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OUR BRIGHTSIDE LETTER.
The Church in West Virginia.
Of course we mean "Our Church." It Is
the Church to us. But we are thankful
that it is not all that there is of the
Church of God in this Mountain State.
Witti us, not only in location and in progress
and service, but in "like precious
faith" are our brethren, Methodist, Baptists,
Episcopalians, Lutherans, striving
together for the faith of the goepsl. We
are not rivals but brethren and co-laborers,
and we pray for their growth and
fruitfulness. Just what their strength and
progress are we have not now the means
of knowing, but we hear of their good
work for Christ in every section. We wish
them prosperity, for the field is large and
the need is great.
Presbyterians, mainly, were the hardy
pioneers; the Scotch-Irish who came over
the Alleghanie8 from the Potomac and
Shenandoah valleys. The South branch
and the Greenbrier gave them homes and
great ioresis ana nca lanas, ana many
log cabins, remote and unfurnished, had
the Bibles and catechisms brought from
Ulster and the Scottish Highlands. In
1760, the first white families came to the
Greenbrier valley. In 1783, the Rev. John
McCue had three churches and many
other preaching places in the country
now embraced by Greenbrier, Monroe and
Pocahontas counties. And in 1794 the
church of Lewisburg, the Old Stone
church, was built?115 years ago. The
General Assembly wttl meet within its
walls in May, 1910. The Synod of Virginia
was with some difficulty persuaded
to come there in 1843, and it came in
good numbers on horseback and in vehicles
of many kinds. It came again in 1857,
and thirty-nine years later in 1896 for
the population in the Western valleys
grew rapidly, and the churches grew in
number and in numbers and in zeal
to overtake the destitutions.
A great mission field the West Virginia
State has been to the Synod of Virginia.
And the responsibility for extension and
labor here has been the chief reason for
the Synod's remaining undivided. Two
Presbyteries are wholly in the new-state,
the older, Greenbrier, now having forty
churches and 28 ministers, nearly all of
them in the active ministry; aid the
vouneer. Kanawha, with 23 churches and
14 ministers. But the old valley
Presbyteries, lengthen their cords far out
toward the Ohio, and have planted their
stakes in almost every valley, for Winchester
has forty-one churches in West
Virginia, some strong and full of fruit,
and some the beginning of life and promise.
And Lexington has 25, in railroad
centers, mining towns and lumber camps.
Montgomery has three and Abingdon
uiubscs oiaic iiiict), iu suppuii out; or
two. So the old Synod has 133 churches
in the mountain State and 60 of its ministers,
heralds of the Cross, with the
blue banner. They have a great field,
with a population, growing, mixed, scat
PRESBYTERIAN OF THE SOUTI
tered, destitute and difficult. May the
Lord bless them richly, and His people
sustain them generously.
In the valley of the Kanawha., there
are strong churches at Lewisburg, Mount
Pleasant, Ronceverte, Hinton, Anderson,
Montgomery, Charleston, St. Albans,
Huntington and Point Pleasant, a chain
of strong links, churches blessed with
an able and faithful ministry, filled each
Sabbath with large assemblies, intelligent,
devout, growing and giving. Fine
buildings there are too, with substantial
and imposing architecture in stone, as at
Charleston and Huntington, and new
churches in stone rising at St. Albans,
and Bream Memorial in West Charleston.
If a Presbyterian would be cheered
by seeing numbers crowding the sanctuary
to overflowing, he should come to
Bream Memorial, and find no Beat and
often no standing room, five or six hundred
in the great Sunday school, a hundred
and more boys marching with the
tlag of the covenanter fathers.
Then is not Lexington Presbytery
planted firmly at Elkins, with a beautiful
church and a strong membership, and an
active and beloved pastor, and a college
too, with its superb view on the mountains,
and on the future as well? Winchester
reaches out from the Eastern Panhandle
from Charleston and Martinsburg
and Shepherdstown, with their older
churches, bearing fruit down to old age,
far up the Potomac and it branches to
the Fairfax stone and beyond, with
strong posts at Romney and Moorefleld,
and has planted its standard at Keyser
and Piedmont and Davis and Petersburg
and many other places.
