Notes of a Sermon Preached by Union Church, Shanghai, on Senday, Sept. 17 of Kings is to search out the Tsaiuh Jo, 18).
Kings were originally the pick of men, the few who stood} head and shoulders above their fellows. In the course of history we have learned to call them heroes. Such men do not always wear a crown and since history. took a new start 1,900 years ago we are learning at last to call them men, because, in spite of Carlyle, the possibility of true kingship and heroism is open to every man. So we read the text. Every true man then hus his honour as God has his glory, but ju non-Christian thought these things are separated and opposed. In the elemental thinking of mankind the gods and the heroes have been rivals. In the stories of India, the sagas of Scandinavia, the myths of Greece, the advancement of man goes hand in hand with the retrocession of God. The gods grudge man his honour and are magnified by his discomfiture. This is the standpoint of Shelley's tremendous poem, Prometheus Unbound." He wins all our sympathy for_the Titan who champions humanity at the expense of the tyrant on the throne of omnipotence.
Only in the Bible, so far as I know, do you get a standpoint that harmonizes the two conceptions of human and divine glory and that is what, I want to present. The music of life comes from the tension of things that are opposed to one another, as it is with the tones of the violin, and although man's honour. and God's glory do seem in rivalry and opposition, they both have to be fulfilled if life is to enjoy the fulness of its meaning and Christianity is the religion that shows how it, can be done. In fact, the superficial antithesis between God and man was abolished by the Incarnation, and ever since our divine Lord was touched by the hand of death, the ascended Christ has been the music of the universe. In non-Christian thought, however, these ideas fall asunder as in the casual thought of the street to-day. Some are so bent on securing the glory of God that they belittle the nature -off man, degrade him in a way which has no sanction in the Bible. Because it is the glory of God to conceal a thing, they conclude we must fold our hands and shut our eyes and renounce our prerogative of searching. They repudiate the rights of reason, they are convinced that inquiry and criticism are, of the devil. And ignoring the second half of this verse they bid us the Rev. A. N. Rowland in the Peat: "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing, but the honour) matter." Prov. 25, 12.
(Read, resign ourselves to the concealment of truth, lest ye infringe the glory of God.
Others hop as blindly to the other side of truth. They imagine (as Shelley did) that you can only exalt. man by ignoring, or denying, or defying God. They lay stress on our kingly prerogatives of search and research, and suppose that mental life only consists in probing things and_ proving them. They take no stock in what is still concealed. It does not waken in them any wonder, love or praise. In the narrowness of their pride they leave it out, of consideration and miss the privilege of bringing glory to God.
Incompiere sup One-Srpep.
Both these positions are incomplete; one-sided and erroneous and assure you that it is one of the chief tragedies of human thought to-day, as I sce it, that it, is so largely divided between two camps who are falsely opposed to one another. for the glory of God can never overshadow the honour of the human mind and the honour of man must never be imagined as a separate thing from the glory of God. "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing, but it is the honour of manhood to search out the matter." In the region of truth man proves his royalty by giving his mind to search and) study and what he finds still concealed, he credits to the glory of God, knowing that the more he searches a matter out the more he will become aware of secrets beyond. On the other hand, God's glory does indeed lie in what is concealed, it is-at present immeasurable and unfathomable, but that does not say we should acquiesce in the apathy of ignorance. It is rather intended to keep our minds in tension andi exercise, quickened by admiration, curiosity and hope, and if you doubt if this is the Christian temper, I should like to refer you to the first Espistle to the Romans, and ask you to remember that it was in the midst of a mighty attempt to fathom the secrets of God that Paul broke out with the words, "O, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgements and His ways past finding out." The mind of the Apostle rode on an even keel, paying honours to human intelligence and. also giving glory. to the secrets of Providence and redemption. That is the ideal standpoint. Knowledge should never lessen faith, nor reason subtract from reverence. "Let knowledge grow from more to more." Yet, it is a nobler, an orchestral music when reverence is united to knowledge and God's glory to man's honour.
This is not the only age by apy means when man has been keen to prove his honour by searching things out. However, our Teaders of thought or those who do oun thinking for us, are always besiege ing the secrets of life and of death, and those who give their minds most freely to the task are most aware of the unexplored margins beyond. In_ science but a few years ago the secret of life was apparently reduced to its simplest terms when a new revelation was given and the atom dissolved into countless electrons to the glory of God. Yet do not imagine the work of these scientists was wasted. I notice a writer in the Daily News" the other day said with more audacity than knowledge that modern science had repudiated Darwin and his works. That is quite untrue. Darwin! left much that was still concealed, bearing witness to the glory of God, but what he achieved was for human honour and advantage.
Take again the subject of medicine. A short while ago there was a tendency to suppose that the secrets of health were access sible by means of physiological anulysis, that illness could be finally explained along materia) lines. All honest work of that kind no doubt has gone to increase human honour. But there were other regions of the subject entirely concealed from these searchers, and it has been found that the powers of the mind and the influence of the Spirit-once quite ignored by doctors, have to be taken into account in the art of healing. Thus the advancing honour of man's mind does not succeed in reducing the glory of God, because it still being brought up against things that are concealed, and what is true in the region of science is true also of the more intimate providence of God, where it touches human life to the quick.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.