The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1915-05-20
Text Furnished Every COngre-
CATION i'm America.
HORROR TO ANGELS AND men
Walls of Widows and Orphans,
Groans of Mangled Dying.
This War but a Struggle for
Commercial Supremacy.


half of the bishops of the Methodist
Episcopal church, Bishop Earl Grams
ton CT Washington made public today
q special Call to Prayer" appointed
to be read in all the Methodist
churches.
Not. once a day only. nor merely
when convenient, but in our every
our hearts necessarily ascend for the
peace of Europe and the world" says
the appeal.
The text of the call in part is as
follows:
an the divine ordering of events
1t has been given to American Meth
odism to develop and occupy the
world-parish claimed by the daring
faith of John Wesley when Methodists
were a despised people.
THE Methodist Episcopal Church,
now firmly planted on every continent
of the globe, must therefore recognize
ut this crucial period in human affairs
her honorable and responsible re1a-
ton to all races and conditions of
mankind. The tenure of her own
spiritual life and leadership is at stake
in her attitude toward this sacred OBJ
legation.
From the beginning Methodism
has conceived of the kingdom of God
as a universal Brotherhood founded
in the spirit and teachings of Jesus
Christ, with God as One Father, Love
and peoples eligible on equal terms to
all it's benefits for time and eternity.
Whatever obscures his vision of the
kingdom of God bars the way to its
glorious realization.
1.-The prayer, Thy Kingdom Come
has therefore ever been the first petit
ton on all human tongues conse-
Grated by the hallowing of the Faith
er's name. But now, to the horror of
angels and of men, the vision is for
the time lost by the one continent that
has been beyond all others sanctified
by the blood of Christian martyrs,
and the voice of God silenced in the
councils of the embittered nations.
Europe is engulfed in unutterable woe
and the world is filled with an agony
of dread. Christian soldiers are daily
passing in multitudeS to judgment
with the blood of fellow Christians on
their hands. On every wind the walls
of widowed mothers and orphaned
children are mingled with the groans
of mangled and dying men,
Commercial Supremacy.
Under such conditions your chief
pastors can be no longer silent nor
can they meet their duty by perfume
tory exhortation to formal prayers for
divine interposition. Not until we
realize that, beneath all that appears,
this war with its awful carnage is but
a struggle for commercial supremacy,
can we understand how alien to hered-
itary dynaStieS is the thought of the
universal brotherhood of man. Ev-
cry tradition and every instinct of i'm
perialism is in constant friction with
the rule of Christ. The jealOuSieS and
hatredS of kings and peoples are not
born in heaven. Let victory rest
where it may after millions of brave
hearts have ceased to beat, the vas
salage of human souls to material
wealth, wealth and power will remain
the sure harbinger of other wars, of
increasing deadliness as suborned
science adds to the machinery of de-
struction unless God shall nightly in
tervene by unseen forces whose STRAIT
egies we may not discern but whose
doubt.
I'VE want not preparedness for war,
but preparedness for God and His
peace, for the sheltering of our ma
ton. We have a Christian president
and aboi,t him in council are men who
pray. Let our united faith also sup
port their constant appeal to God for
patience and poise and wisdom amid
the storm of conflicting advices by
which they are beset Their only
refuge, our only refuge, Europes only
hope and humanitys only hope, is in
God Therefore, pray, pray, pray
without ceasingi
ready comes the voice: God will
shine forth triumphantly. God will
walk in glory upon the fields plowed
by the shells of battle, sown with the
bodies of the dead, and watered by
the blood of those gone forth. And
the harvest will be God established in
the hearts of living men. Not since
such faith as will be. Ameni In be-
half of the bishops.
EARL CRANSTON.
washington, d. c., May II, 1915"