PREACHER TELLS OF RELIGION IN ACTION.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18545, 20 August 1928, Page 3

PREACHER TELLS OF RELIGION IN ACTION.

SEPARATION OF ETHICAL AND SPIRITUAL IS IMPOSSIBLE, HE SAYS.

At the North Brighton Baptist Church, the Rev John Takle preached from the text: “As the hart panteth after the waterbrooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God”—Psalm 42, verse 1. lie said: Doubtljess the Psaimist had seen a noble creature with heaving flanks and dilated nostrils, panting across sun-baked ground to dry wadies, seeking water with which to slake its thirst. To the devout singer of Israel, it was an image of his own soul yearning for the foun tain of the deep of God. Men of every race vibrate in sympathy with this poetic picture of the Hebrew seeker, and thus testify to the universal Godconsciousness of mankind, not that all peoples view God in the same way; far from it. The Hindus, for instance, for over thirty centuries have been intensely eager in their search for “The Reality” and jhave evolved wonderful systems of religious philosophy. They consider the goal of all religious effort to be the annihilation of individuality and personality. This alone, they believe, can ensure absorption into deity Sufi Mohammedans, who are the mystics of Islam and total many millions in Persia, India and Egypt, have turned from the orthodox Moslem conception of God and are seeking knowledge of “Heart” in the universe. Their heterodoxy comes nearer to Christian doctrine than does the original faith of Mohammed.

The religions of non-Christian peoples may not be in accord with our own; yet they show that, within the heart of man, there is a reaching after the Unseen; they prove the power of religion at, work in the soul, which, from the first, has been the great deep, in man calling to the deep in God’s fulness.

“My soul panteth.” This by itself may mean nothing more than the modern thirst for material acquisition and “the pleasures of this life,” described by Jesus as “thorns which choke the good seed.” It is well expressed in the popular slogan: “We want more wants.” People possessed of this modern thirst embrace the world and. shut out the Infinite, but those who say in sincerity the whole prayer: “My soul panteth after Thee, O God,” and live in the spirit of it will find the soul rising in aspiration and growth to further spiritual enrichment. Which is predominant with us—high aspiration or material ambition ?

How may we define God? We are living in a time when men define things in the terms of motion. Do we think of God as living, active and passionately desirous of the welfare of mankind in time and eternity ? If man breathe with intense desire, why should it be strange if we regard God as hard breathing in desire? Shall He be less intent than man that His will, His plans and purposes be carried out: What earnestness there is in the text, “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” Does it move us to believe it?

In his poem, “The Hound of Heaven,” Francis Thompson, in arresting language, has described the unceasing, persistent, '.resistless pursuit of “this tremendous Lover,” who, unrecognised, follows the soul “down labyrinthine ways” until at last the recognition came.

Mr Takle said: With some people God is too statuesque, a transcendental figure, possibly an Idea inherited from childhood. Spiritual experience reveals that He is “the Life, and that -Life was the Light of men.” His activities in righteousness, truth, goodness, redemption and social morality, as revealed in Amos, Isaiah and other prophets, are perfectly manifested in the character and teaching of Jesus Christ.

Those who desire a change of expression from the static theological definitions «;ay that God is like Jesus in character and .purpose. God was in Christ working, forgiving, healing, serving men and reconciling the world to Himself. If ever there was true religion in action, it was in Jesus. To-day. some people cannot tolerate the religious aspect of our faith. They think of Christianity as an ethic that might serve very well for the saving of our civilisation. They would separate the spiritual and ethical in Christ’s teaching. But that is impossible, for Christ’s lofty ideas of brotherhood, of the infinite value of the soul and the standard of human character, and the social principles which lie laid down, are deeply joined to 11 is religious teaching, for all proceed ultimately frona the character of God Himself. The deep of our soul can know the deep of God by our willingness to will the will of God.