Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1919-09-05

| lied to politics; of the oppression OF
weak peoples; of heartless and dead
ly profiteering; of amazing disre-
gard by Christian nations of sacred
pledges; of the persistence, in short,
/ or the state of mind that made pos
sible the world calamity.
Birth Pangs or Death Throcs
Jeremiahs are plentiful in the
Near East nowadays; and frequent
Iy l have listened to men; mostly
British officers, expounding rath-
er popular theory that civilization
is about to revert to barbarism; and
that, as one man expressed it, I'm
ten years the world will be back
where 1t was three hundred years
ago."
This raised the basic question.
Are the pains which society is now
suffering birth-pangs or death
throes? Is what is good in process
of dying. or is something still bet
ter now being born? Is the twilight
,, hour in which we dwell the fore
runner of sunset and the portal of
the worlds darkest night?
Faith and facts unite to convince
the careful, unpanicky observer that
THE best is yet to be,
The last of life. for which the first
was made"
Something new and wonderful is
coming to pass which may be called
by many beautiful names, but the
truest of them is the kingdom of
God. An all-wise, over-ruling and
beneficent Being Is working out his
glorious purposes for man. The
earth is undergoing n sort of divine
housecleaning; and because we had
accumulated so much rubbish (some
or which we ignorantly esteemed to
be priceless heirlooms), there is n
deal of dust to be raised. and vast
quantities of hoary possessions are
being sent to the trash heap. But
when housecleaning is over, this will
be wonderful world in which to
live.
Getting the Big Idea
One who tries to keep his vision
clear to study the times in which he
moves is troubled by the prevalence
OF petty programs, and by the fail
ure OF SO many persons to discern
the real bigness of the issue in
volved. Every social panacea that
has ever been evolved, no matter
how absurd or lawless, is now being
brought solemnly forward as a cure
all for the present world disorder.
Whereas, the real truth lies on
the surface, as we'll as at the heart
namely, that only the kingdom of
heaven idea and spirit can possibly
be adequate for our new necessities
The ailments of the world which
may seem new, need the old remedy
of an applied Gospel. The princi-
pies which Jesus laid down as the
basis of new order of life are the
only ones that can possibly avail us
In these days. If the kingdom is
not set up, then none of our new
nations and forms of government
can last.
A word of warning is in order
here. Some Americans are still so
habit-ridden and so unaware of the
vast significance of recent events,
that they think that the way to pro-
mote the kingdom in this crisis is to
increase the machinery for multi
plying in the world the number of
Methodists or Baptists or Presby-
terians or Episcopalians or Catho-
lies, or whatever their own relig-
ious communion may be. That is
the inference to be gathered from
stray publications that have found
their way across the seas. l read
of some uninformed persons who
sincerely believe that the Russian
problem, for example, is to be solved
by introducing a certain American
religious denomination into that
wandering nation!
Let us speak boldly. The COM
ing of the kingdom of God may
mean the submergence of all the
churches which have served it in
the past. Professionalism, Roman
Catholicism, Greek Orthodoxy, Gre
gorianism, and all the other forms
and expressions of Christianity, are
inadequate to represent and express
the fullness of the kingdom of God.
In that kingdom we may find much
for which there was no provision
in the creed of any of the churches.
Already God has aroused the whole
world out of it's insularity into q
new spaciousness and tolerance of
thought. Mankind is getting the
big idea that
"Our God is marching on"
characteristics of the Kingdom
When a person nowadays grows
out of his former small ideas-and
what growing time for mankind
the past five years have been!-
and begins to get the great concep-
ton of a bigger, better and more
beneficient order of human life, he
finds that the kingdom character
istics outlined by Jesus still apply.
The first mark of the kingdom of
heaven is the rule of the King.
That is not an easy truth for our
rather lawless times to grasp. There
cannot be the kingdom without the
King. God must be accepted on his
throne first of all. The new life
has to be ordered in obedience and
reverence to Him. All that God ex-
pressed of his mind and character
by Jesus must be received as q pre-
requisite of the kingdom which has
been so long in coming to its pres
ent hour. Foolish folk who want
a new life without God will have
to undergo a course in the kinder
garten of experience to teach them
that before all else and above all
else, our day needs to bow down
in humble reverence before the liv-
ing God, in whose hand is human
hope.
on ship, crossing the subma-
rine zone during the war. 1 talked
with an 'emancipated" woman
whose creed was merely lawless-
ness. She represented radically
those muddy-minded mortals who
think that all wrongs will be righted
when all laws are abolished and
everybody does as he pleases If
my mind still functions normally,
despite it's countless queer con-
facts, then one thing is clear, name
ly, that our world is suffering sore
ly, in general and in detail, from
an epidemic of lawlessness. The
kingdom of heaven comes with
laws which must be kept. A reign
of righteousness is essential to q