The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1926-04-15
AN ANCIENT STORY TELLER.

skin tent in the Judean wilderness.
Across the plain comes traveller who
sits down, shares our frugal meal and
sits beside the fire as the shadows
lengthen toward the closing day.
Questions are banded back and forth
across the blaze and the keeping of a
sacred day comes into the talk. "Let
me tell you a story" says our visitor.
And while we sit absorbed he tells
that wonderful tale of creation that
reveals God in every one of six days
in the week, then pausing in the sew
enth for eXultant meditation upon the
work of the other days, "What is good
for God is also good for His follow
ers," may have been the sage COM
ment with which he closed his reel
tai. Certainly it was the lesson he
taught. For this is not history, but
the giving of materials out of which
history is made a moral content for
application to life.
Children's faces look out from the
gathering shadows-shall they have
no share in the witchery of the hour
in which this visitor who seems to so
understand the world and life weaves
a wooing spell about goodness? There
is a swift change in the content and a
greater one in the form in which it is
cast. 1t is the fanciful world of the
child with which he deals. God walks
in a garden among the trees. He
speaks, He searches for hidden fig
ures, He shapes animals out of earth
and asks men to guess their names.
1t is an altogether understandable
God for the wee children listening
breathlessly to his tale. And the ami
mails talk, the wind has voice-what
child does not people his world in that
fashion? The freight CLEANS upon
the naked bodies leaning forward
from the heels upon which they sit
and the man and woman in the Gar
den are as unclothed and are seen
making girdles of leaves as they have
made them many time. The great
question is, "What is he trying to
teach?" What is a problem of the
group he is addressing that has
thrown light upon it by the story? Is
it not one of obedience? How many
times has the child found that to dis
obey brings punishment and loss of
privilege? Here is perfectly under
standable thing out of his little life
lifted into the law of life of all the
world in which God dwells, quicken
ing his sense of justice in his hour of
pain, and terrifying him against
temptation that besets his feet walk
ing a world as new as the one in
which Adam was. To know that dis
obedience has always worked that
way would send these children to
sleep under the old skin tent with
deeper resolve to heed the word not
only of father and mother but of God
as well, which was exactly the pur-
pose of that old story teller that
night.
THE HIGHER HISTORY.
A good story may not be true to the
facts as an historian knows them, but
it must be true to the facts of life.
For the purpose of the teller the facts
may be given a different order that
the truth told may be seen in it's right
proportions and be rightly understood.
For the same purpose some facts may
be omitted from the tale, not because
they are not true, but because they do
not have place in the moral goal of
the teller. All of which makes poor
history but good truth. For the thing
told must always be true life. Take
the God of this garden episode: Do
the facts told within child limitations
give a true picture of God? Of what
sort is He? He is a veritable Father
to that child of His heart. Bringing
him into being He plans a place of
beauty and joy for him as He plants
a garden for his home. He sets him
congenial task in the care of it. He
reserves but a single tree in all its
wide-spreading acres for Himself. He
plans help-meet for him. He brings
the animals to him just to listen to
his dear lips give them names. He
hastens after him in his sin and pun
ishes with a promise of redemption
hidden in its heart. And in sending
him out into the bare world, He ten
derby wraps him in garments of His
own devising lest the chill of the
world mar him in his new estate. Then
He closes the door upon the immortal
ity of the memory of his sin with a
flaming angel that in other surround
ings he might begin life over again
with every chance of making good. 1t
isn't history we are reading, it is an
everlastingly true transcript of Gods
heart.
THE ADVENT OF LAW.
Men and God live in world of law.
The first information given him was
that here was certain rule to be fol-
lowed in his living if it was to be the
sort that would have the right to rule