SUNDAY READING

Taranaki Daily News, 18 February 1933, Page 2 (Supplement)

SUNDAY READING

the late

REV. A. H. COLLINS

INGLORIOUS EASE. “Anri it came to pass at the return of the year, at the time when kings go out to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel; and they destroyed the children of Ammon and besieged Rabbah. But David tarried at Jerusalem.” 11. Samuel, XI., 1. The fact that “David tarried at Jerusalem” is recorded here and in the chronicles of the Kings. The circumstance seemed trifling in itself and was scarce worthy of a place in the story, but read in -the light of David’s former habit and following events, it assumes an importance not to be overlooked. It was one of those fine pivot points on which great issues turn; a wisp of straw which marks the current’s drift. If David had not tarried at Jerusalem, the darkest, the most shameful and tragic deed of his life had not been committed, and the Fifty-First Psalm had never been written. As command-er-in-chief of the army his place was at the front, firing the zeal and stimulating courage by. his own example and, instead of this, he delegated the duty to Joab, and for himself sought inglorious ease. The historian marks the importance of the hour. It was the time “when kings go forth to battle.” The phrase probably points to the. return of spring, when the war horses, could find forage and the army could ' encamp with the prospect of advancing summer and ripening harvest. That some great struggle was impending is suggested by the fact that all Israel was pressed into service. The army had taken the field, prepared to brave the risks and the sacrifices; but the one. man who more than any other should have set the example “tarried still in Jerusalem.” There’s nothing in the story to indicate that State affairs required David’s presence in the Capital. 'Die kingdom was quiet. There was no rebellion hatching. The tribes had sworn fidelity. He spent the time in feasting and sloth, and when he rose it was not to dispense justice, or right wrongs, but to minister to fleshly sins. The old-time martial spirit had left him, and given place to an Oriental’s love of enervating ease, and something worse. For having nothing to do, the Devil found him employment; and having put off his soldier’s armour an arrow smote him and left a lasting scar. THE MOTHER OF MISCHIEF. Idleness is the Mother of Mischief. For a man to bide at the post of duty may involve risk; but not to do it is far more dangerous. The slacker easily degenerates into the poltroon. There are worse things than the long and hard campaign. There is injustice, cowardice, dishonour. Thus David’s false choice and the consequence lends itself to a wide treatment, and multitude of illustration. Empires, once the pride and glory of the world, have passed into oblivion, because their morals grew slack, and instead of following the beckoning hand that pointed the uphill path and the hard struggle, they chose the path of luxury and ease rather than the Spartan virtues and the strenuous battling. Churches that flourished and waxed mighty so long as they struggled have degenerated when they grew rich and respectable. It was not the Neronian persecution that harmed the primitive church; it was State patronage and a fat purse. “Silver and gold have I none,” cried the Apostle, “but such as I have give I unto thee. In the name of Jesus rise up and walk.” But there came a time when a prince of the Church boasted they could no long T er say “Silver and gold have I none,” for they had both in abundance, but one retorted, “Neither can you any longer say to the lame man, ‘Rise up and walk.’ ” One of Wesley’s men prayed, “God grant the Methodists may never grow rich.” and I hope you see what ho intended. WHY SOME MEN FALL. But I do not follow the line further. I am thinking of the individual. Am I wrong in saying there are many men in this Dominion who began life in poverty and obscurity and won success by dogged labour and splendid uprightness, and then fell into the ditch of dishonour when the wrestling ceased? In the far-off days they were simple, humane and considerate. They did justly, loved mercy, and walked humbly with God, but when easier times came, their best friends said, “He is not the man he used to be.” So long as David had 'Saul as his enemy he did not “tarry in Jerusalem,” when he was hunted like a partridge in the wilderness and walked the track of the wild goat, and hid himself in the glooms of Engadi, he was no coward. It was when Saul was slain on the mountain of Gilboa and all David touched seemed to prosper that his moral collapse came, and the Lord’s Anointed fell into deadly sin. More men are morally hurt by prosperity than adversity. John Bright gave sound advice to young men when he bade them made early choice of some great cause and devote their lives to its service. In this way, he said, men may live to see a difficult battle end in a great victory. Dr. Horton recently said much the same to one of the great public schools in -England, and he mentioned the social betterment and the League of Nations as supplying objects worthy to be served. John Bright and Dr. Horton might have gone a step further and said that in this way we may not only win a victory for some cherished cause, but raise a bulwark against “the howling sense's stormy sway.” For, after/ all, our chief concern is not with victory, but with the battle, not with “the shout of them that triumph,” but with “the glory of going on.” The first and best thing is not to win the battle, and the second best to be strong and brave. We are simply called to be brave. There is no failure save in not striving, and there is no defeat save in not doing our best. PERVERTED PHILOSOPHY. A few years ago we were busy trying to get to the back of the German mind; and to help us get there we turned to Germany’s mad philosopher to discover that his philosophy of physical force had poisoned the mind of the nation. Soldiering was not a way of life; it was the way of life. Man is a struggler. Life is a struggle. Man is endowed with an eternal and inalienable capacity for strife. Man must forsake the primrose path of dalliance and “in the teeth of clinched antagonisms follow up the worthiest till he die.” Battle makes him, and lack of it unmakes him. Life’s prize is not for the comfortable, but for the heroic. Germany’s contempt for France was that she had ceased to be virile; her scorn of Britain was that she was not the “Fatherland” but the “Motherland.” England indulged her children over-

