The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1921-09-16
A Trail Thru the Jungle.

A Trail Thru the Jungle.
A certain girl of eighteen years is in
a quandary. She is alta Summer re-
sort, where the Other girls are mod
ern" and she is "old-fashioned." She
has been reared to do as her mother
desires; they have only one standard,
which is that everybody is doing it,"
What she has been taught to consider
modesty they scott at as prudery. All
the reticencies which this girl has been
| told should Shield a woman'S soul are
| panions. In speech, in dress, and in
conduct they daily cross the line which
/ her traditions deem uncrossable. They
| take and permit liberties of behavior
with young men which violate the
code which she has accepted as sacred.
They have a line" and know how to
Jazz it up; she has been brought up
| to observe limits of speech and action.
So this girl is bewildered. She does
not want to be a trump" "kill-joy,"
a "sad-bira," for she is hight hearted,
! pleasure=loVing, normal young person.
That girls plight embodies the
problem of today. The world is a
jungle of conflicting codes and Gus
toms. Since the war, many ancient
boundaries and landmarks have been
removed. Barriers are down. A real
social revolution has taken place. All
the ancient practices and properties
are now hedged about with question
marks. In individual conduct as in in
ternational affairs, the accepted
standards seem to be in the melting
pot. There is not young person out
in active life who is not puzzled as to
what course to follow. In print and in
conversation, on the motion picture
screen and on the stage, as well as in
the contemporary life mirrored by the
newspaper, youth finds much that
SOII1rPlV COnntar- fn tho teach
ings of home and church. There is
a sort of moral and social and sp:r-
itua1 Bolshevism in the air. The Rus
sian code of individual conduct has
the Russian political and economic
doctrines.
An Ugly Old Picture.
There is no use in wringing our
hands over present conditions, or
thanking God that we are not as
others are: that is sheer pharisaism.
First, we must face the facts, with
to ascertain whether they are alto
gether unique. Is our time worse
than all other times? Are we really
going to the dogs? Do our modern
cities, as some ferVid critics declare,
surpass Sodom and Gomorrah" Hav-
ing confronted actual conditions, we
are bound next to find way out. And
hare we have, opportunity, a Sunday
school lesson which is pertinent as if
made to order for this very month of
September, 1921.
Thrust into the midst of the course
of historical studies in the life of Paul
we have this fragment from one of his
letters. We shall be considering, two
weeks hence, the city and the people
to which it was addressed. Now there
is before US the second of three known
letters by Paul to the church at Cor
NTH. The first is lost. The present
one is a tonic for our times. Its read
ing will stiffen up our loose thinking
upon moral questions. 1t really was
written to combat certain evils which
had arisen in the young church, such
as strife and partisanship and i'm
morality. The letter has almost I'M
canny contemporary value, as it de-
picts the evils of a church, led aside
into incidentals and eccentricity of
doctrine, to the neglect of the primal
simplicity of the faith preached by
Paul.
It is an ugly picture of the Cor
inthian church that this letter paints.
We are in the habit of assuming that
those early Christians, of Bible times,
were exemplary disciples. Far, far
from it. There were contankerous
saints in Corinth, quite as we find
them in our own churches. There
were fantastic and fanatioal folk who
stressed ''the second blessing" and the
and good works. Rich Corinthian
Christians were setting themselves up
above their poorer brethren. Worse
yet, there were members who were
living in open unchastity one man,
to the shame even of the heather,
was living in sin with his stepmother.
The nerve of moral conviction in the
church in Corinth had been para1yzed;
and, at the, same time, schism and sus-
picion and back biting and doctrinal
certain kind of encouragement for US
in the historical fact that this apos-
tolic church was farther off from
the Christian standard than any Chris
tian congregation that we could find
today.
As 1t Was OF Old
Once I heard a missionary tell of the
pleasure his converts had in the Book
of Acts, because those early Christians
were so like themselves! We read the
Bible from our own Christian back
ground. AS heirs of centuries of
Christian teaching and tradition, we
have outgrown much of the crassness
fof the worldliness which the early
church knew. Heathendom surrounded
them. The very air they breathed was
tainted with idolatry.
In a dozen ways, and every day.
paganism thrust itself into the life and
thought. What about observing heath
en- holidays? Should they bow to the
,emperors portrait or image-a cur
rent question in Japan today? Was it
consistent for a Christian to eat meat
that had been sacrificed to idols?
Should a convert put away his plural
wives? If so, which ones? We're the
sensual indulgences that were looked
upon as normal by the community to
be permitted to followers of the new
Way? How about the old class lines;
should they persist in the Brother
hood?
Some of these points were nones-
sential, and some were central to the
very existence of the new faith. No
perplexity of morals or ethics that be-
wilders a Christian today can com
pare with the gravity and completely
of the questions that confronted the
disciples in the debauched pagan life
of old Corinth. The quandary of the
! girl mentioned in the opening para
graph of this article is the same in
! kind-but far less in degree-as that