The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1918-08-02
INTERNATIONAL
SUNDAY SCHOOL
LESSON
For August Is Growing Stronger
Luke 2:42-52; 2'Peter 1913.
BY WILLIAM T. ELLIS


What the Recruit Wins.
In his Rhymes of a Red Cross
Man." Robert w. Service has poem
called The Revelation" of which
these stanzas are typical:
we've hidden good:by to life in cage
we're finished with pushing pen;
They're pumping us full of beIiicose rage,
they're showing us how to be men.
We're only beginning to nnd ourselves
we're wonders of Drawn and thew;
But when we go back to our sissy jobs
oh, what are We going to dof
For shoulders curved with the counter
stoop will be carried erect and square;
And faces white from the office light Will
be bronzed by the open air;
And We'll walk with the stride of a new
born pride, with a new-feund JOY In
Scornful men who have diced with death
under the naked skies.
Don't you guess that the things we're
seeing now will haunt us thru all the
Heaven and hell rolled into one, glory and
blood AID tears;
Life's pattern picked with scarlet thread,
where once We wove with a gray
To remind US all how we played our part
in the shock Of an epic day?
"Oh, we're booked for the Great Adventure
now. we're pledged to the Real
Romance;
Wen find ourselves or wen lose ourselves
somewhere in giddy old France
Well know the zest of the fighters life !;
we'ii hunger and thirst; wen die
but first-well live; by the gods, we'll
Ive.'
That is one of the big facts of the
| war. L. has been an emancipation of
manhood. Wage slaves have become
free men and heroes. Dwarfed souls,
! once chained for life to a dreary
grind, have been set at ] berty to trav-
tnI hall y, md ~
| enter into new kingdoms of knowl-
edge. In l,utting on the uniform,
| myri'ids of men have taken on the
whole world. That they should win to
| new physical vigor and power was a
| forego1e conclusion: what is more i'm
| portant is that they have grown great
er in their spirits. They look out upon
a larger life, with clearer, drawer eyes
! knowing life, they know also them
selves. Like tie Hero of our Lesson
| they hav Increased in wisdom and
stature and in favor with God and
man One great item to be put tc
| the credit side on the balance sheet oil
war is the Improvement of our young
men, who are coming home to make
| things new. For
Progress is
The law of life: man is not Man, as yet
Canned Religion.
Millions will lis week study thi.
Lesson of growth, based upon 1t
story of - boy Jesus. 1t bears upo1
its face the message that the Christian
life is a progress, and not a once-for
all experience. In New England eek
| perience meetings 1 have heard 4lei
tell of thier religion as If it were {
memory of -ifetime ago, Lire thei
| voyage around the Horn 1t YVES al
| incident of the past, and not a realit,
| of the present. low stale religion i:
| lees a hIa than n food oil
barrelled water. Shipwrecked sailor!
are grateful for the cask of stale watel
| that saves their lives even SO ma,
one in 1--ergency turn to a stored-uI
religious experience. But the water
of life are living waters" flowing
the time, fresh every morning an(
| new every eve"
Real religion is ever present ex
perience. Superstition harks back al
ways to that which is past. Tit
| natural religion" of primitive PEG
pie is thing of legend and tradi
ton. In shining contrast is the Jesu!
way, which provides for an eternally
| contemporaneous contact with God
It is not enough that once in the Ions
ago Jesus introduced men to the
Father. He is doing the same thine
day by day at this present time; 81
that countless hearts are aglow witt
| a vital consciousness of God, who i:
more of a reality to them than the
friend by their side or the family a
| their table. Jesus is "a living, brigh'
reality to an increasing company OF
| persons every day, who thru Hin
know the Father. They grow il
grace" by growing sin the nowledgt
| of the Lord" The secret of theil
| charac ters is their contact and com
nunion with Christ.
The Worlds New Schoolhouse.
Not the Crusades, nor yet the Rem
| Nuisance or the Reformation, caused
| any such a world awakening as has
come to pass thru the present world
| war. Those three epochs in history
marked a great liberation of knowl-
edge and intellectual effort, and con-
sequent reshaping of society. The
/ present crisis is literally recreating the
entire world order. There is no spot
on earth so remote as to be untouched
by it. By this cataclysm, all mankind
is being sent to school for a training
in cpolitanism, in interdepend-
ence, in righteousness. and in peace
1t is Lot alone the soldiers who have
left their homes for the battlefront
who are acquiring new knowledge and
new convictions: all who stay behind
are being lifted by these strange new
tides of the times.
| Gods great law of growth is work
ing out. In mysterious and violent
fashion, the race is being lifted MP tC
higher levels. Already we have
learned a lesson which the centurie:
had failed to teach us-the sacred
ness of the personality and rights Of
the weaker peoples and nations
Brotherhood has had its best exempli
fication alongside of all of the strife
of the past for years. Justice is seer
to be more valuable than safety. and
in the words of the one great inter
prefer of the moral meanings of the
war. "the right is more precious thar
| r1-I hox h.
mind of the soldiers are agreed tina
there is a new resoluteness to RICH
the social and economic and industrial
wrongs that have long existed IN ou
nations. This midnight experience o
humanity is but the forerunner o
the brightest morning man has known
All thoughtful persons-and who &
not thoughtful in these days7-lool
forward to a reconstructed world.
The Soil Where Souls Grow,