much, and had a large family of spoilt children. Germany’s scorn of Belgium was that she was little. Her dread of Russia was that Russia was big and sacrificial. The teaching is not essentially false; it is a great truth perverted. You know what I think of war. It is wicked, brutal, and devilish. It is an insolent defiance of the teaching and spirit of Jesus. It must go. Only let us do a bit of clear thinking. War is not condemned because it is misdirection of the combattative instinct. We are made to strive. Force is better than feebleness. Life is not intended to be a -long holiday, but a long campaign. Its voice is not “Be comfortable, have a good time, lie snug, slip the yoke.” Its message is “fight the good fight; endure hardships as a good soldier of Jesus Christ; and having done all stand.” We are called to strive and win the mastery, but our battling must be moral battling; and our weapons must not be carnal, or our end selfish. “We are not here to dream, to drift, We have hard work to do and loads to lift. Be strong.” THE CALL TO-DAY. Isn’t it true that we need a call to sturdier thinking, more frugality in pleasure, and simpler living? Isn’t it true that our expenditure on the luxuries of life is becoming insane and our devotion to pleasure a craze? “Jeshuran waxed fat and kicked,” but our peril is lest we grow so fat we can’t kick. Our spectacle is not one David tarrying still at Jerusalem, but a host of Davids doing the same thing, and the consequences are much the same as are told in this chapter, as vital statistics and night clinics all too plainly prove. Reforms linger because David loiters. We could have ended the drink traffic and war, if we had willed it seriously. The evangelisation of the world waits on the will of the Church. Life is a battle, not man’s life alone, but all life and everywhere. The evolution of the universe from chaos to cosmos, from the lowest life to the highest, is the age-long story of struggle from one form of life to a higher. Man, in order to exist at all, must wage a continuous battle for food and shelter. The sun will smite him by day and the moon by night. Winter will freeze him; water will drown him; fire will consume him; disease will slay him, unless he be alert and vigilant. Nothing he wins can be won save at the price of conflict No world of pleasant summer days, no paradise of easy tasks could ever do for man what this rude and stubborn world has done. A world without difficulty and danger would be a world without enterprise, skill, forethought, a world without courage, patience and progress. A youth suffers a real and irreparable loss if his way be made too easy. Many a father whose early years were years of hardship and struggle, resolves in the false kindness of his heart that his lads shall be spared this experience, and have none of the rough and tumble he endured; yet with their superior advantages the lads are seldom quite the men their father hoped and dreamed, for a curse falls on those who “toil not neither do they spin.” Struggle and stern discipline are the conditions of nobility, and the end of life is not comfort, but character. THE AIM OF EDUCATION. So with education. Education is not a question of so many days at school and college, a struggle to pass examinations, and win academic lt is a question of the whole life, and /when the school days are over and the college gates are closed, he is at the beginning not the end. So again with our sacramental liberties, our social reform, our religious faith. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. One reform prepares the way for the next. To-day’s faith should stimulate to something finer on the morrow. “The path' of the just is as a shining light which shineth more and more unto the perfect day.” There is no such thing as complete and finished goodness. Goodness must be nourished and strengthened day by dpy or it will go from us like any other faculty that is not guarded and trained. “The grey-haired saint may fail at last, The surest guide, a wanderer prove.” The call of Christ is the call to the heroic, the tireless following of the Master, the diligent cultivation of the soul. Occasional effort, however intense, is not enough. The soul does not grow by fits and starts of piety. The blessing of blessings, which we call communion with God, cannot be won or kept by easy living. Depth and clearness of spiritual insight come only to those who seek it diligently. Religion may he too cheap and too easy. “Have you found peace, sir?” said one to another. “No, sir, I have found war.” .The best thing in life and religion is not peace. Our fathers were accused of belonging to “the hard church,” but our peril is lest we belong to “the soft church” and join the company of those who imagine religion can be had without seriousness or sacrifice, but the easy and pleasr ant way is not Christ’s, way. “I offer you hunger, thirst, cold, wounds, and death. Let those who accept these follow me,” cried Garibaldi to his tattered regiment of banished men, and they followed to the last unit. That is the call of Jesus Christ. Do you hear and will you heed? . “I ask no Heaven, till Earth Is won, Its sins wiped out, its people free, Its songs an anthem unto Thee. Hear Lord, and answer.” Egypt is a mushroom growth: Egjpt is a baby among the countries: Egypt for all her air of being ancient, for all her pyramids and mummies and antique art, is a jumped-up parvenu. That is the astonishing thought presented by Sir Murdoch MacDonald in his presidential address to the British Institute of Civil Engineers. He said, “Geologically Egypt seems to be about the newest country in the world.” All things are relative. Egypt’s civilisation is one of the most ancient in the world, but speaking geologically she is. a young country.For ten days a bear kept vigil by one of her cubs which had caught itself in a pile of iron scraps in the mountains of sub-Carpathian Russia. Gamekeepers who heard the cub’s howls tried to rescue it, but the mother would not let them get within a hundred yards of her young one. By day and night the bear kept constant watch, licking the cub when it cried in pain, while the other dub brought food for his brother. Finally the young bear died. Before they left the spot the two remaining bears buried the cub. American architects believe that skyscrapers will shortly be build of a new material as hard as concrete composed largely of brown paper built on a metal framework. The paper is moulded into slabs or blocks with coal tar resins under high temperature and great pressure.