By Morton Alexander

“A certain man had two sons; and the younger of them said to his father: Father give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his living. And not many days after the younger son gathered all together and took his journey into a far country and there wasted his substance with riotous living. And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in the land and he began to be in want.”—Jesus.

THIS bewildered, bankrupt world, feebly rubbing its swollen eyes in an effort to discover the cause of its increasing tribulations, might, with great profit, consider the story of the Prodigal Son. Unmindful and disobedient to the law of Right-Use-ness, the young man “shot up the town”—so to speak. He had a “good time” while it lasted. But it didn’t last. So presently he found himself hunting a job—and failing to find one after much searching, the young man’s pomposity and pride deserted him. He grew penitent, “And fain would have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him.” Not even a WPA job in sight! And so he came to himself:

“And said: I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no longer worthy to be called thy son.”

JESUS proclaimed truth in symbols and parables—so that it might be the easier comprehended by the unthinking. The parable of the Prodigal Son is a lesson to a Prodigal World. We are living in that prodigal world—and today, like the Prodigal Son, we are uttering our lamentations over the evils that have befallen us. But are we ready to cease our habits of “riotous living”—and in penitence seek the path of Right-use-ness, the Path that leadeth to the Father’s house?

We look out upon a world filled with turmoil and strife—a world in which the selfish struggle for mere material existence arrays man against man, nation against nation, in an ever-increasing conflict. We hear preachments about Peace—but we see billions of wealth being expended to foster and prepare for War.

We seek to rescue the world from ignorance, vice and poverty—we confront a powerfully entrenched, tyrannical Industrial Business System that derives its substance from the propagation of Vice, Ignorance and Poverty. We know the pitfalls of debt, yet we find our own nation borrowing $50,000,000 per week to sustain a prosperity that at best is artificial and transitory.

Indeed, do we follow the footsteps of the Prodigal Son, and “spend our substance in riotous living.”

AND yet out of this gloomy night, out of this welter of madness and noise, there comes forever the pleading voice of the patient crusader crying:

“Return, return! ye children of men! Cease traveling the pathway of destruction and death! Cast off your burdens of Selfishness and Greed, of Vice and Folly and deadening Sensualism! Leave the swill and husks of low desire and aimless striving—arise, and seek again the Father’s house, the Temple of Brotherhood, wherein dwell Peace and Purity, Light and Love.”

A HOUSEHOLD magazine states that: “Alcohol will remove stains from summer clothes.” True enough! Also it will remove the clothes themselves, not only summer clothes, but spring, winter and autumn clothes from the one who drinks it and from his wife, and children. It will also remove the food from the pantry and the fire from the cook-stove; it will remove the furniture from the house and the smiles from the faces of wives and children. A persistent application of it will remove reason, honor, manhood and self-respect—and it has removed millions of its users to jails, insane asylums, penitentiaries and graveyards.

As a remover of things alcohol is hard to beat.

—From Humanity Magazine.

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