The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1919-05-02
As Life Looks From Eden.


city to a hillside whence may be seen,
in all their vast and eternal grandeur,
the snow crowned peaks of stored
mountains, SO is the turning from the
babble and strife of the days news<to
a contemplation of the sublime story
of mans creation and of his primary
purpose in existence. There is a wide
spread tonic effect bound to follow the
study this week of the story of human
beginnings by the millions of Sunday
school members OF the world. While
we are talking about making over the
universal social order. let us consider
the one essential factor, which is man.
Nobody will be the worse, and every
body will be the better, for a little
hard-thinking on this subject. We see
life and we see it whole from the
standpoint of the Garden of Eden.
When machinery gets seriously out
of repair, it sometimes has to be sent
to the maker to be ade right. Sup
pose we look upon our jangling, creak-
ing, humping, mal-adjusted state of
society as. a bit of machinery that
needs repairing by the Maker. Society
is merely people in the mass. 1t is
the multiple of one man. Most of its
defects are in its individual parts. The
whole mechanism will work we'll only
after the personalitio which comprise
it have been made right. Our days
| supreme issue is one, whether it be
the league of nations or the latest
neighborhood strike, and that issue
| is personal to people. When 'all
| mems good becomes each mans rule"
then We shall have the perfect day
| toward which the world has been so
bloodily. blindly cropping.
Getting Down to Bed Rock.
| Small bCys pass thru a period
wherein they believe that horse hair,
/ if left long enough in a bottle of water
will turn into . snake. AS we grow
older, we are almost equally credu-
GUS concerning the capacity of human
beings to grow into what they were
not. The deIusion that society will
| evolve itself into a new order, dies
hard. 1T matters not that the scien-
fist, who has followed the race back,
] thru excavations and archaeological
| records, declares that for the period of
known history, man was as man is.
He has not essentially altered in more
than five thousand years. Still host
of Intelligent folk believe that human
ity, like Topsy. Just growed." and
that it will continue to grow until 1t
reaches perfection.
We are not accidents. Man came
not by chance, a mere prank of cosmic
forces. He was created. God made
him. Before he was a thing of flesh.
he was a thought of God. The in
scrutable councils Of eternity sat in
deliberation upon his advent. Here
we have the greatest truth of all con-
corning ourselves and our time s-God
had hand in our making. And that
| hand has never been removed from
man. If we know anything at all
about a Supreme Being, it is that his
chief interest in this earth is in man
kind.
! So the Garden of Eden viewpoint is
} that before there was man there was
a God; and that man is because God
was; and that the Maker of man has
proprietary right in him; and that the
Almighty who began the race of man
still stands by to see it thru. We an
'tchor a sustaining faith for troubled
! times in the very character of the
Omnipotent.
Reshaping the Scheme of Things.
Old religions, such as Paul discuss
, ed on Mars Hill, did not get much
beyond the point that we are Gods
offspring, and that he has sovereign
rights in us. That is basic, and not
always remembered. Sometimes we
weave such an intricate fabric of re-
: ligious beliefs that we lose sight OF
the elemental fact that there is a God
who made us and that we are his. "the
3 sheep of his pasture" as the Psalmist
says.
Losing sight of Gods creation
rights, we set about undoing or re-
vising his work. What is bringing
/ nations to crash today Whence
q springs this turmoil that resound.
from Germany and Russia and con
e tiguous parts? Why are statesmen
( more affrighted by Bolshevism thar
t by militarism? Is the answer not sim
:. Pile? Men fancy that, as Omar sings
they can
= Grasp this sorry scheme of things entire
I And reshape it to our hearts desire.
j Flouting God, his nature and his law
they are attempting to build Babel
= that will outwit him and overcome hi
purposes. Anybody who has seen Boil
shevism at work in Russia, as have
T can understand why it has repudiatet
= Christianity, and the ccnturies-testet
| Ten Commandments. These expires
sions of the Divine will run counter T.
y selfishness, hatred, greed, lust, idle
e ness and power. God must be dethron
Il ed before Bolshevism can have it's wa,
: with the world. Instead of callIni
U men back to the beneficent provision
y of the Creator for mans welfare AM
|. social solidarity, it bids them spur
: the tested integrities, and give fire.
= reign to all the baser impulses of self
= indulgence.
y What Are We Here For?
e Dissect not only Bolshevism. blu
= most of the current social radicalisn
=, and liberal thinking. and you wi
" find at bottom the idea that huma
beings are merely physical creature:
\ whose material comfort and carna
# appetites are supreme. OF course, thl
:, is a Garden of Eden fallacy, but
. swings into power recurrently thru tn
ii centuries. Nowadays, as with IN
s. Greeks, it is cloaked in pleasing soph
l., isms. We talk about the sanctity c
. our impulses, our right to self-expres
sion, our untrammeled nature, GU
10 freedom to obey our desires and I
g flout all conventions as mere mar
ID made restraints for inferior beings.
!, all comes to the same thing: we war
- to do as we please, regardless of hui
III to others, and we do not care to pleas
II God. whose beneficent laws are Dor
m of His omniscience and good will. Sti
% more plainly put, this radical conceI
- ton of life reduces us to the level {
D unrestrained animals, and would en-
in making the world a jungle.
10 Dead against this drift arises til
majestic and man-ennobling declare
ton of our lesson. "God created ma
he in his own image, in the image