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“©I SOUTH-WESTERN BAPTIST, X ' THE CHRISTIAN HERALD, of Alabama. 0F Tennessee. VOL. 59. Table of Contents. First Page—Alabama Department: “The Silent Sculptor;” The Great Unwritten Law; Alabama News; The Religious Press. Second Page—Correspondence: Episcopal Prayer Book ; Givingto Christ; From Se noia ; Sketches of Foreign Countries— Germany ; Programme S. S. Convention Mercer Association; A Georgia Missionary Field; Thankful Baptist Church. The Sunday-School—Lesson for May 291 h : Parrabies of the Pounds. The Missionary Department. Third Page—Children’s Corner: Our Willie —poetry ; How Dick Went to the Picnic; Little Goldenhair—poetry ; Where is your Lantern, etc. Fourth Page—Editorials: More About the Conflict; Hereditary Politeness ; Dead headism ; Methodist Liberality ; Conclu sion of the Proceedings of the Southern Baptist Convention, Columbus, Miss. Fifth Page—Secular Editorials: News Para graphs ; Literary Notes and Comments; The Anti-Nihilist Campaign; Georgia News. Sixth Page—The Household Department: The Weavers —poetry ; Ancient Temper ance Pledge; Sabbath Rest. Miscellany. Obituaries. Seventh Page—The Farmers’ Index: A Flying Trip ; German Millet; Bermuda Grass. Eighth Page—Florida Department: Florida Facts, Fancies and Figures; Fare to Insti tute; Ministers’lnstitute; Correspondence; International Cotton Exposition Buildings (illustrated). Alabama Department. B-y SAMUEL HENDERSON. •THE SILENT SCULPTOR." A very scholarly lecturer in the South, some few years ago, delivered a lecture in one of our cities, on the above topic which was said to have been well received by the cultivated portion of the audience. We did not hear the lecture, nor have seen it in print, if it was printed. The topic is all that we have heard of the lecture, but it is sufficiently suggestive to be made the subject of some thoughts, and we propose devoting this article to it. The “North British Review” con tained, in the year 1851, we believe, a somewhat elaborate review of “Burns and His School,” in which the writer says' “four faces among the portraits of modern men, strike us as supremely beautiful; not merely in expression, but in the form and proportion and harmony of features: Shakspeare, Raf faelle, Goethe, Burns. One would ex pect it to be so; for the mind makes the body, not the body the mind; and the inward beauty seldom fails to ex press itself in the outward, as a visible sign of the invisible grace or disgrace of the wearer. Not that it is always so But in the generality of cases, physiognomy is a sound and faithful science, and tells us, if not, alas! what the man might have been, still what he has become.” The relation between moral and physical beauty and moral and physic al deformity is so striking as to have arrested the attention of our best think ers. Nor is it at all strange that the outward man gradually takes on the lineaments of the inward man. “Pretty is, that pretty does,” is an old maxim, and like all other maxims is founded on the general observation and experi ence of mankind. The silent yet cer tain action of the mind and heart up on the countenance has not unfre quently thrown over what was at first the perfection of physical beauty the very incarnation of ugliness; and vice versa it has converted a mass of phys ical ugliness into something charming and attractive. Into the philosophy of this thing we do not propose to en ter. We shall leave that to the physio gnomist. Perhaps those little messen gers, those emunctories as physiologists call them, that play between the heart and the face, bearing on the one hand the excrementitious effluvia engendered by anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication, and the like, from the one to the other—and on the other hand, bringing those sweet em anations of love, gentleness, meekness, benevolence, etc., and gradually fixing the impress of each upon the features, is about all that we need to know in regard to its philosophy. We all know the difference between a count enance distorted by the baser passions of the soul, and a countenance all rad iant with loving kindness; and we have but to suppose each of those to become habitual to realize the fact that the "silent sculptor” will ere long chisel the face into the image of the inward man. The one will be a coun terpart of the other with well nigh as much exactitude as melted matter takes the form of the mold into which it is cast. A sculptor must possess the finest imagination and the rarest artistic skill to call up the attitude, the expression, etc., and imprison in eternal marble the almost imperceptible “interval be tween two breaths.” Mr. Hawthorne says, after looking at the “Dying Glad iator” in Rome, he experienced a sense of weariness and annoyance “that the man should be such a length of time leaning upon his arm in the very act of death.” An artist who attempts to commit an idea to the immortal guard ianship of marble, can only succeed as the spiritual is evolved through mat erial beauty. So true is it, that the greatest masters of art, both in paint ing and sculpture, recognize the eter nal relation between mind and matter, the outer expressing the inner man with incorruptible fidelity. Now, is it fanciful to say that a living man spirit will far more effectively transfuse its likeness to its own body, than that the chisel of the sculptor can fix upon marble his ideal of the subject he at tempts to immortalize? Is not nature more truthful than art? But fact is better than theory. We