Miscellaneous Selections
Alcoholism A Disease?
Herbert Eberhardt, Secretary of the International Union of Gospel Missions and Superintendent of the Central Union Mission of Washington, D.C., suggests that alcoholism is a unique sickness:
"If drunkenness, or alcoholism, is a disease, then we would like to compare it with other sicknesses:
"1. It is the only disease we advertise to the tune of almost $130,000,000 annually.
"2. It is the only disease we propagate to the tune of 3,000,000,000 gallons of liquor consumed annually, or more than 20 gallons per man, woman and child in the U.S.A.
"3. It is the only disease we legalize to the tune of 447,000 retail liquor permits in drug stores, groceries, hotels, and wherever our women and children must go for necessities of life.
"4. It is the only disease we commercialize, — the annual drink bill being close to $9,000,000,000.
"5. It is the only disease voluntarily self-imposed. Not one of the 4,000,000 excessive drinkers, many of them alcoholics, in America, ever became an alcoholic without wilfully taking a drink and continuing to drink. This is not true of any other sickness.
"6. It is the most deadly of all diseases for it destroys, as Jesus said in Matthew 10:28, 'both soul and body in hell'! No other sickness, however malignant, can kill a man's soul. But the disease of alcoholism will and does, as evidenced by the estimated cost of crime in Massachusetts alone, resulting from liquor, of $61,000,000 in one year, to say nothing of intangible by-products.
"7. Finally, we are glad to say this disease is curable for all who wish to escape its malignancy. Thank God! there is remedy for this disease available to all. There is no incurable case in sight of God." — The Methodist Clip Sheet, 1950.
Words Of Wisdom From J. Edgar Hoover
The Sunday morning Bible classes are so important that no member of the church should neglect them. They provide an opportunity for Christians to study the Word of God together. They also give parents a chance to provide some sound spiritual training for their children. And if you have any doubt about the importance of such training, read carefully the following words of J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI.
"Crime is on the march in America. The continuing flood of immorality and crime accompanies a substitution of a secular, materialistic philosophy for reliance upon divine guidance.
"I think that the criminal flood is an inescapable result of our earlier failure to teach God convincingly to the youthful unfortunates who will be the criminals of tomorrow. I think the one sure way to stem the tide and restore our nation to moral sanity is to bring about a return to religion as our guide for daily living.
"Of 8,000 delinquent children (under 17 years of age) only 42 attended Sunday School regularly; none of these children had a mother or father who attended Sunday School or church regularly."
This is the considered judgment of the famous head of our FBI. What a challenge it presents to Christian parents! And when Christian parents neglect to bring their family to Bible classes, what a distorted sense of values they must have! They provide three meals a day for their family. Thus, when they neglect Bible classes, they shout to the world, "We believe that food for the body is more important than food for the spirit." Some of our church members should let the words of Mr. Hoover sink in!
— The Reminder, Kansas City, Missouri
The Old Paths
You tell me that the churches are public forums for political discussions, that they have become commercialized, that religion is reduced from a soul-saving basis to a dollar-and-cents proposition. Too often your charges are true! There are too many places more concerned with serving sandwiches to a club meeting in a church basement than with passing out the Bread of Life in the pulpit! God did not intend for the church to become a glorified restaurant, where chicken suppers were served to pay a pastor's salary. The church has departed a long way from the idealism of the Savior. It has followed the world, instead of leading the world to follow Christ. The church is to exist in the world, but it has now got the world in the church. It has become a theater, a dance hall, a gambling den. Only this week I saw bills displayed declaring that six cases of whiskey would be given away at a church benefit. I lift up my voice against this! It desecrates religion, makes a mockery of religion to become a hiss and byword. The churches of Christ stand today, like the voice of one crying in the wilderness, pleading with you to ask for the old paths, the paths of God. People, let us go back to the Bible!
— The Perk-Up, Phoenix, Arizona
Men
One of the world's greatest needs is men! Men who are bigger than trifles; men with breadth of intellect and depth of character; men who will not stoop to cheat or be unfair; men who will not stand imperiously on their rights, but who in magnanimity of soul cast away personal advantage for the good of many; men who will not lie, and defame, and steal, to increase their own personal fame or fortune; men who would rather stand with the right in the end than to have their own way; men who love the truth and are willing to die for it rather than to compromise with falsehood; men who act upon principle in all their dealings with their fellowmen rather than personal feelings either of bias or prejudice; men with clean hearts and pure motives; men who feel neither envy nor jealousy when one of superior endowments and greater ability surpasses what they have been able to achieve; men too big to hate the excellence they cannot attain; men who are big enough to be satisfied to fill the place in the world for which they were created and fitted by the Benign Creator who made every man for a definite place in His infinite universe of time and space and sense. — A. Hugh Clark
The Devil's Twenty-Third Psalm
King Alcohol is my shepherd;
I crave and want.
He maketh me to lie down in mudholes;
He leadeth me beside troubled waters;
He damneth my soul;
He turneth my car over for his taste's sake.
Yea, though I ride in the valley of the shadow of hell, I will hold to the bottle,
For the devil is with me.
His saloon and his beer joint, they beckon me.
Thou prepareth an empty table before me in the presence of my family;
Thou anointeth my head with bruises.
My pocketbook is empty.
Surely evil and misery shall follow me all the days of my life, And I shall dwell in the house of the devil forever.
— Selected
What Do You Read?
They read the Journal and the News, The Green Book and the Red;
They kept the serials of the month securely in their head.
They went through books both old and new — best sellers, too, they thought;
They read the jokes and scanned the styles — no item went for nought.
They read the sporting page — they called each athlete by name;
They read of baseball, football, golf — familiar with each game. They looked the funny paper thru; they watched the mails to seize The magazines they like the best, whose columns did most please.
But in their home there was a Book, with pages never turned, Whose messages of truth and hope were still by them unlearned —
The only Book that tells of Him who came that we might know The truth that saves and comforts us in this vile world below. What pity that they do not know this man of Galilee!
How sad they do not seek for things of immortality!
But, no they read and laugh and cry o'er stories of the hour, And let the Book, dust-covered lie — unopened in its power!
— Selected