Notes of a Sermon Preached by the Rev. C. E. Darwent in Union Church, Tientsin, on Sunday Eveving January 6
"The desert shall rejoice and ANAT tand 2, Ulossom as the rose." Isaiah Deserts are "fascinating place. 'They are almost as interesting cities, Instead of being full of emptiness, it almost looks as if] they Were more furnished rent things than cities. 'The only' three religions in the world, that have any future are, what' may Blod, desert religions, Jude Christianity and "Mohammedanism, for Christianity sprang out of Jewry, Colonel Sykes, who has travelled in deserts more' than most men, not says that have originated anywh than in the desert. And his reason is, that the view in the desert, wherever you look, is a Unity, suggests nity; sky and land, level horizon and sky__blonding are one, No wonder India ha "gods many," beeatise natitro has been s0 prolix in growing count-Jess apeoios of plants and animals the mind is drawn to anulbs plicity of gods, But the desert one, One sees only it and the} sky; they seem one plane, T have taken the title of this sermon from that of wonderful book by Miss Lowthian Bell, the nughtor of ai great Scottish ironmaster, She made a journey on the ena side of Jordan, all by herself; w thing that no woman would have done 60 years ago, to trust herself alone among those wild people, What will woman next! "Te war a wonderful gurney." Tt appends that remains of Ronmn civilization are far more numerous on the oast than on the west side of Jordan, Good houses, theatres, temples show how rich and populous the, land in Roman times. The Turks other invaders hive soon to} it, that it will be hundreds yours yot, before it ie as it was 43,000 yeara ago. And it is all be-llewed Tinvo tee way. fessor Gregory found, that evaporation is 0, terrific' in this region, that 96 inches of water in" depth disappears. in a year. th That is, that i a you had a lake 96 inches deep, and no rain fell on it, the a/v would suck it all up in w'year, whereas in England evaporation is only 16 inches a year: And he propounds the idea that there are two belts of aridity round the earth, in about latitudes 40, North and South. In the} North' there is the Gobi Desert and the great American desert, similarly' one in the southern hemisphiore. And ho behoves, that these desert belts are slowly but} surely encroaching on the richer] and more watered lands to the north and south of them It looks like it. It is hard to understand why the Chinese first in the north of] if the climate was as. dey} then ita it is now. Far Inter than tht, there is historic evidence, that' the climate was not as dry and desert as at present. Tho} explorations of Sir Aurel Stein, sent out by the Indian Govern:
ut, have revealed the ex of Range populations and 1,600 years ago, to the west of the Gobi," where now there is naught but "dry sand. Even Chinese scrolls of silk have been found iry but legible after being in the sand 1,000 years. Even when Marco Bolo crossed Asia to China, it was not os arid as now. Those bolts of dryness have spread them. solves, The doseft has encroached] on "The Sown." And it looks if the dried up area, was extend jing Whence the dry seasons, that bring famine in the nonth of China, as in 19201 The desert creeps on and on, its sands choking and burying green crops, un-Teas it in. wngchadeand ela and the poor strfagelin ensy-mtveh chance, NEVER-ENDING sTRUGOLR, 'TE NEW YEAR MDSsAOR, this is Now Year Sunday. One tries to have a message, which muy be of uso to us the year. Tt is hard to find one that is not} trite by reason of oft repetition. cultivation here and thoro, whirl But here L think, we have one, the soil is a little kindler; that, we may all, with profit, keep two of Wheat or barley 5 in mind os the months go circling omictimes " fow more, And these round, carrying us on to the time of cultivated land are when we have to give an account "The Sown," in contradic of our lives to the Giver of it, an motion to the bitten desert sutaudit, that we might well keep in rounding them, where nothing; ud' more than we do, grows, Tt i pathetic to se these What then is the "'Sown," Tittle islands of struggling crops what the desert in general?
a vast aren of sandy desert.
Sown" is the whole, mysteriow For the. little patches of wheat} but real inner side St things fare in danger all the time, The us; the unseen, the Spiritual, the wind lifts the sand and blows it moral; the things that endure; over these poor little struggling) that ian #0 often tri bite of arable lund, 'The desoxt 18 hut cannot, 'The always, trying to swallow up the! is the candle of the Lord'? there "Sown''; and if the farmer neg-in that in us, that is of the divine acts to Took well after his little image. There is the yearning for crops of wheat or barley the] the Tnfinite, man's dissatisfaction Wosort sand will, enoronch on. it ith things that perish with] until bit by bit, the "Sown" me; "the things that are, not appears altogether. 'This will seen are eternal"; they are "The count for the condition of the own'; The little flame of faith Custom side of the Jordan river. in God in al] of us is "The Once thers was a large popula 'The christian, the retion to watch the land, that, was Tigious lifo in us, that redeems us, wns to fight the cheroaching ight as it is, from being merely'
ud of the desert. Tt is a case superior animals, is The Sown" Of subtle and persistent encroach. thi Church of the Living God nent. And when the population throughout all the world, strug Was swept away in the terrible ig to keep alight the flame of wars that marked the Mohammedan conquest, the desert swalpetual Ife in, the, "wortd Sown": AM, wi lowed ap the "Sown,"" all but that "man live th nob' by bread Tittle patches, alone, but by very word that] proceedeth out of the mouth of]
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.