SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 16462, 14 June 1919, Page 10

SUNDAY READING.

A Sermon preached, by the Her-. J. Napier Alilne in the V,hitoley Memorial Church.

THE GREAT UNUTILISED ENERGY,

Act? 1-S: “But. ye shall receive power, when the Holy Ghost is come upon you.”

The supremest, need of the Christian Church at this hour is the need of spiritual power. Protest, us wc will the impression is nbroad that the churches o|' the present clay do not meet the needs oi onr present stage ol development: that they are inwardly old and outworn. That, there is power of a hind mi one can deny. “The rattle of ecclesiastical machinery’’ sounds forever in nur ears. Schemes for raising money, enterprises fur promoting the social and intellect mil welfare of the young people, a hundred laudable agencies aiming at objects wholly worthy and good,—the evidences of the Church's activity are legion, loir there is small sign of the sacrctl unction from above, the breath from the tour winds of Heaven. Is it possible to change all this? Is there anv way of correcting tho impression of Weakness that has gone abroad concerning the Church? As individual believers and as Christian communities may wc experience such an access of Divine strength as will make ns mighty to establish in the world an order where the will of Godi shall bo supremo? In .suggesting such questions I would not be understood us implying that power may be received which will necessarily subdue the rebellious and unfailingly command success in Christion service. Even our Lord Himself was not always successful. He was earnest cnougii. "Cold mountains and the midnight air, witnessed the lervour of His prayer.” Vet Tic sometimes lailed. He could heal the leper and raise the dead, but when He came up against the. unbelieving heart Ho could not do many mighty works there. He had many audiences, and He did not always esteem thorn. He craved for a congregation of believing, sympathetic souls, and He gathered it ail at last into the upper room, and the number of the names together was about a hundred and twenty. Always there will bo sonic who will turn away from tho Divine influences. I believe the Church sympathises to tho utmost with the demand of tho workers for a wider, fuller life, and for a greater measure of social justice, but if we were to fight tho battle of the proletariat from the pulpit every Sunday and were to do nothing cles, I do not believe we should get tho working men to the Church in greater numbers than now. Our age is intensely secular in its activities and aims, and for the time being is so absorbed in questions of reconstruction and material progress as to leave itself with little or no capacity for attending to higher things. Men may pass through life into eternity saying "No” to the Spirit of God. \Vliat wo desire to bo assured of is whether there may indwell the Church a force which will make all who hear its message realise that the powers of the world to come are grappling with them, and bringing them either to conscious surrender or to .stubborn rejection? Whether there may indwell the Church a power by which it will ho enabled to meet unflinchingly' the opposition of godless, god-forgetting men, and antagonise the spirit that is in the world ? Before us is the express declaration and promise of the Master that that which we most need is available. “Vo shall receive power when the Holy Ghost is tome upon you.” Christianity is not played out,; it has never yet been tried. A great thinker has tohl ns that the only T antidote to the snullessnoss of modern culture and the starving of all inward life is a return to tho deepening and quickening forces of religion. He believes that "in the bosom of Christianity unfathomable forces are slumbering. forces which have by no means lived themselves out. and are still capable of breaking forth again and driving human life into new channels with an irresistible and elemental violence.”

That is just a philosopher’s way of saying that a fresh ■ enduement of tho Spirit of God means another Pentecost. The wonder and splendour of that first baptism will never Jade away. AVhnt a transformation we see in the disciples! Their ardour for their Master, so susceptible to chill and change in the presence of opposition, leaps to a mighty flame. They no longer fear what man can do unto them. Despite threatenings and cruel mockings and seourgings, they march breast forward. The. Acts of the Apostles is full of a marvellous upspringing of hope and triumph in which every’ Christian soul partakes. 'There is persecution, hut there arc also gales of heavenly aspiration and an enthusiasm which many’ waters cannot quench. There are stripes, yea bonds and imprisonment. but there are also songs in the night and God sends His angel. Some -of the disciples- have to stand before Kings and Governors, but they’ arc not dismayed with any great amazement. AA’e see an enormous moral elevation, an amplification of their whole manhood, a radiance of spiritual joy, a power to move their fellows nutof all proportion to their intellectual attainments. Over every faithful soul is a profound sense of the nearness and reality of God and of Christ and of the unseen world.

