The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1921-08-05

Unheeded by most newspaper
readers, war on large scale, with
armies of hundreds of thousands of
men arrayed against each other, still
RACES in Bible lands. Greeks and
Turks are doing the actual fighting,
! but the interests of alH the leading
nations are involved. The outcome
may ultimately be of~even more far
reaching importance than the de-
! cision on the western front.
AS the newspaper often turns
readers to the Bible, so in the present
/ instance, the Scripture Lessons which
I are being studied by thirty million
members of the Sunday schools thru
out the world may turn many minds
/ to the days cablegrams. Asia Minor,
where the largest-scale fighting now
/ to be seen on earth is under way is
: the identical scene OF the new cam
paign of Christianity's greater SOL
der, the Apostle Paul. The best maps
from which to study the days dis
| patches are those printed in the
! backs of modern Bibles. This CO.
| incidence of modern news with an
| Gent history is only one of the ways
wherein the Sunday school begets
! large mindedness, and makes for
upon Christians to think and live
| spaciously.
| The Greatest Work in the World.
| We are brought squarely up against
a big idea by this lesson For here
begins, in the Acts history, that cam
paign of world conquest which burst
| the Judean and Syrian boundaries of
| Christianity, and carried the Tidings
| quickly to the centers of Roman
| power. and even to the borders of
| Europe; and which continue today to
! bear the same banner across the
borders of Tribet into the center of
| the center of Africa" as one mission
I a letter + have FaRaiVa6 is dated E,
into the far islands of the sea, and to
every people under heaven. We have
to do with a movement which has
changed maps, moulded nations and
altered the course of history.
It is a fat lesson that crowds US
today. so there is no room to recall
how the known world, then centerinG
about 1.-The Great Sea-" which is afresh
the scene of the deepest perplexities
that confront modern statecraft, was
prepared for this swift extension of
the Good News of a Saviour for all
mankind. Greece had imposed a COM
mon language of culture upon all peo-
pies, so that the missionaries could be
understood everywhere. Rome had
laid a network of good roads and legal
Judea had provided the religious back
ground for the new Message. So it
was as the Man of the Hour-G DDS
own hour-that Paul set forth.
Gods clocks all chime in tune. AS
thoughtful persons perceive the ex-
IRENE present need of a new spiritual
motive to restore, restrain and reign
over human life, they see also how
one hundred years CT Christian mis-
sions have occupied most of the
strategic places of earth. At least a
skeletonized preparation of the entire
new campaign of Characterization for
which the distraught race waits. The
making ready of the ancient world for
PauPs missionary tours was no more
Providential or dramatic than that
which today lies before our eyes Ours
is a unified humanity, with unprece-
denied communications and identity of
,, interests and needs. The field is pre-
pared; the Message is ready and ade-
quate; the need is surprising; all that
lacks is the observation-disclosures saint to
follow in PauPs steps.
Little Men in Big Places.
In no eensorious spirit. I hope. I
am bound to rec the great and
growing conviction that organized
Christian work needs a better type of
leadership. The smallness of the men
in high official positions of religious
responsibility is both discouraging and
eXasperating. Few of them can see
farther than their own jobs. They
are often only clerkly- minded occu-
prefne concern is the safety and sue
cess of their own organizations. Their
complacency is as remarkable as their
incompetence. Most of them think
themselves leaders: whereas they
are often found in opposition to real
projects. The pioneering spirit of
Barnabas and Saul is utterly lacking
in them.
One sometimes wishes that it might
be possible for all salaried workers in
organized Christianity, excepting pos
sibly the active ministers of the gos-
pei, to spend a period of, say, five
years in self-supporting secular pur-
suits. Then there would ensue a
wholesome testing of the reality of all
the professional beliefs and activities;
and also, it is to be hoped, a mighty
accession of Christian activity into the
ordinary walks of life. We have gone
long way from the seIf-supporting
missionary work of the pioneers about
whom we are now studying.
If it is true that strange limitations,
| intellectual, spiritual and social, seem
| to encompass the official leadership
| of religious organizations, it is even
| tive of this condition that the ordf-
nary company of Christians are
strangely ready nowadays to rise to
| the largest conceptions and presenta-
| tionS of religious opportunity and
duty. No statement of the church's
| present mission can be too bold or
sweeping for the average religious
| congregation or convention. The time
spirit of crisis has moved powerfully
| upon the popular mind. Christians
generally believe that Christ is calling
His people to unexampled service;
and they really clamor for brave, big
leadership. The church is impatient
| of all attempts to compress the gospel
| of Christ into mere formula OF
petty prescriptions and prescriptions:
she wants to go with Saul into the
difficult places and to attempt the au-
| dacious tasks. One reason why there
is today an alarming shortage of can
/ didates for the ministry is that per
| functory and professional ecclesias-
ticism does not appeal to high-souled
youth: there is not enough that is
| heroic and sacrificial and great-vi-