Newspaper Page Text
BKi 4
VOL. 59.
Table of Contents.
First Page—Alabama Department: The Fa
tal Trio ; “Besetting Bins State News;
The Religious Press.
Second Page—Correspondence: Were the
Ancient Americans Asiatics ?—William L.
Scruggs, Canton, China; Sunday-School
Convention Hephzibah Association ; The
. Olive Branch—J. W. L.; The Sunday-
School—Lesson for March 6—“ Witness of
Jesus to John.” Missionary Department.
Third Page—Children’s Corner: Bible Ex
plorations ; Correspondence; Almonds and
Violets; A Little Goose—poetry.
Fourth Page—Editorials: No Advantage In
Inspiration; More Practical; Intemper
ance in Work; Rest; The South.
Fifth Page—Secular Editorials: News Para
graphs ; Literary Notes and Comments;
About the Boers; The New Hospital;
Georgia News.
Sixth Page—Court Calendar ; A Sensible
Mother. Obituaries, etc.
Seventh Page—The Farmer’s Index: Com
posting; Ensilage; Lucern ; Rotation of
Crops; Phosphate of Lime; Small Notes.
Eighth Page—Florida Department: Chips
and Splinters; Query; Rev. James Page;
| (Interesting Statistics; Preaching and Prac
ticing ; Christian Shirks, etc.
Alabama Department.
BY SAMUEL HENDERSON.
THE FATAL TRIO.
Money—lust—ambition! Despicable
avarice—sensual pleasure— deluding
honors! What a trio of vices, always
appealing to the human heart, alas, too
susceptible to their seductive charms!
As to the love of money, “it is the root
of all evil.” As to the lust of the flesh,
it is affirmed “when it is finished it
bringeth forth death.” And as to
earthly honors, they are the merest
baubles that ever deluded to destroy.
How sad to think that immortal beings
on their way to a destiny so sublime
as that it hath not entered into the
heart of man to conceive of it, should
be decoyed by temptations so debasing
and so ruinous! What folly can equal
this! A young expectant of royal
honors, on his way to grasp the crown
of a grand empire, and who turns aside
to revel in scenes of sensual delight un
til the prize escapes him, would be
wise in contrast with him who has “a
price in his hand” to obtain an in
corruptible crown, and madly throws
it away on the merest trifles that ever
cheated a fool in his folly.
It would seem that the very state
ment of a delusion so transparent,
would be sufficient to expose it. But
then it may not be amiss to go a little
more into detail with the view of show
ing not only the folly but the crime of
such consummate deception.
One cause of the fatal ascendency
of these despicable vices over the hu
man heart is, that our own depraved
nature so readily seconds their temp
tations. That conquest is easy in
whieh an external force is met by an
internal weakness. Their indulgence
gratifies our strongest predispositions.
The contact of tinder and fire will not
more naturally create combustion,
than will the contact of the human
heart with temptation result in trans
gression. We carry the tinder within
us—the fires of temptation will set it
aglow. Take one of these vices to il
lustrate all of them, the love of money,
avarice, that “root of all evil;” as an
old anther expresses it, “a root as odious
for its branches, as the branches for
their fruit; a root fed with dirt and
filth, and so no wonder if of as much
foulness as fertility.” Covetousness,
like the fabled Briareus, has a “hund
red hands,” all employed in grasping
and gathering, and not one in giving
back —cheating and robbing all, and
restoring nothing. All nature is but
a system of compensations. Every part
pays back something for what it takes.
The earth receives the seed and culture
of the husbandman, and pays back “in
some thirty, in sixty, and in some a
hundred fold.” The dumb brutes re
pay their owners more than $n equiv
alent for their care and comfort. Even
the dog earns his food by standing sen
tinel for his master at night. But here
is a monster to whom the more you
give the more you must give, with no
hope of any restitution. Indeed, as
SOUTH-WESTERN BAPTIST. )
OF Ala BAM A. j
you increase your gifts you diminish
any hope of return. How true the
saying that covetousness “makes both
the alpha and the omega of the devil’s
alphabet,” as it is the first vice that
corrupts the young, and the last vice
that dies with the old. We need only
add that lust and ambition are alike
degrading to all the higher and nobler
sensibilities of the soul. The one wal
lows it in the mire and filth of aband
oned depravity; the other inflates with
the pride that sent the fallen angels
headlong to perditiou.
Another cause of our subjection to
their power is the delusions they prac
tise. How readily we become the
dupes of their artifices! For though
they have cheated us a thousand times
our credulity expands with each de
ception. The drunkard may be res
cued from the gutter of the swine to
day, only to sink deeper to morrow.