make no question that the observation of our readers accords with our own. We once knew a man, we will call him deacon Acerb, who, in early life, inherited a combination of features well nigh faultless. One seldom met a countenance of rarer natural beauty. Bqt unhappily, along with that phys ical symmetry, he possessed a crusty, fault-finding, acrimonious spirit, that never saw the sunny side of any sub ject. He spent his whole life in hunt ing up and berating human infirmities. Like “Judith Paddock” in a novel we read in our boyhood, “Westward Ho,” his mission in life might be expressed in a single sentence: • Heighho! this is a very wicked worldI” When he arose to speak in Conference, his brethren would cast upon him that peculiar de precatory look, as if he were about to belabor them with a bamboo brier. Os course, this temperament,habitually in dulged, told sadly upon the counten ance of deacon Acerb. If a painter could transfer to canvass the distor tions tha t would follow a draught of vin egar mingled with cayenne pepper, garlick, and a few old stumps of cigars, it would fall little short of expressing the marred features of brother A. in his latter years. Alas! how many of the softer sex, who inherited originally a noble endowment of beauty, have sac rificed it to the petty annoyances of every day life! The blooming belle of “sweet sixteen” becomes the repulsive hag of sixty! On the other hand most of us can recall instances in which very’ill favor ed people have by the habitual indulg ence of a kindly, ingenious, sympath izing, amiable spirit, supplanted almost every repulsive aspect of their features, and have become really attractive. The genial spirit within has thrown over a rough, uncouth exterior its charming loveliness until we forget the one in our admiration of the other. These transformations remind one of the “Metamorphoses of Appuleius,” whose hero, Lucius, was transformed from a lovely, amiable, talented young man into a beast of burden, and doom ed for many long years to that sad hu miliation, until he could endure it no longer, when, at his earnest request, by a process of purification, he exchan ged his asinine incarnation for the noblest type of manhood, and became an honored and trusted priest, officiat ing at the altars of Isis. Let our young readers cultivate whatsoever things are pure, lovely, honest, true, and of good report, and thus, if they have beauty, they can pre serve and make it more attractive— and if they have not, they can at least set the “silent sculptor” to work with the assurance that they will never be ashamed of the result. When physical beauty and moral deformity contend for the mastery, the latter will always conquer—when moral beauty and physical deformity contest for the prize, the former will as certainly be Victor ious. —The Sunday schools in the State are requested to send delegates to the State Sunday-school Convention, which meets in Gadsden the 10th of June, and are requested to inform Dr. Nowlin, of that city, of the number of delegates they will send. ATLANTA, GEORGIA, THURSDAY, MAY 19, lßßl‘ THE GREAT UNWRITTEN LAW. It is a noteworthy fact that most of the happiness and unhappinessof man kind depends upon the doing or not doing such things as do not fall within the jurisdiction of written law. Indeed, most of the things which are influen tial in the formation of character, hab its, tastes, pursuits, etc., are done out of the view of mankind, and which are neither prescribed nor forbidden by the civil law. Law can never take cogni zance of anything but acts, and even this cognizance only extends to a few of the more flagrant acts that entail the most serious disasters to society. Hence the importance of conscience and religion, as establishing a moral surveillance over our thoughts, words and actions, such as no secular aq thority can exercise. Only think of the power of words, that ready coin, which carries on the whole commerce of thought through the world, as bearing j<»y or sorrow to every heart. On the one hand, “words fitly spoken are like apples of gold in pictures of silver." Can language express a higher value to words that flow from the generosi ties of a kindly heart ? They repre sent a value far surpassing that of pre cious metals that represent the substan tial wealth of all the world. Whatarp gold and silver compared with the wealth of a warm and generous heart, out of whose treasures there goes forth “ things new and old, ” those treasures of wisdom and knowledge, whose price is above rubies ? What ec'stacy is often inspired when these winged messen gers come to the perturbed heart, freighted with all the wealth of a con genial spirit! With what pleasure do we dwell upon those episodes in social life in which “heart answered to heart” in all the kindly amenities and mutual complaisances of sanctified friendship! The recollection of such occasions steals over the soul with something like foe enchantment of music upon the wa ters. Could all the wealth of the Indies compensate a good man for the loss of these treasures, of memory ? —treasures which live and bear their fruit with perennial freshness ? And then, on the other hand, what unspeakable agony has often been in spired by those “ bitter words ” which David likens to “ sharp swords ! ” What a horrid temperament is that which can find no higher employment than to shoot these barbed arrows into human hearts, for the miserable satis faction of seeing them writhe and quiv er under the cruel infliction ! Is it strange that of such incarnations