The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-09-16
s ANGELES, Cal. September 9.-

| as communities and as individuals may help to improve the lot of the unfortu- nate. The text is Deuteronomy xv. Il
 'The poor shall never cease out of tn, land"
 Turning to that valuable and suggestive edition of the Bible called the Red Letter
 Bible, I notice that this passage in Deu
 teronomy is printed in red, indicating that it was quoted by our Lord. It Is astonlsh- ing how many of such passages there are showing how close a student of the 1 Scriptures Christ was. Guided by this reference in the Red Letter Bible, I find the circumstances under which Christ quoted the passage I was at that feast when Mary broke the alabaster box of l spikenard over Christs feet Judas said 1t was wasteful, as the ointment might have been sold and the money given to the poor, but Jesus said there were other opportunities of giving to the poor, for said he. "The poor ye have always with you"
 There were poor people during the Mo- salc era. There were poor people during all the wealth and the splendor of the | solomonic reign. There were novels and rags covered by the shadows of the mag nificent Grecian temples. Poverty and gaunt want went begging for bread dur ing the Roman triumphs, when Christ lived. There are poverty and rags and hunger now, and there will be poverty and want upon this old suffering world until the millennial dawn, when the glory of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the seas. Poverty, haunting poverty, is everywhere.
 We have today our poor in Europe, Asia, Africa, South America and in North America. We have them upon every is- land of the seas, in every town village and city and farming country We have an omnlpresent poor. During all the cen turies from the beginning this burden of poverty has been upon the shoulders of large proportion of the race calling for our sympathy and our help How long will 1t be before the wisdom of our social philosophers and the commiseraton of Christ's church take up the problem and, searching for the causes of the affiction, find ont how to remove them and remedy the misery. l know of no duty more ur- gent and if we find out in studying the problem that in some cases poverty is the result of social evils let go for ward In Gods name to eradicate them. May the Holy Spirit help us to preach an appropriate sermon on this Sabbath, following our annual Labor Day.
 First among these evils l place the prenatal influences which help crowd our cities with the omnipresent poor In this matter let us be brave and truthful. Let us not seal our lips and be silent on ac- count of a mock modesty, It is better to have an inflammation opened and the wound drained, no matter how repulsive the odor, than to allow the disease to go on fostering and eating its way into the vitals There Is many danger more horrible than the surgeons knife
 n. some time ago. l had always a horror of the surgeons knife. I felt that man he'd better resort to everything and any thing rather than lie down upon an op- eratins table But some time ago the wife of one of my dearest church mem bers telephoned me to come down to the hospital at once, as her husband was about to be operated on. jumped on the car and went down and arrived just. three minutes after the work had been be- gun. They had carried the patient into the operating room and were then giving him an anaesthetic. I paced up and down the hall, wondering what l should do. l felt that it was a critical and might be a fatal operation Should I go in or should l not? I had always summed the sight of the operatingStable Because I feared the spectacle of the flowing blood. But as I walked up and down that hall l said to myself: "In all probability this op- eration will be fatal My friend will die within a few hours after he comes out of the anaesthetic. Will it not comfort him to know that I stood by his side dur ing his time of trial?" So I said to one of the nurses: "Tell the doctor I should like to come in He sent out word Come in" I have thanked God since that l went in. When that ulcer was op- ened, l saw then as I never realized be- fore that a man should not fear a sur fr l~,.tfA xxvl.t t.l. .1a.. ons abscess nearly as much as he should fear the abscess which is not opened. Our friends life was saved by the narrowest of margins because he fatly refused to be operated upon until death was literally clutching him by the throat.
 Deadly Ulcer.
 Now, as there was a deadly disease eating into the vitals of my friends body, SC there Is a deadly disease eating into the very heart of our social life. Thou sands upon thousands of our cradles are infected by prenatal weaknesses and the evil results of ancestral sins. We must remember that the present generation is not responsible for all its poor. For, as most of us have inherited the physical looks of a father and mother, a grand father or a grandmother, so there are hosts of unfortunate children born into the world who from the cradle are uooliltu lo ne ol pilNslcdl lflconlpeiency because mentally and physically tainted from birth. But though the law of heredi- ty is inexorabe, and though our poor houses and hospitals are crowded with a lot of miserable creatures who are drag ging ont a suffering, an appalling exis- tence because they were not the offspring of healthy parents. and though thousands of men and women who are not inmates of public institutions of charity are so- c!al parasites or dependents upon others for support through the same dire causes, yet the strange fact remains that re- spectable and refined society forbids it's teachers to discuss these vital questions In public lest such a discussion should offend delicate and sensitive ears.
 Is the offending of delicate ears to stand In the way of the untold agonies that arc cursing childhood because men and women are allowed to marry who have nc business to marry? Are the wards of oui public institutions to be boycotted by all intelligent men and women because they do not wish to see suffering in it's most repulsive forms? Shall we refuse to look at little children, born with curvature oi the spine and with diseased blood and with crooked limbs, who. with swollen lips and distorted and malformed fea- lures. are looking at us from hr ,dred1 Of cots-shall We refuse merely because these little sufferers have inherited the physical weaknesses of their parents What right had the parents of these suf- fering children to marry? Some time ago I attended church wedding where the bride hobbled up the aisle on a cane She had an abscess on one limb and was afflicted with tuberculosis besides. Shs had ri