Handmaiden's Wisdom

"Look at me!" the girl invited. "At nine I had all the ordinary girl's ambitions. I loved to-- dance! I wanted to be an--actress!

"But then I heard Aimee Semple McPherson preach the true gospel.

"Now I'd rather take a swim than a smoke. I want all young people to find the joy I do in reading the Bible. . . . Why--I get more kick out of reading ECCLESIASTES than in having a date!"

Uldine Utley, 15, Fundamentalist, last week was imparting her wisdom to newsgatherers, following her arrival in Chicago, to which fertile area she had gone for the purpose of redeeming the sinners. The girl had just come from Norfolk, Va., where numberless adults had suddenly espoused religion under her auspices. She has been conducting revival meetings throughout the U. S. following the startling endorsement of her methods by Dr. S. Parkes Cadman of Brooklyn, N. Y., who as President of the Federal Council of Churches carries weight as a Protestant spokesman. Dr. Cadman's endorsement made many wonder whether the seeds of Christianity are falling upon such stony ground that all the magic of modern publicity is required to make them germinate. At any rate it was certain that Miss Utley's promised "kick" set many to examining the rhythmical prose of ECCLESIASTES. Its philosophy falls strangely on U. S. ears.

That amiable old roue, Solomon, is, far part of the book, the suppositions "Preacher."* He shows that in the end all human activities are vain:

One generation passeth away and another generation cometh: but the abideth forever. . . . For that which befalleth the sons of man befalleth beasts: even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth so dieth the other.

Her kindest critics could only say that the girl Uldine was too young to catch the meaning of such lilting verses. To the Preacher Progress is futile, Effort ridiculous, Work leading but to the grave. Well might Utley-urged readers doubt whether so spirited a young lady would knowingly propagate this doctrine of Quietism, which all good U. S. citizens despise as encouraging to slothfulness and indolence; which is down right laziness and against the principles of business.

And the Preacher in ECCLESIASTES continues: He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver, nor he that loveth abundance with increase--and what good is there to the owners thereof? And again readers asked the question: Is this according to the doctrine of Opportunity-for-all which stimulates every man to forge his way to the top? Is it not rather the end of initiative, the beginning of a hybrid Hindu-Socialism?

And the Preacher counsels: Be not over muck wicked . . . why shouldst thou die before thy time? Question: Is this not an un-Christian reason for abjuring wickedness?

He goes on: I counsel thee to keep the king's commandment. . . . Where the word of a king is, there is power: and who may say unto him, What doest thou? Angrily, readers asked themselves: Do Uldine's declarations of literate faith in Biblical commandments let her forget the Magna Charta and the Rights of Man as expressed in the U. S. Constitution?

Solomon, when he was a youngster, he remembers, sowed his wild oats. What, though, does he say when he grows old? He says: There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink. . . . This time the question was: Could anything more arrantly pagan be suggested to sincere Christians?

From the last verse of ECCLESIASTES to the first of the SONG OF SOLOMON is but an eye-skip across the page. Stern Puritans used to say that Solomon's SONG OF SONGS is a book which Christians had better whistle than recite.

The opening verse: Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine, and there are more than hints of more. Young Uldine, with her shiny scrubbed face, has been quoted as saying that flappers do not get their flapper ways from the Bible.

*Doubt surrounds the authorship of the book ECCLESIASTES. Some say King Solomon wrote it. Others attribute it to a Hebrew sage named Koholeth, whose name, coincidentally, means "wisdom." Koholeth at first puts his words into the mouth of Solomon, but later drops this literary device. The Greek word "Ecclesiastes" means "Preacher."