SUNDAY READING.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2682, 11 December 1909, Page 3 (Supplement)

SUNDAY READING.

“Into the woods my Master went, Clean forspent, forspent; Into the wood s my Master came, Forspent with love ancl shame. But the olives they were not hand to , i Him, The little leaves were kind to Him, The thorn-tree had a mind to Him AVhen into the woods He came. “Out of the woods my Master went, And He was well content; Out of the woods my Master came, Content with death and shame. AA hen death and shame would woo Him last, From under the trees they drew Him last, ’Twas on a tree they slow Him last, AVhen out of the woods He came.” REASONABLE IMMORTALITY. Canon Horsley has been called “the Canon of the Baptist, and Congregational Churches.” Certain it is that by his frequent intercourse with Nonconformists he has won their admira.a?.d e st T ee m (says the London Christian World. ,J ) His presence at Bloomsbury men’s meeting on a recent Sunday afternoon was an occasion for ■an enthusiastic burst of applause. His address on “The Reasonableness of Immortality” was listened to with keen interest throughout. Dealing first with the sham immortalities which were abroad, Canon Horsley said that the idea of man’s immortality suggested by the indestructibility of matter was of' no comfort—a particle of his present body might be the irritating dust in the eye of a person living a thousand years hence; but that brought him no consolation. The immortality suggested by the immortality of the race was equally without comfort, inasmuch as the rabbit and the flea might equally claim it. Moreover, the immortality of thought and genius left them in a still hopeless condition, inasmuch as they could not claim much of immortal worth in their own thought and genius. Everything, however, pointed to a truer and better immortality. The universal yearning for a life beyond the grave, our divine discontent with living here, and the very incompleteness of our lives postulated eternity. Sensation may cease with our bodily life, but that had nothing to do with man’s memory, or will, or personal identity. “AA’here you find mind,” Canon Horsley continued, “there is immortality. Not one department of memory, will, or understanding suggests the idea of stoppage. It is more reasonable to assume that they are liberated from certain weaker conditions which the body- brings with it.”

General Booth continues to make, substantial progress towards complete recovery. At the time that, the latest mail left London he was holding official councils with various leaders on international affairs, and had personally dealt with a wide variety of important matters. A great thanksgiving meeting was arranged to take place in the Congress Hall at the end of October. Much interest has been evoked by the announcement that the General is preparing material for his autobiography. Recognising the long, strenuous and wide experience of the founder of the great movement, such a,work must be monumental in its scope and influence.

A suggestion made by the Dean of Newcastle, New South AVales, the Very Rev. C. H. Golding-Bird. during a lecture given by him_ before the Australian Natives’ Association, has attracted much attention in Newcastle. The Dean suggested that during the strike there should be a sort of Geneva Convention, that hospitals, benevolent institutions, lighthouses, and so on,’ should not be deprived of fuel and made to pay extraordinary prices for it, and that some mines should be worked for these institutions. The Dean ivas to address a big gathering of miners in Newcastle Cathedral last Sunday afternoon. /

At a monthly meeting of the Society for the Propogation of the Gospel, held in London recently, it was reported that during October the Society had sent to Japan its first missionary'trained under the Archbishop’s Oxford and Cambridge Scheme. He was to go to the St. Andrew’s Community at Tokio 'for his diaconate. In South Africa the clergy of Basqtoland had determined each to give up £2O of his grant—making £l4O in all —in order to push forward work in East Basutoland, a most welcome step. A sum of £SOOO wasj required by the endi of the year if the Society was to carry on most important existing work.

The R'ev Egerton R. Young, the wellknown Methodist missionary in Canada and writer of books of adventure, has died at his home in Bradford, Ontario, at the age of sixty-nine. He was the son of a Canadian Methodist minister, and become a minister in the same church in 1863. AVhen- stationed at Hamilton he was appointed to missionary work among the Indian tribes living in the Hudson Bay territories. Here he and his wife passed a. number of years remote from civilisation, receiving letters arid papers only twice a year. The history of those years of hardship, danger and missionary toil was subsequently told by him in some half a dozen fascinating volumes, of which “By Canoe and Dog Train” is best known.

Mr Lloyd-George recently said that the great need of the Church to-day was a leader who could’ show the masses that religion was on their side. In France, where l he had spent the previous week, the Church was not onlyneglected, hut hated by the imass of the people. A public man in open sympathy with the Church was at once a marked man. , This was in part the fault of their Church, which had always been on the side of the nobility as against tlie people, and of tyranny m many shapes. In London the masses were out of sympathy with the Church. If their churches were full, four out or every five would still be outside. The Socialists on the one hand and the Church on the other forgot that m a great religious faith lay the hope or Hie democracy. Religion was the great world-cui;e.