The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-01-05


Eighteen Million at One Mans Feet.
Copyright, 1916. by William T.
Ellis.)
Eighteen million persons, in North
America alone, begin this week a six
months course of study in Johns
Biogra ply of Jesus. This is an edu-
cational project of immense proper
lions and importance, and yet, because
it is not new, it excites little remark.
Doubtless the Sunday school is more
potent force in shaping a peoples
ideals than all the universities of the
land. With characteristic acuteness of
Judgment, President Wilson once
wrote, The Sunday school of today is
the code of morals of tomorrow
One day L stood amid the ruins of
ancient Ephesus, in the very theater
where Paul was mobbed, and contem
plated the many claims to distinction
of that great city and its glories. First
among these-despite the tumult
about Diana of the Ephesians''-is
the fact that out of Ephesus came
four of the five books written by the
aged John, the best friend that Jesus
had on earth.
Just as, all unnoted by Broadway,
there are streams of light and beauty
and helpfulness going forth from New
DIRK City to the remoteSt parts of the
earth. so from this sensual, pleasure
loving. materialistic and decadent old
city of Ephesus there issued these in
spired words concerning life's greatest
realities and life's greatest Person. The
little company of devout disciples,
whom even the corruption-laden air of
great heather capital could not en-
ervate, little dreamed, when they be-
sought their aged pastor and spiritual
father to write down his personal
memories and Interpretation of Jesus
Christ, that the biography penned by
John would one day be studied in five
hundred languages, or all the tongues
spoken by mankind, and that it would
become the text of special study for
millions of persons in continents then
undreamed Of
Every book partakes of the charac-
ter of its author. Johns emblem in
ancient ecclesiastical heraldry, is the
eagle, because of his soaring and pene-
trating vision. He was the sort of
friend who understands. When they
companied together for three years in
Palestine, it was John who walked
closest to Jesus and who seemed to
give Him the greatest comfort. He
was a comprehending comrade. Like
all fine and sensitive spirits, he had a
high quality of courage, and he was
the most steadfast of the disciples at
the CrucifiXion. Naturally, it was to
John, standing by the cross that the
dying Friend committed His mother
y. l..
it was this same seer of the eagle per-
ception who peered farthest into the
mysteries of the hereafter and wrote
them down in the Book of the Reve-
lation. The Fourth Gospel differs
from the three earlier Lives of Christ
in that it is primarily a spiritual inter-
probation of the divine nature of
Jesus.
Great Book for the Times.
influence of his words. Even these
lessons. which penetrate into all the
remote and unexpected places which a
daily newspaper reaches, have brought
me letters from prisoners in peniten-
tiarieS; from men and women in asy-
lums for the insane; from remote
mountain cabins and prairie sod
houses; from famous business men and
public officials; from alert teachers
and from modest, housekeeping moth
ers. If such is the outreach and eff
feet of one series of simple, present.
day articles, what is the power of a
masterpiece like Johns Gospel, when
universally translated and distributed +?
All the prelateS and potentates of
earth combined have less influence
than this one book.
There chances to lie on my desk at
the moment a small, brown-bound-
copy of this Gospel, distributed by
the million to British soldiers on ac-
tive service by the Scripture Gift
Mission, of London. Thousands of
men in the trenches have gone forth to
death with the words penned in old
Ephesus on their lips.
Peep into any mature Christian s
copy of the Bible and it will be found
to open most naturally at the four
teenth chapter of Johns Gospel, where
the best-thumbed passages will be seen
to be those beginning, Let not your
heart be troubled" Beyond a doubt,
this old book, which springs like a
white lily of spirituality out of the
black mud of Ephesian heathendom, is
the most popular and the most helpful
bit of writing to be found in all the
| world Myriads and millions of per-
sons, of all sorts and conditions, have
found it veritable book of life. So
the six months of study upon which
| the Sunday schools of the world are
now entering is no experiment
| Kiplings wolf-child, Mowgli, had to
learn the master words of the jungle.
Now that the overturning of a thou
sand SATELLITES by the world war has
made life more of a tangled Jungle
than ever, we are all seeking for mas
ter words. Night and day countless
men and women, most of them entirely
unsupported by their closest neighbors,
are bordering, puzzling and sufferln g
over the present plight of civilization.
More persons are interested in these
essentially spiritual questionings than
in the latest plays or books or news
or fashions or food-prices. The strug-
gle to find out God, and to know His
will, is still-yes, even more than ever
the supreme interest of all people.
/ The world is hungry for clear word
about God. And that is the fundamen-
| tai need of our time which this Book
meets 1t speaks the master words.
A Famous Fragment.
! AS the rare air and sublime view
on a mountain top freshen the spirit,
so the majestic opening of Johns Cos
pei lifts ones spirit above pettiness
and triviality, into a contemplation
of the, supreme concerns that the
mind of mortal may grasp. Starting,
like the book of Genesis, with the
words In the beginning it projects
! Il aors- e. .,e