The miser may be brought to the verge
of lunacy by a thousand cares to-day,
only to increase them to-morrow. Vaul
ting ambition may endure the stings
of slander and vituperation to-day,
only to place himself more exactly in
the range of their missiles to-morrow.
The debauchee may nurse the pains
and diseases of his lewdness to-day,
only to gratify his brutal instincts to
morrow. For, in the baser departments
of our nature, our most painful and
revolting experiences are the prelude
to still deeper depths of degradation,
as in our higher nature the rewards of
well-doing stimulate us to abound yet
more and more in every good word
and work. The galley slave never eked
out a service under the lash more con
stant, more degrading, than those
masterful passions exact of their vic
tims. Andjfor all this drudgery, this
perpetual servitude, what is their com
pensation? What is to reward them
for this unrelaxing devotion to their
master, the devil? “The wages of sin
is death!” Alas, alas, what “labored
deeds of hard earned infamy” mark
the career of the slaves of passion!
Such devotion in the service of God
and humanity would be sublime!
Still another reason why our lower
instincts dominate over us to the ex
clusion of our better and purer im
pulses is, that the one brings a present
gratification, while the awards of the
other are, in the main, reserved for the
future. So that we are left to choose
between what our wicked hearts per
suade us is a present and certain good,
and one that is remote and contingent.
We prefer to serve the world, the
flesh, and the devil, because they pay us
down the coin-and oh, such a coin!
rather than our Father in heaven who
bids us show ourselves worthy of the
“reward of the inheritance” before He
bestows it. • We decide to take the
worse than gew-gaws and trash, the
merest shams, of the one, because we
get it in hand, rather than the incor
ruptible crown of the other, because it
glitters in the distance, and demands
that we shall win before we wear it. It
was a fine conception of Bunyan to
personate those two ideas under the
symbol of two damsels, named respec
tivily Passion and Patience. Passion
would have every thing now, even
though it rfemanded her in the end to
poverty and rags—Patience quietly
waited for, and obtained, those trea
sures more precious than rubies. Thus
are we all left to choose between the
“pleasures of sin for a season,” and
that “recompense of reward” which
constitutes an eternity of bliss. What
multitudes make that fatal choice
which plants in the soul that remorse,
that worm that never, never dies!
"BESETTING SINS."
What are they? All sins are indi
genous to the carnal mind. Such are
represented as “drinking iniquity like
water.” But then there are special
sins which possess peculiar charms to
particular persons, and these sine have
not inaptly been styled “besetting
sins.” They are such as being oft re
peated, acquire all the force of habit
over us. Thus our Lord says of those
whose “eyes are full of adultery,” that
they could not cease from sin.” Jo
seph’s brethren had so long indulged
their hatred towards him, that “they
could not speak peaceably to him.”
We often say of a covetous man, that
he cannot be charitable. This strong
language is used, not to denote a nat-
THE FRANKLIN STEAM PRINTING HOUSE.
ATLANTA, GEORGIA, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1881.
ural, but a moral disability. Those
who contract any wicked habit, we say
cannot practice the opposite virtue, be
cause they will not do so; since it is
just as certain that men will net do
that which they have no mind to do,
as that they will not do that which
they have no natural capacity to do;
although the two things are the poles
asunder in their origin. The one pro
claims our deepest guilt, the other our
simple incapacity.
Can our “besetting Sins” be laid
aside? Paul thought so, when he ex
horted his Hebrew correspondents to
“lay aside every weight, and the sin
which so easily beset" them, so as to
“run with patience the race that was
set before them.” What a man volun
tarily takes up, he can lay down. No
Christian who is what he professes to
be, can contract any evil habit which
he cannot abandon. It is a libel upon
his Christian manhood to affirm that
any vice that saps the foundation of
his character as a religious man, can
not be abated. When, therefore, a
professing Christian contracts the habit
of drinking ardent spirits intemper
ately, (and any use of that article
other than as medicine, strictly speak
ing, is intemperance) and says that he
cannot quit it, it is equivalent to say
ing he cannot be, and is not a Chris
tian. If “he had faith as a grain of
mustard seed,” he could say to this
monster evil, though it assumed the
dimensions of a “mountain, be Aon
plucked up by the roots, inti
the sea, and it would be done ” If lie
cannot quit so beastly a habit, the
church is no place for him.
