The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1900-07-16

cas- ier and easier to call by the name 81
F,riend. AS soon as that personal Some
thing becomes realized by us in the rela-
ton of Friend, thought can take re-
cess and the mind can go off on a long
vacation. .,,1is, then, is one element of
the peace that becomes ours when we
have committed ourselves to Christ; ii
relieves the mind from hard work and
from the necessity of intellectual drudg-
cry To have known a man a month,
means more than to read a dozen vol
umes of his biography. An ounce of ex-
detrimental knowledge is worth more
than ton of carefully thought out dem
onstration. There is room enough for
thought to expatiate over, and 1t is by
no means an unwholesome exercise; on
the contrary, 1t is to be most earnestly
encouraged, but the beauty of the think
ing that is done by a man who is in even
the smallest felt touch with Christ is.
that when he is tired of thinking about
him, he can just stop and trust him. and
that when he wearieS of his exploring
upon unknown ground, he can come back
onto his little patch of familiar territory
and rest.
There is no man of us so strong or
competent but he would like to feel that
there is some one upon whom he can lay
his cares, and so leave off being strained
and troubled. We know we can carry all
the load that may be piled upon us, II
only we can depend upon somebody to
carry us. for in carrying us it will be
he really shat is carrying our load. And
then the friendship of the stronger for
the weaker rs always in the nature of a
guarantee. The love which the mghtier
exercises toward the more feeble is kind
children is pledge that your resources
of wisdom and power are at the service
I'of your children. Love knocks out the
wall between two rooms and makes over
into one room. Love has about it a
tinge of communism; II does not say
mine and yours, but ours. If you have
a little back yard, and your neighbor a
/ big back yard, and there is no fence be-
tween them. then for all practical pur-
poses you have big back yard; it is the
| fences that make the trouble. Love is an
| open lot SO it is with regard to Christ.
Once we are in touch with him in any
vital way, then we not only have the
sense of being taken care of by him, but
we know ourselves to be sharers with
him in that which he possesses, bound
with him in the bundle of common des-
! tiny even as he says in this very chap
! ter, Because 1 live ye shall live Also
| One life in which both are contained. The
| Christians relation to Christ in this par
| ticular is like the relation of the planets
to the sun, wherein by the power of the
sun both sun and satellite are swept
along as in a common tide. There is a
makes the sun true sponsor for all th6
members of his stellar household, so til
each planet, If 1t could be quickened into
consciousness, would say: Because the
sun lives, 1 shall live; my destiny is root
ed in his perpetuity; the shock of any
collision to which in my passage through
the celestial spaces / may be liable, will
be broken by the tension of the gravitat-
ing bonds by which | am knit into him.
Another element of this peace consists IL
thinking of God as Christ has taught Us
to think of him, viz, in his fatherliness
The quietude of our young years wa:
due, more than we thought of then, t
the fact that we had a father and
mother to go to when we We're in trou
BILE. They always helped out of ou
little difficulties. When the child comes
in from the outside, the first question h
is likely to ask is, where's mother?" H
may not want her for anything particu
lar. but he wants to know she is there
Having father and mother under the sam
roof makes the child's sleep more quie
at night And so amid the larger Difficult
ties that throng around us as we NOV
along in life, there is nothing we need t
feel so much as that there is some on
that stands to us in just the same rela
ton now father and mother used t
, stand to us years ago. Christianity as al
idea begins with thinking of God in tn
same way that a true son thinks of hi
1atner, tnrlStatnty as Il ne DeSiHS VIII
feeling and acting toward God as a tru
son feels and acts toward his father
Christ taught us to pray, "Our Fathe
which art in heaven" That part of thu
Sermon on the Mount that encourages III
: not to be anxious, and not to overworl
ourselves for food and clothing, bases it
self on the same relationship. 'You
Father knoweth that we have need of al
these things" your Father feedeth TIN
, fowls of the air; are we not much bette
, than they?" 1t is simply impossible t
cverestimate the peace-giving power o
this Father idea of God which Christ ha
revealed.