The Presbyterian of the South : [combining the] Southwestern Presbyterian, Central Presbyterian, Southern Presbyterian. [volume], September 13, 1922, Page 7, Image 7

About The Presbyterian of the South : [combining the] Southwestern Presbyterian, Central Presbyterian, Southern Presbyterian. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1909-1931

Image provided by: Library of Virginia; Richmond, VA

                
Obviously the membership and contin
gent fotv column of the Annual Report
will not tally.
CIRCLES
They n1iou1<1 bo a Mission Study
Class: During October and Novem
ber the Circles should be Home Mis
sion Study Classes and during Janu
ary and February they should be
Foreign Mission study classes, in both
cases using the text books recom
mended for the season.
Tliey should l>o a Rible Study Class:
Bible study should be given a deiinito
placo in the programs. Some Circles
set aside thirty minutes at the begin
ning of each meeting for Bible study
and then devote the remaining time
to other matters.
They should bo a Prayer Hand : Let
each member set aside a certain time
each day ' for Prayer for definite
objects. The Prayer Calendar of the
Church can be used daily as a re
minder. Let the daily prayer be ex
tended into the home and establish
family worship.
PLEADING CHILDREN IN
HEATHEN LANDS
An Exercise for Several Children.
I hear the -voices of Children,
Calling from over the seas;
The wail of their pleading accents
Come borne upon every breeze.
And what are the children saying,
Away in those heathen lands,
As they plaintively lift their voices,
And eagerly stretch their hands?
"O Buddha Is cold and distant;
He does not regard our tears.
We pray, but he never answers,
We call, but he never hears.
"O Brahma, in all the Shasters,
No comforting word Is given;
No help In our earthly journey,
No promise or hope of heaven.
"Oh! vain is the Moslem prophet,
And bitter his creed of 'Fate',
It lightens no ill to tell us,
That Allah is only great.
"We have heard of a God whose
mercy
Is greater by far than these;
We are told of a kinder Saviour,
By teachers from over the seas.
"They tell us that when you ofTer
Your worship. He always hears;
Our Brahma is deaf to pleadings,
Our Buddha is blind to tears!
"We grope in the midst of darkness,
With none who can guide aright!
Oh! share with us, Christian children,
A spark of your living light!"
This is the plaintive burden,
Borne hitherward in the breeze;
These, these are the words they are
saying,
Those children beyond the seas!
? Margaret J. Preston.
(Note: Use several children, one
dressed as a Japanese, a Chinese, a
Mohammedan, and ?thers. An Amer
ican child giving the first two, and the
last verses).
STUDIES ON JAPAN
By Rev. J. Woodrow Hassell
1. The Misisonarie*: There are 50
missionaries of the Southern Presby
terian Mission working in Japan.
Their names and locations can be
found in the back of The Missionary
Survey. Of these 50 workers, 25 are
located on the Island of Sbikoku at
livo stations, and 25 on the main
island, Hondo, at five stations. There
are 19 married couples and 11 single
ladies. Dr. W. C. Buchanan has re
cently suffered the loss of his wife.
Eleven of the force are engaged in
educational and 40 in direct evange
listic work.
2. The work of your missionaries
is confined to educational and
evangelistic work. We have no medi
cal work in Japan. There are many
well educated and competent native
physicians in any small town in the
country.
The educational work of the Mis
sion, as is well known, consists of
three institutions. First, the Kinjo
Jo Gakko, or the Golden Castle Girls
School, located in Nagoya; then our
theological school located in Kobe;
and last, tho Carrie McMillan Home,
superintended by Miss Annie Dowd,
and situated in Kochi.
The Golden Castle School
When it is considered that this in
stitution is the only Christian girls'
school in a city of half a million
people, and that more than 90 per
cent of the students receive a
thorough education in the Bible along
with their ordinary training, you can
judge what a power for good it must
exert in the community, as well as our
eagerness to enlarge and equip it.
This school accommodates 250 girls
and is always filled to capacity. Last
year 100 were turned away for lack
of room. We might have saved 90
of those whom we were compelled to
refuse. How long must we wait?
What kind of training do these
girls receive In the Bible? What are
your missionaries doing in Christian
education? The following is a ltet of
five questions given for examination
to the second-year students at mid
term examination:
1. Write the Ten Commandments
(from memory).
2. Draw an outline of the Taben
nacle and name four articles in it.
3. What was Ruth's choice and
reward?
4. What was Hannah's prayer and
its answer?
5. ? Why was King Saul rejected by
God?
Out of 55 girls, 15 answered the
questions correctly and received
marks of 100.
Our Theological School
This is In Kobe, where about 20
young men are being trained for the
ministry. But the material for
preachers la very imperfect, because
we must depend solely on raw recruits
scarcely out of heathenism, with no
home training or Christian education.
How sorely do we need a Davidson
College for Japan! Such a school will
cost $100,000, but in time it will fit
100,000 young men for life and the
ministry. How poor is our material
may be judged from the incident of
the young man who applied to be
taken into the Seminary, and who,
when questioned, replied that he was
not a Christian yet, but he waa will
ing to become one, for he recognized
the ministry as a pretty honorable
sort of calling, and one that would
yield him a safe and comfortable
living. Who will supply this Chris
tian boys* school for an area of 7,000
square miles and a population of 2,
000,000 people, where there Is not a
single Christian school for boys ?
the Island of Shlkoku?
The Carrie McMillan Home
Eighty girls study here, snatched
from clutches of unscruplous parents
and from occupations of shame. They
are now happy and bright in their
new faith in Jesus. If you look in
on them, you see them seated on the
(Continued on page 13)
Laymen and Their Work
BLUE LAWS AND PERSONAL
LIBERTY'.
By A. B. Bowmar, Editor Woodford
