fifth-
„ / ..
SOUTH-WESTERN BAPTIST, ' THE CHRISTIAN HERALD,
of Alabama. - ' ~ of Tennessee.
ESTABLISHED I 811.
Table of Contents.
First Page—Alabama Department: Can it
be So? “Individual Sovereignty;” An
Incident; Good Meeting; The Religious
Press.
Second Page—Correspondence: From Near
Wonder-Land; A Summer Campaign ;
Inter-Communioa Among Baptists;
Clarkesville Association; Two Revivals,'
From Arlington ; Reminiscences of Mer
cer; Gospel Order; Logic. Missionary
Department.
Third Page—Children’s Corner: Bible Ex
plorations; Correspondence. The Sunday
school : Lesson for October 2d—Free
Giving.
Fourth Page—Editorials: Death of the
President; Dictatorial Prayer ; A Wonder
ful Discovery; More From Tyndale;
Glimpses and Hints; Georgia Baptist
News.
Fifth Page—Secular Elitorials : The Expo
sition and the South; Books and Maga
zines; Notes; Georgia News.
Sixth Page-The Household: Watch and
Pray—poetry ; Parables on Prayer: Obitua
ries.
Seventh Page—Farmer's Index : Sensible
Talk; Weevils —Grain-Moths.
Eighth Page—Florida Department: Meet
ings of Florida Associations ; Q tery ; Cor
respondence.
Alabama Department.
BY SAMUEL HENDERSON.
CAN IT BE SO ?
In the Religious Herald. Richmond
Va., of the 11th of August last, there
appears a communication from our
young brother, Rev. E. J. Forrester,
of Snow Hill, Ala., in which, after giv
ing quite a pleasant and interesting ac
count of our last Conventional meet
ing in Alabama, he takes occasion to
speak of the action of the Foreign
Mission Board in withdrawing the
appointment, of our brethren Stout
and Bell to a foreign field, and says :
“It really seems unfortunate that the
Board should have made a practical
issue of a theory. This is the feeling
of some of the most influential breth
ren of my acquaintance down here —
brethren in the ministry and out of it.
I weigh my words I say the most in
fluential—not those of most towering
intellect, perhaps, but the most influen
tial.” And then after discussing at
some length the questions, “What is
Scripture,” and “What is inspiration,”
in which we do not care now to follow
him, being only concerned as to a
question or fact. He closes by saying:
—“The Board shouldered a fearful re
sponsibility, when upon a theory, they
rejected two missionaries elect. It
seems to me, too, that the necessity is
upon them now to put forth what they
regard as the theory held by the ma
jority of the denomination. They
have said that Stout and Bell do not
hold it. A goodly number of strong
young men are waiting to learn what
will be required of them upon this
subject to fit them to preach to the
heathen the gospel they are now preach
ing successfully at home. Will the
Board put forth the ipsissima verba
theory defended by its late lamented
President ? Ido not know an intelli
gent layman who believes that theory, and
only here and there a preacher." (The
last Italics ours.)
Commenting on the above, the Cen
tral Baptist, St. Louis, Mo., asks-“ Does
he (bro Forrester) fairly represent the
younger ministry of Alabama ? Per
haps the Alabama Baptist could tell.”
Leaving the Alabama Baptist to re
spond as it chooses, we fell it our duty
as connected with the “Alabama De
partment” of this paper, not to allow
so extraordinary a statement to pass
without notice. Up to this time, we
have referred to this embarrassing com
plication we mean, the withdrawal of
• the appointment of brethren Stout and
Bell to the foreign field with great del
icacy. But such statements put forth
as the foregoing in one of the most ex
tensively circulated papers of the de
nomination in the South leave us no
alternative. The time has come for
those of us who regard the word of
God as inspired in whole and in every
part, to speak in a serious tone. If
the statement of our brother Forrester
is true, we ought to know it—if, in the
warmth of his zeal for the late ap
pointees of the Foreign Board, he has
allowed himself to overstate the facts,
he owes it to candor, he owes it to his
brethren, to modify his averment.
