The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-10-19

built and Dedicated Ezra, S:S-
13-6:14-1S-
At the Center of Life, an Altar.
had been watching the Jews at
the Wailing Place in Jerusalem one
Friday afternoon Some of the devo-
ton seemed mechanical. as when
some old Spanish Jews in gaberdines
went up to the wall and read for
space, then, after perfunctorily touch
ing the stones with their lips, step
ped off to one side and chatted and
laughed. 1 was informed that these
men were hired to say prayers at
the Wailing Place for Jews in dis
tant lands.
Then as 1 was about to leave.
saw a woman of perhaps thirty years
draw near. She had been praying
at the other end of the wall. AS she
approached, 1 perceived that she bore
such face as might have been
RachePs-strong, melancholy, spirit
ual, queenly. She was manifestly
oblivious to the motley company about
her, of Jews from many nations: her
soul was in her rapt face, turning to-
ward the great blocks of yellowish
stone, still standing from the founda-
ton of Solomon's Temple. Her hands
were claSped to her bosom, and her
lips moved in prayer. She was see
! ing with great lustrouS eyes, not
those monoliths covered with Hebrew
names and prayer, but the glory of
| the house of Jehoveh, and of the
kingdom Of her fathers. All that had
! been and now is not, and that a de-
vout child of Abraham hopes that
ryet may be, was symbolized for this
| worshipper by these stones. She kiss
| ed them again and again, as the won1-
an kisses the lover who she fears she
Y may nevermore see; and as she moved
away. she looked back over her Shout
| der, with unutterabIe longing in her
| eyes.
That incident gave me a new con-
ception of the ardor and intensity
with which a Jew may love even the
very stones of the temple. There
saw embodied the passion of the re-
turning exiles for the house of Je-
hovah. The spirit of her people, at
their highest and deepest moods, was
| personffied in that one devotee. It
was new light upon this entire story
of the rebuilding of the temple, which
the Sunday schools today study.
''The East Is the East
Nobody will ever understand the
! Jew until it is remembered that he is
an oriental The deep-flowing. re-
ligious spirit of this people who were
chosen to be custodians of humanity's
/ Hottest religious truth is partially ex-
| planned by the orientaPs supreme in
| terest in religion. The occidental is
not so. To this day the people of all
the east, but especially of the region
called the Near East, whence sprang
the Jews, put religion first. All sorts
of religions thrive there: an irrelig-
ious man there is unthinkable. The
villagers on the hills of Lebanon, the
shepherds in the fields of Palestine
4 the Bedouins of the desert in their
tents, the diverse peoples in the
\ Tigris- Euphrates Valley, talk over
historic and doctrinal religious ques-
ttions, just as a group of Americans
discuss, politics or baseball
at the present time the region
where the Bible story was enacted is
PROSTATE beneath the cruel heel of a
4 war in which it was embroiled by the
4 unscrupuIous appeal to the religious
motive on the part of a European
monarch. A million Christians have
persisted. Jews by the thousands have
died of starvation. Armies are en-
camped in Jerusalem and Hebron
and Damascus. over the district of
the exile, old BabyIonia, a series of
4 dreadful battles have been waged,
and British prisoners have been driv-
en-. in abject misery, over the route
of the returning Hebrew patriots.
The Chief Fact About Man.
The Jewish exiIes who conferred their
first thought upon the spiRitual side
of the return from captivity were true
to the fundamental aspiration of hui
manity. AS Carlyle says, I'm every
sense a mans religion is the chief fact
with regard to him. If you tell me
what this is, you tell me to a very
great extent, what the man is, what
: kind of things he will do
The flippant youth, or the immature
man, who has no time for religion -
and who is not interested in the
church, and feels too big for a Bible
4 class. has all the history of the human
race, and the testimony of all the great
thinkers, arrayed squarely against
: him. One hours honest research upon
the subject will start any man toward
. realization of the truth that religion
!. is the theme that has most. deeply en-
crossed the best thought of mankind
from the dawn of history to the pre-
sent hour. The shallow nlaterialism
I of the west is no improvement upon
: the inbred righteousness of the east
The Altar at the Center.
The huge task of the returned exiles
was to build nation. Their existence
, as country had been practically
ended: they were only a scattered host
OF 'captives, their land was laid waste
at its, capital, and elsewhere occupied
! by hybrid aliens. The work ahead OF
them as they traversed the dreary road
from Babylon back home was even
harder than the first organization OF
a state. Rebuilding is in some ways
2 more difficult than building. The per-
son who has made a wreck of life
finds it a greater undertaking to re-
make than 1t was to build in youth
China is in sorer plight today than
ever in her past.
: Vision was needed to see the new
Jerusalem in these heaps of debris
: these piled-up pillars, these obliter.
ated streets few years ago, wher
1 walked over the smoking acres O,
rubbish that had once been San Fran
: cisco. 1 marveled at the courage and
imagination of the citizens who from
! the first saw a new and fairer city
rising from these ruins. So it take.
the vision that has been spirit -anoint.
ed to see in every wreck of human.
2 ity the man that may yet be; and If
the weakness and offenses of the
, present social order a new and per
. feet state of society. The faith which
these old Jews possessed, to behold
i ! SECOND and greater temple in the
stead of this desolation. is needed b.
4 all spiritual builders today. Out o
: the deSolation of the world war mus