The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1907-01-12
In the Religious World
What the Church Folks Are Thinking i
About and Doing. Religious NeWS
eiaq From Everywhere. sss


of blasting Gods beautiful handiwork,
and of blighting other lives. The very
fact that one man may, say, wreck a
bank and bring disaster, poverty and
possibilities in every direction of this
wonderful. go6like will with which
man is endowed.
The First Anti-Race Suicide Teaching.
If people read the old Bible more
they would not be so quickly excited
over such fads as "Anti-race suicide"
or 1.-The simple life They would know
these to be primal and elemental du
ties, as old as Adam, and not twentieth
century discoveries. Man was created
as a family. The first command to
him. forever binding and written in
his nature well on his conscience,
was BE fruitful and multiply" We
have not yet improved on the divine
programme for the race-life in fam
lily, with children in abundance. The
person who misses this comes short of
the highest human destiny and posi-
bility. He has failed of life's greatest
prizes. There is reason for the old He
brew idea that not to have children
was a shame In Japan this same
principle is so rigidly observed that
every man does have children. even
If he must adopt them. No family line
is ever permitted to die out in Japan.
The Edenic idea of the home is still
the idea needed in these times; so also
Is this primitive, scriptural conception
of wOman's place. The new woman
cannot improve on Gods idea of a
womanly career, which is to be a help
meet for man. This does not mean
AS the old chroniclers say, woman was
not made from mans feet, to be his
slave, nor from his head, to rule over
him; but from his side, near his heart,
to be his cOmrade and cO-helper
There is a simple dignity about the
Genesis narration of the purpose and
relationship of man and woman that
rebukes the common frivolity and SEN
timen tality with which this subject is
commonly regarded.
The First Farmer.
Not in a steam-heated apartment,
furnished with hundred needless lux
uries, and arrayed in a swallow tailed
coat, a shining shirt with a high col
Lar, and patent-leather shoes, was the
first man started out in life. He was
far better equipped-with nothing.
Hapless and bewildered as Adam
would be, logged out in our modern
flummery equally helpless is the pres
ent city man in the simple conditions
which constitute paradise. There is a
whole sermon on the simple life in
the simple statement that the first man
was a farmer. He took his name
from the earth to which he lived so
close. All that the Creator considered
indispensable to happiness was found
in that first garden.
As a further sign of the simplicity
of this life which God pronounced very
good. is the fact that Adam was re-
stricted to a vegetarian diet. Even for
the lower creation no food seems to
have been provided except that which
springs from the earth. Civilization is
suffering seriously from indigestion,
and it well may bark back to it's first
forbears for a lesson in absteminous-
ness God never meant man to be an
ascetic. but neither did he intend him
to be a glutton.
Simple surroundings, simple food
and work, were the Creators pro-
signed to be fit for fellowship with
himself Nowadays we must precede
every important conference on a re-
igfous subject with a big dinner; even
church socials will not Ego" without
to eat.
When man mad been established as
a free moral agent, amid ideal sur
roundings. the Creator saw that the
of his work had been reached. |
his power was man. Then he rested |
The first Sabbath as a precedent be- |
came a part of the law written on tab
lets of stone, and written in the very
fibre of mans physical nature. This |
IS one of the laws that twentieth CEN |
fury man is constantly king; and |
II you would see the penalty exacted |
therefor. look at the myriad over |
crowded sanatariums and asylums. |
Rest is as divine a law as work; to do |
neither is as bad as to do one and not |
The other. 1t is a disobedience of the |
divine and natural law as well as a |
failure to apprehend the pleasant pos |
s1bilities of life. when one fails to keep |
he rest-day ordained at creation