The impression made by his commu
nication is, that the great body of our
people are tinctured with Dr. Toy’s
sentiments upon inspiration, that the
Bible is “partly human and partly di
vine.” Nay, that he “does not know
an intelligent layman who believes
that theory,” (the entire inspiration of
the Scriptures,) “and only here and
there a preacher.” On reading this,
we paused, and asked instinctively, Is
it possible that within the last two
years a total revolution has passed over
the Baptists of Alabama in ' regard to
the very first article of their faith as it
appears perhaps on ninety-nine hun
dredths of their church books, ‘We be
lieve the Scriptures of the Old and New
Testament to be the word of God, and
the only rule of faith and practice.”
Now, we undertake to state a fact or
two: in the bounds of our acquaintance
extending over a pretty broad surface
of counties in north-east Alabama, we
do not know a single layman, “intelli
gent” or unintelligent, nor a single
minister, educated or uneducated, who
is at all tinctured with this semi-infidel
theory. And we will go further and
say, that up to two or three years ago,
we did not know a minister in Alabama
save perhaps one, who cherished any
Sentiments that savored of the “partly
human and partly divine” theory.
“The most influential brethren of my
(his) acquaintance” to whom he refers,
must, as we suppose, be confined to
those young brethren who have recent
ly come to Alabama. It is due the
ministry of the State for brother For
rester to name those “influential breth
ren,” since he declares that in the
bounds of his acquaintance there is only
“here and there” a minister but sym
pathises with this German rationalis
tic theory (at least this is the impres
sion conveyed,) a theory by the way
that has run its course in Germany,
and is now giving way to a refluent tide
that is depopulating the Schools that
taught it. and filling the hall s of those
in which the integrity of divine truth
is tatight and accepted, f At least this
is the information we see see reported
from respectable sources.
We have no reason to believe that
since Dr. Toy left the Seminary, any
such views as he cherishes on the sub
ject have been taught or tolerated; but
we do say, and we say it with all the
emphasis we can command—we say it
as one of its Trustees —as one who was
present at the meeting at which it was
founded —as one who was on tho com
rnittee that located it at Louisville —as
one who has watched its progress from
the beginning till now, with all the
solicitude we are capable of cherishing
for any “school of the prophets”—that
if it had an endowment of a million of
dollars to day, and should propose to
indoctrinate its students with this theo
ry of inspiration, better a thousand to
one sink it m>d ocean at once, than to
risk the consequeeces that would inevi
tably flow from such instruction. Dr.
Toy has already, in “going on to per
fection,” reached the conclusion that
the Book of Daniel is nothing but a
pious fraud—a mere religious fiction,
written after the events occurred of
whieh it purports to be a prophecy.
His adherents are following in his
wake, and no one need to doubt where
this current of “advanced thought” will
drift a young man who surrenders
himself to it. Like the divergence of
a railroad track from the main trink,
it seoms for miles to run parallel with
the old track, but the distance begins
to widen until ere long the two trains
are running at full speed in well nigh
opposite directions. When a man
“switches off’ from the “old paths,” he
knows no more where he will land, if
we may change the figure, than a ship
at sea without chart, compass, or rud
der.
If one half of the Bible, say, is hu
man, and the other half divine, in
the estimation of those brethren, if
this is not semi-infidelity we know not
what to call it. And further, if the
line of distinction between what is
human and what is divine be so nice
as to require the closest critical acu
men to discriminate it, what is to pro
tect the common reader from con
founding the one with the other 1 How
is he to know when his faith is based
upon a “thus saith the Lord,” or on the
mere utterances of men as fallible as
himself 1
We have spoken as temperately as
we could, for we greatly respect those
brethren; but such sweeping declara
tions as we have been reviewing cal
culated to convey impres
sion, left us no other alternative.
