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August 16, 1911] THE
Baptist encampment at Bluemont. Across the
Swanannca on Black Mountain is the Y. M. C. A.
encampment. To the west sixteen miles away
is Ashville, already noted as the scat of religious
assemblies. A few miles further on at Waynesville
entensive mountain tracts have been purchased
and are being improved by the Southern
Methodists. The Southern Railway is encouraging
these enterprises by offering especially low
rates from all important points and holding out
other inducements. These enterprises are now,
some of them, just started and in a few years
tourists will be coming by tens of thousands.
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j. muoi ua^/auic pi earners, seuoiars, lecxurers
and entertainers will be engaged by the several
associations, dividing time between them. Then
from these mountain heights where once black
bear, rattle snake and eagle held sway, will
radiate a diffused light carrying gladness, power,
conviction, confidence and enthusiasm throughout
our Southland. The point to be guarded
will be that the specialist in tattering the truth
shall not find a roof to cover his head here, and
the serious and elevating employ of learning and
delighting in God-given truth shall not yield
place to a seductive tendency toward superficial
entertainment. There may be recreation and
entertainment in abundance, but to be valuable
and enduring, a place of Christian conference
must be a fortress of truth, a mountain top of
devotion.
To those who seek pure, invigorating air and
water, a refined social atmosphere, a refuge from
much of the vanity, folly and grossness of the
world, Montreat should prove acceptable. Those
who require granolithic sidewalks constructed
on a prescribed ascending or descending scale,
who revel in aides and attendants, who complain
because clouds and sunshine are not made
to order, who require French menus and protracted
course dinners and who are shocked if
red soil adheres to the soles of their shoes?these
are liable to come to grief at Montreat.
The scenery is not to be challenged. The man
who is not inspired by it must be so impressed
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wiin ins own majesty mai a mountain win seem
to him a mole hill. Some years ago a famous
Boston literateur visited this "Land of the Sky"
and having been a traveler of large experience
he wrote to the magazines that the scenery of
Eastern North Carolina was equal to any on the
American continent and rivaled that of the
Swiss Alps. We submit that if a Boston man
freely admits that any part of the world has
more majestic mountains and more magnificent
landscapes than Boston has, the claims of competing
scenery are triumphantly vindicated.
PREACHING THE DOCTRINE OF SIN.
Positive conviction as to religious truth, in
tense devotion to the duties of the religious life,
heartful gratitude to God for his scheme of redemption,
a strong and vigorous Christian life,
are possible only when one has felt the power
and the stain of sin and has seen its awfulness
in God's sight. The reason for the nambypamby
kind of religion which is just now too
prevalent, and of the indifference to Christian
duties which so many display is that men have
not been made to see it as it is in the eyes of God
and as it is in its consequences to the sinner. Not
seeing sin, they feel no need of regeneration, the
necessity of the atonement is obscured, and all
the priestly functions of Christ are depreciated.
A part of the promise of Christ was that the
Spirit whom he would send would convict men
of sin. We ask too little for the Spirit in this
part of his work of grace. When the church
and its people begin to cry for more conviction
of sin, and when the preachers begin to deal
more faithfully with the doctrine of sin, we may
PRESBYTERIAN OF THE SC
expect the beginnings of a great revival of religion.
THE AMERICAN MISSION.
Humanly speaking, one of the most difficult
mission fields in all the world is Egypt, the land
of the Pharaohs. The people are inert, wedded
to the traditions and customs of centuries, proud
of their antiquity, complacent, hostile to innovations.
Most of all they are Mohammedan in
their religion, which implies ihe vow of persecution
unto death of a rival faith, and persistence
unto death in allegiance to the false prophet.
Yet an that strange land whose customs and
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and physiognomy are a survival of remote
antiquity, one of the most flourishing missions
of the world is to be found. It is sustained by
the United Presbyterian Church and is known
as the American Mission. Travelers have
written of the remarkable character of the work
that is being accomplished, and hurrying taurists
have paused to express their wonder and admiration
as they became eye-witnesses to the
transformations which it has wrought. Now,
Mr. "William T. Ellis, field editor of The Continent
writes to that journal:
Possibly no other missdon enterprise anywhere
has been the object of so much praise; any body
of people less steady than these psalm-singing
Presbyterians would long since have had their
heads turned by such a stream of approbation.
It is notorious that on questions of state the
highest British officials in Egypt seek the counsel
of the United Presbyterian missionaries.
Despite the success of their work as a leavening
influence and in making actual converts from
Islam, these missionaries retain the good will of
their Moslem neighbors. Extraordinary stories
are told of the number of Moslem scholars and
officials who are quietly studying the Bible.