Wc need in our time to recapture something of the experience of the early Christians. Exporimcntly it is to he feared' that the .majority of Church people are Jiving on the wrong side of Pentecost. Sonic there are indeed who have abandoned all belief in the third person in the Blessed Trinity, and “the thrusting forth of religion,” as Dr. Hastings lias well said, “is having its revenge in the entrance of superstition. Men and women who refuse to believe in the Holy Sprit read anxiously any hook which speaks of haunted houses and go eagerly to palmists and fortune tellers.” Most of us, however, can -still repeat the article in the Apostle’s creed which affirms the existence of the Spirit. But were we asked what part .such a belief plays in our life wo might he not a little puzzled for an answer. The Holy Spirit has never so possessed ns as to scatter our weakening fear, plan! light and power within our souls, and lift our whole being to the loftiest moral throne. Why should we longer deprive ourselves of this gracious ami glorious indwelling? The Spirit of Pouer is waiting to lie claimed. He does not hare to descend from some distant sky. .lie stands at each door and knocks, wishing to enter. Yea. (loser is He (lum breathing, nearer Ilian hands or feel. We need only apprehend and aprnprial.e Him. 11, is true io sav fhal nothing new came into the world at Pentecost. The new thing was the awakening and realisation in specially prepared hearts on an unprecedented scale of what bad always boon available for men. Von know that we are. learning in these later days to utilise many

powers of which previously’ wc were ignorant. Around us are ever throbbing the mighty forces of the Universe, and civilisation is rapidly- finding out how to yoke them to hor car. But these powers were equally in the world in the days of Abraham and Moses and the Pharaohs. The electricity with which we work our factories and run onf trams and light our homos and streets; all that makes possible wireless telegraphy was upon the earth when the inhabitants of New Zealand were head-hunters, and the dwellers in the Old Country were hollowing out their oaken boats on Clyde and Humber, Tyne and Thames by means of tire and Hint hatchets. The difference is not in the forces; those have been in tho world from the beginning, but that wo have discovered them, have come to understand them, to work in their track, and so to harness them to do our bidding. For 1900 years tho Holy Spirit has been heaving and moving in the Church. Occasionally we have felt the thrill and throb of His Presence, but for the most part w© have insufficiently apprehended His power and have scarcely appropriated it at all. That is the explanation of our ineffectiveness. That is why the chariot wheels of the Kingdom drive so heavily. We might achieve so much, and alas, wo achieve so little. Here is this power ready to hand, waiting to bo utilised; a power that would lift ns to a loftier plane of being and send us forth conquering and to conquer; a power that would erase from the brow of the Church the lines of weariness and the traces pf care, and make her as the lovers of Zion have ever delighted to picture her—“fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners.” The power is available; how are we to get it?

Not less than the, forces of the Universe, tho Divine power has laws and conditions. Yon are aware that if you got into proper relations with the lire it will warm you and fill you with its glow; but if you get into wrong relations with the lire it will 'burn and blister and consume you. The Holy Spirit is lire. You may not seek this power for personal ends, for the sake of office and popularity, for the place it may give you in the public eye. The life that would know the power of the Spirit must first he emptied,—emptied of everything that would hinder the Spirit from doing His characteristic work. It is necessary to pray, “Whate’r of sin in me be found 0 bid it all depart.” Tlie final condition is absolute and unreserved dedication to God. What loss we suffer because we will hold back some little thing! There is a story of a child who was playing one day with a valuable vase. He got bis hand into it and could not withdraw it again. His father tried his best to get it out, but all to no purpose. They were talking of breaking the vase when the father said, “Now, my son, make one more try; open your hand and hold your fingers out as you sec mo doing and then pull!” To their astonishment the little follow replied, “0 no, Pa, I couldn’t do that: if I did that I would drop my penny.” He had been holding on to that penny all the, time. It is a picture of ourselves. AA 7 © allow some poor unworthy pleasure or gratification to come between ns and liberty and life and power. And if wc would only drop the copper God would give ns gold. A 7 ou have heard of the man, perhaps, who had a big debt to pay to a man he hated. He paid, but he payed in farthings. And many who believe in tho duty of self-surrender are. giving their all to God like that —a farthing at a time. And while God is waiting for the farthings, drink and the devil and death are peopling hell and old night. “Breathe on ns Breath of God, Till we are wholly’ Thine, Until this earthly part of ns Glows with tho Fire Divine.”