SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 144209, 27 September 1913, Page 6

SUNDAY READING.

Notes of a sermon preached hy the Rev. J. AY.. BURTON in tho Wiitoley Memorial Church. THE AVIDER UNIVERSE. 1 Text; “The tilings which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.”—ll. Corinthians, iv. 18. Noble words those! And in Hie light of modern scientific thought, accurate words! Last Friday our papers contained a cablegram from the Old Land in which there was an extract from an address by Sir Oliver Lodge. Among other things, he is reported to hayo said, “AVe are deaf and blind to tho imminent grandeur around us unless we have insight enough to appreciate the whole, and to recognise in tho woven fabrics of existence tho overgrowing garment of a transcendent God.” These words convey.no fresh impression to those who pave been reading Sir Oliver’s articles in tho Hibbert Journal, and, indeed, they aro but a faint description of tho attitude of tho best and most compelling thinkers of the present day. The significance of the cablegram is in the fact that to the mass these words are strange, and represent a now attitude of the human mind. There have been, for many years now, voices crying in the wilderness and fervent lips heralding tho new Messiah of Spirit which is to save the world; but, until lately, neither tho ecclesiastical pharisees nor the materialistic saddncccs have thought the message of any importance. Iho priest has droned over Ins office, and tho chemist has watched the changes in his test-tube—and neither has heeded tho growing light in tho eastern window of his temple or laboratory. Yet, surely, the kingdom of spirit is at hand, and the winnowing fan of Truth is causing movement in tho heaped-up chaff on the threshing floor. There will need to be much repentance on the part of orthodox religionists if they aro to flee from the wrath to come; and there will be necessary some notable baptisms of professed unbelievers if they are to enter into this wider kingdom of freedom and power. the goodly fellowship of tho prophets may now cause their Te Deura to nns in the high arches of vast cathedral of spirit, for the ago of the unseen, for which they have long waited, is upon us; and tho tyranny of the ilicchanical is for ever ended. AVe may well ask, what aro tho most SIGNIFICANT SIGNS OF THE TIMES? Thev are not the wonderful discoveries of physical science, dazzling ns they have been te the eye and useful as they have been to tho race; nor have they been tho conquests of tho sword, winch have stained tho green earth and changed the colours of tho, map; nor have they been the exploration of our planet, which has now lost much of its romance because there are no more lands to conquer; not oven can wo find the true significance of our age in the mighty revolutions in social lifo and the reorganisation of commerce on a world-wine basis —these are but minor phases of our human lifo. Tho one vast, illimitable and omnipotentlypregnant movement of our day is THE RE-RECOGNITION OF THE SPIRITUAL on a grander and nobler scale than ever the. world has known. This is the thing that matters—fur it is the elusive, all-pervading, mysterious thing which foils the wit of man; it is tho magnetic variation which means tho reorientation of every mariner’s compass on tho wide seas of human thought. Like a fresh, cool breeze blowing through tho tired and heated streets of a city, this now spiritual impulse touches men to finer and holier issues. There have been ages in our world when tho spiritual was real to men and women—“ages of faith.” we call thorn; but, alas, they were too often ages of ignorance and superstition. Faith in the spiritual was mixed with belief in dogma, and the expanding mind of man outgrow' tho intellectual beliefs which wore thus connected with tho spiritual experiences. Tho uprooting of tho taros was harmful to much of tho wheat, and the spiritual harvest was lessoned. So there came a period of spiritual dearth —a period when Art, and Poetry and Music, children of spirit, also suffered hardship. Men revolted from impossible intellectual conceptions and, unfortunateIv, threw away the treasure because of tho rough c»rlhcn vessel in which it was stored. The arid scientific spirit took possession of men. They would have nothing but Facts—weighahle, cuttable, visible Facts. To explain these material facts, mechanical theories wore invented, and these became the gods of the intellectuals. They found tho disordered heaps of bricks lying confusedly about them, and with bleeding hands and weary feet they built their temple in which Truth was to dwell. Nor should we blame them over much, for they wore the best builders on tho earth then. Darwin, Tyndall, Huxley, Herbert Spencer—these were some of the master bricklayers of a past ago. All would have gone well, and men might have been content to that this ugly, square building, without facade or dome, was the only one possible to humanity, if some more curious and subtle minds had not asked questions ahcir. the Bricks! That these fitted in mast wonderfully, none could doubt. That they had definite form and shape, was beyond question. But what were they made of? Why wero they made? How were they made? AVho made them ? Men saw that there was something more wonderful than the temple of science—it was tho Stuff of which it was made. In other words, Men wanted to analyse the atom, to trace tho law back to its source.

