The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 18??-19??, 1910-12-06
IN THE RELIGIOUS WORLD.
What Church Folk Are Think.
ing Abont and DOING
AT THE SIGN OF THE WORRIES
VAR.
lie ntcEnatlonal Sunday School Les
son for December II Ia 1sThe Cruel
fixion.' Matt. 27: 1880.

AhC hANCA AAoIEOAan4 sunday school les
son for December II is 1.-The Cruel.
fxion." Matt. 81: 1850.
(By WILLIAM T. ELLIS.)
Really startling is the fact which
a close observer discerns. that some
where in the background of all the
great struggle going on in the earth
today rises h figure of the cross,
Portugal, the latest nation to overture
confesses the issue to have been pri-
marily religious, even as is also the
cause Of SPANS deep discomfort
Egypts agitation resolves itself int
a question Of cross versus crescent.
The Xxi problem, which en-.
crosses the attention of European
diplomats. and is intertwined with the
future Of Greece, Crete, Bulgaria,
SerNia, Montenegro and Roumania-
not to mention the n~ationalities under
Turkish dominion-is essentially a
problem Of islam versus Christianity.
Greeks, Russians, Armenians and Sy-
rians see it all typified in the figure
Of the cross coming back to the
mosque Of ST. Sophia in Constantin-
ople. St Sophia's was founded IN
tan emperor of the Roman empire.
For nearly five centuries it has been
in the hands of the Moslems. But
the belief is strong in millions Of
hearts that t cross is coming back"
When it does, the Turkish empire will
have fallen.
An Emblem and a Passion.
The vast political significance of
the Christian emblem is best under
stood in the regions around the Meii-
There the Moslems spit
upon and tread underfoot the cross.
Even officers to whom Emperor Will
liam of gave decorations
when he visited Palestine thus treated
their honors, because they bore the
hated symbol Of Christianity.
The Greeks especially believe that
the cross is to be their sign of politl-
cal emancipation. SO their Christian
ity tends to become almost idolatrousI
devotion to the cross. In the old city
of Ephesus the archaeologists have
unearthed a beautiful marble bap-I
tistry, with seven great crosses about
it's sides. I caught our horse boy
reVerently kissing one OF these
crosses.
One of the most impressive bits of
statuary I have ever scotland one
that should be better tina
which stands halfway up the hill over
looking the Danube river in the city
of BUDAPEST. The figure is that Of
a king-emancipator, in bronze and OF
heroic size, holding aloft a cross above
the city below. At his feet crouchesi
an eloquent figure in marble OF al
savage Hun who looks aloft to the
appraised cross for nope and emanci-
DdIiOn. ne titlI1e 6Aodp AaiIAS oolA- |
mates the whole city. 1t is beautiful
~ emblematic of the power Of the
cross as the only home of the modern
city.
The Man.
All of this worldwide devotion to
thu cross points back to the sad-eyed
figure of a lonely and wasted Man,
hanging on rough WOOden beams upon
a stony hill outside Oil the capital OF
a remote Roman province. An execut-
ed criminal, a thWarted .reIorfner, d
crushed dreamer; a forsaken leader
could any fate be more pitiabie than
that of this failure, as his content
poraries regarded the Carpenter from
Nazareth?
Just a pain-rent Victim Of that hor-
ribIe invention, the cross, at whom
the meanest OF the gaspinS rabble and
the coarsest of the rough soldiers was
to scoff-yet that Man Is today
the worlds greatest ~conqueror, and
the supreme factor In human lie ana
International politics l have been
working lately in the regions where
til great ones of ancient history
fought and intrigued and ruled and
sat in splendid state. Only here and
there have / been able to find even
An uncertain trace of Cyrus and Dart
as and ACKNOWLEDGMENT and Alexander
Great and julius Caesar and Cleo !
patro and Saladin and Haroun or +,
Raschid. But his Man VINO Went 10 =
dP2th OlNSluC OI otO &c oooASAA
.ay the most living Of all the Worlds
forces. c
TYle Message of the Art Galleries.. :
The shame of that ignosnlnous DEAN L
IS being s~upplanted by the greatest
slories the race can bestow. Every
,na who has visited the great art gal
cries Of Europe knows that the one j.
theme Of the greatest artists !
been the death Of Jesus Of Naza- c
eth. "Ecce Homo!' might be inscr1b- 1
I'd over the door OF every great art
"a lIerv. for there the cross is lifted up.
Passing by the conquest of the I'M $
Mortal music by Christ and his king Q
hip in the worlds literature, one may V
20 to the firing line Of civilization. He Il
earns that something like one-seventn .
# tbo human rare Sreaks Arabic, and &