In reclaiming persons far gone in
intemperance, two things must be
done. First, rally their manhood, all
their moral principles, if they have
any, and bring them to the rescue. If
there is anything in the victim of this
vice to which an appeal can be made,
and on which any moral conviction
can fasten, then do this the first of all,
for unless he can be summoned to put
forth his best exertions, nothing else
need be tried. But secondly, create
a strong sympathy around him, so
that he will be encouraged and
strengthened in all his efforts to eman
cipate himself from his degrading sla
very. Let him know that the wise
and good, all those whose good opin
ions are worth conciliating are in full
sympathy with him in his praise-wor
thy struggles. Give him your best ad
vices, your prayers, and in so far as
you can, your confidence, and let him
know that your eye is upon him for
good. Many a struggling victim, after
making such an effort, has relapsed
back into his old habits, just for the
want of sympathy.
Long Credit.—How often do the
occurences of early life come up before
us “to point a moral, or adorn a tale.”
It must have been forty years ago that
a little incident occurred in our neigh
borhood between two worthy men of
which we have often thought. One
of them had unwillingly offended the
other. The complainant went to the
the offender with the story of his
wrong, and, as is sometimes the case,
very demurely assumed the role of the
martyr, and said to his offending broth
er, that he had carried the case up to
the final Judge, and that the judg
ment of the great day would vindicate
his innocence! The supposed offender
answered, that “the credit was too
long—that he apprehended both of
them would have as much to answer
for that day, a 3 they could well meet,
without carrying any special cases
there that could be better settled here,
and that for his part he demanded an
exchange of receipts then and there.”
Reader, do not carry too many cases to
that last tribunal. It is hazaruous in
the extreme. There may be "two sides”
to these questions of which you little
dream, and the decisions of that day
may surprise you. Better settle as
yon go. Better not cumber “the
books” then and there to be opened
with too many cases. Should any of
them go against you, your loss is irre
parable.
The Legislature adopted a resolu
tion granting permission to Col. If. M.
King, editor of the Macon Mail, to have
access to the archives of the State to fa
cilitate him in writing a history of Al
abama.
STATE NEWS.
—During a part of the time this win
ter, some parties in Florence were
forced to use cotton seed for fuel.
—Fifty thousand dollars are rendy
for improvements to be made in the
Talladega colored college.
i —Rev. B. F. Riley, of the Baptist
church, is getting up a petition to pre
vent the sale of whiskey in Lee county.
—Old farmers in Alabama say tlsat
good crops have always succeeded
hard winters in that State, and they
are going to spread themselves this
year.
—Notwithstanding the fact that the
mortgage system has been in vogue
■•ever since the negro became a com
mercial free agent, there are numbers
of prosperous colored farmers in Bar
bour county who have never given a
mortgage on their property or crops.
—The spirit of progress is on the
move, and every day adds to the im
portance of Pratt Mines as a mining
centre. Already it is the largest mine
in the South. Coketon will, in time,
rival any of the large mining places in
the country. The population of the
place is said to be one thousand.
—Parties connected with the M. and
C. railroad hstve lately been over in
Marion and other mountain counties
looking for coal and iron, with a view
Building a road out into that coun-
Xhey found both coal and iron
bundance and of fine quality.
*The Gadsden Times salys : There has
been a marked improvement in the
cash trade in Gadsden within the past
few years.
As an evidence of the rapid increase
of population in our city, the upper sto
ries of business houses are being occu
pied by families as tenement houses.
—A declaration of incorporation of
the Alabama and Mississippi Railway
Company was filed in the office of the
Secretary of State. The road is to ex
tend from Eutaw, in Greene county,
to Columbus, Mississippi. A commis
sion was issued to Arthur C. Jackson,
of Boston, Richard C. Daniel, of Mem
phis, and Lester C. Smith, of Mont
gomery, board of corporators, to open
books of subscription to the proposed
railway.
The Religious Press.
Color prejudice at Cambridge! Right un
der the shadow of Harvard ! The superin
tendent of schools confesses that so much
color prejudice exists among a part of the
community that it seems inexpedient to ap
point colored teachers, although several
young women qualified for places have for
some time been applicants. Before we send
any more missionaries to Africa let us send
a few to Cambridge.—Christian Register.
The trouble will be that the mis
sionaries themselves, when brought
into close quarters, will yield to the in
exorable trend of nature, which re
quires that like shall consort to like.
The best missionary that could be sent
to those who are anxious to break
down what is called the “color preju
dice” would be the negro Senator
Bruce, from Mississippi, who asks for
his race, “equality before the law” and
nothing else.
