'A Sermon Preached by, the Rev. A. N, Rowland in Union Church, Shanghai "$9 teach us to number our days that we may get us an heart of wiedom."..(Po. 90. 12.)
Although I-had no personal know view of God's creation we are utter-ledge of my predecessor's ministry ly insignificant, like "grass which and can therefore add nothing worth growth up and is out down," like your attention to the full and sym-a tale that is told," but from the Pathetic tribute that was paid by point of view of God's redemption Mr. Box at our memorial service, I life gains a wonderful significance. have the impression that this verse The psalmist seems to picture it as sounds the keynote of his charac-jan instrament for God to use. "Let teristic utterances. Mr, Darwent Thy Work appear upon us and the was above all things a defence? of beauty of the Lord our God." The the Christian faith, His work as an value of a thing depends not upon 'Interpreter was overshadowed by his fits durability, but upon the use to gifts as an apologist, He recom-which it can be put. If you were mended the faith to men as the to bring a violin' into. an. iron highest, wisdom. Ho loved to show' foundry it would look ridiculously it was the most reasonable thing in as it really is, But let a the world to accept and apply musician handle it and he will charm because it leads to fullness of life.
Jail the workers away from their This was the prayer that manifestly. noisy work. -And this is the glory tay behind his preaching: "So teach of our lives, that although they are tus to number our days that we, may constantly humiliated by the powers Get us a heart of wisdom." To this, of death and sin, God moans to ministry of persuasion put His own interest and meaning ciliation his many gifts {into them. were directed with a single heart to the glory of God and the honour 'The Secret of the Puritans of our Saviour. And we give There is such a wonderful corres-thanks to-day that this pulpit has idence between God been so powerfully used for so many' s, that in magnifying years for the furtherance of faith Tagnified ourselves, That was and righteousness, the secret of the Puritans. They read God quite from the 'The National Hymn ian standpoint; but they took We have all felt the solemnity of 'Him into their lives, and by fearing this psalm, partly from its close, Him they made themselves feared. association' with our funeral The more you make of God the more vices, partly because it provides you make indirectly of your life. substance of our national hymn, "O, 'There is nothing abject in surrender God our Help in Aj " "But to God: it is the way' to freedom that hymn for, all its grandeur fails, and to power. On the strength of I think, to mirror fully the spirit] this truth Jet' me challenge a very of the psalm. You may notice it common heresy that even creeps has three parts, and the last part, into popular theology and certainly beginning with verse 12, is not remakes itself at home in what is: produced in the hymn." Dr. Watt called the mind of the man in the helps us to picture the shadowy mountains any mysterious river rect, In the name of this psalm T beg you to withdraw your separaim, but he has not included tion between human and divine of people singing at if they excluded one another. Ao-it conclude cording to our common speech, th divine grows at the expense of pends on the contrast between th human, the human increases to the Life is pr ess of the divine. It is against that heresy that the Bible throws all its weight from the first chapter; to the Inst, forgotten as the fancies of the night, such is our life when measured There is an orthodoxy that dreads Against eternity. And this impro: the attribution of full humanity to sion is deepened in the second part, Jesus as if it were and must be a which introduces the still more belittling of his divinity. 'There are' humiliating thought that life is those who will bid you assert your be-riddled or honeycombed with sin, Het in the deity of Christ, but make that gives a pang to its brevity and no demand, as the early Church did, supplies death with its sting. {for an equal belief in his humanity. But these are the two hands of the But just as the "Dead March" of Christian faith, the one gripping Handel changes, so does the Psalm God, the other gripping mat change its key at the 12th verse to They work together if match a new thought. After con-you out off one you mar and vineing us that life is of no account, misrepresent the faith. It is the a melancholy, if not a miserable,, doctrine of the Incarnation that the episode in the drama of eternal Invisible God made Himself known forces, it conjures us to count our and carried on His work through days as a most precious thing, to tone who was really Man—tempted trade with wisdom, to buy up our like as we are yet without sin, wear-opportunity, to rejoice in the assuring our human likeness yet the exance of the Value and permanence press image of God's person. of our work. Few pieces of literature, even among the Psalms, move!
'A Wrong Antithesis so swiftly out of gloom into But the people of no "doxy" have shine, from a contemplation of life's caught the infection of the same! frailty and folly to the conviction heresy, though in their case of its beauty and usefulness. breaks out in another way: The Majesty and Tenderness average man—the kind of man that most of us are sometimes and in What then is the key to this re-some moods—supposes he can shut: markable transformation which I off the divine and spiritual as if it! venture to say has, been missed in the were something outside the really! Popular conception of the psalm? human. He concludes that life There can be no doubt as to the choice between the religious answer, which is a double one. cular, that he must either be: First, eternity is viewed-in the light wrapped in the consciousness of an! of the person of God. Secondly, the omnipotent God, in contemplation of person of God is conceived in' the world outside the world ho sees, spirit of Christ. As the psalm pro-or live within the limits of the world Bresses you seo the unchangeable life that is measured by time! majesty of God, which is presented and filled with transitory interests, fin the first few' verses, grow tender Dat still requiring a man's initiative! with human purpose and a divine and courage. Faced with—this! pity. Gradually you are shown the alternative he takes this and leaves: effect of this upon our fragile lives, that. "He may not actually re-how they are" able to" assimilate pudiate religion, but he lives on the! something of the strength that scale of the day's concerns, accord-threatened to crush oF ignore them. ing, to the requirements "of the 'Just as a tree begins in feebleness, body, taking his fi of food and! but gathers solidity and tenacity sport and letting the other world' it grows from the air and soil about) look after itself. But he is acting it, so it, ig possible for us to draw on an antithesis that belongs to {nto our nature those qualities that Buddhism: there is no such alter-make life significant, enduring and beautiful. a native in the light of the Christian faith,' Our human life ig. God's Life theh.js belittled at the begis® own "responsibility. and oppottuinits ning of the Psalm, but at the end it tuainified. Prom: the- point-of Sifnow ye" ok that ye, are God's andry;* God's "Bulding,""God's
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.