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*4 THE PRESBYTERIA
THE APPEAL TO THE CHURCH.
Whenever a reform movement or organization is started
or desires an impulse to make it move more rapidly,
it applies to the Church, ^t asks from the Church not
only endorsement and publicity but funds as well. It
endeavors to show how clearly it is related to the
Church and the Church's supreme aim. It reasons plausibly
concerning the Church's duty to sustain all moral
reform c anrl Ovon ?!'? -1 1 :?1 ? * * '
luv. o^icii auu liiuustriai movements
which look to the betterment of the conditions of men,
women and children. So, the Anti-Saloon League, the
Child Labor Reform, the Purity League, the Sunday
Rest Association, and a host of others, even down to
such purely physical and semi-medical organizations as
the Anti-Tuberculosis League, approach the Church
and appeal to her to set apart days for considering their
claims and telling their efforts, for enlisting public sympathy,
and frequently for providing funds for their maintenance.
The question arises, Why this appeal to the Church?
Is it made simply because here is an organized body,
ready at hand, compactly organized, and the only one
thus completely organized among men? Is it because
these ardent reformers see in the Church a body ready
to be useful in any firood cause, comnbiwnt
_ ? , 1 V, >11
spirit? Or is it a direct and reasonable tribute to the
power of the Church and an acknowledgment that God
has set her in the world to be a bulwark for the truth, a
fostering mother to everything that is pure and good and
true? The latter must be the case. The appeal would
hardly be so earnest, so sustained, so universal, were
there not a conviction underlying it that the Church
is indeed invested with influence and that she is appointed
to minister to the best and noblest that is in
man, that she is, as it were, God's beneficent hand
stretched out to the needy as well as to the guilty.
T? *?*.!_ ? - -
rwen 11 uiis dc true, however, it does not warrant the
Church in allowing herself to be drawn out of her legitimate
sphere. She is a witness for the truth. She is
God's agent for proclaiming the Gospel of his Son and
his intermediary in bestowing peace and comfort
through the Gospel. If she allows her influence to be
exerted through any other channels than the preaching
of Christ to the world and the setting before men of
high spiritual motives and methods, she has forgotten
her calling. Through Christ and faith in his name all
her acts are to be performed, and when she gets away
from that ground she is in danger.
The richest contribution she can make to the civic and
social, to the material and esthetic, welfare of men, to
culture and elevation, is through preaching Christ to
men. For where he is and where he is known, there is
libertv. Make an individual r>r a (imli.. ~? ?
_ Ul <t CUIIIIIlUIlliy,
or a people truly Christian and the best that is in them
will come out in the life. The fundamental difference
between the spiritual life which she is to proclaim and
the faithful and proper efforts of men in reform movements
is that the new life works from within outward,
tTiat it begins at the center and not on the circumference.
It furnishes inward principles and sources of
power.
In urging her members to countenance and support
all wise movements for the betterment of men's condition
and for the improvement of society, and to do so for
N OF THE SOUTH. February 10, 1909.
love of the Lord Jesus, is not contrary to her divine
mission. So far from this, she is to help them to find
the highest motive for sympathy with all such work. All
this she can do without leaving the place to which God
has assigned her and going as such, in her organized
capacity, into fields which are not properly hers.
NOTES IN PASSING.
By "Bert."
Is God unkind to his own? I have heard some who,
I have no doubt, were Christians, under stress speak as
if they thought so. Peter and John were going up to
tli-e temple at the hour of prayer, a lame man begged
for alms and they were forced to say they had neither
silver nor gold. And yet these two men were the living
representatives of Jehovah who is infinitely rich. Many
going up at the same time had no living knowledge of
God, living only for self, caring only to make a favorable
impression upon men, had abundance of this world's
goods. Is God capricious or unkind? Were Peter and
John poor men? They had no money, that being so the
world would call them poor. But does the possession
of money necessarily make a man rich? I knew a man
whose house caught fire, he rushed upstairs to save a
trunk in which he kept his valuables. His charred remains
were found beside the remains of the contents of
the trunk. Was he richer or poorer for the valuables?
1 call no man poor who by a touch of his hand or a word
can inspire hope in a soul; for a new hope is the greatest
riches, and he who gives it must be rich. I call him
rich to whom the sufferer goes for sympathy, to whom
the despondent goes for inspiration, to whom the burdened
heart instinctively goes for help. I call him miserably
poor who can give only money. It was a fine
thing for that lame man at the Beautiful gate that Pfeter
and John had no money. If they had they might
have given that and passed on. But not having that
they gave what no money could buy. I think, maybe,
that is why God keeps some of his saints poor. Having
^ i.i 1.1? ? -
nv? muiicy iui ii?c wormy causes wnicn interest them
they can only pray, but their prayers command the sympathy
of God and bring larger and richer contributions
than they could ever hope to give.
To put yourself in the place of another means to put
him in your place.
Some can pay without praying; none can pray without
paying.
To pray for others as you would for yourself means
to give to others what you want for yourself.
Prayer does not get God in line with us, but us in line
with God.
Nothing is invisible to the eye of faith.He
who sounds his own praise makes not music, but
discord.
The sparing of the wicked is a miracle of grace no
less than the conversion of the wicked.
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