The Sabbath

Waikato Times, Volume 112, Issue 18803, 26 November 1932, Page 14 (Supplement)

The Sabbath

ADVENT. Hark, the glad sound, the Saviour comes, The Saviour promised long; Let every heart prepare a throne And every voice a song.

He comes the prisoners to release In Satan’s bondage held, The gates of brass before Him burst, The iron fetters yield.

He comes the broken heart to bind, The bleeding soul to cure, And from the treasures of Ills grace To bless the humble poor.

Our glad hosannas, Prince of Peace, Thy welcome shall proclaim, And heaven’s eterrial arches ring With Thy beloved Name.

The Spiritual Quest. The Christian life should be a life of strenuous spiritual quest, based on the conviction that God is seeking to reveal Himself and to accomplish things in the field' of human life, using men as instruments of His purpose No wise man who believes in a creative mind and will behind 'the visible order will exclude from his view of the universe the element of possible 'catastrophe and of a sudden winding up of the human drama. But even if mankind is still in its infancy and human history has many thousands of years to run, it is none the less true that crisis is always present and that eternal values are waiting to be realised and appropriated. “The end is at hand" is a statement which the Christian can never afford to disregard. The writer of the Fourth Gospel, writing when the failure of the expected End to arrive was causing real perplexity, meets the difficulty by emphasising the continuous coming of Christ through the Spirit, of which the pledge was the experience of the first Pentecost. Here, he says in effect, Is the true Advent, here is the eternal manifesting itself in -the temporal; Christ is ever coming to the world in spiritual power and presence. There is indeed movement towards a far-off goal; but the potencies of the End may be present in each one of the moments which lead up to it. It is the answer of deep to deep, of life to life. Vision and vigilance should mark the Christian; vision to see under the changing things of time and sense the unchanging realities of the eternal world; vigilance lest through heedlessness some moment fraught with spiritual significance pass unheeded.