The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1922-08-25
International
SunddySchoolLesson
By WILLIAM T. ELLIS.

For August 81 is s'Nehemiah's
Prayer."-Neh. IT'LL.
| How Big Man Took Bad News.
Recently the Council of the League
| of Nations met in London; and the
only decision reached that created
worldwide interest, causing popular
demonstrations both in New York and
, Damascus, tho of directly opposite
characterS), was that affecting the
mandates for Palestine and Syria. One
of the remarkable phenomena of his
tory rs this persisting interest of man
kind in Jerusalem and the Land Of
Promise. Again and again, thruout
the centuries, courts and commoners
have been agitated by this question.
Whole continents have been stirred, as
in the Crusades of the Middle Ages,
over the fate of the Holy City.
While speeches are being made, and
articles and books are being printed,
about the present re-emergence OF
lions of Sunday school members are
once more brought face to face with
the very same question, as it arose
more than four hundred years before
Christ, in far-away Persia. Those
who follow current foreign news
closely will be interested to point out
that even today in the same region,
down in Bagdad, the capital of the
new and troubled kingdom of Irak,
the present situation in Palestine and
Jerusalem is a political factor of first
magnitude.
No other travel theme interests the
public like tidings of Jerusalem Oc-
casionally, I have asked audiences to
choose the land about which should
talk; and invariably the choice has
been the Holy Land. After a lecture
dealing with the Near East, the Ques-
tons are mostly about Jerusalem and
Palestine. The City of David is still
today the most interesting and be-
loved spot on earth. Songs, pictures.
stories, sermons, dealing with the Holy
City, are endlessly popular. Bernard
Of Clairvauxs Jerusalem" is in all
our hymn books, altho written in the
twelfth century.
News from Jerusalem, nearly a gen.
Grafton after the date of our last Les
son, was carried to the Persian court
at Shushan, the modern Susa, where
adventurous travellers go to study in
teresting ruins and excavations. There
it brought sorrow to an eminent pal
ace functionary, the kings cup-bearer,
Nehemiah the Jew. It is no mere
high office in an alien land, as wit
ness Lord Reading, the present vice
roy of India, and late ambassador to
the United States; Disraeli, the" IA
nous British prime minister; Morgen-
than, American ambassador to Tur-
key, etc.
Newsbearers in the East.
Our Lesson text opens with a pic
ture of Hanani and his fellow mes
sengers from Jerusalem that calls up
visions of what is taking place today
in the old land that continues to rely
on other sources than the newspapers
for its information. AS these lines are
being read, messengers are on their
way across the deserts from Syria to
the very region where this Lesson is
laid. AS they go, they scatter fire
brands of information among the
Arabs on the way.
What Hanani and his companions
did of old has been the most potent
form of influence in the Near East
since the war. Men have been shut
ting to and fro, from Cairo to CAL
cutta, from Damascus to Delhi, from
Jerusalem to Jerabub, from TripoH to
Teheran, from Constantinople to Can
ton, from Bagdad to Bombay; and all
have been distributing the yeast of
unrest. Even on the lonely and re-
mote Sinai Peninsula I found that
these tidings of political and religious
upheaval were being carried.
Universal communication is the pri-
mary factor in present worldwide I'M
settlement. Because there is no spot
on earth so distant as to be out of
touch with all the reading public we
have entered upon an era of genuine
ly international consciousness. What
Hanani did for Jerusalem and his
brethren there, the daily newspaper
does today for the whole wide world.
- a III SITdlBnI-
way it is known to the reading public
OF the entire earth. Is there an in
surrectfon in Bagdad, or a riot in
Damascus? The five continents hear
of 1t within twenty-four hours. In a |
sense the Apostle scarcely meant, we
bear one another's burdens" News
Is the bond that binds together the
hearts of all humanity.
Who Cares for the Worlds Woes?
Fervent folk who write of recent or
present atrocities and famineS and |
floods are fond of describing them as
without precedent in the worlds his |
tory. OF course that is inaccurate. |
None of these things are new. Pile /
into one heap all the Armenians dead |
since 1915; all the Greeks massacred |
by Turks and all the Turks massacred |
by Greeks; all the tens of thousands of l
Christian Assyrians slain by Moslems |
and by adversely; all the victims of |
deportation and oppression in the Bal /
kans; all the dead in the Chinese and |
Russian famines since the war; and |
still the CHASTITY mound will be small
as compared with those who fell by
the swords Of Tamerlane, Attilla, |
7henghis Khan and Kublai Khan. A
little knowledge of history saves US
from superlatives.
What is different today is the ex-
.ent of public compassion for the
woes of the world. Nehemiah's sor-
row for the suffering of the Jews in
Jerusalem is a common sentiment to-
law One of the real evidences of