283
June 1929
T h e
K i n g ' s
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tion of that rapt communion with Christ on earth which will be consummated when we go to be with Him. The critical atmosphere his family live in. does not foster such communion, nor the consciousness of Christ that is the eternal joy of all believers. And the worst of it is that he does not realize any of this. He thinks his family are just about what God expects Christians to be, and while he blames himself for not wishing to be with them much—or to be like them—yet he cannot force himself to swallow it all. As a consequence he has drifted into that gay crowd at college—very attractive and so generous in their praise of the other fellow, and yet—without Christ! He is look ing unconsciously for people with a positive and not a negative attitude, I believe. And all because of continual hammering at home!” §1 suppose you’ve kept yourself from a critical atti tude towards the Haworths, Elise, since you deplore it so much in them.” “You score right away, Uncle,—” “No! I t’s your turn to wait and let me finish. If you had spent plenty of time alone with the Saviour down there, and then had come among them with His fragrance upon you, you might have changed the climate consid erably.” “But—” “I am sure from your account that that solution never occurred to you. Try it another time-—don’t miss such an opportunity. I only learned it myself after much bitter experience.” Elise was busy now making figures in the sand. “I am not defending the critical attitude,” he con tinued, “but do you realize how it starts ? An earnest desire to defend the faith is often its beginning. Then as time goes on every word of every message is not only scru tinized carefully—as it should be in a world that ever tends to apostasy—but is received *suspiciously and sub mitted to a certain acid test which so discolors it that a good message may go unrecognized or be misrepresented. This is abnormal. It has been rather inaccurately called ‘phariseeism’ by some of the Modernistic group.” Elise interrupted him eagerly. “That’s another bother of Lawrence’s ! He said his family could take a lesson in lovingkindness from some of that very group.” “What did Hal say?” “He asked Lawrence why he did not tell his family so, and he replied that he had—and what do you think the sister said?” ! “What?” “That he was back in the Sermon on the Mount, which is kingdom teaching!” “It is true that the Sermon on the Mount came before this dispensation .of grace, but she will find that the in structions in Paul’s Epistles are echoes, or amplifications, of that Sermon, and they are not ‘Kingdom teaching’ but written to the Church. And this is true not only of Paul’s Epistles but of those of James, Peter, John, and Jude. It is hard for one as young as Lawrence to distinguish be tween mere suavity and genuine lovingkindness,” he con tinued. “The latter is a glowing Spirit-born love in the ¿pul. Lawrence was not alive during the attacks made in the past century on the historicity of the Bible by the higher critics. One of the worst results of the work of the suave elderly gentlemen who made these attacks was that the group which arose to defend the faith were goaded by the very subtlety of their foe into an oversensitive state of Apprehension, that caused some cases to be exaggerated
C h in e s e C h ild r en Chinese girls usually wear clothes of red or printed cotton, and rarely of striped pattern. From of old, they used to have their feet bound, but in recent years, as it is with the queue of boys, the custom of foot-binding is going out. In the more modernized parts, such as.foreign concessions or great marts, queue and foot binding are almost completely eradicated. — C ourtesy “J a p a n M a g a z in e .” and dangers to be imagined. But more often the alarms of the defenders of the faith were well founded.” Elise was following him intently. “Poor human nature is on a pivot that is broken, and it swings crazily from laxity to over-zeal, unless it is abso lutely surrendered in all its activities to the rule of our thorn-crowned, crucified King,” he concluded. Elise watched a long line of sea birds streaming into a sky that was in a rosy glory to receive the sinking sun. “Harold says that Lawrence was much helped by the Dawsons when they came,” she began, after a while. “They are just beaming with Christian joy! They always make me feel near to Christ—-very close, somehow! I thought they were wonderful, but the Haworths spoiled it all for Lawrence. Mrs. Dawson was too vivacious! And Mr. Dawson was ‘off’ in his interpretation of the meaning of the leaven in the parables, and so on and so fo rth ! Is it any wonder Lawrence acts as he does ?” Her uncle was sitting erect now, hugging his knees. He watched the horizon line for a moment, where a bright fog was hanging ready to engulf the sunset glories at sun down. “Criticism!” he exclaimed, finally. “We all have to take it. Livingstone had it to bear and brooded over it and told Stanley about it. Stanley was disappointed in Liv ingstone for a little, until the man’s grace-filled life gripped him. And then, back in London again, Stanley had a taste of it himself. I ’ve often wondered if his heart did not yearn toward old Scotch David when some of the ‘Ex plorers Associated’ 'of England threw doubt on his achievement in Africa—even questioning that he had ever found Livingstone. “Paul had it! Like Livingstone, he not only suffered from criticism but slander. Do you remember how he wrote, ‘in peril from false brethren’? He also said, Elise, that we were made a spectacle to angels and men. ‘B.eing reviled, we bless , . . | being defamed, we entreat.’
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