of depravity, the divine penmen say, “the poison of asps is under their lips ! ” Yes, the poison of asps, whose bite is the most fatal of all reptiles ! What are asps, daggers, swords, compared with that moral virus that blasts the good name of a worthy man ? To the refined sensibilities of a noble soul, death is a small calamity compared with the loss of reputation. The in stinct Os a carrion crow is far less des picable than that ignoble spirit in man that battens upon “ the blood of repu tation. ” God forbid that we should ever by a single word mitigate the crime of duelling, for of all murders it is the most criminal, because most pre meditated ; but it no doubt orignated in that high conception of a good name which the honorable man scorns to survive. We speak not of the reason of the thing, but of the fact, since no man can pretend that one crime can atone for another. We allege the fact only to show that even in the estima tion of worldly men, crimes may be committed, against which there is no written law, but which can only be atoned for by the life of the perpetra tor. In one of Bishop Butler’s sermons he says, speaking of conscience : “ Had it strength as it had right; had it power as it had manifest authority, it would absolutely govern the world. ” Mete power is one thing, and authority is a different thing. Authority is ineffect ive without power to enforce it, and the power that enforces the authority of conscience must be wielded by the man himself. The man may be oper ated upon by moral or spiritual agen cies, but then the impetus, the force that follows the decisions of conscience with corresponding actions, can be sup plied only in the very nature of the case by the party. He must act of and for himself. Did we write “ the great unwritten law ? ” Yes, unwritten so far as hu man jurisprudence is concerned. But then there is a “ law written upon the heart, ” answering to the law written in God’s word, under the jurisdiction of which, every word, every thought, every act, occurs, backed up by a pow er, held in check for a time to give us a day of visitation, a season of repent ance, but which, sooner or later, visits “indignation and .wrath upon every soul of man that doeth evil, ” and award “ glory, honor, and immortality” to every one that believes in and obeys it. Authority and power unite to en force that law in every jot and tittle. ALABAMANEWS. —Out of a white population of some fifteen hundred in Greenville hardly four hundred attend church regularly. —A railroad meeting will be held at Elba on the 21st inst. —The Alabama Press Association will meet at Blount Springs Tuesday, May 17. —lt is said that there are 1,500 bales of last year’s cotton yet in Choccolocco valley to go to Oxford. —The colored people of Selma have erected a handsome brick building to be used as an academy. •—Tommy and Cales Fearne, broth ers, aged 12 and 9 years, were both drowned together in Madison county. —A stock company has been organ ized in Tuscaloosa for the manufacture of cotton yarn and rope. It will begin work as soon as suitable machinery can be purchased. The company starts out with a paid-up capital of SIB,OOO, and the stock is held by some of our most reliable business men—men whose names are a perfect guaranty of success. The new enterprise will be known as “The Tuscaloosa Yarn and Rope Mills,” and the stockholders have elected the following board of directors: Messrs. W. W. Branch, J. Snow, H. P. Walker, W. F. Fitts, and W. W. Her ring. Colonel D. W. Branch has been elected president of the company, and Mr. W. W. Branch secretary and treas urer. —lt is announced that Mr. Sayre, of the Bethlehem (Pa.) Steel Works, has made arrangements for the investment of $1,000,000 in new steel works at Birmingham, Ala., and will erect the necessary buildings this summer. A few years ago the site where Birming ham now stands was a cotton field ; now the place boasts a population of 6,000, and has in successful operation iron furnaces, acres of coking ovens, and extensive rolling mills, whilst it is rapidly becoming one of the most im portant, railroad centres in the Bouth. The Religious Press. Fools and Pistols.—A pistol with a fool behind it is a dangerous thing, and, unfor tunately, the fools are almost as numerous as the pistols. Death by the bullet has be come one of the most common items of our daily news. The echo of the murderous pis tol shot is heard every day. Our communi ties are full of silly, light-headed, cowardly tools, who are always armed with the ever handy weapon, and are ready to fire away at anything. A foolish whim, a burst of passion, a crazy impulse, is enough to evoke the pistol, and a fresh tragedy is added to the daily list of horrors. Life is altogether too cheap in these days. The best life is at the mercy of every reckless rattle brain and silly boy who goes about with a loaded pistol in his pocket. And what shall men do in this state ot insecuri ty? Shall everybody go armed? This would only make matters worse. The law against carrying concealed weapons must be enforced. The punishment for the crime of going armed amid the peaceful pursuits of the community ought to be ten times as se - ,vere as it is. Cowards and fools and des peradoes must learn their lessons under the rod. —Evangelical Messenger. Whisky, fools and pistols! What a compound! It would do no good, but harm, rather, to increase the severity of the law against carrying concealed weapons. The proper remedy is to enforce the law we have. No man proven to be guilty ought ever to escape