SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LX, Issue 143765, 13 April 1912, Page 5

SUNDAY READING.

Notes of a sermon preached by the Rev. J. W. BURTON m the Whiteley Memorial Church. LIFE AND DEATH. Text; “Therefore, be ye also, ready; for in an hour that ye think not, the Son of Man cometh.” —Matthew xxiv., 44. The chapter in which our text is found is a difficult one to understand. It would seem as if this were but the veriest fragment of a discourse of Jesus Christ ; and that many of the connecting links have been altogether lost. The talk with the disciples evidently commenced with a visit to the temple, and Jesus, reading the signs of his times, prophesied the overthrow of Judaisjn as an organised system of worship. But the destruction of Jerusalem by no means exhausts, the significance of some of the verses in this chapter; and 1 have found no’scholar who is able to give a clear and consistent interpretation of the meaning of these fragmentary words of Christ. There we must leave it. The purport of it ail is that men should be prepared for changed conditions of life, and that these conditions bring new opportunities and testings. It is therefore no violence to the teaching of the Master, though excgctically it may not be quite defensible, to apply this attitude to the great change we call Death. The consistent, teaching of they New Testament is this: That death is the ENTRANCE INTO NEW CONDITIONS OF LIFE. It is not' the termination of being: it is merely a change of the form of existence. It is the separation of that more tangible thing we call Matter, from that less comprehensible thing we call Spirit. The vita! power releases its grip of the . non-vital, and each goes its way. The dust returns to the dust, and the spirit flies to God who gave it. May it not. be that we have made far too much of Death ? ' There is something utterly pagan in our attitude to it even to-day. The cold silent clay, which but a few hours before was so full of warmth and motion, arrests our imagination, and makes us' boggle at the conception of a spiritual lire; but are we so sure of Death as we imagine? We are sure of Life; but are we quite positive about Death? Matter, we know, can never be destroyed: the utmost that- we con do is to change its form. It is immortal. Is, then, the highest product of our univer.se—personality—to be of less account? Shall the atom live, and the soul of man die? Force can never be lost in all the mazes of change. Energy knows no decay, no diminution—shall thought and feeling, the highest forms of energy, vanish in thin space Matter and energy persist—then why not life?

What veils the future from our eyes is not the grave, but our limitations of vision. It is not distance which conceals the stars, but the short sight of, man. A few years ago there were millions of stars that the eye of man had not seen but which to-day ho is familiar with. They. were there, but vit was not until ho applied the sensitised plate to the eye of the camera that he determined their presence. Our spiritual senses arc yet in their infancy. Millions of ages have gone to making the animal in us; millions more have travailed to bring forth the selfconscious into being; and the spiritual is still in the dark womb of the future. .We. know in. part and we prophesy in part. Professor Thomson, the other day, invented apparatus by which ho can magnify objects to such diameters that a drop of water would appear in sizo as large as our earth. The spirit .of man is extending his vision and training his ear, until one day we shall catch sights and whispers of the spiritual, which to-day are known only to faith. This, then, is the essential message of Easter— LIFE LI.VES OX. “I am the Resurrection and the Life,” said Jesus, ‘‘ho that believeth on Me shall never die.” Easter docs not stand for some mere physical re-aniraa-tion of our material bodies; its triumphant message to mankind is that Spirit persists. ‘‘My own dim life should teach me this, Trpi t life shall live for evermore, Else earth is darkness at the core, And dust and ashes all that is.” How deep is tho faith of humanity in the persistence of life? It is the strongest intuition of our nature. Doubt may cut the waters for a moment with its keen blade; hut the sea of faith closes the instant the steel is withdrawn.' It is only when we commence to speculate upon the nature and character of the life that our minds become at variance. But none knows. The most dogmatic is just as ignorant as the most questioning. The speculator, be he bishop or layman, has equal uncertainty to baffle him. Our questions fall unanswered from the heavens: it must be better so. This much seems clear: That Death is but a, change of condition. It is not the end of a career; just as birth may not be the beginning; it is an experience in endless life. “The death change comes. Death is another life. We bow our heads At going out, we think; and enter straight Another golden chamber of the king’s, Larger than this we lovelier.” Notice TEG CERTAINTY OF THE CHANGE we call. Death. “The Son of Alan cometh.” Nothing is more certain than that. Birth and Death are .the two margins of our present experience. As surely as we have experienced the one, we shall experience tho other. It is 'he great uncscapable fact of o istenco. And yet how persistently we try to ignore ft! The Latin authors could scarcely be brought to write the one syllable which meant to them the end of life—Mors. They phrased and paraphrased to avoid its use. All civilised peoples are the same. The Hindustani people, whose faith in the future is much deeper than ours, always say “Guzar gaya”—he has passed. We ourselves, people of less sensibility, usually smooth out the roughness of the term. An l we need no death-skull at the L-ict to remind us of the fact of dcaoh. It is ever before us, pretend indifference how we may. In the r. idst of our laughter, there is the solemn toll of the bell; when our dearest schemes arc absorbing onr thought, there is a 'prick in onr side, a flutter at our heart, a mist before our eyes which remind us that life has narrow margins. jCiis jp»s Diet pi iivmm floyt*..

smoothly on ; but cacti drop is a new drop, and will never return again. Our congregation to-night is not tho same, congregation of a month ago—for Death has been busy; nor will it be the same in a month’s time—for he halts not in his task. The Son of Man cometh, and one by one we go to meet Him. “.Humanity,” said Comte, “ consists more of the dead than of the living.” Those who are alive to-day are but the pitifnllest fraction of those who have looked on the sun.

