Newspaper Page Text
January 22. 1913 ] T H E P
Editorial I
Dr. James R. Graham, of Winchester, Va.,
has undergone a serious surgical operation in
having his right leg amputated just below the
knee. The treatment was severe, but was successfully
administered. Dr. Graham being in
his eighty-eighth year, his attendants and other
friends have been and still are solicitous as to
the final result of his illness. Prayers have
ascended from a great number of hearts that his
life may be spared. At this writing there is
good hope of his recovery.
Our neighbor. Rev. Dr. Robert A. Meek,
Editor of the New Orleans Christian Advocate,
announces that at the close of his present year
he will leave the tripod. This is much to be regretted.
Dr. Meek has made an admirable editor,
filling the columns of his paper with strong,
evangelical matter. He has not been as sociable
as we should have liked, but men who are en
in sui-ii worn as ilia iuiuw now 10 excujse
one another. They have very little time to spare.
We were reading, the other day, a very earnest
plea for a return to the old time revivalism
of the Church. It was based upon the present
conditions, which the writer so greatly deplored.
The writer attached his name to the article, and
it read, "Rev , Litt. D." There it is.
brother. Perhaps you did not just see it. There
is a little too much "Litt. D." about the work
these days. Titles, culture, pretentiousness, are
to the front, when men are crying for the Bread
of Life. If there were less affectation and ambition
and more concern for souls there would
be more of the revival spirit amongst us.
One of the notable books of the last few
months is Dr. Jowett's "Yale Lectures on
Preaching." Something of the lecturer's principles
and of his sound advice to young preachers
may be understood from the following charA
t. u n l ~a. a ii..
auteiusuo semeiices: .rreacii great truuis, iiul
topics. Preach not politics, but the power of
God." "We never reach the innermost room in
any man's soul by the expediencies of a showman
or a buffoon. The way of irreverence will
never bring us to the holy place." "Grapple the
big themes. Make the apostolic themes your
themes. Preach on the holiness of God, the
love of God, the grace of Christ, the solemn
wonders of the cross, the ministry of divine forgiveness.
and the blessedness of divine com
munion."
At intervals short articles will'appear in these
pages describing and emphasizing the importance
of evangelistic work in behalf of the large
neglected populations in the mountainous portions
of the Synod of Virginia. Tragedies of the
most revolting character have occurred, from
time to time, among theise mountaineers. It has
not been long since one of our most useful min
inters was murdered in his own home by a man
in bondage to the vice and lawlessness of the
social and moral atmosphere in which he lived.
The more recent tragedy, in which a court of
the state and its attendant officem were cruelly
murdered in the discharge of official duty, has
aroused our people to the importance of giving .
the gosDeJ afresh to a neoDle whose forefathers
generations ago had learned from the source
of all wisdom that righteousness exalteth a nation.
No more urgent or promising task invites
the consecrated zeal, the liberality, the
persevering toil of the Synod, than does this
work waiting at its doors, the evangelization of
its scores of thousands of neglected mountaineers.
RESBYTERIAN OF THE SO
Votes and
The Presbyterian op the South offers a
most attractive and available adaptation of the
Talent Money Plan for paying the Foreign Mission
debt. It is fully described on another page.
With all deference we submit to our readers that
it is a liberal proposal. For every new subscription
secured the Talent worker is to re
tain one dollar and fifty cents for the Talent
Fund and forward fifty cents to this office. Tite
Pkesbyterian of tiif Soutii will then be sent
one year to the address inclosed. By this method
the Talent Fund may be increased rapidly, new
subscribers will receive many times the worth
of their sub^driptions and Tije pufsnvreni an of
the South will render increased aid to hastening
the debt obliteration to a finish. Let us
burn the mortgage!
The Talent Plan is well under way. It has
been cordiitllv annroved and nrrrpntlv rnmmend
v ? I I " * O ~~*J
cd to the whole Church by our Executive Committee
and Secretaries. In every section, according
to information received, the people are getting
busy. The talents are distributed and the
industry, ingenuity and business sagacity of an
army of workers are in active exercise. The
beauty of it all is that the multitudes are working
together at the same time for the same object
and on the same general plan. Let none
tire or get discouraged or relax effort until the
Livingston centennial day arrives. All amount?,
ffrpflt. HP fjmflll will hpln nvol I tlio final nnnn/1
total. Let us remember, this is the plan that has
been adopted and is being worked for paying
the debt. Every dollar of that debt was well
used and has borne fruit. It is bearing fruit
still. Let us sustain it in its fruit fulness until
the final harvest. This united service will doubly
bless. It will bless those who engage in it
with time and thought and substance, and it
will blot's those in whose behalf it is rendered.
ijet us an nave a reputable part in cancelling
that debt. Lot us use our best judgment and
work and give in the way that we think wise
and most effective. Remember the Church is
making one supreme effort to pay the debt. Let
not one of us be out of line, each in his own
capacity and by approved methods and the use
of available resources. Close up the ranks, press
on and let us have a flag-raising on March 19.
