One can see how religion should, to a young person, be associated with repressive and prohibitive laws. Youth is the time for the luxuriating of newborn, and, therefore, delicious vital forces. But its very luxuriance is disorderly, and religion cannot coexist with disorder. Therefore, that which is so continually warning the young against impulse, and passion, and irregularity, ought not to be too greatly displeased if it should, by and by, come to be regarded by the young as a synonym for mere repressive force, and, therefore, as an unpleasant and unpopular thing. I believe, too, that there is no exception to the uniformity of the experience, that all young countries adopt freer systems of religion, and divest religious bodies more completely of all political and properly coercive power than older countries. It is all an illustration of the same thing. Young life, which most needs regulation, most dislikes it.[33]
As the genius of the bard is in the poem, as the wisdom of the legislator is in the law, as the skill of the mechanician is in the engine, as the soul of the musician is in the harmony and melody, as the words of a man’s lips issue from the inner world of his mental and spiritual character—so every work of God, and conspicuously man, as the noblest of God’s works, may truly be said to shadow forth a portion of the mind of God.
We talk of creation as a past thing. But the truth is, creation is eternal. Creation never ceases. Every time the clouds drop in rain, every time the waters freeze into new ice, every time the juices of nature gather into another violet, every time a new wail of life is heard upon a mother’s breast, every time you breathe another sigh, or shed another tear, there is God as truly present in His miraculous creative capacity as on the day when He said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
P. S. Menzies (Sermons).
Apart from their intrinsic value, the above extracts are given because this book of sermons is of special interest to Australians and because it has passed into oblivion. There are very few copies in existence.
Menzies came from Glasgow to Scots Church, Melbourne, in 1868 and died at the early age of thirty-four in 1874. At the Glasgow University he had been largely influenced mentally and spiritually by Principal Caird.
The sermons published in this book were selected by his widow after his death. Although not revised by their gifted young author, the fine thoughts expressed in chaste and beautiful language remind one of James Martineau.