Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 232, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 September 1910 — LIFT UP YOUR EYES AND LOOK [ARTICLE]

LIFT UP YOUR EYES AND LOOK

By BISHOP WILLIAM A. QUAYLE

Montreal. Canada

-vT* 1 ,* 1 In everything give thanks; for tms is the will of God In Jesus Christ concerning you.—These. 6:18. Have we not set the song of the Christian life to much to the tune of difficulty, danger and sorrow? “In everything give thanks.” I am pretty certain, will, in the multitude of instances, be translated as meaning that whatever difficulty or distress enters your life, be of grateful mood. Do not murmur. Be glad through whatever roughness the water wear as we voyage across their uncertain billows. 1 am certain of two things in this matter. First, that this is hdw this Scripture is pretty generally viewed, and second, this is not what it does actually mean. It does mean that, but it means indefinitely more. A farm Is on a landscape; and he who confounds farm and landscape is not seeing things as they are. Difficulties are to be encountered and sorrows are to be met and they are to be met with the mood of manly and womanly resignation to the wide-working will of God. But that we are to be grateful for the clouds rather than the sunrise and the noon and the blessed open sky is to me absurd and a listless interpretation of the good God our Heavenly Father. To be glad on a holiday is as devout as to be sad on a funeral day. We shall not need to reset our estimates of God and his will concerning us before we are In harmony with his mood. He is the glad God of out-of-doors and the happy z singing things whether they be birds or children or women or strong men. This anaemic notion of religion Is unwholesome because it is untrue. God gives no assent. A good man and great said this: “In everything give thanks.” Nobody but a good and great man could have said It. The sentiment is like Mount Lycabettus from whose top all of hlstorled Greece lies under the eyes withe t straining an eyeball. All life lies at the base of a mount of vision and of praise like this: “In everything give thanks.” The fact which is meant to be lifted into light at this moment Is that there is a devotional element in all things whatsoever. We say grace before meals, except we be heathen. We often say grace before

labors and battles without or within and reading of books and taking of Journeys and husking corn or going to picnics or a stroll through sunburnt fields for the sheer love of the crisp grass under foot and the hot sky overhead. We do narrow beyond the permission of God this thought of devotion or we must be at church or prayer meeting or at family prayer to be devotional. Those places and occupations are greatly good, but they do not monopolize the moods of devotion. The devotional frame is the deep consideration. Are we open to devotion for all things as Paul was? It is meet to give thanks for the bird voices, and a good way to give such thanks is by listening to the voices. —— That Is worth weighing. To love things enough to give things heed is a mood of gratitude, whereas not to care enough for things to notice them is a first-class specimen of ingratitude toward God and his doings. The cricket’s chirp is a species of poetry which may well set the heart singing after its fashion, too. Such a little warmth makes the cricket set his heart to song. Were we as good at the voicing of our gratitude as the cricket of the hearth, what a shout of chorusing would the great God hear from men. The religious nature is wiser and wider than many religious folk are given to supposing. Christianity Is generosity. “Thank God!" How often have I found my own given to that gust of gratitude—“thank God!" And I am not slew to believe God hears such prayer and smiles with gladness to hear it. Why should we not give thanks for the finding of a wild flower or the striking gracefulness of a child at play, or the toss of apple branches lit with bloom, or the blue jay’s note with its musical unmusicality. No, secularlties are just theme for praise and prayer. We have no call to ask for things for which we have not call to answer to God in spontaneous words of thanks. “I thank you” Is a phrase which the debonair use frequently. Courtesy is a good habit for a body’s own sake. To begenteel Is a soul-instinct of fineness, and if a man or a woman lived alone and broke bread Mth himself, (although such a way of living is not necessary or to be desired. If one is alone and has no relatives, then should such a one borrow some child, or, better, some homeless body, somebody human, not feline nor canine, to keep alive the humaneness in one’s own soul), he would do well to say: •■t thank you" when h® passes food to himself, for so would the method of good manners be kept alive and the social impulse would be hearkened to “Father, I thank thee,” says the Christ; and “In everything glee thanks,” says his brainiest follower. And for one I will take this advice and will find provision for devotion in everything, books, folks, church, labor, song, tears and cares. And for the least and largest to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ will make my adoration for the Christ, my Saviour and my King.