Then came an opposition from the other side of the house—the opposition of materialism —which was just as unreasoning, prejudiced and intolerant as that of ecclesiasticism. One has only to read papers like the “Clarion” to see how dogmatism can shuffle and squirm to defend old ideas. It is not the august figure of Truth, but the shadow of some old mechanical theory of the universe that is being worshipped. A NEW SCHOOL OF THINKERS lias possession of the intellectual world, and, in thirty years or less, their conceptions will bo among the commonplaces of ordinary thinking. These men are just as earnest as the old materialistic scientists in their desire for Fact, but they want the inner Fact which is sheathed in the outer Fact. They want to know what the bricks are made of. Men like William James, Eucken, Bergson, James Ward are in the vanguard of human thought, and these are followed by others who express their ideas in the language of the common people. The old spirit of mystery that created the atmosphere in which poets and artists were born is ,

coming hack to our world again. God renews His ancient rapture, and humanity thrills with His spirit. Awe and wonder are filling our minds once more, and wo sco again that tho meanest flower that blows can give thoughts which often lio too deep for tears. Mon will not bow down to reeking altars red with blood, not only in the incense-filled church will they hear the Divine voice, hut tho call ot tho spirit will como from river, forest and sea, and men will wonder why, in a world of such marvel, they ever called anything common or unclean. No longer will wo talk about tho ‘’natural” and the “supernatural”—for the whole world will bo filled with the glory of God. AVe arc coming to see that pur text is profoundly true—the unseen is the real, tho invisible is the Fact behind all facts; the seen is but a passing phase, the visible is only tho wire along which the currents pass. God fills His universe—that, in religious language is tho teaching of the new thinkers. God IS everywhere. Even the older thinkers had an uneasy feeling that this might be true. Said Herbert Spencer. “There remains the one absolute certainty tlpit wo are ever in the presence of an Infinite, Eternal Energy from which all things proceed.” Sir Oliver as the representative of a newer school says wo must recognise “in the woven fabric of existence the ever-growing garment of a transcendant God.” This reminds us of Heine’s dictum: “Nature is visible thought.” Whilst our scientists have been sidetracked by tho glitter of mica in their quest for the gold of the universe, our POETS HAVE ALAVAYS BEEN SPIRITUAL. They have never believed in a loveless God’ amid His worlds. The hidden mystery of the universe has appealed to their clearer eyes, and one might spend an hour in merely quoting their visions of One God, one law, one element And one, far-off divine event, To which the whole cr'eation moves. In their attempts to interpret the sense of wonder in their souls they have always fallen hack instinctively upon tiio thought of a personal Presence— A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, AVhosc dwelling is the light of sotting suns, And tho round ocean and tho living air, And tho blue sky, ahd in the mind of man. And, to-day, the poet is comm" into his kingdom, and will don purple and fine linen, for even our black-gowned scientists are catching staves of ecstasy shaken from the reedy pipes of Pan. OUR GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS through all ages have always recognised the spiritual. Too often the message of the prophet has been scribbled over by the priest, and the statement of groat truths has become a vulgar incantation ; hut the strength of religion has always been in its insistence upon tho fact that man was ever in the presence of that Infinite and Eternal Energy from which all things proceed. In the dim twilight of tho world men twanged their hunting hews and brought music from them, and built » bridge of sound over the, abyss which separated them from the spiritual ■world. As man’s "mind developed he made pictures of tho great Not-Himsclf. The vast apostolic succession of great spiritual minds has ever appealed to the spiritual ns the nrtist appeals beauty. Like the artist, the saint has not been able to body forth his whole experience. Words have been too halt, music too coarse, canvas ton small to interpret the meaning of the spirit. And ns science , has never been able to explain the artistic instinct, neither will it he able to'explain the spiritual. Science stands before the canvas whereon beauty glows and talks learnedly about the chemical composition of the pigments which the brush of the artist lias caressed into meaning—hut no science can give a hint of the mind which created tho picture. And the spiritual reality of the world is a reality which will over baffle tho lens and test-tube —yet it is the only reality in which the soul of man can spread its eagle pinions. This renascence of faith in the unseen and spiritual is not a mere intellectual triumph; it is a practical fact. It is making more insistent in our etirs the voice ot the spirit. Tho great foot of tho universe is not Alatter, not l aw) not Order, hut God. He is a spiritual presence everywhere to he felt and realised, ' and from Him comes the strength in which alone men may live the richest life. Jesus was more sure of God than of anything else, and He came to such oneness with God through prayer and communion that Ho could sayl “I and the Father arc one.” Thus wo call Him divine, for He was cue with God. That too is our privilege and calling—to be sons of God. Do we pray? 'That is a radical question. Do wo keep in touch with the unseen reality ? It only we will realise the presence of God in all our life we shall pray.

Speak to Him thou, for He heareth, and spirit with spirit may meet, Closer art thou than breathing, nearer than hands and feet.

It is possible for ns to live in a halfworld—a material world—and ignore the unseen ; and wo are dead whije wo live. “When a man ceases to pray” (if I may quote Mrs. Besant again) “God fades out of His life.” That is the worst possible materialism. Within us, my brethren, is a never? dying germ of spirit—not fully awake yet, but waking. We are not cunning casts in clay merely—we are eternal spirit, I most firmly believe. The Old Book shadowed forth the mighty truth that wo were made in the image and likeness of God. It told us that the Divine Spirit stooped over our prostrate animal form and made it the envelope of living soul by the inbreathing of spirit. The breath of Cod is in us still —we are children of spirit—we outpace the stars.

What’s Time? Leave that for dogs and apcsl Man has Forever.

In ages long past the Prophet and Poet reached out hands through the darkness and touched Something, and they called it God ; in the shining days in which we live we have seen the Scientist, with bowed and reverent head, stretch out the same human hands of Faith, and find them strengthened by new-found power—for God is not only Prophet and Poet, He is Scientist too. New hone lights our face and irradiates our path, and the Future has no terrors—for God surrounds ns.

Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark 1 And inav there be no sadness of farewell When I embark; For though from out our bourne of time and place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face, When I have crossed the bar.