Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1919-09-15

! and the devil finds no fault with
| the mother who sends her children
| to play in the street for fear they
viii wear out the carpet T they
stay in the house. and by trying 10
shine in society she has no light
for her own home, and by spinning
society yarns many a mother helps
to make the rope that hangs her
own boy.
why call We me Lord, Lord, and
do not the things l say?-" in your
home and in your family life and
! in society?
Wait a minute! l have no quar-
rel with society-only against the
sinful usages of society. l believe
in society with both hands up but l
believe the most God-forsaken.
good-for- nothing, useless woman
on earth is an American society
woman whose life is frappes and
there is nothing, my friends, to her
but frame upon which to hang
fashionable clothes, and a digestive
apparatus to digest highly seasoned
foods.
There is a great tendency to
classify social standings according
to dollars, nowadays. A lot Of peo-
pie are more anxious to get their
names on the social lists than they
would be to get them on Brad
streets or r. G. Dunn, or heaven.
Oh, genius and talent are choked
by the insane desire to mould our
selves according to the social de-
mands until We became Infamous
non-entities in the world And if
you only knew the inner life Of
many of the weather. class you'd
know how unhappy and dissatisfied
these social butterflies are with
their life and with the emptiness OF
all and the way they live.
1 believe in parties. Jesus Christ
didn't say, when you have party
simply invite in your friends" No
He said, Go get the poor, the
manned, the halt. the blind, the
lame; they can't return the COM
pliment, so there'd be no recon-
pense." You apply the gospel and
it will abolish the sins of Eociety;
it will drive them out We've got
today the seyerest retribution
against the impurity that turks in
the alley and in the cellar and in
the fan tan, the opium joints and
the coke joints, my friends, and all
that-the stale beer joints-and We
cry against it.; we hurl the indig
nation of the law against it but we
become lenient as impurity arises
in affiuence, high social standing,
and finally we are disposed to pal
late if not apologize for their Gus
sedness.
Hays of uncleanness today, they
walk our streets, they ride in their
limousines, sail in their private
yachts, they look from behind
French plate-glass and hide behind
rich tapestries, they walk over
Persian rugs, sit beneath the flash
of the candelabra of wealth and
they quaff their wine from gold or
silver tankard and they eat from
Haviland or hand-painted china.
Judgment Awaits Society.
And society today is fast hasten
ing to the judgment that overlook
Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Sodom
and Gomorrah, when God Almighty
made old Mount Vesuvius vomit and
puke in a hemorrhage of lava until
he buried Pompeii 80 feet deep be-
meath the red-hot cinders and
ashes where their vileness was
sculptured on the wall and on the
pillars of their temples.
] don't know, people of the tri-
cities-I don't know how God
will purify, whether
He will start with a fire or
with a food or with a fam
inc or with a pestilence or with n
war, but he will do something. You
can't defy God all your days and
lift your puny, infnitesmaI. medi-
ocre, pigmy selves up in defiance
(TnnfinnoH