There are certain changes coming about in
Great Britain that evince a great modern awakening
and presage better opportunity to the
classes that constitute the nation's strength and
create its wealth, but are denied just recognition
and reward. Of the more important measures
to which the government is now pledged,
Welsh Disestablishment is well to the front.
The taxation of nonconformists for the support
of a state Church is a relic of despotism that
1 I 4-- 1 ? *- - *
HiiM inrvii iou iong uuu luo pat icni i v en tin re?
by the people. Through the weary years the
Welsh have been demanding relief. It seems
now to be in sight. The llrilish Weekly states
the case thus: 44As to disestablishment, we take
the question as settled in the mind* of practically
all nonconformists and very many Churcli/men.
The plain and sorrowful truth is that the
Welsh Kstabiishment is an injustice, an anomaly,
and an offense to the great majority of Welsh
men. It is the evil principle of ascendency that
is to be swept away. Thia is not a question of
pounds, shillings and pence. It is a question
of justice to free citizens in a free State. The
time is past when a minority in any country can
he rightly armed with the power, the prestige
and the favor of the State."
UTH (57) 9
Comment
"THE FATHERS HAVE EATEN SOUR
GRAPES AND THE CHILDREN'S TEETH
APF hipt n^v.rmnv "
By fchia striking image the prophet lays down
the law that binds us by generations. Modern
Science calls it "Heredity."
The world of thought is coming to believe
there is more in it than they once imagined.
Their view is very close to the old fashioned
doctrine of "Original Sin."
There is a mysterious bond that binds families
together. Physical, mental and moral traits run
in inmmcs.
The races are distinguished by physical differences
that are reproduced through long lines.
The wife of a Presbyterian elder has a marked
Jewish countenance. Her ancestor a number of
generations back had bought a wife in the days
of the early colonists, when a shipload was
Drought for wives, and gave an extra hogshead
of tobacco, for a red-headed Jewess. This trait
remained.
Eloquence runis in families, rising to unusual
heights in some. Moral traits are found in fath
er ana son. Jacob deceives his father with the
skin of a kid, his sons bring the coat dipped in
a kid's blood and deceive him.
The law of cause and effect works along this
line, because effects are not stopped by the
limits of one life. The ripples from a stone dung
into the lake die on the shore. There is no shore
to our lives. We live on in our children.
How important it is to know oneself. Not to
TMAium All- ? 5 '1 ? VT-* 11 '
uivuiu u?u uui minus una xuiiures. :\ot mat we
can tear up the old, ugly trait at one tug. But
as we see the same young sprout coming up in
the life of our children, we may take it out with
gentle hand.
Children ought to be better than their parents.
We ought to expect and demand it of
them. If the father has eaten sour grapes, the
child ought not. We should know ourselves in
order that we may know our children. Ilow careful
parents should be to keep their children
from things that they plunge into. If they have
found the grapes are sour, and in folly have cat
eu, uiey can at least Keep tne children out of the
wild vineyard. *
A great actor would not so much as let his
children see a play. The taste for the stage was
there, and he knew it would not be overcome. A
reformed drunkard was most hostile to the presence
of liquor, and became a mast determined
prohibitionist..
It is a good thing to have new strains of blood.
New lines of heredity. Men deplore the fact
that America is the gathering place of the world.
That all kinds of people are being mixed here.
It seems an unnecessary fear. The man who
seeks to improve his stock, whether of poultry.
pips or pigeons, does not fear new blood. He
seeku it and knows that old strains degenerate.
Hod is making a wonderful people in America.
He is making this people out of all the elements
of the world.
Do we not need the respect for parents of the
Chinese. The?loyalty of the Japanese. The
Conservation of the Orient. The chastity of the
Saxon and the Celt. The religious disposition
of the Jew, with the love of home, the desire for
a better condition of life, and an ambition for
learning, characteristic of the Occident!
Above nil we nerd the jstendv crroee r\t ClnA
- ? ?-? O'MVV Wl WU,
that took a supplanter like Jacob and quietly,
by long and patient processes, killed the love of
a 'ie. till Jacob became Israel
If the children's teeth are set on edge, they
should not want the sour grapes. They need not,
.