For Sunday

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 71, Issue 219, 15 September 1928, Page 17 (Supplement)

For Sunday

“WHAT CHRIST IS TO ME.” (By Dr W. T. GRENFELL, of Labrador.) The older I grow, and the more I compare what Christ seems now to be saying every day with my own reactions, drawn from the lives of every class of many, rich and poor, well-in-formed and uninformed, self-conquered or self-indulgent, on land or on sea, the more I am convinced that my teachers were wrong to try to tell me that we had “nothing to do because it was all done for us.” (That is the negation of any meaning to our life on earth). My own deductions to-day more than ever convince me that what we do, small as it is, is of the utmost importance to Him, and that He came to earth largely to show us what things we can do that are pleasing to God, and by doing them Himself challenge us to follow Him, and so find the “meaning” or “light of life.” He knew that which Science has only discovered since radio activity gave us a new vision of this earth and discovered the world of the spirit, viz.: That we in human frames never know more than a rigidly limited amount. Our knowledge of the earth should always be called faith—it can never be anything else, and He knew it. He was much more concerned with challenging us as sons of God, by following Him to help bring a new Kingdom of God on earth, than with arguing about our intellectual attitudes. This is what our teachers meant, possibly, when they spoke of “Believing in Him.” I hope so, anyhow. Thc word believes means “live by.” That Ho never did mean we should either be “cast out” because we did not recognise Him, or that we could understand Him before we followed Him, is certain, because he asked everybody to “Follow Me,” and none of those who first followed Him did understand Him, and considering that they all ran away it is a question whether any of them really believed more in Him than Thomas did. Our vision of this meaning of Christ’s challenge has united us absolutely in Labrador in work, and then in seeking that strength, that wo all admit we need, beyond our own, if we are even distantly “to do to-day what He would do in our place.” and if we are to believe that we may go out and preach the Gospel of the Grace of God without any other qualifications to be labelled Christian so far as our mental convictions go, than this willingness to follow, which He said would win faith for us. Jesus said definitely to Judas Iscariot: “Go out and preach the Gospel.” His explanation of this seems to me to be: “If we follow Him we shall have, or find, the light of life.” I have known preachers, professional preachers, who have been paid to preach all their lives, and yet could not conscientiously claim ever to have been “fishers of men.” The contrary is also our expcrienc, viz., that no self-indulgent or selfish man, even with any amount of degrees or labels crediting him as a Christian, has any real power just, by taking to recreate men—this life we- can give—but not by might or power but only by His spirit manifested in our own following of Him. Who would lend «, man a five-pound note because he had a D.D. or was called a Christian 1 ? Who would, to-day, be led to lay down his life by any mere talking, if thc preacher did not do from day to day the things that Christ would do in his place? “Whtit a man is speaks so loud,” says Emerson, “that you cannot even hcai what he says.” A statement that grows truer every day. On the contrary Christ says: “Follow Me and ye shall be made a fisher of men. ’ I can only say that 1 have been lifted out of myself and nearer to God, and got a clearer vision of what God means to human life, many times in schooners’ fo’castles or in Labrador cottages than I have in any cathedral or other preaching place. Take this example: One night in a Labrador house I was trying to work out. what the father and the mother of a large family of children could do to fend off starvation during the winter. Their last barrel of flour had been opened. It was then only early in November, and they had nothing in sight for winter in the way of food except what they could shoot or trap, till June should conic round again. Not long before a man further north, late in the spring with his family starving, had driven out his wife and eldest son to go south and seek a neighbour who might feed them. He had then killed his small children with an axe, and shot himself. Even as I sat in the, cottage a knock came at the door, and my friend went out into thc entrance porch, and I heard him talking to a neighbour. I then distinctly heard him ladling out flour from his barrel into a baking tin that, thc neighbour had brought. “What were you doing, Tom, D I asked him when he came back. “I was lending Uncle George a pan of flour,” he said. “Is he out of it already?” I inquired. “Yes, he is,” was the reply. I then asked him: “Will he ever pay you back?” and he said: “I do not think so, I do not think he can.” I asked: “Then why do you do it when your children arc already hungry?” The man looked into my face and said simply: “What Would you do, doctor?” On another occasion a poor fisherman, who had taken me across the bay to see a dying man, apologised when at last I got to his house cold and wet because the hot tea

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that he offered me had neither sugar or milk. There were several children in I the room partly grown up, and miserI ably clad. In the attic I found an ’ old fisherman dying of cancer of the throat, and his old wife, blind with cataract, crooning from her broken heart over the partner of her life. After doing what I could I came down the ladder that served for the stairs and asked my friend whether this was his father. “Only a neighbour,” he replied. “How long has he been in your house,” I asked. He replied that the man had been there about a year. I said: “Do they pay anything for their food?” “They have nothing to pay.” I then asked him: “Why do you do it, seeing that you and your children are so much in need.” The man looked into my face and said the same thing: “What yould you do, doctor?’’ Those are the preachers who appeal to thc youth of all ages, but especially of to-day, viz., the men who do things. If increasing experience gives increasing wisdom, as I try to write down what I think of Christ asks each individual of to-day, it is to do the thing that pleases Him. To have courage to follow Him and leave intellectual faith to be won by experience—of long, hard and expensive experience —but to bo won in the good fight, as every worth while acquisition of man must be. Thc humility of modern science is a greater marvel than over its wonderful achievements. Humility, not. infallibility, is the note that thc man of to-day responds to. Life is not a tragedy, it is a field of honour. What the Christ’s teaching leads me to do for Him is the gauge I shall be judged by. ft is unquestionably the gauge by which men appraise any claim to the title Christian. What Christ seems to be asking me for every time is not comprehension but apprehension, not belief but courage. His religion is not the mean emotion that seeks to save itself, but that ennobling onp which in willingly Laying down life for others, finds its own salvation. CHRIST OF THE CROSS. When mother-love makes all things bright, When joy comes with the morning light, When children gather round their tree, Thou Christmas Babe, We sing of Thee! When manhood’s brows arc bent in thought To learn what men of old have taught, When eager hands seek wisdom’s key. Wise Temple Child, We learn of Thee. When doubts assail and perils fright, When, groping blindly in the night. We strive to read life’s mystery, Ma with the Light, We turn to Thee! When shadows of the darkness fall, When sin and death thc soul appal, A Captain on the stormy sea, Christ of thc Cross, We cling to Thee! And when thc worlds all ended are, When dim ami cold arc sun and star, I glory then our souls made free, Thou God enthroned. Shall worship Thee! Exchange.