THE UNCERTAINTY OF OUR PHYSICAL LIFE. is constantly impressed upon us. “In an hour that ye think not the Son of Man cometh.” We cannot prophesy when the great change will take place. Life assurance societies have their tables, hut only of the mass. They cannot gauge the individual. Death is often dramatic and sudden in his methods. Two men are in the field, talking over their plans for next harvest, judging the value of their crops, counting up their cattle—one is taken, and one is loft. Two women are grinding at tho mill, chatting pleasantly of the ways of children, confiding to each other the happy secrets of love, planning little surprises for those around them—one is taken, the other is left. It is tho seeming tragedy of life.

It is not so sad, maybe, to see men taken like a shock of corn fully ripe. It is the half-spent life, the just-open-ing flower, the tender bud, which cause us perplexity. We ask our questions; but Death is dumb. We know not what a day may bring forth. The mourner at the funeral of the one day, is himself on the bier the next. In the midst of life we are in death. All flesh is grass; in the morning it is green and groweth up, in the evening it is cut down, dried up and withered.

THE NEED OF PREPARATION FOR THE CHANGE.

is forced upon us. “Be ye also ready.” There is nothing morbid or cowardly in an attitude of preparedness for death. Should not the grub prepare itself for the wider life of the butterfly? And it best prepares itself by living the perfect life of its present state. Throughout life we see that present action determines future conditions, Thoughts make actions, actions habits, habits character, character destiny. “Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap” is a law woven into tho warp and woof of the universe. I have not much faith iu “death-bod repentances” (even though we could bo certain of such opportunities); the saner, the wiser s thing is to repent now. It will never be easier to get right with God than it is now. Every time you resist the strivings of the great Spirit of God in your soul, you make it harder for that Spirit to appeal to you. If the call came to-night—arc you ready? Is there no change in your attitude that you desire? Are there no sins that you would repent of before you meet God face to face? Is there no wrong that you have done a fellow-being that you would right as far as possible, before the final summons comes? Is your business in such a condition that you would not blush to have tho great, audit made by Christ Himself? Are there no hatreds, no desires, no plottings in your heart of which you are ashamed? Aro you ready ?

And more. How much have- you done to make the world better for your having lived in it ? . Goodness is not just absence of badness; it is a positive thing. “Inasmuch as ye did it not”—that is the ground of the soul’s doom. Oh, my brethren, this thought should weigh with us. There is so much to be clone in the world; so many wrongs to he righted by human hands and hearts; so many weaker ones to be helped to higher life. What are we doing? Let us work, for the night comcth when no man shall work. “Blessed is that servant whom his Lord when he comcth shall find so doing.”

Wc have all been tragically reminded of our text in the death of our friend. Charles Fieri how. It is a great joy to us to know that he was ready for tho sudden call. He was brought up in a Christian home, and tho gem ip influence of that went with him into life. He was always what we call a “good man”—honourable, generous, unselfish; but it was not until during the last few months of his life that he made the supreme .decision for Cod, and tho determination to serve and follow Christ. Then he was filled with a great anxiety to do something for his Master. He gladly look up the position of steward in this church, and there are many that will miss his kindly face and hearty hand-shake at the door yonder. One Sabbath saw him serving in tho earthy temple, tho next in the city of God, where temple there is none. At his own suggestion a little Sunday school was formed by him in his own house for those who wore too small to attend the town institution. Last Sunday the scholars stood at his opep grave and dropped flowers upon their friend. They will never forget him. Onr hearts are still sore, for we, too, had grown to lovo him—and wo arc realising his loss more keenly as tho days go iby. We sorrow, not for him, but for her who has been widowed, and for those who are to-day fatherless. God bless them. Odd comfort them. Who will take his place ? Wc can ill spare such men as he—unselfish, sincere, service-giving. I appeal to you young men concerning whom our friend was so anxious. His last work for me, as pastor of this church was to prepare a list of your names in connection with our brotherhood. Your names are written in his hand. I do not want to work upon your emotion, nor to traffic with your sorrow; but I know that the Spirit of God has spoken to some of you through this death. Decide to serve Charles Bcnbow’s God, and to-night pledge yourself in discipleship to the same Master that he strove to serve. There will bo upon your face, as there was upon his, a new gladness, and a life of wider usefulness will enfold you. “Be ye also ready, for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man cometh.”