that follow are more surprising still, for no sooner is the eulogy pronounced than it seems to be withdrawn. The man who is given rank with the princes of the world is declared to be the inferior of the least in the kingdom of heaven’ HUMBLEST AND GREATEST. The question arisen in what sense John the Baptist was the equal of theworld’s greatest, and. in what sense the humblest member of the kingdom heaven ranks higher than John? plainly the greatness of John was moral and religious, rather than intellectual and material. It was not John’s fame which gave him rank with Caesar or Alexander. Christ was not thinking of eloquence and intellect. No one would say that John was equal with Moses in mental vigour and resource, or with. Elijah in prophetic vision. John was built' bn a smaller plan than’the major prophets, and his influence was not as farreaching .as theirs. Jesus Christ was thinking of John as the herald'of the Gospel. John the Baptist was the last of the prophets of Israel, and the immediate forerunner, of the world's Messiah. He occupied a position no other man did, for he saw the close of one dispensation and the opening of another. He saw Judaism cro down in darkness -and blood, and he saw Christianity roll up the Eastern gky, to fill the world so long as time shall- last. John’s greatness was greatness of soul, in nearness to Christ, and in understanding of Christ's will and work. This rough man of the desert with none of the' refinements of courts, and none of the learning of the (schools, wa<s greater than courtiers os' philosophers, for he walked with God. THE SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE. One of the foremost authorities on Greek literature declares that the very best product of the Greek mind was psychologically shallow compared with the spiritual experience of Saint Paul. Christianity passed at a bound all the achievements of the Greek mind in the n-olden age of Greece. We might say with perfect truth, that of those born of woman there hath arisen none greater than the noble-minded Stoic, Marcus Aurelius, with his serious outlook, his courage, and his lofty sense of duty; yet in some directions a Salvation lassie is the superior of the Stoic Emperor. In mental endowment he was far ahead of her, but in spiritual consciousness she is far ahead of him, for the spiritual is greater than the intellectual. “We hold the grey barbarian lower than the Christian child.” Our relation to Christis the measure of greatness. This is not'the common, view. We are impressed by the splendours of the intellect, and we are far too ready to worship the golden calf, but simple, unsophisticated goodness is more than either., and the frank acceptance of that fact would reverse a good many of our judgments and modify some of our pursuits.! THE WORTH Of*’ A MAN. One of our questions is “what was he worth?” after a man’s death, and the question is a painful witness to the commercialism of to-day. If a man is worth no more than he leaves behind, he is worth nothing, says “The Expository Times.” “A man is worth what he is, not what he has; and that is true both of this world a’ud of that which is to come. While he lives he may win and lose everything but one—his own personality, That is always his; ultimately it is all that is his. In that lies his worth—not in the abundance of the things which he possesses and can lose. And when he dies, he Joses what he has, but he remains what be is. He who is unjust will be unjust still; he who is holy will be holy still; but he who is wealthy will be wealthy no more. When a man is said to be worth so much, let us ask, to whom? Who was the better for what he was worth? Was even ■he himself the better for it. or was lie only the richer? Did his presence lighten any darkness, cheer any loneliness? Was any heart (he sorer for .his passing? Unless he was a worthy man, unless, that is. there was something in him we could worship —for worship is tribute to worth—he was worth nothing, though he had millions. The day is -not yet come —will it ever come? —when inner worth is rewarded with its corresponding share of the world’s good things, its honour, fame, and gold. There may be sortie world where worth and wages invariably and accurately correspond, but assuredly it is not ours.” G R E AIER . IHAN THE ROSE. I have in part anticipated the further question, in what sense is the least in the kingdom of heaven greater than any born of woman? Perhaps I can illustrate the answer. zA rose is a beautiful thing—delicate, graceful, sweet and wonderful in structure. Those who know the rose best are most captivated by its grace and sweetness. A mongrel dog is neither graceful nc«- sweet, out the dog is greater than the rose, ami belongs to a higher ord“.'.'. liie body of the rose and the dag'-.- hody are composed of the same material, but the -dog has developed something the rose has not and cannot, namely, intelligence. The dog Ilves in a .larger- world, and is possessed of fuller powers. If you take him hi hand you can train and improve him in. docility and faithfulness until lie becomes a kind of four-

footed Jeb, and in any ease the poorest dog is of a superior order '.o the flowers. And you might say of the flowers of the field there is none greater than the rose, nevertheless the dog that is least in the sub animal kingdom is greater than the flower. That is to say, it belongs to a nobler order. Tennyson describes the changes in the life of a dragon-fly: To-day I saw the dragon fly. Come from the wells where, he did lie. An inner impulse rent the veil, Of his old husk: from head to tail Came out clear plates of sapphire, mail. He dried his wings, like gauze they grew; Through crofts and pastures wet with dew, A living flash of light he flew. Once it was a soft, pulpy, formless thing, living at the bottom of a pond, content with its submerged life; then acting on some mysterious impulse from within, it developed new powers, sought new food, and began a new life. Instead of crawling in the slime, it soared on brilliant wings and was at home in God’s pure sunlight! The imprisoned grub became the emancipated dragonfly. The rose and the dog are composed of the same life cells, so with the grub and the dragon-fly, but before the flower could become the animal it must ba xe-born, and ere the formless thing in the slime can become the living flash of light it too must ’be born anew. INTELLECT AND SOUL. This has its parallel in the spiritual life of a man. The natural man may be great in intellectual power, his hand may be deft and his fancy glowing. He may be rich, and clever, and influential, and yet the soul that has none of these natural gifts and graces, but has been born into the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, is invested with powers and possibilities beyond anything the unregenerate man knows. We never touch reality until we do it in Christ; we are helpless to do it otherwise; and reality is the beatitude of the love of God. Those of you who are acquainted with Mr. Shorthouse’s famous novel “John Ing'lesant” will doubtless remember the crisis in Inglesant’s life when, in a mean little hut, vision of Christ was granted to him. He saw as with his bodily eyes in visible form. “The halo round his head lighted all the hovel, so that the seamless coat he wore and the marks upon his hands and feet were plainly seen, and the. pale alluring face was turned not so much upon the bed and upon the monk as upon Inglesant himself, and the unspeakable glance of the Divine eyes met his.’ - To me the impressive thing about this narration is not so much the phenomenon thus described, though I quite believe such things have happened and do happen, but what it suggests. That is the way Christ does come into the hovel of our individual earthly experiance, and lights it with his presence, at once revealing its squalor and filling it with heavenly glory. It is the supernatural breaking through into the natural, the divine invading the human, to deliver it and transform it into its own likeness. No greatness of ours can gain it; no goodness of ours can earn it; it is an act of Divine grace operating from a region far, far above all question of human greatness and goodness.- We simply appropriate its benefits by faith to the saving of the soul. STANDARDS OF GREATNESS. Society has various standards of determining greatness, and some of the standards are false and evil. Men arc estimated by mental and physical qualities. They are of fine physique or clever in manipulation, and therefore honoured. They can speak winsomely and convincingly on abstruse and difficult questions. It was thus the Greeks judged. The genius which touched the canvas with light and moulded marble to passion, and uttered yare thoughts in melodious language, received the tributes of his fellows: but the human soul was not esteemed. Jesus Christ speaks quite otherwise. He declares there is x a Divine quality inherent in the human soul and the meanest man, and the basest woman, bears the impress of God’s image. So let us regard men, and while we recognise distinctions of gifts and talents and despise none, nevertheless it is true that goodness is man's crown.