The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1911-05-13

AlOO4CSl l1LEIdIy SlylS+ with e9OO0 W.
son. The simple explanation for SO
much commonplace and stupid preach
ing and writing is that the preachers
and writers are not on fire with great
passion. Isaiah had a mighty mes
sage, touching his country and his
living fire and wrote. There are
hundreds of ambitious young people
today buying books upon authorship,
and sending their efforts to long-suf-
fering friends, or to secondrate hired
! literary hacks, for criticism. What
really ails them is that they have no
tremendous passion or conviction.
In India I have come across an ex-
traordinary and revealing fact: The
literature of the Nationalist, the
is couched in the most exalted Ian
guage. so that professors of literature,
who have not a shred of sympathy
with this propaganda, confess that
they have never read such sublime
and beautiful literature in the native
producing. They admit that it is be-
yond their power to give a.. adequate
translation of it into English.
What does this startling fact out of
the life of today signify Simply that
great passions are productive of great
ability. They are today in our schools
young people abundantly able to be
our modern Isaiahs, if only they may
be exalted into a loftier conception of
life, and of patriotism and of human
service. Is not this a practical mes
sage for today's Sunday school classes d?
Let us learn to speak and write and
draw and make music, all for the sake
of our native land and our fathers
God. There is every evidence that we
have abundant material for the crea-
ton of patriots who will redeem our
popular songs from their inSufferable
vulgarity and inanity who will produce
new forms of patriotism and SocialiZed
iterature-satires allegories, poems,
proverbs, who will elevate caricature
to its highest form and use; who Will
paint great patriotic canVases; who
will find a new and higher mission for
the moving-picture machines. and the
photograph; who will conSecrate the
wings of the flying machine to the holy
cause of nationalism and International
ism-in a word, who will take of the
resources of this twentieth century,
and make them minister to the noblest
ideals and deepest needs of our coun-
try and the world.
Where Are the Prophets?
All truth belongs to today; it is less
Isaiah's message to the old Jews than
TO the living, wandering, SHINING, be-
clouded men and women of our own
time that concerns us now. The writer
of this wonderful book, with its beau
tiful passages which have become i'm
bedded in the literature of the lam
guage, stands first of all for the truth
that every time needs prophets. Why
are the big pulpitS of Am sending
across the water for preachers? 1t is
a pleasant expression of international
good will to have these men from the
mother country; but what an indict-
than a confession that America, on
both sides of the Canadian border, is
not producing her own prophets. Even
with frequent importations, an alarm
ing number of conspicuous pulpits re-
main vacant.
leaders. No, not prominent ecclesias-
tics; the world, the flesh and the devil
constantly conspire to tho overproduc-
ton of this undesirable article. But
mem who know God and who know
man; who walk in such intimacy with
the Eternal, that spiritual things are
the most real to them, end yet know
themselves but men, weak, SHINING
men, needing pardon along with the
worst, so that they are brothers to all
their kind-for these the need was
never greater. They who keep close
to God are properly highest to men.
The sense of the reality and awful
holiness of the infinite is still, as it was
in Isaiah's day, the most necessary
equipment of the prophet. A keen
realization of God is more to be COW
eted than the learning of the schools
or the cunning of worldly wisdom. 1t
is that which makes brave the mes
senger, and delivers him from the
thraldom of fear and of all ignoble
concerns.
To be an interpreter of the mind of
the Most High. whether through this
spoken word, the printed page. the
canvas or the political arena. is the
highest of all callings. That is what
puts Isaiah above mere rings. In old
Assyria recently I had translated for
me some of the boaStful inscriptions of
Sennecharib; how little he ever dream
ed that an obscure prophet in one of
the lands which he subjugated would
milleniums after his power had gone to
dust, be the teacher and inspirer of
millions of persons in a civilization far
greater than that which Assyria boast
ed. Isaiah is the greatest Of the Old
OF God was clear and strong; and be-
cause he applied to his time the mes
sage that God gave him.
A Little God or a Big?
Yesterday was in the bazars, buy
ing goods for my friend, The professor
Of comparative religions. I carried
several away in my pockets, for-this
is the great teaching of the trivial in
cident-the gods of the heather are
all little gods. Some thousands of
them are so small and ignoble as to
merit the contempt of even their own
followers who have received a western
education 1t is a fair question to ask
concerning any PERSONS religion, is
your God little God or a great God?
The God of Isaiah was an ineffable
and all-glorious God, throned in
majesty above all kings, before whom
the celestian cherubim and seraphim
yelled their faces and cried, Holy,
holy, holy!" The lustrous purity and
majesty of the Infinite made the
prophet cry, Woe is mel" Nothing
creates a consciousness of sinfuln ess
like the sight of holiness. The best
way to awaken the world to a sense of
Its sins is to give it vision of the