The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-01-21


 If the City of Birmingham is Not Right, Who is to Blame?"
 From the above subject Dr. George R. Stuart yesterday preached to a ca pacity audience at the First Methodist church at the morning hour, and in his usual forceful, logical manner sand wiched with such humanisms as he is capable of giving voice to in a style that is peculiarly his own. he held the out his discourse.
 pr. Stuart based Is sermon on the story of Nehemiah. He told how Ne- hemiah had builded the great wall around the city and stated that he went about it in the right manner. "He went over the wall and found the weak places, and there is where he started. He then called every man and woman to their task-not even the preachers were exempted. They all had to do their part. He made it task for all, and when he had his organization per- fected he assigned them to their work and the wall was soon built.
 Organization is a great thing, any how" he said. Take these wheatless. mean the saving of millions of pounds of meat and millions of bushels of wheat each day If 1t is enforced in the United States. It is great thing, and organization is doing it.
 GREAT WORK FOR ALL
 
 Birmingham for us all; if you are go- ing to be just filler in church work, for instance, then you will only attend prayer meetings and church on the bad days. But what you should do is run with the young folks-until you are 95 years old anyhow-then it won't make any difference where you run. Now we are in a great city here in Birmingham and it belong to you and everything that occurs here. sooner or later. will affect you and I-even a pebble dropped for good or bad will make wave that will finally hit you. You may say that you have no in- terest in prohibition--that you do as you please and let the other fellow do the same. It reminds me of the wealthy man that I knew who gave us that
  ding the city he lived in of whisky. I do not drink, and my wife and daugh- fers do not drnk--and I will have nothing to do with your fight for I am running business and 1 don't pro- pose to be brought into this fight is what he told us But there was fine looking, slick tongued saloon keeper who had diamonds and money, and that saloon keeper married his daughter. He %I,;. |. know when girl falls in love with a man. you had just as we'll try to teach q billy goat mathematics as to teach her anything about the man she is in love with. That man received a tele gram one day to go and bring the dead body of his daughter home, after she had been shot to death by that saloon keeper while he was drunk.
 CAN SEE AND SMELL ''I have not been in Birmingham long, but I have keen eye and big nose, and can see and smell, and know your city pretty well by now So am going to take you for a mental trip over your city and show you wha. you have here. The trouble is that you do not know your town. You take your easy chair at home. with your daily paper, and don't care who goes
 
 sliding toward heaven. We talk of for eign missions and the needs of the heathen. when there is much to do right here at home in the way of mis- sicn work that we ignore
 We will first take your city com missioners-you have a commission composed of men above the average. I believe that 1t would be hard to dupli- cate them in any city the size of Bir- mingham. but there are a lot of things that they have not done that could be done. You have blind tigers, gambling and places where rooms are fors rent, and If were to call any names I would shock you folks sitting here--you would jump out of your seats
 Your schools are good and the sys- tenn is good. but there are many chill dren in Birmingham who should be in school who have never seen inside of schoolroom. The Alabama Girls school Is a shame and disgrace to Alabama. For where you have adequate