Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1921-06-08
THE MILLENNIAL
MENAGERIE

| a managerie beasts which are natural
enemies living in peace and harmony
together, their fierce instincts ap-
parently tanned. They seem to the
casual observer to be happy family,
in whom all the age-long instincts
have been obliterated. But as a
matter of fact, such happy families
are imaginary. The creatures have
been either Supplied, or threshed into
submission; they are held in apparent
concord through fear of the master,
or have been bred through several
generations Of captives. The bonds
that hold them in unity are liable at
any moment to be snapped. Old DR..
Watts put the matter about right
when he wrote these words:
Let dogs delight to bark and bite,
| For God has made them so;
Let bears and lions growl and fight,
For it's their nature too.
Isaiah however in this lesson de-
! clares that the time is coming when
the lion and the lamb will lie down
| together, and the lamb will not be
| inside the lion. That will be Mil
| lennial menagerie, in which there will
| not be the necessity for separate
| cages, nor iron bars to keep them
apart.
Co7mivora becoming Grami7svoru
There are those who profess to
believe that when Isaiah said that he
! referred to real beasts of the field,
real lions. and bears, and wolves, and
calves, and lambs and snakes. They
admit that if that ever happens there
will have to be some very radical
changes in the anatomy of the wild
beasts so that the carnivorous crea-
lures will become herbivorous. They
say that grass was the food of the
beasts at first and that they have
gradually changed their habits
through the centuries, and that the
/ change will be only putting the wild
creatures back where they were at the
beginning.
Human Nature Revolutiomized
However that may be, it is pretty
certain that this changed world will
become so only when men Of wild
beast disposition are changed by the
power of God. cit would be queer
world where the wild beasts became
tame so that little child would be
perfectly safe among them, aid at
the same time leave human beings
full of the Devil. One cannot ex-
pect the lion and the lamb to lie
down together until Catholic and
Protestant can unite in their prayers,
an immersionist and an effusionist
join hands in service, ritualist and
an independent can kneel at the same
altar. When Methodists, and Con-
gregationalists, and Baptists, and
Episcopaleans, and Presbyterians,
re- Of
tend the same church, listen to the
munion table, and strive to carry the
gospel to the regions beyond, the
paradoxical prophecy of Isaiah will
be at the door. But such consuma-
ton would be about as radical
change of heart as the change of the
wild beasts from meat eaters to
vegetarians. One event is about as
near as the other. Theologians had
better stop scrapping over the mean-
ing of this prophecy and set them
selves to create the change in human
beings that is necessary before the
great day of God Almighty can come.
If you take this passage literally,
you must also acknowledge that the
same kind of Transformation must
take place in the human race and that
is the job of the christian church
If we get men right, God will take
care of the animals.
Transf ormaatiom Necessary
Look at the state of the world and
the transformation of human life
that is necessary. Some one recent
ly said:
The wolf is to dwell with the lamb;
when the exploiters Of the race dwell
justly with those whom they have
''feeced," when it is safe for the weak
and unprotected classes to lie down
and go to sleep in the presence of the
classes who have always preyed upon
their brothers, chat will be sign of
Christianized world. When the
lions might is tanned and he ceases
to demand the lions share; when big
and civilized peoples ceases to use saw
age tribes as door-mats, that will be an
evidence that the Galilean is coming
into his own. When a little child can
walk past the former sites of dens
of iniquity whose citizens have been
brought to Christ, when baby can
pass through all stages of growth and
all the customary contacts with the
world and not be stung with deceit
or underhandedness or poisoned with
veil thoughts and selfish ambitions
and sordid ideals, we shall have
sure harbinger of the Kingdom.
But so long as such disgraceful
tragedy can take place as that of
the race riot in Oklahoma, where a
whole town is turned into perdition,
in which white men and negroes vie
with each other in deeds of Satanic
character, Isaiah's vision will be a
long time coming. Will Irwin, In a
recent address at Boston, on "The
Next War;" declares that it will be
slaughter by Wholesale" He quoted
generals of the British army to the
effect that gas, ultra violet rays, and
bacilli will be the weapons of the next
war, and enormous numbers of the
population swept off the earth in a
few strokes. And he averred that
just prior to the armistice, scientists
in this country and in Europe had
almost simultaneously invented gas
power SO deadlyand such concentrated
that IL bombs laden with it and
dropped from air planes on Berlin
would kill every living creature IN the
city.
The Evemt is Certain