The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1910-09-03
BY WILLIAM t. ELLIS.

|EFORE typesetting machines
AM became common in newspa-
per offices. 1t was the prac-
tice of some cOmpoSitors to
keep standing certain COM
mon lines and phrases. They
knew that so stereotyped is human
speech they could insert these lines
bodily with some saving of time and
labor. 1 have thought of these COM
positors often when attending some re-
ligious meetings. For these seemed
made up of left over, shop worn
phrases. The freshness and life have
gone out of them. They have all un-
Willingly. become that odious thing,
cant.
Religion has a tendency to run to
words. Certain stock phrases become
common. Glibness in conventional
speech is a blight upon. religious life.
1t was the same fatal facility in
stereotyped phraseology that afflicted
the active members of the Jewish
church, and gave rise to the parable
which the Sunday schools are now to
study. The story of the two sons is
a story of lip service versus life ser
vice. The first son was told by his
father to go work in the vineyard,
but refused. Afterward he repented
and went. The second son with
promptness and politeness said, 81 go
eir"-but went not.
PIous Verbosity.
The auditors of the parable praised
the first son-until the Teacher point
ed out that the second son represented
their own case. They had been wond-
rously proficient in professions: never
had religious phraseology been more
luxurious than with them. But, 10,
all the while they had been making
this pious verbosity a test of ecclesias-
teal standing the publicans and the
prostitutes had been going into the
kingdom of heaven ahead of them.
What a shattering blow to self-com-
placency!
The shock was meant to be whole
some. What if somebody should arise
in prayer meeting and interrupt every
one who used carelessly the sublime
phrases of Christian devotion with the
challenge, do you mean that?'
Would not the effort be as beneficial as
It would be startling? We are very
careless in the use of speech in this
western world. We are In quite as
much danger as those old Pharisees of
putting words in the place of works.
We are fond of taking religious
pledges, and repeating solemn conse-
crations and lifting our hands in meet
ings in renewed vows. The peril that
ALWAYS awaits the glib and the stereo-
typed and conventional, of putting the
form in the place of the substance
turks before our feet. The danger of
becoming like the second son in the
parable is a real one.
story was told the other day of
South Carolina Scotchman who was an
austere and reserved man. One OF
his descendants SAYS that the only
word of endearment he was ever heard
to utter concerning his wife was on
his death bed when he commended her
to the care of his adult sons in the
words. Margaret is a good woman,
and I like her." We smile at the
meagerness and caution of the utter
ance, but remembering that they had
been preceded by a life of consistent
devotion, are not the simple phrases
more beautiful than the tropical ardor
of the passages commonly read from
letters in the divorce courts? Let us
be a little slower to speak the great
words, and a great deal more heed
full in insurlng reality behind them. 1t
is not 1.-THE most beautiful prayer ever
addressed to a Boston audience" that
moves God, but the sincere cry of an
honest heart.
A Dire Warning.
Kipling derides the modern thought
which substitutes for our first par
ents, "the yelk of an added egg"
Far worse than this tendency to make
man of jellyhsh origin is that which
irreverence-would' give to the uni
verse a jellyfish God, without charac-
ter or convictions, and easily to be
placated and cajoled with cheap and
sugary phrases. The teaching of Jesus
that God Is love is a strong and noble
and divine conception; q popular per-
version of this teaching, which strips
the Deity of all his divine attributes
and makes him a characterless crea-
ture of mans vagrant will, is debas-
1t needs to be met with such terrific
parallels of warnings as Jesus spoke to
the self-satisfied Jews of his day.
A story is often the best form of
history of the Chosen People in the
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