The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1921-06-23
SUNDAY SCHOOL LESSON
Prepared Especially for The Repub-
lican By DIR. U. S. Wright.

Prepared Especially for The Repub-
lican BY DR.. U. S. Wright.
SUNDAY, JUNE 26.
THE SOCIAL TASK OF THE
CHURCH-Review
He shall dwell with them and they
shall be his pe0ple.-Rev. 2l:3.
L. S. WRIGHT.
MAPS AND MASTERY.
The first step in any advance is the
making of a map. Is it the building
of machine or a house or an essay?
Someone must prepare pattern,
plan or an outline before an success
full attempt can be made toward the
completion of the thing at hand.Names
are non-essential things for each of
those mentioned are maps of the
country that is to be taken possession
of. Germany had studied every road
in France and Belgium long before
the assault came to Liege and knew
destination and direction as well as
the French themselves. 1t is a great
thing that the church has gone into
the map-making business and from
the local organization that takes a
survey of its community to the Inter-
Church with it's attempt to cover the
world, the entire matter is the famil-
lar one of making MAYS. In the les
sons of the quarter there has been the
effort to map out the social lands that
lie all about US, so that there is a bet
ter understanding of the fields to be
traversed before the Kingdom can be-
coma a reality. Beginning with the
individual the map-makers have char
ted health, work, money, schools,
teams, homes, communities, nations,
world and society so that the outlines
of Christian world order appear as
a challenge to the onlooker When
the Syracuse stadium was built each
worker, as he came Up out of the mud
and dirt of the low level to which the
concrete pillars were sunk, looked up
on the huge painting of the finished
structure with all its green and white
and brown, stimulating him to do his
work in helping to produce such a
piece of utility for the University of
the State. This is something of what
the lessons have attempted. The sec
ond step after the map is made is to
study it. What roads best lead to
conquest. Germany was never able to
force her way along the southern
route past Verdun and her swift ad-
vance over the level plain and concrete
roads of Flanders Fields that lost her
her soul and brought England into
the war, was the result of her careful
study of the possible routes. After the
study comes the advance that is to re-
suit in the Rule of God in the life of
the world. Now the work of the
Church is to make the maps and to
prevent any such disaster as came to
Germany through choosing an i'm
moral way to reach a desired goal.
The Church must furnish the vision
of redeemed world or it will never be
seen. 1t must inspire the spirit that
will face every difficulty and hang on
until the thing that ought to be is. Let
the prophetic fire die and the world is
dead. But its chief task after all is
to create men who will catch fire from
the vision. 1t made men who shouted
over the pictures of heaven to come,
over sinners clutched from the mouth
of hell; over individuals reborn. 1t is
now making Kingdom men who shout
over the world transformed and that
is greater task than the old. And
that was the thing Jesus did. He took
the narrOwest of narrow Jews, drew
pictures utterly foreign to Jewish
ideas, for Samaritans and Gentiles
were included as brothers and not as
subjects hated and oppressed, until
they caught His compassion and were
set praying for laborers in the harvest
helds that they now saw ready for the
sickle. And presently they so caught
His passion that they were hurrying
along every highway of the Empire to
proclaim the good news to every
alien and to bring the Rule of God in