when there is a Baptist on the jury. Ought he, then, to escape when there is no Baptist on the jury? By no means, but the mission of The Index is chiefly to Baptists, hence it singles them out. The First Baptist church of Oakland, (Cal.) was happy and honored by the coming of Judge J. B. Crockett into its membership. His witness for Christianity was all the more notable, by its infrequency among men of his advanced life, and prominence in the legal profession. His baptism, with three others, made an occasion of great impres siveness and solemnity. To the Head of the Church, Jesus the Christ, our Lord and Sa viour be all the praise. So says the Herald of Truth, a Bap tist paper published in California. Most emphatically do we dissent from the use of the word “honored.” Judge Crockett is a man of great dignity and excellence of character, and for eleven years has ably sustained himself on the bench of the Supreme Court of California, and at the age of 73 has publicly put on Christ by baptism. Doubtless the church was “happy” to receive him, and it ought to have been, but it was not honored. No man can confer honor on a church of Jesus Christ. If the humblest and most obscure little Baptist church on earth were to receive into its membership all the crowned heads in the world in one day, it would not be honored, but they would be. In August the people of North Carolina will vote on a prohibition amendment to their State Constitution. The Prohibitionists are already in the field and doing active work. When the question came before the Legislature, it was backed by a petition signed by 278,000 persons, including many of the leading men of the State. There is no mistaking the fact that the sale of liquors in the South is the great bane of the freedmen, who seem, from their few moral surround ings, to be too much the victims of bad example. We do not favor such a law as this in Georgia, but we think that the Local Option Law, which allows the people of each city, town, county, or militia district to do as they please on the liquor question, would be salutary. Petitions asking our Legislature to give us such a law, are now in circulation. We advise our readers, male and female, to sign them. What For?—How much the world is in debted to simple principles. The mighty revolution effected by steam —the applica tion has been by the simplest principles of mechanics. If men do not want to be drunkards, the means are simple: let them not trifle with intoxicating drink. If men want to be honest, let them live within their income and keep out of debt. Principles by which great results are accomplished, are of the simplest kind. What is the church for ? To read the multitude of volumes about, we would sup pose that of all the mysteries, the church and its great objects were the most mysteri ous. And yet there is one only great object which the church has, to make men like Christ. We feel sure we shall give offence to no one, if we say, the church which does this best in the long run, is the most divine. And the preaching and the services which do this best are the most divine. Let us keep it before our minds constantly that the church exists for one purpose—and that is that we and all men may become like Christ. If the church cannot succeed in this, it might as well shut up its building and turn them into anything men please. If the minister keeps this simple principle before him in preaching he will be better able to build his sermons after the pattern shown in the Mount. If the man who goes to church will keep thissimple principle before him when he goes, he will be able to wor ship God better.—Southern Churchman. And from the same paper we copy, the following: lhe church is not going to the dogs. Things were a thousand times worse once ; if Justin, if Tcrtullian, if Augustine, if Chrysostom could have seen the church as we now see it, they would have thought the millennium had arrived. And there never has been a day from the times of holy apos tles to the present, that devout men and wo men have not been groaning and weeping over the evils of the church and its degen eracy. Yes, things are bad enough, but they might be worse ; they have been worse; they have generally been worse. Cer tainly there is much to lament, but one day’s work is worth more than a whole year’s lamentation. Instead of moping over the evils of our day, let us be ac tive in trying to correct them. Begin with number one. Live nearer to Christ, and you will benefit the whole church and the whole world. Zion’s Herald, speaking of the revis ed New Testament, which will make its appearance in less than a week from this present writing, says : When the new version is once accepted, it will not be necessary for our young Biblical critics to give us new renderings of the text, and intimate the defective character of the English version. After the combined schol arsnip of England and the United States has exhausted its learning through such an ac complished commission, our youthful in terpreters will hardly have the face to im pose their free translations upon their hith erto long-suffering audiences. We fear that the result will be just the opposite of what our Boston brother predicts. Comparisons between the new version and the old will now be the order of the day, and we shall be drenched with doses of criticism be yond all precedent for magnitude and multitude. Still we hope for better things; we hope that our ministers will resist the temptation to advertise their scholarship, and confine them selves to preaching the gospel. The chaplain of the Illinois Legislature prayed that God would give the members “more wisdom and greater promptitude.” The Maine chaplain, during the recent dead lock, cried out: “0 Lord I have compassion on our bewildered Representatives and Sen ators. They have been sitting and sitting, and have hatched nothing. 