SERIOUS THOUGHTS

Waikato Argus, Volume XIV, Issue 1558, 16 May 1903, Page 4

SERIOUS THOUGHTS

SHEEP AND SHEPHERD. I My Sheep hear my Voice '; ' I know Mine own and Mine own know Mo': so our Lord confidently pronounces. Wo are His sheep. We must, if we would hear His voice, he His sheep. "We must know ourselves still, grown men as ■we are, to be dedicated heart and soul to another and a Higher than ourselves, to be absolutely in His hands, absolutely bound over—impulse, will, reason, feeling, and all—to the service and good of One who has a >vider vision, an infinitely fuller capacity than ourselves. Do not let us be afraid; He will not dwarf us, he will let us use all our gifts, reason and will—these we shall possess in full play, for they are His tools. But they ■will be used, not as if they are already perfected, but as if they had yet to grow to a far higher use, to a far nobler purpose. Our desires will not be crushed, but they will be accepted, not as a canon of right, but as prompting something greater than now they understand, as hints of a purer will, as glimpses into a better land, as flying lights from a clouded sun. T7p to that higher guidance we shall ever be aspiring, ever hoping to be shown more clearly, to know more vividly, to seek more unfalteringly. Up to that higher service we shall ever be moving, using what is, only as a step to what shall be, devoting all that wo are now to the necessities that draw us onward to a purer life, to a less selfish end. All this will have become possible, if only we can yield ourselves to that self-surrender which makes a flock of sheep under their shepherd so lovely a picture of delicious comfort, of endless refreshment, of enduring peace. H. Scott Holland (F),