SUNDAY READING

Taranaki Daily News, 18 June 1932, Page 2 (Supplement)

SUNDAY READING

By

the late REV. A. H. COLLINS

KINGDOM WITHOUT A FRONTIER.

“In it there is no room for Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free man; Christ is everything and every where.” —Dr. Moffatts tianslation Col. 111., 2.

This is a great text. It is one of the greatest of all the great texts which star the pages of the New Testament, a passage which justifies the belief that Christianity will one day be the universal religion. It describes a Kingdom without a frontier. The fourfold contrast is very remarkable. “Greek and Jew” is a racial distinction; “Circumcision and uncircumcision” is a religious distinction; “Barbarian and Scythian” is an educational distinction; “Bondman and free man” is a social distinction. These are the great lines of cleavage between nation and nation, between church and church, between class and class, and St. Paul says that all these obstinate prejudices are abolished in Jesus Christ, and instead of them there is created a . new, type of man baptised in the spirit of Jesus. It is one of the boldest of all the bold ■sayings of this catholic apostle of the new faith. , Some men think in mean streets, some think in small provincial towns, occasionally a man arises who thinks in.continents,. but how rarely a man appears whoso thought and sympathies are cosmic in their range and sweep! We are often lamed in our virtues, so that patriotism is a poor, pinched parochial thing. Brotherhood means black or white, and even religion itself shrivels into a mean and paltry sectarianism. But the arresting thing about the religion of Christ is that it takes no account of thes.e paltry differences. It is wide as the world, and free as the mountain wind.

THE SON OF MAN.

Jesus Christ was neither a Greek, nor a Jew, neither Teuton nor Slav, neither a German nor an Englishman. He. was the Son of Man. His doctrine is neither Oriental nor Occidental; it is cosmopolitan. His redemption draws no colour line. It is designed and fitted and free to the whole race of sinning and suffering men, and for this reason it is the one missionary religion ami/i the' faiths that took'their'rise in the sunlit Orient. Con . over your New Testament, and' you will catch this distinctive world note, as the key to all Christ’s teaching; “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature”; “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever bclievcth in Him might not perish.” The breath, the freedom of that! It would have been a bold, a startling thing for anyone to say, but it was specially so when the speaker was a .Galilean peasant, and yet standing in a remote corner of the slumberous East, untouched by the quickening breath of the West, far removed from its trade routes, and military camps, Christ knew that all men need and wait God’s mercy, and hence He said, “Give My love to the world,” and I know nothing that supplies more convincing evidence of His divinity. ,

EFFECT OF SPIRIT’S WORKING.

Later you see something of the same spirit in the Apostles themselves. By nature they were, a band of Jewish bigots, a company of narrow-minded provincials, whose thoughts moved in restricted channels, and whose hopes did not extend beyond their own national frontiers. ’ But when they caught the spirit of Christ, their minds dilated, their hearts grew roomier, they began to share His expansive sympathies, and His thoughts of world-wide Empire. “He is the propitiation for our sins, and not ours only but for the sins of the whole, world.” Thus does the Apostle wipe out at a single stroke all surface distinction. The etceteras of life are ignored. Ho addresses man as man. Here is one who needs a moral uplift. Here is a human being who is out on right relations with His maker. Never mind the caste of his. features, the colour of his skin, the cut of his clothes, or his particular social status. The man is more than all else, and Jesus Christ is-out to save man. That I say is the distinctive note of the Christian Gospel.

NO RACIAL DIFFERENCES.

Note then, the Christian Gospel takes no account of racial differences. There is neither Greek nor Jew. The personal ministry of our Lord illustrates this. His first disciples and earliest converts were members of the Jewish race, for He came to seek and to save that which was lost out of the house,of Israel, 'but His search did not end there. One memorable day when the sun was high and all nature glad, there came a company of Greeks, saying, “Sirs, we would see Jesus.” When the Master heard that His heart rejoiced for in the coining of the Greeks He saw the first fruits of°the harvest He would reap in ‘'the field which is the world,” and He lifted up His voice and cried, “and I if I be lifted up from the earth will draw all men.” That day Greek and Jew were made one. Another day a Roman soldier came saying, “Lord my servant is sick,” and Christ, with no touch of national scorn, answered, “I will come and heal him.”

Thus Jew and Greek and Roman found the -same glad welcome, the same divine help, and it has been the same ever since. The Gospel has been carried from the equator to the poles, from Arctic snows to tropic heats, and everywhere is welcome as sunshine, as daily food and dear mother love. It has never failed to meet the heart’s sorest need. In Birmingham and Benares, in Manchester and Madripur, in the literary man and the lorry man Christ meets the deep universal heart-hunger of the race. ’

NO CREDAL DIFFERENCES.

. Note this also, the Gospel disregards credal differences. There is neither circumcision nor uncircuincision. But circumcision was the Jewish badge, and if a man did not wear the badge he could not be saved, so St. Paul believed in his pre-Christian days, but he had moved ahead of all that, and now in effect he says, it is not a ceremony you need, 'but a saviour, not a creed, but Christ'-Himself that saves; systems are nothing, save as they help a man nearer God.

In England you have Protestantism; on the Continent of Europe you have Romanism; in Turkey you/have Mohammedanism; in China you have Confucisrn; in India Buddhism; in Africa. Fetishism; but none of these isms can save, and none necessarily destroy. 1 make no question that the redeemed in glory everlasting will include representatives of them all.

"Our little systems have their day, They have their day and cease to be, They are but broken lights of Thee, And Thou, 0 Lord, art more than they.”