0 Lord I let NO. 20. i dem arise from their nest and >o home, and ill the praise shall be thine." The Pennsyl vania chaplain recently prayed : “Give these iw-makers, O God, more brains—more brains—more brainsl” And the chaplains who disgraced their profession by making these irrev erent prayers, showed themselves to be as heartless as they were brainless. We cannot conceive of anything more calculated to injure the cause of true religion than impudence addressed to Almighty God in the guise of prayer. Boy Rklioion.—Can bovs become Chris tians? It is not generally expected that boys of eight or ten years old will be con verted. It is not common to pray and labor for their conversion as for that of young men of sixteen or eighteen. If a boy of ten is in clined to hope that be has been converted, his hope is often regarded with suspicion. The practical attitude of the church is that, though undoubtedly there have been some cases of conversion in boyhood, such are not to be commonly expected, perhaps not, when professed, to be believed in. • • • • • • • But Jesus was once a boy. That is a very hard thing to understand ; but, nevertheless, it is true. The infant Jesus has often been pictured, and the grown man Jesus is pre sented to our eyee; but it is bard to get an idea of the boy Jesus of ten years old. We ought not to think of him as a little old man ; the doctrine of the Incarnation im plies that every element which naturally belongs t • healthy, genuine boyhood, he possessed. If it is natural to the “genuine” boy to like play, the boy Jesus must have liked play. Whatever hilarity we properly enjoy seeing in our own boys, that the boy Jesus must have possessed. And yet he was sinless. It follows, then, that sin is no es sential part of genuine boy-nature. It is no more necessary that a boy should do wrong in order to be a genuine boy than that a man should do wrong to be a genuine man. If there was a boy Jesus, there may be boy followers of Jesus. If Jesus was once a genuine boy, then one may become his fol lower without losing a single trait necessary to make up a genuine, hearty, healthy, per fect, ideal boyhood. It is just as much a boy’s duty to imitate the boy Jesus as! it is a man's duty to imitate the man Jesus. A boy can and should re pent of, and turn from, a boy’s sins as a man can and should repent of, and turn from, a man’s sins. We should, therefore, preach to boys as we preach to men, and should expect boys to become Christians as we expect men to become Christians.—National Baptist. The Index has great confidence in boy-religion. The best members of, our churches are usually those who were converted early in life. But it is a mistake to suppose that, because a boy is a Christian, he must, therefore, cease to be a boy. Boys will be boys, and they ought to be. They may be as juvenile as their years make natural; still they may be believers, and they may be truly pious. We should not expect from them the graces of man hood, but the graces of boyhood. When they become men they will, of their own accord, put away childish things. It must be remembered, however, that boys are easily impressed. Noth ing is easier than to persuade a boy to be baptized and to “join the church.” But it is a cruel wrong thus to persuade a boy, unless he gives convincing evi dence of a change of heart; a wrong to him, for it puts him in false position all the rest of his life; a wrong to the church, for it foists on it an unworthy member. We have in our mind at this mo ment a most melancholy instance of religious ruin, accomplished by a dis tinguished minister of our denomina tion, by persuading a mere lad to "take up his cross” in baptism before he had taken it up anywhere else. There are thousands of such cases. Cultivate the boys, preach to them, exhort them, pray for them, baptize them when there is reasonable assurance that they have been born again; but be cautious. The bill which says that liquor sellers shall remove all screens from their doors and windows, thus making their business as un concealed as any other, has become a law in Massachusetts, but there seems to be a gen eral understanding that it is not to be en forced. In Boston the screens and curtains and stained glass continue to shut off the view of passers-by as heretofore, and the business inside goes on as usual. It will not be creditable to Massachusetts if she allows her laws to be dead-letters. The law is a good one; we should be glad to see it enacted and enforced in Georgia. Christian churches may well remember the truth which underlies the old saying: “I fear the Greeks, even when bringing gifts.” One of the worst misfortunes which can befall a church is a money gift which makes it willing to relax its own beneficen ces, or which binds it, be it never so little, to the will of some worldling donor who seeks to purchase the silence of pastor and con gregation, and to go free from troublesome rebukes of his sins. The notion that “money is money,” and that some little deference may be pa’d to the world, if only it sub scribes liberally to the works of the church, has dragged down to lifelessness many a church which was once the very temple of Christian love and service.—B. 8. Times.