Sermon Preached by the Rev. A. N. Rowland on July 29, in the Union Church, Shanghai And Stephen said: "Brethren and fathers hearken.
The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran, and said to him: Get thee out of thy land and from thy kindred and come into the land which I shall show thee."—tects VIT, 2, 8.
For Abraham to move from Chaldea to Charran and from Charran to: Canaan with no better means of locomotion than camel was equivalent to travelling half round the world to-day. And there are various motives for such ventures. Science brought a few people to a South Sea Island last year to view the eclipse of the sun. Adventure has inspired scores to follow at the call of Scott or Shackleton into the danger zones of the Antarctic. Business has brought hundreds here to Shanghai. But Abraham went out on a religious quest. There was no other way by' which he could satisfy his soul.
Differences of time and place make it impossible for us to reconstruct the details of the story. I can only offer you this legend, which at any rate came from the neighbourhood of Abraham's native land. One evening in his boyhood he said to his mother: "He that created me, that has fed and clothed me, shall be my Lord and none but He.'" Then he caught sight of the evening star and said: "Surely this is my Lord.'"' But before an hour had passed it had sunk in the West, and the boy said: ~"I love no* things that change: this could not have been my Lord." But now the moon Lad risen and was casting its unearthly light across the landscape. Young Abraham watched the moon. al] night, sure that it was the Lord. But the moon also passed beneath the horizon. Then the sky was tinged with the delicate colours of dawn, the sun rose with its memorable pomp, and the boy said: "This at last must be the Lord." But the sun sank, and the shadows lengthened into night. In his anguish young Abraham prayed: "O Allah, Who art unsearchable and unchangeable, reveal thyself to thy _servant, guide my steps and lighten mine eyes!"
ABRAHAM AND AKHNATON, In giving his utmost for the highest, Abraham had to leave the land of his fathers. There was no other way of breaking the entanglement of idolatry that was wrapped up with every local custom, unless of course, one were a despot like the Pharaoh Akhnaton. You remember he mardied a Syrian princess, re- urbs om the South side of the nounced allegiance to idolatry, took away his court from the old metropolis, and built a new city and temple further down the banks of the Nile. But Abraham, not being an autocrat, had to be an exile; for it needed desperate measures to make a venture in spiritual and personal religion. We may guess at the trouble of religious environment from these words I once heard from a missionary who had worked for nine years among the primitive tribes of Madagascar: "Their religion is so externalized that it has no effect whatever on their conduct." It simply did not touch those faculties and motives that we summarize as the soul. And we have reason to be on our guard against the same tendency that our religion, too, may lapse into what is merely formal and external. In countries like Cyprus, where the soil is rich in calcium, the springs are constantly sealing themselves up with a crust. Year by year they run Less freely, until the outlet may be altogether closed. Sa there is am element of habit in our life. that tends to close over inspiration, and there is a liability and peril in religion everywhere to become encrusted and fossilized.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.