ON THE THRESHOLD OF SUNDAY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19367, 25 July 1925, Page 2

ON THE THRESHOLD OF SUNDAY

(Contributed by the Wanganui Ministers’ Association). THEORY AND PRACTICE. America just now is in the throes of a violent religious controversy. It is I being conducted with the vulgarity | that must make all serious-minded men, I whatever side they are on. mourn. Yet ' it is typical of the tragedy of the atti- I tude of tht* ages to the Gospel of Jesus ' Christ. Men are quite 'willing to i wrangle about it, and fight for it and ! even kill other people on the plea that i it is to the glory of God. What very 1 few are willing to do is the simple i thing Jesus asked —to practice it. He I asked us again and again, in regard to j His teachings, to do them, not to argue around them. The test of our loyalty to Him is not our opinions but our character and actions. The test of our , Christianity in the New Testament is not our theological orthodoxy but how we are treating othei people. When I at length, after we have lived our ; lives, we stand before the judgment seat of Christ, we are not going to be • cross-questioned as to whether we could square Genesis and modern science, or ; whether we believed in the Virgin ; Birth or physical resurrection, or what our opinion is as to the authorship of the books in the Bible. On these matters the opinion of most of us is valueless to both God and man, for wo are mostly quite incompetent of forming an opinion, and mainly so lacking in the requisite mental capacity and knowledge that our opinions are quite worthless even if we form them and express them. But what Christ is going to consider is whether we have been kind to other jjeoplc in their troubles, even if they have brought those troubles on themselves. In a sentence, the test of our life will not be the , correctness of our opinions, but our practice of Christian love. KNOWING AND DOING. Now this judgment of us is based on the very nature of the life of the spirit. Spiritual life is concerned not with the existence of facts but with the value of those facts. Science deals with the nature of existence, religion with the value of existence. To a certain extent the one re acts upon the other, but it is a false method when we try to form our religion by science, or our science from our religion. Science patiently examines fact after fact and gradually builds up its ultimate ideas about the nature of existence. Religion works in the opposite way. It makes a leap of faith to its ultimate idea and then proceeds to test experience by the light of that idea. 'That is true whatever a man's religion, whether he be a materialist or a fundamentalist. But the proof of each is the same—experiment, not arguing. Only “rationalists” try to arrive ht facts by arguing, commonsense folk seek truth by experiment. All that reasoning can do is to bring to clearer expression a truth already implicitly believed. New truth comes from experiment, from observation of facts. And these new facts are revealed by doing. We learn by doing. This is absolutely true of spiritual values. No theorising can teach us the beauty oi a work of art. Only an artist can really know it, and we lesser folk know it in the measure in which we have attained to some measure of practice. For instance a man who has never tried to sing or play has not the primal elements in his mind enabling him to form a judgment on the beauty of a song of Handel’s or a sonata of Beethoven's, and no amount of theorising on the science of acoustics can give it to him. So ds it with religion. It is by the practice of religion that we develop the l capacity to understand religion. This |is Christ’s meaning when he laid : down the fundamental law of religious growth —“He that willeth to do the will of God, he shall know the doctrine.” It. is by the practice of Christianity that we get to know the truth, the power, the glory of the Gospel.

MAKING A CHRISTIAN. How then does a man become a Christian? How do we learn to know Christ as God? Certainly not by arguing about the historical truth of tac Virgin Birth, etc., nor even by being convinced of the intellectual validity of the doctrine of the Trinity. Most of us have not, and never will have, sufficient intellectual capacity to even understand what these questions are about, let alone answer them. M e clan but accept the verdict of men wiser than ourselves. Our way is plain and practical. Jesus stands before our conscience as the Ideal of Character; thnt's the kind of man and woman we ought to be. If we face the fact of Christ we must realise our sinfulness. But He does not crush ns. That is Tlv wonder of His perfect goodness. It

does not discourage us but awakens in as a great hope. We ought tit be like Him: we can be like Him: we will Im like Him. So we start trying and fail Then a bigger hope takes possess!'.::

of us. He will. He can help us. We find ourselves trusting in Him for help, we find ourselves praying to Him, an 1 we find that He is helping. A new

life, a new power, has come in ami is moulding and shaping us into His l.knness. We find by experience that 'b' takes three values fur us—the moral I ideal—wo must give Him unquestionI Ing loyalty—the ground of our hope—- * we yield to Him utter trust as a Sa'-’-iour—the source of our power—-we find j ! Him a living spirit within us, changing i us from glory to glory into His likeI ness. Thus He lakes in us and for us i the value of God. That is the unshakei able fact of Christian experience of jHirn las Saviour and Lord. It is that. ■ experience which makes us Christian®, i Theology is just the effort of reason !<■ ! relate that fact of experience to the i other facts. It may be in many eases ’ crude, in every case it may be parti illy | or even largely unsatisfactory: it may and does need continual re-adjustment. ■ But there is no need 1o refrain from ' Jiving out the facts till you ger T he : theory portecr. The man who wiil not ! start* trying to live the Christian life I until he has an entirely satisfying I theory of it is as foolish as a. man would 1 e who would not open his eyes and see until he had an entirely satlsfving theory of optics and of the transmission of light. Vvhat Go I and man are ically interested in, is not our r theory of t l < Christian life hut our 1 I practice, of it i- it m inifests its r - wcr " and beauty in cur character am! service. “Follow Me” says l.'n> Msstcr, " not “argue about Me.”