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December 29, igog. THE PRESBYTER!
ular services of the sanctuary. They are heard every
Sabbath in towns and villages and rural communities
throughout our land. Their influence in refining
character, in maintaining exalted ideals, in developing
and confirming faith, in dispensing the great truths
upon which happiness and success in life are founded,
is immeasurable. To no class of men does a nation
owe such a profound debt of gratitude. Upon none
is it so dependent for the stability and loyalty of its
cuizensmp. And yet no class is more self-denying
and heroic.
The average minister is the character builder of his
community and he is building with the materials which
(jod has provided in his gospel of redemption for the
lost. He is doing work that is to endure through all
the crises of coming ages. His teachings are the rock
upon which the Church is founded. Yet with his
sublime message and his solemn, exalted mission, how.
inadequately does the world recognize and how feebly
does it acknowledge its debt of gratitude to him. So
it has ever been. The gospel works like leaven, with
an unseen, unmeasured fnrro ,J
xiii. <igiii ?Ji me woriu
is often seen with carnal eyes while its source is unknown.
The force of this leaven and the brightness of
this light are being evidenced by the extraordinary
zeal of both the ministry and laity in evangelizing the
world, both at home and abroad.
TO BE DISCOUNTED.
Magazine attacks upon the Bible, the Church and the
Christian fnifti " ? ?
,a.iu die very common. Almost every one
of those that are catering to popular tastes has something
of the kind in almost every issue.
Several things ought to be remembered in connection
with these attacks. The first is that the proprietors
are simply trading upon the innate prejudices of
men. They are not printing these articles for the
good they will do. They are in the business of publishing
for the money that is in it. If they should
think that this class of articles does not pay, they
wouiu speedily shut them out. Ridicule of religion,
depreciatory remarks upon the faith, sharp and cutting
attacks upon the Bible and theological truth have
been popular in all the ages. That they are so, accords
with the statements of the Bible itself. "The
carnal mind is enmity against God." But keen-eyed
business men have seen how this fact might be turned
to good account. They have made it pay. They have
used it to sell their products.
Another thing to be remembered is that the writers
of these articles are, as a rule, the least qualified of all
people to discuss the principles or facts in the case.
Neither by training nor by sympathetic scholarship
are they qualified to pass judgment upon what they
decry, and they are absolutely wanting in the judicial
spirit which is the first requisite to careful analysis
of conditions or correct discrimination between error
and truth. They are either prejudiced judges, expressing
their own nredil#?rtioric /-> "
g .?ptiiu^-rt-iiners WHO
get so many dollars for so many pages of attack along
popular lines upon faiths which the popular mind so
dislikes that it will pay for the attack. A year or two
ago a young woman went the rounds of the churches
to test the "stranger welcome" problem. She was
4- ,
IAN OF THE SOUTH 3
well paid for doing it. Her test was a fraud. She was
not a stranger to be taken care of, to know from experience
and response to actual needs and stranger
nooci what the churches were doing, but was a masquerading
spy who deserved more than ajl the coldness
that may have been shown her. And precisely
the same may be said of those other writers who, having
exploited the cities and the trusts, at so much per
page, and sorry pages most of them have been, arc
now devoting themselves to attack upon the Church.
TIlP hnrrpnnpcc ?11 f 1
? _ vi uiv^v. niiacKs, in ciii umcr ieatures
except the enmity which they display, is a marked
characteristic of them. They seldom show anything
beyond the most superficial knowledge of the great
matters with which they deal. They read, as to their
information, almost invariably like second-hand affairs.
TIipv nrn ?*-* 11 1 " A ' r '
~ a. v. >>i an macs generalizations irom tne smallest
kind of isolated cases or from the testimony of extra
small mind or minds puffed up with arrogance and
intoxicated with their own vagaries. To be alarmed
by these ebullitions, therefore, is to be almost as silly
as they are. Instead, the true believer may remember
that such attacks, such prejudice, such ignorance.
suen nasxy generalization are as old as the faith itself,
with the one added feature of modern times that the
exploitation has been made to pay! He may discount
every one so heavily that there will be nothing left of
it visible except its enmity and lack of disinterestedness.
_Jk
PIONEER WORK THIRTY YEARS AGO.
In the "Herald and Presbyter" of December, there
is an article by the Rev. Henry B. Gage, that specially
u.t.av.is uui diicimuu. ne was a co-laborer with Rev.
Sheldon Jackson, in the "wild West" during the seventies
and onward. He was familiar with the work of
that veteran home missionary and was a home missionary
himself. Verily, in those days it was the "wild
West." In those times the conductors on the railroad
trains would warn their passengers, at meal times,
"not to wander away from the depot," saying, "I can
protect you within the depot limits, but not beyond."
And we Saw two passengers who disregarded the warning
and went abroad, come back to the train, twenty
minutes later, without watches or money.
But the gospel was made for just such times and
just sucn men. Mich were the dwellers in Pisidia, towhom
Paul preached, and where Timothy was reared
and these two pioneers hesitated not.
They sat down together with a government map,
and began to study where population was sure tocentre.
They were at Denver, then a city of four thousand
npnnlp A roM.wl ? ' r
,?!* >.. luuuuu inciii wcic opportunities tor populous
towns, but not any towns. These two men noted the
passes that led through the mountains and decided that
towns would spring up at the mouth of each of these.
They noted the fact that the country was larcelv n
V O "V ?
desert because of the lack of water, and yet there were
streams that could be used for irrigation and they felt
sure that towns would develop in the neighborhood of
these streams. Thus the two men, in the early seventies
plotted out the field.
The Poudre river was such a stream. They "put a