The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-07-06

grace which fathers sometimes bring
Ahaz. and Broadway.
One thing essentially was wrong
with Ahaz: his mind was muddled.
his thinking was foggy and he had
no clear vision of the absolute pre-
eminence of right. instead of hav
ing clear convictions, to which he
would hold in spite of life and death
and hell, he had only a weakling's
desire to be in the vogue of the hour.
Ahaz would have made typical
broadway idler, for the display of the
latest fashions in clothes and vices.
Like the habitue of Broadway, his
law was what they say
OF course, the young person who
would rather be popular than right :
who would rather walk in the fashion
than in his integrity is on a tobog-
gan slide to destruction. The devil
loses no sleep over the person whose
chief aim IN life is to do what every
body else is doing. Straight to the
issue of issues in our own day the
example of Ahaz takes US. He gave
UP the God of his fathers for the sake
of the gods of the neighboring heath
en- because he was afraid of being
peculiar" and wanted to be popular;
and because he wanted to vote with
the majority party. No other tempta-
ton quite like this ever comes to a
young man or woman. 1t is the dead
| lest besetment that awaits the feet of
youth.
This is the trap that snares SO
many of our sons and daughters as
| they leave home for the great cities.
| Broadway, to their unsophisticated
eyes, bulks bigger than Sinai The
song of the Valley of Pleasure,
''Everybody's Doing It," sounds loud
er in their ears than the Sermon on
/ the Molnt.
Battleships and armies are less i'm
portant to a nation than the ideals OF
its youth. We greet with gratitude
the attitude which the Christian ma
| lions in this war are assuming with
respect to the moral welfare of the
boys in uniform. Whosoever is min
istering to idealism in youth is serv-
| ing his land and time. BY contrast
King Ahaz calls to mind Tennyson's
| portrayal of King Arthur's ideal for
his knights:
L make them lay their hands in mine and
To reverence the King, as if he were
Iheir conscience, and their conscience as
To break the heather and uphold the
Christ,
To ride abroad redressing human wrongs,
70 speak no SANDER, no, nor listen to it,
70 honor his own word as if his Gods,
To lead sweet lives in purest chastity,
To love one maiden only, cleave to her,
And worship her by years of noble deeds
Until they won her; for indeed l know
OF no more subtle passion under heaven
Than the maiden passion for maid,
Not only to keep down the base in man,
But teach high thought, and amicable
words,
And courtliness, and the desire of fame
And love of truth, and all that makes
man.
Going the Limit.
If Ahaz had been a modern educat-
ed young man, he would have accepted
| Nietschism as his philosophy. The god
| of Syria gave success; ergo, he would
worship them. Anything for success
There was~no limit of heathendom to
which he would not go. This wastrel
king worshipped the idols of his neigh
bors, set up their shrine among Gods
people, and even adopted Molock, the
fiery god to whom children were sacri-
feed. All the heather practices
against which the very existence of the
Jewish nation was a protest, were ac-
cepted by this mountaineering
t1me-serving young king. All sense
of sanctity seemed gone from him fol-
he withheld not the treasures of the
temple from his conquerors.
When man goes wrong, he some
times goes further wrong than the one
who never held his ideals. This peri
is in front of every Christian. They
fall farthest and hardest who fall from
height There are no prodigals like
those who have come from noblest
homes. Ahaz is an admonition There
is a terrible possibility for bad in the
best of us-and a glorious possibilit,
OF good IN the worst of us.