The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-02-14
What IssA Lost Soul?
By pk ' FRANK CnANE

We u.e the word "Lost'' in several senses. 1 Grandmother has lost her spcctacles.. They are upon her hair, but she cannot find them. In this sense lost means simply misplaced.
 We may have lost an opportunity, day, T l bargain in which case we refer to what we might have had, but missed. We may lose tlffe, or limb Tor money, signifying that some l thing isl no longer in our possession. But what is meant when we speak of q
 mans losing his own soul? Ones soul is ones self and one cannot @ lose l ones self except in a figure of speech. The little girl spoke accurately who, when asked if she was lost replied s& s'No, am not lost mamma is lost" esEa
 The real significance of the saying that one may lose his own soul is that the soul may
 lose it's health, and consequently its happi-
 ness in other words, that it may drop from normal condition into abnormality and per- version.
 In plain English salvation is mental, spirit | ual health damnation is spiritual sickness, l In the one case the soul is sound, sane. en- | joys good digestion, is vigorous in its emo | lions, and joyous in its world, as are all healthy beings. In the other case it is full
 of fevered fears, sickly nauseas, pains and
 spasms
 Those who find their pleasure in cham bering and wantonness, in drunkenness and
 cruelty, in other words all whose end is the l qualification of the physical demands, are
 simply i'll Their souls are i'll. They corre- spond to those Georgia Crackers who eat clay, to the small child who sucks her thumb, to opium smokers, and to all those unfor- | tunates who are driven to gratify cravings that destroy health. A normal appetite dif- fers from an abnormal in that it promotes
 those pleasures that are permanently pleas urable. All abnormalities produce those
 pleasures that itch, irritate, burn and tor ! ment. What we term moral actions are
 simply those which the experience of the
 race has demonstrated to result in unreactinx pleasure. They have no reaction of diseased disgust. Of course, the best souls have their suffering and tragedies, but they are only outward, they never affect the inward, essen- tial peace, poise and health-joy of the soul. Jesus was "a man of sorrows" but He | said My peace give unto you" and that
 He came that our '.joy might be full" So
 no soul can be- lost by anything the world | can do to it; only by what it can. do to itself. The implication in Ibsen, Oscar Wilde and Bernard Shaw, and the whole run of latter day preachers of unmoralism, to the effect
 that quite as much harm may be done by
 good as by bad people, is merely confusion
 of thought. They do not distinguish between
 that pain which is redemptive, purifying and deepening to human, nature, and that pain
 which is the diseased product of human na-
 ture gone wrong. StP
 Rest assured, morality is based on fact,
 just as surely as chemistry. Nobody invented
 it. Nobody will explain it away. Says one of the clearest thinkers of our time: Moral duty consists in the observance of those rules of conduct which contribute to the welfare of society and of the individuals who compose it. These rules, like the other so-called lave of nature, are discoverable by observation and experiment. Some thousands of years Of such experience have led to the generalixations that stealing and murder, for instance, are inconsistent with the ends of society. There IS no more doubt that they are so than that unsupported stones will fall"
 The soul that does not believe this is lost. That is to say, he is as sure to lose hie souls health he would by regularly eat ing impure food be to lost his bodily health.