Sun.
One of the principal topics of dis
cussion in newspapers and magazines
at this time is "blue laws," by which
is usually meant laws which prohibit
drinking, laws which prohibit gam
bling, and proposed laws to prevent
Indecency in "movie" plays and in
the legitimate drama and to secure
an orderly and quiet Sunday.
From the line of argument taken
by some of the advocates of "per
sonal liberty," it is a fair inference
that they believe that without the
liberty to indulge his appetite for
stimulants and his appetite for the
excitements of gaming and sensual
ity, man will lose that independence
of character by which civic and In
tellectual freedom is alone preserved,
and will become the bond-slave of a
priestly despotism, sinking to con
stantly lower levels of superstition
and misery.
In considering the probability of
this awful fate, several questions
have presented themselves to my
mind:
First. What nations in ancient or
modern times have been subjected to
degeneracy and decay and to loss of
personal independence by the opera
tion of blue laws? Do you know of
one, gentle reader? I do not.
The people of Scotland and of New
England present the most conspicu
ous examples of a population whose
forebears were governed by the most
rigorous of blue laws for several hun
dred years. We might expeot to find
the descendants of people who long
endured such a yoke at the lowest
point of decadence, instead of which
they exhibit the highest degree of
mental and physical virility. Scot
land has given more brains and more
independent thought to the w;orld
than almost any small territory on
earth except ancient Greece and a
similar statement may be made of
New England in its relation to the
United States. If the blue laws hurt
the fathers, they must have tremen
dously benefited the sons.
The only people among the ancients
who were subject to blue laws were
the Jews. That section of their na
tion which utterly refused to conform
to blue laws went down into the dust
forever. The descendants of the king
dom of Judah, nearly 2,000 years af
ter their capital was destroyed and
their nation scattered throughout the
earth, are to-day the wonder of the
world for their mental and physical
virility, their racial purity and their
ability to flourish amidst adverse con
ditions, while they often excite both
the envy and the hatred of other races
because they dominate the finances
of every civilized State. The Jews
have seen every nation which arose
before them perish, except China, ana
while that nation has long been de
crepit (probably due as much to their
use of drugs as to over-population
and non-Intercourse with the outside
world), the Jews are as vigorous as
in the days of Solomon.
May it not be that one reason Eng
land Is less debilitated than most Eu
ropean nations Is because for several
hundred years a spirit of puritanism
has constantly contended against the
"personal liberty" which England
certainly enjoys, though not In so
great measure as the continental na
tions. Can it be that the license aria
ing from "personal liberty" has kept
Puritanism from degrading and de
bauching the people of England and
rendering them effeminate and cow
ardly? Is It not more likely that
Puritanism, constantly exercising a
certain restraining influence on Eng
lish life, has kept the English from
sinking to lower levels?
The second question I have asked
myself is: What nations of ancient
or modern times have degenerated
and gone down to ruin from the free
exercise of personal liberty to gratify
appetites? The greatest nations of
the past have been thus ruined. Home
being the oft-quoted, conspicuous ex
ample. The very things which the
advocates of the so-called "blue
laws" are fighting to control in Amor
ica ? unveiled, unblushing sensuality,
drinking and gaming ? brought Rome,
mistress of the world, prostrate be
fore the barbarians. Name the civi
lized countries to-day in which the
greatest "personal liberty" to gratify
appetites exist, and you name those
which are in greatest present danger
of ruin. .
America has bad one object lesson
In this matter, although it has not
had to do with the laws of the land,
but with laws of social life. Up to
a certain number of years ago the
literature of America was clean, both
in magazines and books. With so
few exceptions as to be almost neg
ligible, the drama was clean. Sen
suality lurked in the dark and in
back alleys. We became conscious
that the Euiopean world thought us
"crude" and "raw" (which are other
names for decency), and we blushed
for it. They told us that America
wa3 living for the young person and
that this was wrong. They preached
to us "art for art's sake," and after
that had soaked in they preached lust
for lust's sake, although not in those
words. They told us that represen
tations of life in literature and in
the drama must present the subject
whole, by which they really meant
that animalism and vileness must be
given the foreground of the picture.
We followed these false prophets.
Magazines and books introduced sto
ries of licentiousness into the homes
and the theatres introduced scenes
of lust and indecency to the amuse
ment-loving public.
When the movies came along they
took a thousand-leagued step in ad
vance in the larger towns and cities
and presented to the children, as well
as to the grown-ups, representations
of the most appalling lust and vUe
ness. Instead of this freedom lead
ing to a higher form of art ? untram
meled art ? as our European critics
said it would, it led to the partial
commercialization of literature and
almost the absolute commercialization
of our amusements, the control of
the latter being not infrequently
vested In men of the lowest possible
moral, or rather immoral, ideas, with
only one principle, to fill their pock
ets.
What came of all this? Precisely
what might have been expected to
tome of it: After the drafts were
made for the laite war, the horrified
surgeons of the United States Army
declared that a frightful per cent, of
young men examined were suffering
from diseases caused by impurity ?
diseases practically certain to injure
their descendants.
It is impossible for the generations
that come Immediately after us to
(Contiifhe? on page 13)