On the Threshold of Sunday

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 18790, 26 May 1923, Page 15

On the Threshold of Sunday

I (Column Contributed by the Ministers’ Association}. BROTHERHOOD. | The crest and crowning of all good, I Life’s final star is brotherhood, ! For it will bring again to earth | Her long-lost poesy and mirth: i Will send new light on every face, A kingly power upon the race. And till it come we men are slaves. And travel downward to the dust of graves. Come, clear the way, then clear the way I Blind creeds and kings have had their day. Break the dead branches from the path; Our hope is in the aftermath— Our hope is in heroic men. Star-led to build the world again: To this event the ages ran: Make way for brotherhood—make way for man. Edwin Markham. THE PRAYER FOR THE WEEK. "Blessed Lord Jesus, teach Thy Church what 1t means so to live and labour for Thee, in the spirit of unceasing prayerfulness, that our faith may rise to the assurance that Thou wilt in very deed, in a way surpassing ail expectations meet the crying need of a dying world. "Amen.”—Andrew Murray, D.D. THE VERSE FOR THE WEEK. “The harvest truly Is plenteous, but the labourers are few; pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest that He will send forth labourers into his harvest.”—Matt. ix. 37-38. THE GENTLENESS OF GOD. “Thy gentleness hath made me great."—2 Sam. xxii. 36. We wonder, sometimes, when God is so great, so terrible in majesty, that He uses so little violence with us who are so small. But His way is to be gentle. He remembers that we are dust. God is gentle with us all—moulding us and winning us many a time with no more than a silent look. So God did not drive the chariot of His omnipotence upon Peter and command him to repent. That one look laid a spell upon his soul which was more than voice or language through all his after-life. Here, then, are two great lessons—the gentleness of God. and the gentleness of the soul—the one as divine a marvel as the other. God may be dealing with us In some quiet way just now, and we not knowing it. So mysteriously has all our life been shaped, and so unobtrusive the fingers which mould our will, that we scarcely believe it has been the hand of God at all.—Henry Drummond. THE USES OF THE PAST. Not for nothing did God bestow upon us memory; not for nothing do His servants recollect themselves, look back, call to mind, remember. We might almost content ourselves, if we desired to humble the pride ot anyone, with saying to him: Let memory work; think of that shameful fall which you had yesterday, or the day before: that broken resolution, that outbreak of temper, that irreverent worship, that omitted duty, and that secret sin thought of, not done. I can scarcely see how proud whose memory is not dormant. We must not entirely forget the things that are behind, so far as our past sins are concerned, if we would humble as we ought to be. i It is possible that upon some the memory of the past may have an elating influence. There are those who trust too much to a past conversion and look too little to a present consistency. St. Paul utterly disclaims any such trust; telling how he forgets the things behind, and reaches forth only to the things before; nay, declaring his conviction that he might even preach to others, and yet himself be a castaway. But far commoner is the opposite risk; far more in numner are tney whom the thought of the past deeply depresses. May it not be said to such persons: Forget the things behind? When the question is ot courage or cowardice, or resistance or flight, then forget the things behind: let past falls be forgotten; let past proofs of weakness be disregarded and dismissed; put your trust in God. and in His name and strength go forward. —C. J. Vaughan. “A NEW CREATION." Men have fabled fancies of a fountain in which whosoever bathed grew young again, his limbs restored to elasticity, and his skin to clearness. To the old world it was as good a thing as priests could promise to the good, that when they died, the crossing of that dark and fateful river should be the blotting out for ever from the soul of all memorials of the past. But God gives us a better mercy than the mercy of forgetfulness. The Lethe which obliberates from recollection a sinful past Is a poor hope compared to the blood cleansing, which permits us to remember sin without distress, and confess without alarm. Or what would physical rejuvenescence be, compared to the “washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost”, the rejuvenescence of the inner soul-life, the life of life made young? With a new self, cut off from this dreadful moral continuity with the past, eased of one”s inheritance of self-reproach, and made quick within with the seed of a new future, all things seem possible to a man. The whole world changes when we change. Old things pass away; all things become new:—J. Oswald Dykes. FORGETTING AND REMEMBERING. Forget your mistakes, your worries, your vexations, your slights, your wrongs, your disappointments. Forget your successes, your achieve-) ments. your prizes, your honours. I your titles, your merits—yourself!' I Remember your blessings—your i health, friends,’opportunities, your own frailty. Insufficiency, unworthin- ( ess, probation, responsibility Remember "Jesus Christ!”