Sermon Preached by the Rev. A. N.
Rowland in Union Church, Shangha on January 11, 1925 ud Hayar cast her child under one of the shrubs, and sat her down over against him a good way off, and she lifted up her voice and wept, And the angel of God called to Ha out of heaven, and said unto her, What aileth thee Hagar? Fear not, for God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is: (Genesis' chap. 21, vv.15-17).
Dr. Whyte of Edinburgh has truly" said that sometimes Paul writes like og angel, but just casionally be argues' like a rabbi. For instance at the and of Galatians turned the story of Hagar into an allegory, talked of a woman: as if she were a mountain, after the manner of the scribes. Anthrdapologists do much the same when they" explain it as meaning the movements and mixtures of tribes, But over against the dry as dust methods of rabbis and cefentists there are the artists and poets who discover what is personal and spiritual instead of dissolving it. That Is the way of the Bible, What heart-stirring stories it has evoked from the dreary annals of primitive history!—The famous ist Leonardo da Vinei has given the portrait of Mona Lisa, daughter of the Italian Renaisance, with her inscrutable coun-tenones and sophisticated ¢mile, And here in Genesis ie a woman of find her twice in the Bible, she the Egyptian woman, with the Cana-tanites and the Moabites sharing place with the chosen peopl The Bible spends as much time over these women as it spends over soldiers, scribes or statesmen. Hagar did nothing, knew nothing, the world reckons. She was just a wourari whose experience was her only wisdom, whose love was her only strength, whose sorrow wes her only crown. But the Old Testament specializes on things of the heart and conscience that are known to us all and important in the sight of God. And when Christ, came the human values of Hage Rehab and Ruth were brought into his table of weights and measures. Wherever his gospel is preached these simple folk can never be forgotten. Be it known to all that in every issue, political God iv on the side of humanity in the name of the Bible, in the name of Bethlehem and Nazareth. the dawn of the world, alive, elemental, maternal. 'The light of heaven' picked out this woman from among a myriad of nameless, disregarded mothers, and in the name of Magar we are-assured that in coolie, fellaheen or slave there is something of human interest, worth and dignity.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.