At Charleston, the fine capital of the
new Virginia, on the Kanawha, Dr. Henry
Ruffner organized the church in 1819.
And to a growing congregation, Dr.
James M. Brown ministered from 1837 to
1862. You may find the home and the
room in which he wrote the thrilling
story of his mother, Mary Moore, "The
Captive of Abb's Valley." In 1868, Dr.
John Calvin Barr came to this church
from Lewisburg, to be a strong tower in
this community and the whole valley for
religion and morals and all things good
and lovely. At eighty-five, he survives,
greatly venerated and loved by all, and
rejoicing in the good and effective work
of his successor, Dr. Ernest Thompson.
J. P. 8.
THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.
Bunyan's work was among the first
western books to be given to the Chinese.
In the kindness of God it found an excellent
translator, a man who made those
symbolical names stand out with great
vividnesB.
Could Bunyan see what a splendid
work his book is doing, he would thank
his Master with tears for those 12 years
in Jail. Only yesterday an old teacher,
a non-communicant as yet, said: "1 have
not read the New Testament through, but
I have read Pilgrim's Progress through
many times. I didn't used to believe
Christ died for men, but I do now."
It is safe to say that in this part of
China, no living man is exercising a
i. December 8, 1909.
deeper, wider influence in forming the
Christian character of the individual
Christians than John Bunyan. Everyone
of our Christians that can read, has read
ktn n ' ? " "" * * "
mo num. v/ue 01 our emers saia: "l aid
not know Christianity, though I was a
professor, till I read Pilgrim's Progress."
One of our old Christian women said: 'I
read Pilgrim's Progress with much profit
and I have been reading and crying over
Christiana all day today." Today I have
frequently caught myself listening to the
helper as he sits in the court with his
class of catechumens around him, while
he illustrates and amplifies Christian's
journey.
Would that parents and pastors- at
home would more constantly urge young
Christians to read carefully this book. It
will not only interest, but will bftng rich
knowledge and experience to every one,
who will read it and trv to see his imir.
ney portrayed in its quaint pages.
B. C. Patterson,
October 12, 1909. Suchlen, China.
THE AMERICAN REVISION WRONG
On Titus 2: 13; 2 Peter.1: 1.
By Rev. Luther Link.
It is very much to be regretted that
the American Revised Version has gone
back to the old translation of these passages,
for the Revised Version, as fixed by
the English committee, takes "God" and
"Savior" as embraced together under one
article; "our" being an attributive to
both. It renders the verse: "Looking for
the blessed hope and appearing of the
glory of our great God and Savior Jesus
Christ." Now that the American Revisers
have changed this back to the old
translation, we have the two revised versions
opposed t? each other on these
texts, and every man will have to decide
for himself which is right. It seems
hardly credible that so great an uncertainty
should inhere in the text itself;
and is it possible that the world of today
is not sufficiently conversant with
the laws of the Greek language to decide
this question? It would seem so; and it
is unfortunate that some difficulty hangs
around several of the passages which directly
assert the deity of Christ.
Dr. Warfleld, in a footnote In his "Lord
of Glory" (p. 245), quotes a German editor
of Winer's' grammar in favor of understanding
these passages and several
related passages as having reference to
a Bingle person, in which therefore Christ
is called God. He says: "In any case no
one will ground here on grammar, but
must hold a careless construction possible,
and therefore in deciding the question
leave room for material r-nnolrtoro.
tions." He says "Winer had on Biblicotheologlcal
grounds decided in these passages
for two persons?that is, he decided
on the strength of his conception of
what these authors would be likely to
say, but he allows that grammatically
they are flexible to the other opinion."
This remark of Schmiedel's on Winer is
evidently Just, for here is what he really
says, according to Lunemann's seventh
edition: "For reasons which He in the
doctrinal system of Paul, I do not regard
'Soteros' (Savior, in Tit 2: 13) as a