—Zion’s Herald, Boston, says that one of
the speakers at the funeral of the late bishop
Haven at Salem, Oregon, was bishop Dog
gett of the Methodist Episcopal Church
South. “The age of miracles is” not “past,”
then; for the death of bishop Doggett pre
ceded that of bishop Haven by a year or
more
ALANTA, GEORGIA, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1881.
“INDIVIDUAL SOVEREIGNTY."
Politicians prate much of the “sov
ereign people” in this free country—
all kings and all subjects. All this is
designed to tickle the fancy of the oi
polloi, the common people. It is the
poetry of republicanism. But then,
there is a sense in which every man
under every government is a sovereign,
a sense as high above the plane of our
average politicians as virtue is above
vice, as spirit is above matter. Mr.
Carlyle, the English essayist, lately
deceased, speaking of Louis XVI, of
France, who lost his head in the
French revolution, says: “And yet
let no meanest man lay flattering unc
tion to his soul. Louis was a ruler,
but art thou not one also? His wide
France, look at it from the fixed stars,
is no wider than a brick field, where
thou, too, didst faithfully or unfaith
fully rule. Man, ‘symbol of eternity,
imprisoned into time,’ it is not thy
works, which are all mortal, infinitely
little, and the greatest no greater than
the least, but only the spirit thou
workest in that can have worth or con
tinuance.” Rather rugged in expres
sion, but the thought is good.
It is sovereignty that deliberates
upon and decides the hightest ques
tions. Can any question of State
compare with that which appeals to
every man from the very throne of
Omnipotence—“ What shall it profit a
man if he gain the whole world and
lose his own soul?” Or this—“ Why
will ye die? ” The answer to these
questions will decide a mightier issue
than was ever submitted to a “Con
gress of nations,” or the cabinets of
kings. Whatever an immortal soul
can suffer or enjoy through eternal
ages hangs upon their decision. And
yet every man is to .decide them for
himself. God himself has chosen to
remand us to the hazards of eternal
perdition, to secure the glory of a vol
untary service. The gospel of the
grace of God shuts up every man to
his own individuality. We are to re
pent, believe, obey, live, die, be judged,
and saved or damned for ourselves.
Every day we are deciding all these
questions. Nay, our very indecision
will decide them. How tremendous
that moral position which God has
assigned to every rational soul!
~AN INCIDENT.
A certain minister we wot of, in
great need of his dues, asked one of
his churches for the portion of his sal
ary that had not been paid. He did
it in so business like a manner that
one of his brethren made the remark
that “he asked for his money with as
much assurance as if he were a Ten
nessee horse-drover.” And why should
he not do so? Is it not his due? Has
he not earned it? Has not the church
promised it? Is it not “wages”, as
much so as if he had split rails for it?
Is it not as much of a debt as if he had
sold a horse or a mule, and were to
present the purchaser with his note at
its maturity? Nay, is there any debt
which can be contracted so binding as
that which a church of Jesus Christ
engages to pay to maintain the cause
of the Redeemer in their midst? By
how much Christianity towers above
all other interests committed to human
agency, by so much are the obligations
to sustain it above all other obliga
tions. And yet how many professing
Christians pay every other obligation
first, and then if they have anything
left that they think they can spare,
they pay it to the pastor. Alas, that
it should be so.
GOOD MEETINGS.
Dr. Renfroe has recently held a meet
ing at his church in Talladega at
which there were some twelve or fif
teen accessions, most of them by bap
tism. He was assisted a portion of the
time by Rev. B. H. Crumpton, of
Greenville, Ala., and our young broth
er McGaha, a member of his charge,
who recently graduated at the How
ard. He is a young man of decided
piety and great promise.
We also held a meeting of a week at
Alpine, embracing the fourth Lord’s
day in August, assisted by our young
brethren Giles, now a student of the
Howard, and McGaha, and a day or
two by Dr. Renfroe. The influence
of the meeting npon the church was
more general, more profound than we
have known for many years. Four
have already united with the church
—others, we hope, will follow.
