'A Sermon Preached in Union Church on Sunday Morning, November 7, 1926 by the Rev. B. F. Horst Smith "Bye hath not seen, nor car heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. But God hath revealed them unto ne by His Spin 3 2 w 9 and 10, Most of us are driven sooner or later to feel the utter inadequacy of worldliness, There may be moods in which we may appear to be satis-ied with the things that are seen, and there are some hours of the jay and some days of the week. which fit into those moods. We dis-uss politics and commerce, 25 though man's life consisted in the abundance of the things that he possesses. We plan for sport and entertainment as though the whole: four interests were comprised within the span of our life on earth, And then we are called up abrupt-'y. We are made to see that the chings which usual! are act the only things, sud senly confronted with questions beand our solving. The mystery of life is forced upon us, When all} seems sunshine, there comes 'a bolt} irom the blue." A. life sway in the midst of its usefulness, The strong, the pure, the beautiful are called from our midst, Then lifleult questions are asked—some-1¢s inaudibly, but none the lasa lly. Perhaps some of us know, re of experiences than We meet those who have offered bitter losses and_have jwarrel with Providence. But they get at Providence directly, whereas they can get at us, and the task for which we often feel orally inadequate is thr =the task of "\justifying the ways At those times, utterly useless. It]
solution to offer, Tt is bank upt. It can but point to unrelievtragedy and blank despair. And hhere arises an imperative demand or something more.
The Church has often been eritiined for other-worldliness. Perhaps: hat criticism has sometimes been. justified, and of course we want to reserve our balance and to give the present life, with all its wonderful possibilities and responsibil due. But there is a much serious charge than that of ther-worldliness and that is world. imes; for that charge would be aral, if it were true, The Bright Future Now it was to meet some such challenge og I have indicated that he doctrine of the future life first crew up. For the ancient Jews all he promises had reference to this ife in the form of longevity and material prosp The bright future was for their descendants other than for themselves, But in he course of time all sorts of ques-ions arose and among them this: Vas it right that there pure souls had sacrificed themselves to lay he foundationo of the coming king-fom should themselves have no share in it, And so in the course of ime the belief gradually grew up hat for the righteous at least there hould be a resurrection to eternal ife; for without some such doctrine fe had too many ragged ends; it vag void of meaning and lacking justice, Now the thing that the greatest the ancient Psalmists and Pro-hets came gradually to dream, the gospel confidently affirms. Life and. mortality are brought to light in he Gospel. It declares that the casson that things seem so chaotic ind purposeless is becatise we know Tittle about them, In this life! ye see but a small portion of the Jan of God. His great purposes. an only very partially be carried vut in time: they require eternity their full maturing: God has prepared things for them that love Him. Here Science and. Religion rave, at Jo ground. The scientist' telic that in the terse there isn Jous, or avbi that there is ire universal yeign of law. And St, Paul, looking at life from the! religious' ingle, endorses thie and eclates that there is i reason for all these signa of elder and of de-things are "prepared" In God's universe there are no after-thoughts, nothing is improvise ed; but all is' planned. "All's law and all's love". And Jesus -made use of the same word. To His friends who were broken-hearted.at the thought of His impending departure, He said: "I go-to prepare a place for you.
Does that sound too good to be true? Jesus declares it is too good not to be true. He seemed to re-gerd any announcement on the matter as hardly necessary. The onus of declaration was on the other side, He took the future glorified life of His friends for granted, as too certain and obvious to require mon-Was it not implied in all He said and did? Was it not the tacit assumption in all their intercourse? Had it been otherwise, then indeed some clear statement would have been called for: "if it were not so, T would have told you."
Now what can we say about that glorified life? The Apostle speaks Of it in negative terms, not because these are to be contrasted with posi tive terms but because language does not contain the positive terms that would be needed. Language is inadequate, it ig halting, it breaks! down. It goes ay far as it can and then utters one word: "Beyond."
The Eye of the Mind That life is beyond anything that ca be seen. Many of us are more less blind. We are devoid of any artistic sense, But St, Paul was not addressing people like us. He] Was writing to Greeks, who were admirers of the beautiful, who had a keen aesthetic taste, who had a genius for art. What wonderful] thingy their eyes had seen, or the eyes, of the lover of Nature, or of the great painters. There are some: people who are so moved by. the glory of n sunset that they feel that our ordinary public worship jars upon them. 'They claim to find more of Nature's God in Nature than in services of the Church. And, without altogether admitting their claim, we may readily acknowledge that' to the secing eye wonderful things are visible, And St. Paul would not have us #uppose that these glorious sights are in any way misleading. They do. indeed give us useful hints. It la right to speak to the artist in terms of art, for beauty is on the ultimate values. But the glorified life is somethin in comparatively greater. It is beyond what the a 's eye has secon, "Bue hath not seen the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him."
Moreover that life is beyond anything that can be heard. would not exhaust the " Apostle's dea of what may be heard, but let us take it as an example, There are many people in Shanghai who are so devoted to music that they would not sacrifice their wonderful orchestra for anything. And we know that in our Church services a great deal depends upon the way in which the musical part is rendered. Some of us have no ear for music. Well, we don't count in this dise: sion and another line of argument needed for us. But there are other: people who, music, expe no greater delight than to shut themselves up in a Church and listen to the melodious tones "of an organ. Alli the world is then lost to them; they are oblivious to every other things their souls are thrilled with wonderful harmonies. And those thrilling sounds will' not mislead them in their attempts to conceive the glorified life. It is well to speak to the musician in terms of melody. But there is a Chorus of Redemption in comparison—with which all other sounds are faint; a musie that is vaster, grander than any ever heard on earth, "Ber Him."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.