Great Falls tribune. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1921-current, 1922-09-25

the JdreS anu the pdTdDle Vi lue drag
net. While all men can see that it is
true in some fields of life; few men
can see that it is true in all fields
of life. There is an increasing ten
| dency to lump society together into
a great cololress mass without any
distinctions. The seven levels of
| Milton's classical hell have been made
into a great level without a mountain
or a valley. We have a great sect
of ever increasing people telling US
that there is no such thing as evil
after all. And there is another great
group of people who are in~dustriously
engaged in dragging down righteous
men to the common level, and Juggling
up culprits to the same plain. Is
life colorless after all? Was Christ
mistaken?
Gets Answer From Nature
He went to nature for His answer.
There is the wheat field. 1t is very
typical of nature. You see there the
wheat and you see the tares. You
see the black and the white. You go
10 the side of the lake. Taking your
great net, you push out from the
Shore. You let it down until it
touches the bottom of the lake. One
end you hold in the boat while your
partner gets into the water and guides
the other end. Thus you start to
the shore. Nothing escapes, FOR the
to the shore and what you have OBJ
tanned is a cross section of a small
segment of nature. There is no
theory or phi~losophizing. Argum enta-
ton has no power. You look With the
eye of a scientist at what is before
you, even though you may be al ignJr-
ant man. And what do you see? 4
minute ago nature had seemed color
less without any important distinction.
If you had been able to see any fish
in the water, the only difference was
one of size. What does the cross sec
ton reveal? If you have eyes in
your head you see Immediately in the
abundant life before you a thousand
distinctions where you had seen but
one. No answers this segment of
nature; Life is not colorIess. There
are here all the shades of a thousand
rainboEs.'
society is like that, Jesus said. 1t
takes a great many kinds of people
know this but we do not. A dragnet
thrown into the midst of society which
brought us some idea of how a cross
section looked would bring great reve-
lations to us all. In the main we know
something about u own group of
TRENDS We have a few acquaint-
;ances, outside of this circle, but our
knowledge is very limited. When
How the Other Half Lives people
were amazed. They had no idea of
how literally millions of people lived,
either through choice or necessity.
Most important. of all are the moral
distinctions. We like to think that
everybody is doing the very best they
can for the upbuilding of human So
ciety.
All Kinds of Men
But we must be fools and blind to
have such a faith. For every Edison
buried in his laboratory working on
his devices for human welfare, there
are Il hundred men who, instead of
trying to overcome human ignorance,
are attempting to overcome men
through their ignorance. Life is like
a graz piece of cloth. The gray eff
feet is usually produced by the close
association of black and white stripes.
When you look specifically at a great
mass of men, they all blend into a
grayish shade. And you say to your
self, men are not morally black or
white, they are gray. Men are black
and white and everything which lies
between.
This is true Of individuals as well
as society as a whole. In the vest
men we find traits of weakness.
Peter, the leader of the early church,
betrays his master. Luther, the
apostle of the Protestant reformation,
urges the princes of Germany to treat
without mercy the peasants who were
making the same effort for political
reform which he was for religious re-
form. And then while we are wonder
ing about the saints, we see the IN
sanity do some act of kindness. We
see the honor which there is among
thieves and We get confused. Life is
not as simple as we thought it was.
We cannot neatly classify people as
we should like to, and accurately
label them. No man is perfectly con
slstent. We may call him gray, but
as a matter of fact he is o black
and now white.
Every day somebody offers with
great gusto some panacea which will
cure all the ills of society. The remedy
cine TO the single tax, but always
guarantees to create a perfect society
made up Of imperfect individuals.
Everywhere you go you hear people
talking with great freedom of the
weaknesses and flaws of others. And
there are actually people who do not
attend church or will not join a church
because OF Ine nypocrltes III IL. IHey
are looking for the perfect church.
One feels tempted to say to them,
Suppose you did find the perfect
church and Joined it, would it still re-
main perfect after your name was on
the roll?' There is a story told about
a Scotch church which set out to
make itself perfect by eliminating all
the hypocrites. Finally all the names
had been removed from the roll but
that Of a man and his wife. One day
a friend said to the wife, Well. you
must have got a perfect church at
last Deed was the answer with
inimitable self-complacency, deed, and
/ am not so sure of John This is to
reduce to absurdity the search for the
perfect. Evil is in life. You may as
well accept it.
Decision Is Question
What are we going to do about iii
That is the next natural question. The
two parallels present two different an
swers to the same question. The par
able of the tares says, Leave the evil
alone Let the tares grow in the field.
The harvest will come after a while.