Nothing is gained by making admission
into the church too easy. To invite persons
to rise and report themselves converted, adds
nothing to the strength of a church, and
raises no presumption that souls are being
saved. To fill the records with names of
children, unless deep religious impressions
are made, does no good, and much harm.
To make terms with persons who say, “I
will never give up theater-going, dancing,
and card- playing, and will never attend the
“class meeting,” is to betray the cause. If
the truth be manifested to the conscience ;
if the invitations of mercy be given: if
earnest private appeals be made, and but
ten be saved, it is a great work. Spurious
revivals often make a genuine one impossi
ble. The church and the pastor were in a
hurry. Be faithful: be in haste, hut never
in a hurry. Blessed is the minister who can
do his whole duty without yielding to the
temptation to adulterate the sincere milk of
the word I
This wholesome counsel is from a
Methodist paper. It is by our Metho
dist brethren that we Baptists have
been led astray. Now that they see
the error of their ways, and desire to
abandon them, we shall be wise if we
follow their counsel. But alas! it is
easier to follow a bad example than a
it is to take good advice.
The sphere of modesty and caution is in
the formation of opinion, in the growth of
J THE CHRISTIAN HERALD,
( of Tennessee.
conviction: they have nothing to do with
utterance. Fitness as to time and courtesy
as to manner are the only checks upon the
utterance of convictions. Positiveness of
tone implies no lack of courtesy. It it did,
there would be an end to all real discussion
of any topics, and especially of moral and
religious topics. To produce any impression
upon his hearer, the preacher must speak
with theaccentof positiveness. If his words
and tone indicate that be is not sure of his
own conclusions, that there is a shadow of
a doubt in his mind of the utter truth of
what be is saying, how shall he persuade
others to make his conclusions theirs? The
same rule applies to writing as to speaking.
No man has h right to claim the public at
tention to what he mar say on ?. great ques
tion, unless he can speak with the positive
ness that is the natural and fitting utterance
of sincere conviction. If he speaks with a
hesitating, half-hearted air, he is an inter
loper who should be unceremoniously thrust
aside. He may or may not persuade the
public; but he must, first of all, have per
suaded himself that his view of the case is
the true one.—Examiner and Chronicle.
All very true and well said; but lest
they should be overlooked or forgotten,
we repeat the qualifying words of our
contemporary, “fitness as to time and
courtesy as to manner.” There are
those who seem to think that a man
is not “sound” unless he is always en
gaged in controversy, and that a man
is not “strong” unless he is abusive.
Controversy may be proper, yet proper
but seldom. In general, the best way
to put down error is to preach up the
truth. And in all discussions soft
words and hard arguments are much
more effective than soft' arguments and
hard words. That positiveness of speech
which the Examiner urges, is not at all
incompatible with dignity, courtesy
and charity.
And here is written
in poetic' prose by the gifted editor of
the Christian Register. He is speaking
of those deep experiences of the inner
life which every heart is conscious es,
but which are unutterable. In regard to
these things x e are like a race of deaf
mutes wholly untaught in the art of
communication with each other. Each
man is a secret from his fellow, not
always because he desires to be so, but
because there is that within us for
which nature has provided no outlet.
The writer having said, truly, that
music can express much that is ineffa
blq in words, continues :
But the divinest office of music is not in
giving expression to ineffable emotions, but
in revealing to us the mystery and depth of
that which is inexpressible. There is an
unutterable without and an unutterable
within.
Name, catalogue, analyze, as we may, all
the emotions and operations of our own
minds, is there not still to the shallowest
soul a depth of being which we cannot scoop
up into our dictionary or congeal in a frigid
phrase of philosophy. The subtlest so-ms
of our thought, the deepest experiences of
emotion, are not easily formulated. We
cannot convey them to others, we cannot
represent them to ourselves. They are like
strains of music which float dreamily through
the mind, but which escape us when we try
to sing them.
But there are still depths of thought and
sentiment which even music cannot utter
for us. Below the melodies which may
breathe from the voice and vibrate in the
ear, there is a melody of heart which the
most inspired musician could not score. It
belongs to the untranslatable zone of our
lives. And there is no part of our being
which is more real to us than that depth
which we are unable to explore.
So, to love in its highest forms, the altitude
of experience far transcends the altitude of
expression. The ineffable moral joy which
comes of a good action is something which
is just as real as it is unspeakable. Paul
recognized the melody of the heart, and bid
men set their worship to its finer music.
The closest and most real communion with
God is the unutterable communion of soul
with soul, which Jesus described as the wor
ship of the spirit.
