Everyman’s Hut

Camp News, Volume 3, Issue 124, 29 May 1942, Page 8

Everyman’s Hut

sorcery, could give us much information on this point.. Is it not the nameless fear of an invisible Something that makes the management of large hotels skip over number 13, and the host at a party anniversary cast about for a fourteenth guest, so that there may not be thirteen round his table? It is fear of the unseen that hasgiven rise to the superstition that, on certain days and at certain hours of the night, it is fearsome to go through, a cemetery, or to be left alone in a. room with a corpse, even- when it is the body of a loved relative.

FEAR NOT (Continued) THE FEAR OF SUFFERING Innumerable people impoverish and spoil their lives by the constant fear of what they may have to suffer. Just as the cinema gives a life-like rendering of actual events, fear raises scenes of possible future suffering before the eye of the imagination, and tortures the soul with indescribable terrors. Fear magnifies trifling ills till they appear gigantic, and hours that might have been comparatively pleasant are shadowed and poisoned by the forebodings that the fear of future suffering inflicts upon the soul. * THE FEAR OF THE FUTURE This kind of fear has made many old before their time. The loss of property, the loss of health, the loss of position, infirmity, the burden of advancing years —every possible and impossible eventuality weighs on their spirit with a sinister pressure, and embitters all the quiet and peaceful enjoyment that the present might hold for them. THE FEAR OF THE INVISIBLE WORLD X ' Does this exist in our enlightened days? Perhaps more than it ever has done! Fortune-tellers and diviners, those who read horoscopes, or practise other lucrative but dark arts of

THE FEAR OF DEATH In Hebrews ii, 14, 15, we read r Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same; that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.” The fear of death is in truth a bondage from which none but Christ, the Prince of Life, can set free. I read once that the great French novelist Zola confessed in a moment of selfrevelation how often he sought sleep in vain at night, and tossed restlessly to and fro, disturbed by uneasy forebodings. The fear of death deprived him of all peace, and cast a gloom over his life: He glanced over at his wife; she, too, lay there restless, and though she said nothing about it, he knew, that dark thoughts, were distressing here, torturing her mind — was the fear of death. Who of us does not remember the days when the decorated military trains covered with cheery, even witty, inscriptions carried the troops to the front? Excitement and rejoicing, jokes and sallies at the farewell, there seemed to be no room for a single thought of fear; but when things finally began to look serious, when the shells were bursting around, and horses and men were swept away in a few seconds by an air attack, then surely even the stoutest heart was gripped by that unavoidable terror of death. We have often heard that those who mocked and blasphemed, and would throw their boots at the Christian who knelt to pray in the barracks, would press close up round him in the dugouts when the bombs were crashing, and say: “You know how to pray, read to us out of your Book, pray with us.” (To be continued.)