In the early days of my I P inlsfcl^ a l f l England, I went to preach in a country town on the £™ fti ;f de ° f swe eping mans vast estate. The wiae park-lands the velvet. lawns, inas . glorious oaks were walled, i ;„.„ I . V nls give iron gates at convenicn nropcrThe grounds were the abso ue ty of the Duke of Marlborough. Head mitted or excluded them The common folk could only enj y o„ s»Se,««e. But b » ’,l could Ü B o common, where th. JIMS browse lus “W o' 3 t tllcll . own sweet will sprea ding eTiXoX.o vinoge u snntl.y.stood. ™ V ?L th t ’.X t NX»nd«r cf ene.o ft ' that open space.

THE GOSPEL’S UNIVERSALITY.

That walled , and gated park is like the isms we have devised, and labelled “Private” “No thoroughfaie, but the Gospel belongs to no church or sect or party. It is “the common salvation and “whosoever” is written everywhere. Further, the Gospel takes no account of cultured or rude. Therein neither barbarian nor Scythian. -j ow Greek was the flower of culture—the representative of poetry,, philosophy, music, art, and our galleries hold examples of Greek treasures. Barbarians were men outside the Greek world, and they were regarded very much as the Chinese used to regard the foreigner. We were all “barbarians to John Chinaman, because we were outside the celestial empire; Scythian was a lower type still—the off-scouring of all things —and to call a man a Scythian was to offer him a mortal insult. But St. Paul says these educational differences do not count, for though a man be the flower of English culture or an oppressed Nama Sudra.or an opium smoking Chinaman, he needs Christ and Christ meets his need.

THE ESSENTIAL MESSAGE.

The Gospel is one. The Saviour is one. Give me a congregation of reformed drunkards and profligates, or a congregation of Girton girls and university dons, and though the form of address may be different, the essential message will be the same, for the Gospel needed by each is this: “Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.” Of course, there are differences between man and man. The Himalayas are a little nearer the skies than the molehill, but in the presence of vast astronomic distances, the difference Is a triviality. So between the Greek, the Jew, the barbarian, and the Scythian the differences are not worth counting. “All have sinned” and “Christ died for all.” Finally, the Gospel takes no account of the social status. “Neither bond nor free.” But this was a line of cleavage which ran from the top to the bottom of the social fabric. St. Paul was a free man. He boasted of it, and said he could put his hand on the parchment which proved his Roman citizenship. “I was born free,” he cried, yet he saw that the salvation by Christ goes deeper than the accident of birth which made one man free and another a slave. And He says that at the cross and in the Church of God class distinctions are a contradiction and an impertinence. That is a fine story told of the Iron Duke. He was kneeling at the communion in the village church when, a country yokel came and knelt beside him. A fussy official sought to remove him, till Wellington quietly said, “Stay where you are, we are all one here.” Oh, this is a great Gospel. • The longer I live the prouder I am to preach it. ° The Gospel of Divine Fatherhood, the universal Saviourhood of Jesus Christ, and the common brotherhood of the race. Once we dare to give these doctrines something more thai lip service they will change the face of the world.

A DISSOLVING INFLUENCE.

I have said the Gospel ignores these differences, but it does more. It dissolves them, as diverse metals fuse in the crucible, and are made one. No nation has a monopoly of the arts and the sciences. Astronomy is not national; it is international. Mozart and Handel were German, but no one dreams of confining them within the bounds of the Fatherland, and when the “Hallelujah Chorus” peals and rolls in glorious waves of harmony, we forget all questions of nationality, and abandon ourselves to the cosmopolitan music. So with truth. One man sees it from one angle and another sees it from a different viewpoint. Hence our denominational orders. But beware lest you build your denominational fence so'high that you cannot see your neighbour, and specially beware you do not put barbed wire on the top. When the tide is out, the shore is dotted with pools, each the home of shrimps and crabs and minnows, and if these tiny things could think and speak, I suppose they would say their pool is the only world there is, but when the tide turns and the sea swings, the pools are lost in the great and wide sea.

The Gospel is free, the Gospel is adequate, the Gospel is available for you, me and everybody else. Welcome it. far and wide. “Names and sects and parties fall. Thou, 0 Christ, art all in all.”

OTTAWA CONFERENCE. ,

Sir Robert Horne, I understand, hopes to be in Ottawa during the sittings; of the Imperial Economic Conference. He ■will go in an unofficial capacity, 'but with the knowledge and approval thb Government. Many other members of) the House of Commons are also hoping to go to Ottawa if Parliament adjourns in time, and it is expected that many business men, in addition to those sei lected as the official advisers of Government, will be present. Sir McGowan, the head of Imperial Chemical Industries, hopes to be among the number.' The informal discussions, for which their presence will give an opportunity, may be hardly less helpful than the official negotiations.

FOR THE KING’S CUP.

Plans have now been settled for the air race, which will take place on the second Friday and Saturday in July, for the King’s Cup. Brooklands will be the taking-off place, and the course will bo one of 1223 miles, divided into two sections. The first stage will be an eliminating one. Only the 50 pilots with the best handicap performances over the first 728 miles will be eligible for the second day’s racing. The second' day’s route will be Bristol, Northampton, Brooklands, Shoreham, Portsmouth, Bristol and back to Brooklands to finish. Nothing foreign will be admitted to the competition, which will be an all-British race by British pilots exclusively. This is no doubt highly patriotic, but it docs knock some of the thrill of international rivalry Out of the event.