Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1919-03-11
BISHOP GAMBLERS MESSAGE

fore, one of these young officers, writing
home, says, we have done away with
the kaiser, a car, a score Of little kings
and destroyed evils manifold. Now we
want to do some work at home and make
the dear old town, through its schools
and church, better place to live in "
large number of soldiers have returned
home already, but no such movement is ap-
parent among them. They are attending the
Churches formerly.
1t will be observed that the Liberty
Halls" proposed by this prophet, are some
what less religious than the Churches, and
that they are to offer a market for the wares
of lecturers who draw considerable incomes
from lyceums and chautauqua assemblies.
Many preachers according to this plan will
be without engagements, and the lecturers
will occupy the position Of the moral leaders
of the country.
But suppose the boys desire something
more religious and prefer the Churches to
Liberty Halls" What then? 1t is easy for
man to set up martin gourds," but it is
another thing to get the martins to occupy
them.
The truth is that the soldiers want re-
1igion as they never did before in all their
lives. They Rave been facing death in the
trenches. Life is more serious to them. The
great issues of personal salvation have been
brought home to them never before.
They will not be content with plan of
public assemblies in which amusement and
recreation take precedence over the eternal
issues of life and immortality. They have not
been over-contented with the merely recrea-
tional while they have been overseas, and
they will be less so when they return home.
Some of us have seen men return from
war before this time. We remember when
the men of the sixties came back from the
war between the states. They came wounded
and sick and sore. They returned to homes
which had been desolated during their alb
sence at the front. Their stricken souls
yearned for the comforts of grace in Christ
Jesus, and they turned their weary feet to the
affairs of the Churches, and there found rest
to their souls. They called for no Liberty
Halls and for no peripatetic lecturers and
shallow diversions on Sunday.
Their grandsons are returning in much the
same frame of mind. Many are MANNED and
blind and halt from dreadful wounds Not
a few return to homes from which their
dearest have gone to God since they went
away to France Their bleeding souls call
for comforts deeper and sweeter than can be
found in Liberty Halls" They desire above
all things to draw near to the God of their
fathers, who bound up the broken hearts of
the men of the sixties, and they know that
"his way in the sanctuary"
What have the Churches done, or failed to
do, that these prophets of wordliness should
so constantly find fault with them?
They nurtured the men who have filled the
ranks of our armies. Witness the multiplied
thousands of stars on the service flags in all
the Churches.
They made the Christian sentiment upon
which the government, the Red Gross, the
Y. NJ G. A. and other organizations have re-
lied during the fearful war in which we have
been engaged.
The preachers have been active and effec-
tive in every campaign for Liberty Bonds and
other funds required for the support of our
men in the field.
The preachers and churches are now Great
ing sentiment for the League of Nations to