The Washington herald., 1918-02-13

and the twenty-fourth verse: 20
wretched man that I am; who shall
deliver meT'
Robert Louis Stevenson always had
a great liking for allegories as is
seen In his THE Ebb Tide" but his
power of description reached its
highest expression in what must al
ways be regarded as his masterpiece,
his famous story OF ''Dr. Jekyl and
Mr.. Hyde"
The story had been written in a good
many books before Stevenson ever
translated 1t in the language Of his
terrible book, but Robert Louis Stew
enson and all other writers,owe their
greatest debt to the New Testament
for II was st. Paul who first wrote
the plot in the seventh and eighth
chapters of Romans which Stevenson
later on translated into the language
Of our day as "Dr. Jekyll and Mr..
Hyde"
You can name this problem what
ever you please, II you will feel bet
ter by your own selection. You can
call it "Dr. Jekyll and Mr.. Hyde"
You can call It war in our members"
You can call it ''the flesh against the
, spirit" You can call il Original sin"
any one OF a hundred names, IL you
!. please. for labels make no difference.
seourge Of His Own Liza
You have seen a generous man slid
ing and sinking away IN selfish greed
over a rasping. grasping. skin-fint,
miserIy disposition which would make
Scrooge or Marley look like a plugged
counterfeit cent by the side of
thousand-dOllar government bond.
Furthermore, you have seen a truth
full man smarting under the scourge
OF his own lie. and you have seen
virtuous man Iashed by the con-
sciousness of his guilt. oh. yes, GER
tainly,
And YOU have seen a sober man.
moaning in repentance after he'd
been drunk. promising that he
wouldn't get drunk again. only to be-
come enslaved and brutalized by his
appetite. and do what he didn't want
he wouldn't do.
And you have had the quiet hour of
your mediation and prayer slimed and
stained with the wickedest of
thoughts which have come unbidden
into your mind like a troop OF vul-
lures.
Imagine a half wolf and half lamb,
half pure and half vile. half drunk
and half sober. half God and half
devil.
You will find that fellow is as rotten
as hell in his own life. who is so anx-
|, ious to expose the other fellow.
have reyer seen it fail In my life. Put
1t right do Rn. will you? He is as rot
kteu as hell and he is Just trying to
divert attention from his own pusil-
lanimity and trying 10 make you be-
leve il is the way the other fellow
lives instead of the way he himself
lives.
After all has been said and after all
has been read and laid aside and COM
mented upon, we've all got to turn
back to Stevenson who has given US
the most dramatic, the most powerful.
the most terrible commentary upon
the seventh and eighth chapters of
Romans in his strange and weird story
of DR.. JekyIl and Mr.. Hyde.
Man Of Pure Life.
He pictures DIR. JekylI as a man
of pure life, high ideals, kind, vir-
tuous. generous. sympathetic, with
wide charities, who in the course of
his scientific Investigations in his
laboratory one day discovered a
drug which when taken would dis
solve his better self and release
the vile, lower self into the world,
and whenever he drank this drug
DR.. Jekyll. the pure. the kind. the
gentle, the virtuous, faded like your
breath on a mirror and the brute
took the reins and drove like old
Jehu.
The angel retired and the devil
took the stage and his body shrank
and shriveled in order to fit the
&shrunken soul of this mean, wretch
ed nature of Mr.. Hyde. And when
In the person of this british dwarf
1he INDUCED with sinful glee and su-
preme delight in all the outrageous
things which he would not, for his
right arm, thought of doing when he
was in his right mind or when he
was Dr. JekylI. When he was Mr..
HYDE he would outrage virtue. out
rage womanhood or childhood and
the decency of society. He took su-
preme delight in going to every length
and every extreme OF vileness and
corruption
Then. when the police were on his
track he would dash into his labora-
tory and he-Eould drink from this
flask this drug. and in the twinkling
of an eye would change into the re-
fned, gentle. kind. sober, sympathetic,
pure DR.. Jekyll.
And he gave this vile, lower self
Of his a name. He called that Mr..