Our brother Paul speaks of some
things heard by him which it is “ not
lawful for a man to utter.” 2 Cor. 12:4;
but if it had been lawful in a moral
sense, it might still have been forbid
den by a law of nature which denies
escape to anything .through an avenue
smaller than itself. Our grandest ex
periences never find expression, either
through our lips or otherwise. To the
saint it is a source of joy to know that
his aspirations, though unuttered, and
not formulated even to himself, are
known to God, the searcher of hearts.
If our baptized children and youth were
distinctly and perseveringly taught that they
are members of the Church of God, “conse
crated to his service” and placed under sol
emn obligations, as such, to keep the com
mands of Christ, it would constitute the
most powerful appeal to their consciences,
would give them a new sense of obligation,
and would exert a restraininginfluencefover
them. Who can doubt this?—Southern-
Presbyterian.
All Baptists doubt it; or rather none
of them believe it. The same may be
said, we think, of a good many Presby
terians. Most of the baptized children
growing up ungenerate will doubt ii
and deny it. In this country so per
vaded with Baptist leaven, it is hard
to get an intelligent but professedly
unregenerate person to think that he
is a “member of the church of God”'
in any sense whatever. In Europe,
where the Pedobaptist sentiment pre
vails overwhelmingly, everybody who
was baptized in infancy considers him
self a member of the church ; and what
is the effect of this on the spiritual con
dition of those who are so deluded?
The idea prevails among them very
largely that their membership in the
church will save them. We try to
touch the consciences of our children
by assuring them that they are not
members of the church and that they
ought to be; that they ought to be
members of a church, all whose mem
bers have made a personal profession
on their own responsibility of their
faith in Christ, and who have publicly
put on Christ by baptism; said bap
tism to be their own act, and not the
act of another. This we think is the
more excellent way. We think it is
inflicting a cruel wrong on a child to
make him believe that he is a member
of a spiritual body when his own heart
tells him that he ia not so.
Canon Farrar says that,
“A nation which has never had a national
church may flourish, though always and
that inevitably, upon a lower level of blear,
edness, with feebler powers of Christianity
with wilder of error, than if H
bad one.” ' -
And on this the Herald and Presby
ter remarks with much pith:
Spain has a national church ; so has Italy,
and so has Russia; but we hope American
Christianity may never drop to their “level
of blessedness.” Transpose the words
“never had” from the first line to the last
and the statement is nearer the truth.
There are thousands of Christians who
never put themselves to any trouble to learn
what is going on in the Christian world out
side of their own immediate neighborhood.
They do not take religious papers; they
give little or nothing for missions and edu
cation ; oftentimes, though wealthy, they
ease their conscience by giving their pastor
a pittance.
So says the Central Baptist.
“Thousands of Christians who never,”
&c. It may be so; it may be that
there are thousands of such Christiane.
But admitting this, we must think
that a good many of those who are
classed with these “thousands of Chris
tians” are Christians only in the sense
that they profess to be such. If a
man does not pray, “Thy kingdom
come,” his claims to being a Christian
are not very credible, and if his ac
tions do not correspond with his pray
ers, his case is .very far from being
above suspicion.
The rapid development of facts in these
days is exploding a great many cherished ■;
theories in all parts of the United States.
The census just taken has taken the wind
out of the sa'ls of many a voyager on the
seas of speculation, and struck dumb many
a prophet of evil. Let us be thankful.—
Christian Advocate.
Yes, a good many of them are
dumb, but a good many of them "rise
to explain.” They have a great deal
to say about “square miles,” “extent of
territory” and the like. But a “square
back down,” as the boys call it, would
serve them a better purpose if they
could only think so.
This introduces us very pleasantly
to the last wriggle of the Journal and
Messenger, who seems to have been
made uncomfortable by the facts of.
the census.
The class in Chinese at Harvard Universi
ty has doubled this year. Last year it had
one and now it has two. This is a larger per
centage of gain than any other class has
made, and if it shall go on increasing at the
same rate, all the University will be enrolled
in the Chinese class in a few years. Chris
tian Index please make a note of it.
0 yes, good brother; anything to
oblige you. Take all the comfort yon
can get from your Chinese class, and
your square miles. Explain all yon
can. The facts without any expla
nation are good enough for us. It ia
something like the case of infant bap
tism. It is not necessary foqr us, as jA
is for some, to explain why thtare » \
allusion made to it in the New
ment. On this, and on the c*>-
question, we have on our side nof
but facts ; the other side has notl -
but explanations.
NO. 8.