The Presbyterian of the South : [combining the] Southwestern Presbyterian, Central Presbyterian, Southern Presbyterian. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1909-1931, August 25, 1909, Page 17, Image 18

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% August 25, 1909. "THE ue to come until the opportunity at home equals the opportunity here. They are going to be citizens with all the rights and privileges of the oldest inhabitant. What kind of citizens? This is for the Church to answer. The public schools will teach them their duty to the country. Who is to teach them their duty to God? The Church must do it. There is none Other_ "One mllllnn Imml grants means one million opportunities, and one million responsibilities." The Assembly's Committee is now preaching the gospel in six nationalities in as many languages. Our great Church this year is spending $7,500 on this foreign work. We should at least spend $25,000 if we would do our share. Never was a work more successful. The Expanding Frontier. Into the great South-west settlers from other states and homeseekers from other lands are going at the rate of a million a year. In the early settlement of the nation our fathers built their houses, and then the church close by. Today it is different. The church comes last if it comes at all. The gospel privileges in this new country are totally inadequate for the multitudes who need them now as never before. Louisiana, on of the oldest states, yet a part of this new country, is fast coming to be recognized as a field rich in promise and white with harvests. Possibly no state in tjie union is more missionary in character and presents greater opportunities for gospel triumphs. Texas, "which would hold all the people on the globe and give each family more than half an acre of land," is a prize well worth the effort of any church. Here are hundreds of communities entirely destitute of the gospel, waiting the coming of the missionary., Oklahoma, the young est synod, is destined to be one of the strongest?a state that In twenty years has grown from a territory, sparsely settled, to a great commonwealth with a population of 1,900,000. Within the bounds of this synod there are scores of towns without a church and opportunities for denominational expansion without a parallel. Arkansas, Missouri, New Mexico and Arizona tell the same story. The only question is: "Are we going to enter these open doors and do our share in the evangelization of this great country and save it for our Church and the Kingdom of God?" Why Home Missions? mu * 11 i uest? lauib art; a pai tiai answer. AM these conditions represent adverse forces drawing us away from the Kingdom of God. They press upon us and challenge the power of the Church for their salvation. America is not a saved land and It Is folly to assume that it Is. No reflex influence theory of missions will meet the need. There must be a complete occupation of every part of the land by all the institutions and agencies of the Church of God. This must be done for the sake of our country, for the conservation of the Church, and the results al ready gained. "To the nation as to the man, to be without God is to be without hope." Upon Home Missions depend the salvation of the unchurched millions in America, and the salvation of America itself. ; PRESBYTERIAN OF THE SOUT SOME LESSONS FROM HISTORY. By E. C. Gordon. The country has recently been treated to an exposition of some teachings that are said to be current in some of the great schools of the land. The designed outcome of these particular teachings is to overthrow the Christian relieion ami the morality of which it is the chief foundation. We are gravely told by these university professors, so it is said, that we have outgrown Biblical Chistianify, and now need to formulate a new Christianity, according to their teaching. There is nothing new in all this, as students of history very well know. When Paul at Athens preached Jesus and the resurrection, some of the university professors mocked. Doubtless this was true also at Tarsus and in other learned cities. Paul kept on preaching, and the university professors and their mockeiy passed &wav hn* phriotu^u.. 1?J ? , 1, .avmuu; out VIVKU. It st^ll survives, strong with the strength of the strong Son of God. Most of us know of the conditions in western Europe at the beginning of the Sixteenth Century. These conditions have recently been widely discussed. The apathy of the church, united under one earthly head, the revival of learning, set forth with all the arts of literature and oratory, excited the gravest fears in the minds of the devout and earnest Christians. It seemed as if Biblical Christianity would be ground to powder and scat tered to the winds. But these fears were not realized. God raised up Luther, Calvin and others. They preached Jesus and the resurrection, the great doctrines of man's sin and of God's grace in salvation, and Christianity survived. The religious condition of r.ront ain in the middle and latter part of the Eighteenth Century is not so well known. It was indeed most deplorable. The great doctrines of man's sin and of God's salvation by grace had been shelved. Infidelity was rampant. A barren, formal orthodoxy, a dead morality, occupied the attention of the pulpits of the church. All parties in the church seemed to have agreed on one thing only; to do nothing for the salvation of sinners. There were no Sunday-schoolB, no Bible Societies, -no city missions, no foreign missions, no evangelists. Crime and vice of every sort were flagrant in all classes of so ciety. Since the times of Luther and Calvin, the level of gospel preaching had never been so low and the level of immorality had never been so high. But Christianity did not perish. God sent forth some successors of Paul, an nnnfltlo r\f Tfionu M? At- * vuiibi* ior ine raitn or God's elect and for the truth which leads to godlikeness. These men held tenaciously to the Holy Scriptures as of divine authority, and as an infallible rule of faith and practice in religion. They took the great doctrines of sin, and salVoHnn ~%M "" uunu Hum tuts Bueir. iney preached them with great unction and power wherever they could get audiences; even amidst obloquy and persecutions of all sorts. They taught the doctrine of native depravity, of salvation by God's t'VS" H. l7 grace through faith in a divine and crucified Saviour. They emphasized the necessary and inseparable connection be tween saving faith and sincere, persistent and successful efTorts after a pure and holy life. The results need ever to he hnmo mind by both infidels and Christians. These great preachers of Biblical Christianity saved Great Britain and North America from a dominant infidelity, from a dominant Romanism, from a prevalent and destructive immorality, from despotism. In the closing years of the Eighteenth Century, France, weltering in the bloodshed during the Reign of Terror, found that neither atheism nor infidelity could help her. Then a number of influential men undertook to found a new religion on scientific principles. Their creed consisted of two doctrines: the existence of God, the immortality of the soul. Tneir moral code consisted of two duties: love to God, love to men. Their worsnip consisted of prayer, praise, the exposition of the two great duties, and placing flowers on altars. No religion ever started under fairer auspices, or with more flattering prospects of success. Biblical Christianity had been formally abolished. The religion that defied reason and worshipped a harlot had been found wanting. Men of the highest learning and purest philanthropy gave this new religion their influence and patronage. The cathedral church of Notre Dame and eighteen others in Paris were placed at its disposal by the government. Its manuals were seui ionn over France free of expense by the Minister of the Interior. But this religion did not flourish under the fostering care of the State and disappeared at the first breath of opposition. Napoleon Bonaparte blew on it, and it died. The lesson is this: Preach the great truths that gather about the Cross of Christ: Man's sin; his native depravity and innumerable actual transgressions; his helpless, hopeless condition in and of himself; all this, true of the fine gentleman and lady as well as of the criminal and vile true of the millionaire as well as of the pauper, of the university professor as well as of the ignoramus of the king as well as of the peasant. Hence the need of God's sovereign grace, of a divine and crucified Saviour, by each and all. Christianity is not, was not, designed to be self-propagating. It needs God-sent men and women, who live and teach it so as to give others a full knowledge of it, a full knowledge that leads to godliness. If the attitude of the infidel university professors shall lead to a general revival of true Gospel preaching in Christian pulpits, preaching addressed to the rich, the learned, the powerful as w?ii as to the poor, the ignorant and the weak, there need be no fears felt for the Qospel, which is the power of Qod unto salvation to them that believe, or for the Church, which is the pillar and ground of the truth. Lexington, Mo.