The Cordova daily times., 1922-07-26
OPINIONS ARE
 DIFFERENT IN SUICIDE CASE

not h1ll! -D9 1lLSEpEeteu, uuu6E any condition, to be the soul salvation of lf-destructionist?
 divided over these questions, as arc friends of pretty Stella Marshall popular belle and teacher in the little Baptist Sunday Schoo here, who lies in her grave, the vic tim of her own hand.
 Her story is without precedent in the ecclesiastical law of life and death.
 Miss Marshall's Sunday School class was giving an entertainment The young teacher went into her garden to cut a corsage boquet of roses for her fluffy organdie dress she wore. She carried a razor edged butcher knife.
 Papers, gathered from the street during a windstorm, cluttered the yard. Miss Marshall gathered these into a bundle and touched lighted match to them. Then she turned to the cutting of her roses.
 A moment later and her dress was afire.
 A scream-then moment of frantic effort to beat out the flames which had ehveioped the girls body.
 Then, dropping to her knees, the burning girl prayed:,
 Dear God!" J. E. Nash, a next door neighbor heard her cry, "for- give me! Forgive me!'
 The flames had reached Miss Mar chall's hair-her body was a torch,
 Nash vaulted fence in his effort to reach the girls side. But before he could do so Miss Marshall placed the blade of the butcher knife she carried to her throat. A moment later she fell-the veins of life had been cut.
 Frantically Nash beat out the flames, which by now had burned deep into the flesh of the girl
 But the knife had made a fatal wound-Miss Marshall died before medical aid could be administered.
 Physicians who later examined the body expressed the belief Miss Mar shalls burns would not have proved fatal. She would have been disfig- ured for life. however.
 Miss Marshalls father, E. o. Mar shall. a merchant here, iustifies his daughters act upon a childhood eX- perience of his daughter.
 Stella, when very small girl, was painfully burned" the father said Since then I have heard her say many times that she preferred death to the agony she suffered at that time I believe this fear, grown to a mania, led my daughter to com init an act over which she had no control"
 Clergvmen of the Middle West a1- lied with the liberalist school of theology declare the state of Miss MarshalFs mind at the moment she took her life would serve as her jus tification in the tribunal Of the mora law.
 eff Miss Marshall, at t'e moment she killed herself, believed that death would result from i'e flames which were con sumirg her body she had the. moral right to relieve the death pains which her childhood eT- perience had built into a monster which drove all elsL trocl her mind at the moment" Rev. James F. Peo- ples. local clergyman says.
 Opposed to this is the teaching Of other of the citys leading ministers, who are emphatic in their decIara- tion that the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill' was binding on Miss Marshall.
 "God gives human life," they ar gue-"only God can take it
 Unless the act of self-dostcuction is that of insanity, some of the clergymen insist, the soul is lost.
 They are joined by the "old-fash- toned" ministers of the "Old School" "
 As a result of the bitter debate over Miss Marshalls act the subject of her moral justification may be broueht before the national conven- tions of many of the leading church organizations this year and rulings