THE FIRST EVICTION.

Waikato Times, Volume 97, Issue 15894, 19 January 1924, Page 11 (Supplement)

THE FIRST EVICTION.

EDEN LOST AND RESTORED. (By Darius. ) The catafalque in Tutankhamen's sepulchral hall is breath-taking in its beauty, the whole exterior being a radiant mass of gleaming gold, the surface of which is daintily carved with a scene depicting Tutankhamen receiving gifts from Osiris, with hawks spreading protective wings above. All the adjectives in our language fail to depict the beauty of this death chamber rescued from three thousand years of entombing silence and darkness. Magnificence such as that which amazes and interests the world to-day is in marked contrast to the austere simplicity of that oilier tomb hewn from the living rock for Joseph of Aramathca and dedicated to one Jesus, called Christ, for purposes of his secluded burial after crucifixion. The gold and the predatory birds are symbolic of an age of luxury and spoliation. The hawks are protecting their own to-day, with beak and talon as in the days of Tutankhamen. . The .road to 'wealth is not the road to immortality. Pharaoh is dead, but Jesus, called' Christ, is alive for evermore, because the dove and not the hawk was his emblem and his Kingdom is in the hearts of men. The Christ law is ttiat a man must make good or get out. Human society affirms that law. I have already said that I would not lift my voice in prayer to God to settle any man-made war. We let the dogs of war loose and then pray to God to whistle them back to kennel up. Wc make in- 1 dustrial wars as well as bloody international wars. Are we then lo be hedged round with peace through prayer, and forget that unalterable law that whatever a man soweth that also shall he reap? God tried the experiment of hedging man about with all felicities. Everything he required was to his hand —fruits and meats, milk and wine, woman and love, and beauty beyond imagining. Man did not need to make good—he had only to stay good, yet nothing would please him but rebellion; nothing would please him but a pulling down, a breaking and a rending, with a building up again upon his own lines. The earliest attempts at settlement on. lines of effortless existence proved a rank failure. Man did not stay good, so he had to get out. It was the first eviction as man did not keep the conditions of permanent tenancy. He has been out ever since, a predacious animal whose aim is gold and whose guardian spirit is a hawk. The Way Back, i The question we ask ourselves is, "Will man.ever get back to Eden?" Assuredly 'he will when he is disciplined by his experiences to resume his first relationship to Divine Duty. The salvation prescribed for us is work, and' the proper 'allotment and reward of work is the business of the sociologist The Pharaohs went out of business because they were predatory and not business men and wealth that disregards the fundamental truth that tho labourer is worthy of his hire, will have lo face revolt and everlasting antagonism. Business that devotes its, energies to the payment of large dividends and the building up of huge reserves with no kindly human consideration for the wealth producer, is bad business, and all the gifts of Osiris cannot free it from the reproaches of honest men and just 'God. Tell me lo whom should the poor be loyal and how can tho starving poor think Imperial thoughts. Christendom is full of ' hypocrites .praying to <God that he may do their jobs for them at His OAyn 'expense* but another age is dawning, and the lost Kingdom shall be restored, not through vain prayer and the' fruitless charity of gifts, but through good and God-approved business. Get inquisitive as to who is your brother, and who is your neighbour and take Christ's answer. The- world is getting full of trusts, rings, and combines and the devil has been running the whole concern as chairman of directors. lam glad, and I am honest to God, when I say I am glad it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. I am glad a man has to be skinned to 'his soul before he is fit to associate with the aristocracy of the Spirit. lam glad a man must lie like a damned mummy, mocked by his own mountains of gold, and become poor and lowly before he is fit to call Christ and Lazarus brother. I am glad that Dives who drank from a full glass with beaded bubt-rcs winking at the brim and stopped his ears to the wail of the hungry child and the homeless, must at the last whimper for a drop of water to cool his parched tongue, because, however much of a parable it may appear, the meaning is plain—justice is alone all—wrong cannot go on eternally. God lives and does not approve of big dividends, the taxation of the poor, and of profiteering in the foodstuffs of the world. Co-operation Good Business.

Your responsibility .to your workmen does not end with the payment of his week's wages. It does not end when you stop his wages on account of absence from work through illness. It will be good business on your part to awaken in him the spirit of co-operation. There is going to be a rapid multiplication in the world of those men of far vision, who are giving the workers a fair 'share of the profits they produce, in a co-operation of spirit and act; and these aro the men who will stand secure when the Industrial Armageddon comes —who fear no red flag, or Khlan, or Bolshevik; who do not shout loyally and Imperialism, but who live both, asknowledged before God who dearly loves a good business man, as witness by the saying of his own Son. ''Know ye not that I must be about My Father's business."