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, 14 THE PRESBYTERIA1S
Young People's Society
AFRICAN MISSIONS.
Topic for Sunday, April 25: Heroes of African Missions.
Jeremiah 1: 6-12.
DAILY READINGS.
Monday: The missionary's passion. 1 Cor. 9: 16-23.
Tuesday: The missionary's danger. Ezekiel 2: 3-7.
Wednesday: The missionary's faith. Isaiah 49: 1-5.
Thursday: His reward. .Mark 10: 28-31.
Friday: The missionary's joy. 2 Tim. 4: 6-8.
Saturday: The missionary's triumph. Revelation 7: 13-17.
Tuonan, Livingstone, MacKay, Hannington, Lapsley are
names that will always be written high upon the roll of the
heroes.of African missions. ,
All who have gone to that land are heroes. It takes more
true heroism to go there than to any other mission field.
The distance, the danger, the insalubrity of climate, the character
of the people are the cause.
There are many names unwritten and unheralded which deserve
a high place in the heroes' roll. The quiet of their
work and the unostentatiousness of their activity while obscuring
from public gaze have enhanced their work and
worth.
Our own church's representation in the galaxy named was
Samuel Lapsley, the son of one of the best families in Ala:
batna, who went out as one of the pioneers to the great
Congo Basin, and whose life was given to the cause he loved.
I lis death stirred the church as nothing else could have
stirred it.
The companion of Lapsley was William H. Sheppard, a
colored man. By his devotion, constancy and intelligence
he has done more than perhaps any man in the mission
to carry it to a marvelous success. He has been recognized
by the learnc d societies of England and is a Fellow of the
Royal Geographical Society of London.
Other colored workers, men and women, have gone out from
our church to be messengers to their own race of the grace
of God. Their work has been substantial and effective.
Through them and their white co-laborers there has been
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tjnwntu a.', uucuu, uu me dsiik or rne ivassai, tne greatest
congregation in numbers that is enrolled in one entire church.
The part played in African missions by cur modest little
institute for training a colored ministry has been most important.
Founded at Tuscaloosa, Ala., by the late Dr. Chas. A.
Stillman, and after his death named for him, and supported
by the church in a manner far from as generous as its purpose
and merit deserves, it has furnished our African Mission
with some of its finest workers.
But the African.- in Africa are by no means the only ones
to whom we are called to give the.gospel. Millions of thy
same race are just around us and in many cases just as
needy, as to their spiritual wants, as the people dwelling in
the Congo country. The problems they make for us here
are serious and perplexing. Publicists and statesmen have
not found a solution. The gospel will solve them. For our own
sake, then, as well as for this people's, we must try to lead
IUCU1 IU Vylll 1SI,
The work of our own Dr. J. Leighton Wilson, back in the
forties, the first to go to the west coast of Africa, and the
man to whom, more than to any otfier, the civilized world
is indebted for the abolition of the slave trade, should be an
incentive and inspiration to work for 'he colored race at
home and abroad. He had the faith to lay foundations broad
and strong, and to the day of his death no cause lay nearer
to his heart than that of the Africans. The spirit which
animated him should be perpetual in a church which honors his
name and memory.
I OF THE SOUTH. April 14, 1909.
~u H i 2-'JsZ'\ XI?? . 00. .NT. Ih.^V
Prayer Meeting
TOPIC?THE UNCHANGEABLE PURPOSE.
Rom. 8: 28-32.
" For Week Ileginning April 18.
Our conception of Deity Is radically defective unless, as its
initialive * clement, there is a recognition of the divine
sovereignty. A God who. in the absolute sense, is fettered
>n his activities and thwarted in his design* ?v... <?
o , ?f iiw 10 iii\UIC l U
fail in his sublimest plans and be defeated in his most
comprehensive schemes of beneficence, is not a God at all.
Moreover for God to act without a plan to rule, without a
definite, intelligent purpose, is unthinkable. Further, it is
radically erroneous to assume that there is any part of his
moral or spiritual government about which he has no intelligent
plans, and which he leaves to such fate as may emerge
out of chaotic conditions. He is an intelligent sovereign,
"knowing the end from the beginning,"' because he decrees it,
and doing his will in the army of heaven and among the
inhabitants of earth. All efforts to evade this basal truth are
futile and childish. To say that the omniscent One chooses
not to know and that the omnipotent One chooses not to
have a purpose is to conceive of him as forming a monstrous
conspiracy against himself to imperil those beneficent ends
which his infinite perfections would sanction. A God who
would frustrate the highest ends by refusing to impose his .
benevolent purposes upon them, wouln ho a mnn?to.
The magnificent text before us is a comprehensive statement
of God's supremacy in the execution of his eternally
gracious purpose in the process of rescuing a soul from an
estate of ruin and translating it to an estate of glory.
Every stage of the process is the fulfillment of an unchangeable
purpose in behalf of his redeemed people, and every stage is
linked 'nseparable in plan, in order and in execution with
the other stages. The glorification of a ransomed sinner is
not only accomplished progressively, but this progress is
according to God's eternally formed method.
"All things work together" to this end. He controls conditions,
material and spiritual, earthly and celestial, temporal
i- - --
nnuai, iu i ue execuuon or His purpose. We do not
always apprehend the method nor detect the unfolding of the
plan. It. may be enveloped in impenetrable folds of mystery.
The great general rule is that God's method and the evolving
cf his plans are hidden. Surely this is true in the outworking
of his providential designs. But the text assures us many
times, oui observation confirms the assurance, that all things
work together for good to the believer.
The fulfilling of God's sovereign purpose is perceived more
clearly in the sovereign act of regeneration. His supremacy
is such that he re-creates tne spiritual nature that the body
if sin may be destroyed. This fact is involved in our being
foreknown ana called. We are new creatures in Christ Jesus,
boru again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, begotten
unto a living hope.
His sovereign is fulfilled in our effectual calling, by
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y 11 me ui wiuirn we wuiingiy respond to and accept this offer
of mercy and become subjects in his kingdom, his disciples,
his servants, his friends, his followers. We become willing
in the day of his power. "I will put my fear in their hearts
that liiey may not depart from me."
In our justification God graciously and sovereignly provides
i he remedy for guilt, the ransom price, and according to his
good pleasure, he accepts it as the ground of our beijig justified.
The entire transaction, the laws involved, the method, are all
above us and beyond us. It is all of his good pleasure and
according to his gracious purpose.
The divine purpose is accomplished in that gradual refinement
of the nature in holiness which we call sanctiflcatlon.