SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LX, Issue 143771, 20 April 1912, Page 6

SUNDAY READING.

Notes of a sermon preached by the Rev. J J. W. BURTON m the Whiteley . Memorial Church. THE COWARD AND THE MAN. Text; ‘‘How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.”—l. Kings, xviii., 21. What a magnificent man was Elijah 1 It is a wonder that some of our greater dramatists have not taken him as the central figure ot some mighty work. Milton toon bamsou the Wrestler, and made him a symbol ot struggling humanity ; but Elijah stands in moral screngui and beauty above Samson as a sunlit peak lowers above a common plain. Little wonder that Elijah wqp a popular hero in Palestine in the time oi Christ, and that the Jewish race fervently Delieved that lie would appear among men once more. He was a great patriot not the jingoistic, Dreadnoiignt, limelight patriot of these days, but the "still strong man,” one who could rule and who Clare not lie. He was a child of the desert; he was reared amidst its haunting solitudes; tho spirit of the self-sufficient mountains had clothed him with the enchanted armour ol detachment. He had Ic-trned from tho solemn forces oi tiue a fear that knew no other tear; ' and his whole life was a protest against a corrupt civilisation. He was a rebel against Society, for the Society of his day had left out tho ideal of righteousness—the ideal for which alone he lived. Ho came but seldom, therefore, to the haunts of men; and when ho came it was to deliver his message. What cared ■he for the threats or flattery of his follows ? They could give him nothing—neither wealth nor fame —for he wanted them not; they could take nothing from him, for his sole possession was his faith in God—and human hands cannot clutch that. The utmost they could do was to kill him, but they could not even thus stifle his conscience-piercing words. It is thus we give hostages to falseness —we hold tilings too tightly. We feel that we ought to speak, maybe, but what could it cost? wo ask. If I speak thus and thus, we say, I shall lose. So we either lie by silence or sell our souls in compromise. A weak Israclitish king, Ahab, had married Jezebel, a daughter or the Phoenician court. She had introduced into Israel, Ahab weakly protesting the while, foreign and corrupt religions—the religions of Baal and Astarte. They were singularly sensual and grossly licentious; but Baal worship became the court cult, and the worship of Jehovah the God of righteousness—was almost banished from the land. The people had followed the royal example ,and Israel sank into abominable idolatry. What could one man do under conditions such as these? But suddenly, like the flash of a sword-cut, Elijah appeared before Ahab. For three years he had been a hunted fugitive with a price upon his head, sleeping in the clefts of rocks or beneath the stunted brushwood of the desert. Now he stands before the,soft, pliant king, and his fierce eyes flash .accusation. See them in this drama of conscience! Elijah, rugged in feature, his face tanned and beaten by the weather, his cheeks scored by fasting and prayer, his brow lined by serious thought and frequent vigils, his hair, unkempt and unshorn, falling about his shoulders, a rough mantle of camel’s hair around him and a girdle of beast-skin, ragged and tom, about his loins, his hands gnarled and knotted by efforts to win food from the bleak desert, and his frame emaciated • with privation—the Man faces the Coward. Hear the thunder of his voice as he denounces the effeminate king. See the royalty of righteousness, the supremacy of goodness. How tho trappings of position and of birth fall off in the presence of such regality, and the crown changes heads. The chance onlooker would call them Fugitive and Prince; the men who looked into their eyes would name them Brave Man and Coward.