The little church, Shelving Rock,
near us, has lately had an accession of
six. Brother Nelson, of Coosa county,
is its pastor.
The Religious Press.
The South generally did not rank
Booth with common assassins.— H’afc/i-
Tower.
Oh yes, the South did, and our
opinion is, that the man who uses the
press,’apd particularly the religious
press, with the deliberate intention to
assassinate the reputation of a dozen
millions of his fellow citizens, is not so
much better than Booth and Guiteau as
he imagines himself to be. If our re
mark seems severe, we have to say,
that it was suggested by, and is justifi
ed by the concluding paragraph of the
very article from which the above in
considerate echo of an atrocious slan
der is taken. Here it is:
But for the fierceness of political fac
tion, our noble President would not have
been shot. Conkling has forcibly said :
“There is an assassination of the press,
as well as of the pistol.” If parties con
tinue to denounce each other without
charity, their representatives will con
tinue to enforce their judgments by acts
of violence!
The Watch-Tower, to some degree,
identifies the whole South with the act
of Booth. On the same principle that
journal should, to the same extent iden
tify all the political opponents of Pres
ident Garfield North and South, includ
ing the Stalwart Republicans, with the
act of Guiteau. Such frightful denun
ciation, and so groundless, and so
wholesale, may be called what “Conk
ling has forcibly said,” is the “assassi
nation of the press.” Our apology for
our esteemed brother of the Watch-
Tower :s, that he did not see the effect
and force of his statement, and was
doubtless misled as to its truth, by the
ex-part' evidence of false witnesses.
Such as this, though carelessly
mad ®?£d u. Vcvive a spirit which
oughtto be extinguished finally and
forever.
The distribution of tracts in Italy is
producing so much effect that the priests
and Catholics have founded a society,
with a fund of 60,000 francs to start with,
called the “Anti-Tract Society.”
This so far as it goes, will be a very
good advertisement for the tracts; a
dozen or twenty more such societies
would give the tracts a fine circulation.
It is definitely understood that the
churches or individuals that pay the pas
tors’ salaries most promptly and liberally,
and that give most for Christian benev
olence, and are most interested in Chris
tian work, are the churches or persons
that take and read our religious week
lies.— Journal and Messenger.
Which is the cause and which is the
effect? Are they better people be
cause they take the religious papers,
or do they take the papers because
they are better people? Both. Each
fact is a cause and each is an effect.
It takes a very wise man and a very
honest man to use figures so as not to
abuse them, by deceiving others or being
deceived himself. — National Baptist.
Yes, and the same is the case with
facts.
In New England,the practice of infant
baptism, along with the union of church
and state, lowered the tone of piety in
the churches; the dykes were thrown
down ; the world swept unrebuked into
the church ; devotion died ; morality
sank to a low ebb; an uni egenerated
church-membership prepared the way
for an unregenerated ministry. All this
led; then followed the Unitarian defec
tion, the denial of the Atonement, the
denial of the Deity of Christ, the de
thronement of the Bible, the obliteration
of the Holy Spirit. But the character
went first; the doctrine followed. —
Rational Baptist.
When did foeticide, and divorce
come in, and how?
Romanism grafted on the Celtic race
makes but a poor stock.— National Bap
tist.
True; what kind of stock does it
make grafted on any race?
If a church is not awake with the mis
sion spirit, it is the pastor’s fault.
So says a correspondent of the Wes
tern Recorder. If what he says is true, a
good many of our Baptist pastors in
Georgia have a good deal to answer for.
A Presbyterian, or Baptist, or Metho
dist, has no right to take a pulpit or a
paper that belongs to his church to make
war upon the doctrine or institutions of
that church. — Christian Advocate.
We agree with the opinion expres
sed by our Methodist brother. In this
country the press is free, as indeed it
ought to be everywhere, but this does
not mean that every press is free to
everybody; it simply means that a
man may print what he pleases on a
press of his own, or on one that he
hires, if he cannot get anybody else to
print it for him. It does not mean
that he can control the press of anoth
er, for this instead of sustaining the
freedom of the press, destroys it. Cer
tainly the organ of a religious denomi
nation ought not to be used to combat
the interests or opinions of that de
nomination. Who is to judge whether
articles sent to a public journal are or
are not calculated to promote the
cause to which that journal is devoted ?
