The Cordele Dispatch And Daily Sentinel

CONTRIBUTE THE MITE OF YOURSELF TO A WORTHY UNDERTAKING TODAY
By JUDGE W. P. FLEMING

The effort, led by the Lions, to realize the fullest possible attendance on the several Sunday Schools of the community tomorrow, is expressive of a beautiful and patriotic spirit that should grip and enlist the support of every good citizen.

If Cordele is warranted in pluming herself, as she is accustomed to do, on being an exceptionally moral and church-loyal community, her status of excellence in this regard has been attained, no doubt, in consequence of just such kind, systematic efforts as this now appealing to us.

In the vision of these, our well-intentioned friends, Cordele has not been perfected in genuine loyalty to the basic principles and practices, of christian civilization for which our Sunday Schools and churches stand. They call upon us to look into the mirror of truth and realize the distance of our goal.

They are not busy on a problem that is fancied. It is general as well as local. Of all Georgia folks, for instance, only 42 per cent are church members. Of this membership, not all, of course, are pulsing with life as "members in particular." Of the population of Cordele, about fifty per cent are white; probably sixty per cent of those are church members; about fifty per cent of this membership attend Sunday School and church more or less regularly. Another step in the inverse progression brings us face to face with the fact of a comparatively small number in each denomination who have some zeal with some knowledge. So that, if the mirror is true, my features and yours don't look very beautiful in it, after all.

Individual responsibility cannot be evaded in matters of life-expression and character. What others do or fail to do, furnishes no fixed criterion of duty or action for you or me. What they are, or are not, inside or outside the church. does not determine our character or destinies. The best that I can do is to contribute to the right side of this scale the mite of myself.

The only perfect example of true living was given to the world by one who went to church regularly: who studied the Bible and set store by its meaning; who was social, loved his neighbors, cherished his friends; one in whom the art and alchemy of sympathetic fellowship was an essential element in that true living. of which he gave the only perfect example to the world. Straight lines from the principles-the starting points-he set, will not lead a man into a maze of crooked ways. These lines point like his index finger to Sunday School tomorrow.

Shall we not set our active approval upon the Lions and their co-workers in this matter? Or, shall we wait for the fragrance, we may not sense, of flowers wreathed for a casket? They are our friends who would greet us and our wives and the children and the neighbor. And may we not all stay to church