THE COWARD’S POSITION is one of indecision and vacillation. “How long halt ye?" To halt is to walk lamely, to limp; and that is just what Ahab, had done and what the crowd assembled before Elijah on Carmel had been guilty of. They had limped first to one side and then to the other, as popular fancy seemed to indicate. They veered with every wind and became mere weather vanes instead of men. Little wonder that Elijah blares forth contempt for them. And have we not this class still in our midst? Is not one of the great needs of our times men of sturdy independence and unwavering conviction? One of the great curses of our age is that we have so few beliefs that we would die for. We may deride the bigots of a bygone age, hut wrong as they were, they were worth more than our spineless types of to-day. The coward piles up excuses—some of them plausible enough and some of them almost reasonable. He puts his head on one side, and with the air of a philosophic doubter says, “What is Truth? 1 He reminds us that the prophets of Baal and the prophets of Jehovah seem both equally correct in logic—how is a man to decide? So he stands aside, waiting, he declares, until the disputes are settled. But is that Man’s attitude? Doubt is a thing for man to master, and make crouch beneath his foot, and so be pedestailed in triumph. Choice makes manhood. I ■ “What is right?" murmurs the moral coward. He reminds us that the science of ethics is chaotic and uncertain. He points out that moral distinctions are not so easily made in this increasingly complex world. Right cannot he separated from wrong with n hatchet. He delights to preach upon the faults of religious people, and maintains that the followers of Baal are indistinguishable from the followers of Jehovah, that Ahab is not one whit better than Jezebel. Then he scuttles off like the cuttlefish in the inkiness he has produced, and would havo us believe that he has iustified himself. But it is the coward s attitude—the attitude of ‘funk, of indecision, of vacillation. THE MAN’S ATTITUDE is one of splendid scorn for coneemiences. “If Jehovah • be God. follow him; if Baal, then follow him.” That is a man’s fashion of thought. It is better for a man, actively and determinedly, to worship Baal, ‘ Jo go to the devil,” as we say, rather than throught weak compliance to worship Jehovah. Better Jezebel the Heathen than Ahab the Weakling, better Saul the Persecutor thaw Pilate the Trimmer. See the magnificent courage of Elijah I Alone he stood upon the granite of his own mdivicbiahty. He forgot all about himself m the sm-

cecity of his purpose. There was no gallery play, no foot-lights and stagepaint about his goodness. He believed in God, and he would serve Him though he served alone. That is manliness.

To veer how vain I On, onward strain, Brave barks! in light, in darkness too ; Through winds and tides one compass guides, To that, and your own Selves, be true. A man’s attitude to truth implies action. If Jehoyah follow him. It is not sufficient to arrive at some intellectual conviction; it must make itself real in action. If wo really believe in honesty, let us be honest, cost us what it may ; if we believe in purity, we must pay the price of restraint; if we believe in God we must serve him, though it mean that we lose a situation that Mammon offers. To believe one thing and to act another is to lose all captaincy of our soul. Elijah’s courage was rooted in his faith in God. His great formula was '’Jehovah, before whom I stand.” It was Milton’s conception of life as lived under “the Great Taskmaster's eye.” And the man who really believes in God, not as an intellectual affirmation of the mind, but as a fact for everyday life—that man can know no fear, save the fear of being unfaithful to his master. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom—and of every other noble possession of the soul. There is never any fTber way but the right way to the mAi who is God-possessed. This was an APPEAL TO CONSCIENCE. “And the people answered not a word.” 'Little did even jMijah trunk that conscience would so prick them. Righteousness made an appeal that no court nor wealth could suence. It is so still. Conscience doth make cowkrds oi us all. Let the best part or man speak and wo have ho doubt as to what he will say. -10-aay the issue is not between Baal and Jehovah. \Ve have travelled far since those days, and neither the conception of Elijah nor that of the priests of Baal is our conception of God. To-day, it is God or Mammon; Christ or , self j Truth or Compromise. We have to decide. There is many a man amongst us who knows in his, heart that he ought to serve God, to follow Christ, to deny himself—why doesn’t he? He is a coward. He is afraid. He dares not take a stand on the side of truth and right, for it might cost him self-denial, the reproach of boon companions, the mortification of a laugh against him. Is that a Man’s attitude ?

How long limp ye between two opinions? How long will you vacillate and weaken your wiU by indecision? Until your wilt is like a rotten board in which no nail of determination can get a.hold? “Infirm of purpose” was tho most scathing sentence Lady Macbeth could hiss at her coward husband; and the world that smiles at your weak compliance with its ways is curling its lips at your indecision. A higher conception of God than that of Mount Carmel makes its appeal to you. The hill Calvary, with its message of limitless love and perfect self-sacri-fice, speaks to you. The shadow of that great lonely Cross touches your life. Christ, the stainless, unselfish, courageous Christ, is the expression of God to you and to me. If Christ be God, follow him; if you have found some higher than he, then follow him. But decide.

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, In the strife ’twixt truth and falsehood, for the good or evil ‘ sidb ; Then it is the brave man chooses; but the coward stands aside, Doubting in his abject spirit,till his Lord is crucified.