We can think of no one more suitable
than the editor.
Heroes are not found, in the struggle
of arms alone. They are found in the
conflicts of opinion and the battle of prin
ciple for ascendency over the wrong.
These heroes are the men to whom,
under God, the world is indebted for its
progress. The pathway df reformation is
dark, thorny, wet with the tears and
stained with the blood of martyrs. They
have travailed and freedom has been
born, or human rights and happiness
have been put on better foundation.
The minority men are the men who ad
vance the world and do the work of God.
They are God’s true servants. They are
the men who would rather do right than
be popular, rather be alone on the side of
God than to dwell in the tents of sin. It
is through [the few who dare to be right
without regard to popular opinion that
God works out the steps of human prog
ress.
Truth, every word of it, and well said
by the Evangelist, but like all other
true things it is subject to abuse.
There are those who like to be in the
minority, who are never satisfied any
where else, who advocate unpopular
things because they are unpopular, and
who pride themselves on the very
cheap martyrdom purchased at this
very low price. There are apt to be
some such men in every community.
We have seen them in the church.
t
Wb copy from an exchange, which
copies it from somewhere else, the fol
lowing paragraph which to persons in
the decline of life is one of the most
comforting things we ever saw.
Nothing is more common than to hear
old people utter querulous complaints
about, their deafness ; but those who do
so are not perhaps aware that this infir
mity is the result of an express and wise
arrangement of providence in construc
ting the human body. The gradual loss
of hearing is effected for the best pur
pose, it being intended to give ease and
quietude to the decline of life, when any
noise or sound from without but discom
poses the enfeebled mind, and prevents
peaceful meditation. Indeed, the grad
ual withdrawal of all the senses and the
decay of the frame in old age have been
wisely ordained in order to wean the
human mind from the concerns and
pleasures of the world, and to induce a
longing for a perfect state of existence.
The brother who in describing you
gives first an inventory of what you do
not posses, does not like you. It does
not take much skill to use this negative
sort of disparagement and yet keep with
in the limits of the letter of truthfulness.
No man is universally endowed. It is
no disparagement to a blooded racer to
say he is not as heavy as a draft horse, or
vice versa.—Christian Advocate.
We have seen preachers who in
speaking of another would always con
trive to mention some good quality
which the person spoken of did not
possess. This is mean and cowardly;
envy is at the bottom of it.
A correspondent of the Canadian
Baptist quotes the following paragraph
from “the Bampton Lectures publish
ed this year under the auspices of the
Church of England.” The lecturer is
explaining bow there crept into the
ancient church, a double standard of
morality—a higher for the “clergy”
and a lower for the “laity,” and he
says:
The first of these causes was the wide
extension of the limits of church mem
bership which was caused by the preva
lence of infant baptism. In the earliest
times the rules of morality which were
binding on church officers, were bind
ing also on ordinary members, but when
infant baptism became general, and men
grew up to be Christians as they grew
up to be citizens the maintenance of the
earlier standards became impossible in
the church at large. Professing Chris
tians adopted the current morality; they
were content to be no more than their
neighbors. But the officers of all com
munities tend to be conservative, and
conservatism was expected of them; that
whieh had been the ideal standard of
qualifications for baptism became the
ideal standard of qualifications for ordi
nation; and there grew up a distinc
tion between clerical morality and lay
morality which has never passed away.
Historically, then, infant baptism
operated to corrupt the purity of the
church —to debase its morality to the
level of worldly practice in society at
large. And we think that philosophi
cally this result was inevitable : in the
VOL. 59.-NO. 37.
very nature of things it could work
out no other issue.
