Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1918-08-02
WHAT The RECRUIT wins
The International Sunday School Lesson For August Is
Growing Stronger"-Luke 2:42-52 Peter 1853.
By WILLIAM T. ELLIS

In his Rhymes of a Red Cros:
Man" Robert w. Service has poem
called The Revelation" of which
these stanzas are typical:
We've bidden good-by to life in g
cage, we're finished with pushing
pen;
They're pumping up full of bellicose
rage. they're showing us how tc
be men.
We're only beginning to find our
selves; we're wonders of Drawn
and thew;
But when we go back to our sissy
jobs-oh. what are we going to
do?
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 wen walk with the stride of a
newborn pride, with new-found
joy in our eyes,
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
through all the years;
Heaven and hell rolled into one,
glory and blood and tears;
Life's pattern picked with a scarlet
thread, where once we wove with
gray
To remind us all how we played our
part in the shock of an epic day? ?
"Oh, we're booked for the Great Ad-
venture now, we're pledged to the
Real Romance;
Well find ourselves or We'll lose
ourselves somewhere in giddy old
France;
Wen know the zest of the fighters
life, the best that we have We'll
give;
Wen hunger and thirst; we'll die
but first-well live; by the
gods, We'll live!"
That is one of the big facts of the
war. 1t has been an emancipation
of manhood. Wage slaves have be-
comes free men and heroes. Dwarf
ed souls, once chained for life to a
dreary grind. have been set at lib
erty to travel half way over the
earth, and to enter into new king
doms of knowledge. In putting on
the uniform, myriads of men have
taken on the whole world. That they
should win to new physical vigor
and power was a foregone conclu-
sion: what is more important is
that they have grown greater in their
spirits They look out upon. larger
life, with clearer, braver eyes. Know
ing life. they know also themselves.
Like the Hero of our Lesson, they
have Increased in wisdom and sta
ture. and in favor with God and
man" One great item to be put to
the credit side on the balance sheet
| of war is the improvement of our
young men, who are coming home
Hto make things new. For
Progress is
The law of life: man is not Man, as
yet
Canned Religion
Millions will this week study this
Lesson on growth, based upon the
story of the boy Jesus. 1t bears upon
its face the message that the Chris
tian life is a progress, and not a
once-for-all experience. In New
England experience meetings" I
have heard men tell of their religion
as If it were a memory of a lifetime
ego. like their voyage around the
Horn. 1t was an incident of the past,
and not a reality of the present. Now
stale religion is less palatable than
canned food or barrelled water.
Shipwrecked sailors are grateful fo-
the cask of stale water that saves
their lives; even so may one in emer-
Eency turn to stored-up religious
experience. But the waters of life
are living waters" flowing all the
time, fresh every morning and new
every eve"
-
Derience. Superstition harks back
always to that which is past. The
natural religion" of primitive peo-
pie is a thing of legend and tradi-
ton. In shining contrast is the Je-
sus way. which provides for an eter-
rally contemporaneou contract with
God. 1t is not enough that once in
the long ago Jesus introduced men to
the Father. He is doing the Same
thing day by day at this present
time; so that countless hearts are
aglow with a vital consciousness of
Cod. who is more of a reality to them
than the friend by their side or the
family at their table. Jesus Is "a
living, bright reality" to an increas-
ing company of persons every day,
who through Him know the Father.
They grow in grace" by growing
"in the knowledge of the Lord" The
secret of their characters is their
contact and communion with Christ.
The Worlds New SchoOlhouse
Not the Crucades, nor yet the Rem
Nuisance or the Reformation, caused
any such a world awakening as has
come to pass through the present
world-war. Those three epochs in
history marked a great liberation of
knowledge and intellectual effort,
and consequent reshaping of soci-
ETY.. 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 cosmopoli-
tanism, in interdependence, in right
eousness, and in peace. It Is not
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.