A sermon preached by the Rev. A. N. Rowland on February 19, 1922, in Union Church, Shanghai "His raiment became white and glistering."—Luke 1X, 29.
That was the impression made indescribable moment that is called the Transfiguration. It was due to the radiance of His spirit, it was a transfiguring that came from within, And we may therefore take it as a description of the character of Jesus, that it was both white and glistering. We are bound to usc both these words because we have two standards of admiration. On the one hand we admire men for such worth and virtue as they possess, all that qualifies them to be pillars of the common good. On the other hand our hearts insist on having their own favourites, and we cannot help admiring those that have a way with them, often a path of smiles and tears.
There is a fine couplet of Tennyson'
"Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, These three alone lead life to sovereign power"
Yet another kind of power is won by those whose habit is to forget and abandon self. You savour the difference in our regard for Washington and for Nelson. The echo of "I cannot tell a lie, father'? conveys a whiteness we admire, but there is a different quality in our remembrance of the ''Kiss me, Hardy" of the dying Nelson. We cannot help it, we take off our hat to the one, we fling it up for the other.
Me. Wetts on ScHoouMasTers.
If you were to appeal to the judgement of the man in the street, (and perhaps that is all of us when we are off our guard), I think he would roughly identify these two classes with the people inside and outside the churches. Tf he was fair-minded, he would probably allow that the Church contains many who are above suspicion and beyond cavil, in short who have the character which Mr. Wells once attributed schoolmasters—trustworthy rather than taking. They are icily regular, but they don't take "you by storm, But if you ask the man in the street for those who interest and attract him, he will be incline ed to look away from religious and professing people to those who move in faster currents and more exciting circumstances.
Plenty of exceptions at once occur to our minds but we may frankly acknowledge that there is some foundation for this judgement. The religion of most of us is tod much a matter of Propriety and restraint. And the cloistered and self-conscious virtues are not very lovely. As a result it is takea for; not enthusiastic. granted that religious people ere by Christ on His disciples at the|drab in their interests, limited in had a sense of justice and a their tastes, starved in' the smaller} humanities, while there is often natural charm, a kind of magnetism in some of those who are outside the circle of the Church's activities.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.