The Republican., 1921-08-11

SUNDAY SCHOOL LESSON
Prepared Especially for The Repub-
lican By DIR. U. S. Wright.
SUNDAY, AUGUST IA.
PAUL IN ICONIUM AND LYSTRA.
Acts IA.
Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God,
and Him only shalt thou serve
Matt. 4:10.
THE JEW-GENTILE RIOT
FACTORY
Driven from one city the party,
with Paul as chief, passed over the
great highway eastward until they
reached Iconium. Here they repeated
the history of Antioch by appearing
in the synagogue and preaching to
great crowds of sympathizers. The
rulers of the Jews were reused into
opposition and set themselves the task
of getting rid of this apostate Phari-
see. 1t was good advertising for the
company and so long as the Lord gave
continuing converts, Paul kept at the
work of evangelizing the town. For
opposition only strengthened his pur-
pose and his commission had been
given by higher authority than anv
that Rome afforded so that he felt his
great responsibility for carrying the
message through. He was much like
the soldier at the front. A message
had to be gotten back over perilous
ground where death stalked openly
and volunteers were called for. Ev-
cry man offered, so slips of paper
were drawn and when one got the
marked billet, another said, "You
lucky dog!" 1t was privilege to face
peril for cause, and Paul reioiced in
it. Months passed and the lines were
more sharply drawn so that division
began to appear in the city's life.
Beaten by the growing approved of
numbers, the Jewish rulers resorted
to mob tactics and stirred the dust of
the towns lawlessness and organized
it not for the protection of the city
nor for the promotion of justice and
goodwill, but for their own base ends.
Like the city ring they would exploit
the civic pride and desire to promote
the best interests of the town for
their own purpose. They created a
mob factory and Paul's life would not
have been worth a plugged nickle in
the hands of these boasters of serving
the city. 1t could not be kept still!
and Paul and his party fled along the
highway into other territory.
WHEN GOD COMES TO TOWN
Lystra was primitive place with
frontier characteristics. Still there
were no Jews, and Paul hoped the
trouble-makers were left behind. But
he faced the raw heathenism of the
place where the ideas fostered by Ju-
dalsm had not gone. Professionalism
has made swift advance in the Philip.
pines and in Porto Rico, because with
all its failure, Catholicism had made
familiar the ideas of Christianity.
Wherever the Jew had gone he had
carried certain moral standards that
gave the itinerating Christian lever
age not granted elsewhere. AS is
true today, the ministry of healing Of
Tered a contact that had surprising
results. Just what the first sermon
preached by a Christian teacher to
raw heather told, is not given in the
record, but Paul used the universal
language of helpfulness and it was so
well understood that they stirred the
town with it. The significant thing
is that the people believed these men
were behaving as God would if He
came totown. They made God real
to the people. After all, that is our
high task: to so live that Christ will
become a reality in the thinking of
our time. And if it should happen that
some day He should walk our streets
would our conduct have so familiar
1zed folk with His characteristics that
He would be recognized by it? The
trouble in that far off day in Judea
was that the Jews life was so utterly
foreign to our Lords that He came
unto his own and they knew him not
All over Lystra there were hurryine
feet and eager speech. It is unlikely
that the cured soul had share in it.
Tor ne probably was in the lodging of
these men through whom he had re-
celved blessing. But priest and people
were eager to honor these visitors
from another world who held the pow
er of blessing in their hands, and the