The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1922-04-28

Torontos peerless Mendelssohn
Choir was recently singing to a Phila-
delphia audience of thirty-five hun
bred persons, as only it can sing.
While the two hundred and thirty
voices. trained, attuned, unified, swept
thru the auditorium in what seemed
a transport of ecstasy, to the strain
/ of Bach's
Sing ye to the Lord,"
this lesson, which I had been null
/ ling over for days, took on a new
meaning. and my enthusiasm cried in
'wardly, These are touched lips! What
it would mean to the world were
/ Isaiah's coal of fire from the altar of
| God to anoint to harmony and min
istry and purity all Christian lips!
! Why construe the meaning of Isaiah'S
vision as applying only to stern proph-
cts and pleading preachers? Suppose
| all the harshness and bitterness and
evil-speaking were burned off the
speech of us common folk; so that our
voices should be
Ever, only, for the King?"
Turnout the wonderful evening of
music that thought was weaving to
and fro amid ideas of this Majestic
/ Old Testament fragment; and then,
ing singers gave a still further illus
tration of the theme. Their voices
were drilled not only to harmony, but
also to tact. The last number of the
While the great audience stood, the
women of the choir sang, God Save
the KING" many of their hearers
joining softly in the words. Then the
/ Country, lis of Thee!" the added vol
une of mems voices giving, by design,
increased stress to the anthem of the
nation whose guests the singers were
1t was fine exhibition of gracious
ness and consideration that still
further warmed Philadelphia hearts
toward the visiting Canadians and
their county. And it was all after the
Isaiah pattern; how quickly interna-
tlonal misunderstandings would dis
appear If all voices were thus touched
with the purifying altar-gift of tact
and good will.
What Makes the Prophet?
Isaiah, greatest of Judah's prophets.
and the author Of the loftiest utter
anceS in the Old Testament was made
prophet by opened eyes and anointed
lips. Vision and voice are forever the
two qualifications of a real prophet |
Nobody ever gets a message until his |
eyes are opened to the great things; |
and until his voice has been purified |
from selfishness and fear.
These two laws may be laid down |
as the first essentials of any forth |
teller of the truth for the times. Last !
week I had a long, rambling letter |
from man who declared that he is |
Lf6 lOHS -dWdlIGQ prophet OF NIOd TO /
this generation: frequently such mis- |
siVes come from persons WAC, for one I
reason or another, simply are abnor- |
NAL and do not see straight The |
twin requirements of the real prophet |
(and TO be real prophet one need |
not attain to Isaiah proport;ons) are to !
have seen and to be able to say. To |
know God in His greatness; and to de- |
clare His will in its glorious majesty |
and burning might, are the creden |
Tf,I- ,F
Jehovah.
No theological seminary can offer a !
substitute for these. The test of a |
true preacher is not the number of |
degrees he can string after his name; I
nor the prizes he has won for oratory; |
but simply whether God is real to him.
with a reality that eclipses all other
considerations; and whether he is able |
to say what he has seen and heard.
God-fire men alone can set the world
on fire. The eternal realities can be
brought home to our time only by
Christians to whom the Eternal is real.
How Big Is Your God?
Between the dramatic end of King
Czziah, smitten with leprosy in the
temple for his impious usurpation and
sacrilege. and the call of the Prophet
Isaiah, there may have been more of
a connection than is generally as
sumed. The record reads almost like |
cause and effect: I'm the year that
King Uzziah died I saw the Lord.
Many a souls biography is similar:
lon the day that father died I saw the
Lord" ION tho day that baby died
I saw the Lord ION the day my
earthly hopes persisted 1 saw the
Lord"
A calamity had befal1en Judah in
the deterioration and death of the
great king; simultaneously, a great
blessing came to the nation in the
call of Isaiah No price is too heavy
to pay that makes soul or people
aware of the nearness and reality of
God. Some persons never look up |
until thrown flat on their backs, as
thousands of unemployed workers and
bankrupt business men can testify in
these days. All of life's experiences
are merely a school in which we learn
to know God.
This patriot Isaiah who became a
patriot-prophets have
been the rule, rather than the eXcep-
ton. in history-caught an effulgent
vision of the greatness and majesty
Of Jehovah. The almightiness of God
shrivelled him up into a covering
sense of his own unworthiness. Here
of our Lesson for the world today.
With crime so rampant that society
is scared; with self-indulgence holding
carnival amid all ages and classes;
with widespread disdain for law fIout-
ing all the teachings of civilization,
we wonder whence the remedy is to
come. Lo, it is right here in this Les
son. Give the world a new sense of
the greatness and holiness of God, and
it's own over-towering feeling of self
Importance will collapse. A peoples
is in direct proportion to the
size of it's God. We have for a gen
Grafton been cursed with a mood of
thought which makes man big and
God little; and the direct result has
been this blight of lRwlessness and
moral anarchy and Sodom and Co ]
n1prrah sinfulness.
Things will get right only when the
living God is seen in the awfulness
and exaltation of His character, as