More than once the native officials who have been
examining graduates from Assiut College have
themselves, without a book, conducted the examination
into the student's knowledge of
Christianity. Once the questions were so learned
and searching that the governor had to be reminded
that the students are not advanced theologians.
The simplicity of United Presbyterian
worship and their devotion to the Book even in
song, have apparently appealed to the Moslems,
who are opposed to all liturgy. Converts in
their own churches are said to be the only
Egyptians who know anything about the art of
self-government; they all manage and support
themselves.
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i viu iiooiuu vjuncgu cmu^eusiiu uauas go
forth weekly to preach the gospel; and the Christian
spirit among the students is so strong that
the Sabbath I chanced to be in Assiut sixty
students united with the church. The average
is one hundred a year. There are practically no
non-Christian graduates. And of the college
alumni of 256 men, 104 are preachers, sixtynine
teachers and twenty-three physicians?a
most astonishing record. So far as my observation
goes, Assiut Christian Training College is
the most nearly ideal of all the educational institutions
on the mission field.
The present critical moment in Egypt's life
calls for large vision. "What is sound in the
aspirations of Young Egypt should be given opportunity
for expression. All that makes for religious
intolerance and strife and disloyalty to
the best interests of Egypt itself should be
sedulously and vigorously repressed. A new
nation is emerging in EgvDt. but it has not. vot
emerged. The condition is one that should particularly
appeal to the sense of strategy in the
Christian church.
Egypt is, as of yore, a pivotal point in worlddominion,
spiritual as well as material. It is
m a position to wield a powerful influence upon
other Oriental nations, even as it did in centuries
long gone. It is the critical line of battle between
the cross and the cresent. 3choolbooks,
printing presses, churches, and the moral support
of a Christianized stream of business and
travel frem the We3t are all needed to help
Egypt achieve her best possiW futur j And the
> u T H (779) 11
highest of destinies is that this ancient land
should find rest at the fe? t of him whom it
harbored in his infancy; for "Egypt for Christ"
is the wirtst expression of the sentiment. "Egypt
for the Egyptians."
"THY WANT AS AN ARMED MAN."
(Continued from page 8).
self what 1 am, I have done this, and man is
great and needs not God." "I am," man exclaims,
and to prove it he gives his wealth to
win more wealth, gives to build places of confinement
for the unfortunate instead of building
them places of freedom, that he may prove
that man needs not God nor His healing but
that man can care for his own.
"I am:" and if nnnt.Vifr ia looc fnrtnnato laf
him suffer, and if I must care for him let me
care for him in my name and not in the name
of God. "1 am," and my wealth will be given
to prove it, and if my neighbor loses wealth or
health or soul let it pass if the order of acquiring
wealth does not pass, that 1 may go on
my chosen way and find the end of the rainbow
at last.
Here is presented for your consideration a
denial of God, and a denial, not because of the
claim of His creation of the world, not because
the Bible is said to be His revealed word and
inspired; not because He is said to have sent
His Son upon earth; not because of a miraculously
born Christ, not because of a supernatural
Christ; not because of the claim that He rose
from the dead nor because of the miracles He
and his disciples performed, but a denial because
man wants to say '' 1 am. I have made
myself what I am."
And because of this desire man is willing to
claim descent from the ape; to claim evolution
that he may prove that all good is inherent in
man?to the end that man is justified in continuing
the accepted order of things and disregarding
his fellow man; to the end that man
may not be held his brother's keeper and may
be free to eontinue building that pyramid of
gold that shall elevate him to the view of others.
God is not denied because of the claims for
mm, Dut oecause ot the claims for man, that
man may exalt himself and cry aloud to the
world "/ am that I am." Christ was not denied
by the Gerasenee because they could not see the
supernatural nor was he driven away because of
the loss of a few swine, but He was refused because
it was bad for business to upset men's
minds and they were more anxious for regular
older than they were for men's lives or their
souls. Christ was refused in that day even as
He is in this, because men are always satisfied
if they are prospering in this world's goods, or
if there ever is a chance for them to prosper,
lie was refused that men might get more wealth
and build greater barns and say unto their
pretenses for souls, "Eat, drink and be merry,"
and this also as well, "A little folding of the
hands in sleep," in utter disregard of the reproach.
"How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard?"
Lawton, Okla. J. M. Kelly.
There is nothing small in a world where a
mud crack swells to an Amazon, and stealing a
penny may end on the scaffold.
It is because men see only their bodies that
they hate death.?Chinese Maxim.
Every day is a new day for us. Every sunrise
brings opportunity. The wrongdoing of
yesterday is gone with yesterday. To-day is
come, wherein we may do right.?The Classmate.