The Sabbath

Waikato Times, Volume 103, Issue 17326, 11 February 1928, Page 18 (Supplement)

The Sabbath

“CASTING AWAY HIS GARMENT.”

Cast it away! That timeworn garment wov’n on

earthly loom With warp and woof of ignorance and fear, Shaped by the laws of false heredity And sense control. 0 Man, rise up,

and see What thou hast hugged about thee lovingly, Cast it away!

Look where the moth Hath worked among thy precious broideries, The gold and purple threads of thy

success, 1 And rust hath tarnished. E’en the crimson weave Of thy affections shows the blurring

stains Of mouldering jealousies and lost

ideals. The ermine border of self-righteous-

ness Speaks but a tottering throne of human

will, And pride foredoomed. Then, Man, beloved of God Unwind the binding folds from thy free limbs, Cast them away! Dost thou not hear, With Bartimaeus blind, the Master’s call? Rise from the wayside of material dreams, And seek thy sight. Fling now thy robe aside, And kneel before Him, naked, unafraid. Cast it away! —Carolyn W. Greene. «■ FAITH ON THE EARTH. MAN’S FINAL TEST. Confidence in the perfect attainment of the Divine will at the last is the constant theme of the Gospels. The prominence they give to the Advent of Christ with His ultimate triumph over all His enemies is maintained throughout the New Testament The one element of uncertainty in the drama of the Day of the Lord is the nature and extent of men’s faith. There are few more pathetic utterances than the question, “When the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” Faith is more than belief in certain facts. Belief, on the testimony of the Gospels, that Christ lived and died in Palestine 19 centuries ago is not faith. It is the judgment of reason on the testimony of history. Christian faith is Something More Than Belief in historical fact or a readiness to follow authoritative guidance in doubtful questions or in matters above reason. It is the confident giving of oneself into the hands of God revealed in the Person of Christ. Where true laith exists the whole man comes into action. It is not some function of the man acting apart from reason, but the whole of his personality in its great venture of trust in God. When once this character of faith is grasped the dominance, attributed to it in the Christian life, may be appreciated. It is the deliberate selfdedication of the man who put his life to the service of Christ with all the strength of which he is capable. It takes the whole of a man to attain faith, and the measure of his faith is the measure of his manhood.

Men and women are to be judged in the Anal reckoning of life not by their social gifts nor by their intellectual powers, nor even by their moral ideals, but by their faith. Some are of little faith as those who, believing in Divine Providence, are yet distracted by present difficulties'and by fear for the future. Others are of great faith, as the Roman officer, who, brought up in every circumstance which encouraged him to despise the Jew's, yet appealed for help on behalf of his servant to One whom his contemporaries regarded as only a fanatical Syrian preacher. Whether a man’s faith be little or great, it is the most important thing about him, the

Most Powerful Force In His Life

for the shaping of character and the regulation of his conduct. Faith is the measure of his worth in the final estimate of life. If without faith it is impossible to pffiase God, it is also true that without faith it is impossible to attain to the full pow'ers of man, hood.

A perfect God is necessary for a perfect faith. Whenever men’s ideas of the Deity have been gross, or lower than their conception of truth and righteousness, conditions which have frequently existed, faith has been destroyed. Men can never exercise the fullness of faith until it is centred on a God who is perfect in truth and love. Superstition, on the other hand, is based on a non-moral conception of the Deity and looks neither for goodness nor truth in that which is worshipped, but only r the possession of powers which can be propitiated by sacrifices in some form or other. There is a superstition of irreligion, and it is either gross or childish. The fear of the savage who seeks to protect himself against the violence of an angry deity by putting himself to some prolonged agony is scarcely less degrading than the fantastic use of mascots and charms which now provides the only sign that flippancy offers for its recognition of the existence of anything beyond what can be discerned by the senses.

Nowhere is conduct so plainly declared to be the evidence of a man’s character as by Christ. “By their fruits ye shall know them.” There is no contradiction between this statement and the declaration that “We are saved by faith.” They stand for two facts of life complementary to one another. The test of faith is not feeling, but conduct. Faith shapes both what a man is and what he does. It is the dominantly effective force in his life. On the one hand, it is so practical, so effective, in life, that it will enable a man to do what would be impossible without. If ife first action is to control, purify, and energize the hidden sources of a man’s life it goes on to endow him with the skill, the resourcefulness, the patience which, enable him to exert a supreme inthe World’s Greatest Benefactors fluence in history. For this reason have been men of faith. It is true that there is a great danger when faith is not derived from and directed to a personal God Who is at once AllRighteous and All-Living. That Christians have committed great crimes in the name of their faith shows only that their faith has failed to be Christian. Let faith rely on Him who re-i veals the gentleness of God. His willingness to forgive the sinner, to teach, the ignorant, and to strengthen the feeble , and it will surely transform those who possess it into His likeness. Be it ever so feeble, so long as faith endures, a man can never fail.