A Kentucky 7 correspondent of the
Western Recorder mentions two facts
illustrating “the progress of Baptist
principles” outside of the denomina
tion :
Not long since a Methodist brother of
great zeal, held a protracted meeting
near our town in which he had good suc
cess. At the close, before baptizing,(?)
he preached very learnedly on the sub
ject of baptism ; and argued profoundly
to prove to his hearers that sprinkling is
rigid and immersion wrong. At the
conclusion eleven of the converts, about
half, demanded that he should take them
eight miles to the river and immerse
them. Their conviction of truth was
stronger than his logic. Another : in a
neighboring town the Methodists had
enjoyed quite a revival. In closing, their
good pastor requested all those who had
been baptized to sit on the right, and
those not baptized on the left. While
obeying orders the pastor’s son seated
himself on the left, when the father
called to him saying, “Elmore, you
have been baptized.” “No,” responded
the son, “I have just been sprinkled.”
Akin to these facts is the following
furnished by Dr. Hillsman to the Bap
tist Reflector:
A Pedobaptist preacher took it into
his head to stir up the parents of his
flock to have theirchildren sprinkled,and
preached a sermon to convince them of
their duty, concluding by appointing the
next day for the sprnkling,ordering or re
requesting that all the unbaptized child
ren bejbrought up. This excited numer
ous Baptists to go and witness the scene.
The day came and the preacher was in
his place with a pitcher of water on hand
for the operation. The babies in due .
time were called for, when 10, not a baby
came I Os course the Baptists smiled.
A Methodist brother has said in one
of the “Advocates,” that
“If all the Baptists have ever written
were lost to-day, nobody, exeej c a few
Baptists, would hardly know it.”
We suppose he meant to say “all
that the Baptists have ever written,”
etc. The rest of the sentence “nobody
. . . . would hardly know it,”
makes it manifest that the writer of
the same does not know much that
anybody has written. We are not sur
prised that some silly and illiterate
man should have written thus, but we
are surprised that any of the Advo
cates should publish it.
We copy the following at second
hand from the Florida Sun-glass, a, pa
per that we have never seen:
No Christian who values his own hope
in Christ, and sincerely loves his Bible,
can be indifferent to the religious wants
of the world. What the gospel has done
for him, he desires it shall do for all oth
ers. No church which refuses, or neg
lects to aid in spreading the gospel
abroad, can expect to be prosp. red with
spiritual blessings itself. The rapidity
with which Christianity is spreading
among the nations, winning tens of
thousands of converts to Christ, is a
cheering evidence of its power, and
should inspire all hearts with confidence
in the gospel’s saving power, giving as
surance to all who work and pray for its
triumphs that their labor is not in vain
in the Lord.
How much “real church” is there in
a church that does nothing for the
spread of the gospel? And how many
“churches” have we that are a not
churches?
Among ths hopeful signs in Germany,
noted by Rev. Joseph Cook, is the de
cline in the number of theological stu
dents attending the lectures of rational
istic professors. There are only twenty
four theological students at rationalistic
Heidelberg, “while evangelical Berlin
has 230, evangelical Halle 304, and hy
per-evangelical Leipzig, 437.”'
The German theological pendulum
ewings first one way and then the oth
er. Recently, the tendencies were de
cidedly Pagan; now, they are Evan
gelistic. Persons in this country (lead
ers of advanced thought) who pride
themselves on being a little “off,” and
who plume themselves on following
the Germans, are behind the times.
It is true that they are following, but it
is at a distance. We hope they will
soon “catch up,” as their masters are
now on the right line.
—Twice over, since the publication of the
Revised New Testament, we have gone
through it in our daily reading of the Scrip
tures. This reading, of eourse, was not de
igned for critical or exegetical purposes;
but it prepares the way for these by relieving
t he amended version of theair of strangeness
ind novelty. May not some have erred in
attempting exegesis and criticism without
this relief?
Senoia Farm and A.
VanHoose baptized two members into
the Greenville Baptist church on last
Sabbath. He reports the chuich in a
progressive state.
