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special
f Convention Notes and Comments.
The industrious and skilful “special re
porter” of The Index has given you full and
accurate reports of the proceedings of the re
cent meeting of the Southern Baptist Con
vention, but your “Virginia correspondent”
feels inclined to accept the invitation of the
editor, and to make a few “notes and com
ments” of some things about the meeting
which impressed him favorably or otherwise.
WACO’S SPLENDID HOSPITALITY
was, of course, the admiration of all. She
opened wide her gates, and invited the Bap
tist world to come in, with wives and daugh
ters, sisters, cousins and aunts, and we went,
nearly four thousand strong, to find a royal
welcome and an abounding hospitality for
all comers.
Those of us who thought Dr. Burleson very
rash when, at Greenville, he invited the sis
ters as well as the brethren, and promised
entertainment for all, and who looked upon
the committee at Waco as guilty of even
greater tashness when they repeated the in
vitation in all the papers, did not then know
the large hearts and elastic houses of these
noble people, for after seeing them provide
for 3,637 guests, and then complain that oth
ers would insist on paying their bills at the
hotels, we came to the conclusion that Tex
as hospitality is as expansive as their
broad prairies, and that Waco is the centre
of it all. They have evidently caught here
the spiri tZof the old Texan, who said that in
the early daysjhe had entertained 50 brethien
at an Association when his total accommo
dations consisted of “two small rooms to his
cabin and two live oak trees near by;” but
the people now have larger houses, and the
live oak trees were not brought into requisi
tion as sleeping apartments.
THE EFFECT OF THE VAST CROWD
on the meeting of the Convention was, in
some respects, bad. It was a matter of im
possibility to have that good order and deco
rum in the transaction of business which
have so so long characterized the meetings
of the Southern Baptist Convention, and it
was even a little amusing to hear our “prince
of parliamentarians” (Dr Mell) declare on the
last day of the session: “I feel like the figure
head of a magnificent ship that is darting
and pitching in the sea. I never knew a
more good humored crowd, but it is beyond
my capacity of control.”
People who were packed in like sardines,
filling even every square inch of standing
room, and unable to hear what was going on,
Just would talk, and the consequent confusion
was very annnoying.
But on the other hand, the crowd enabled
the committee to have preaching three times
a day, at six separate preaching places, and
thus an unusually large number heard faith
ful gospel preaching, and it is to be hoped,
were impressed by it.
And then, too, a much larger number than
usual were brought under the influence of
the Convention, and went away more imbued
than ever before with the spirit of missions,
and a determination to work in the Master’s
vineyard, e. g. one good sister gave SI,OOO to
the Seminary, and another was so impressed
by the Foreign Mission meeting that, after
making a liberal contribution that night,
she gave the next day one thousand dollars
to the cause which had so touched her heart.
This seems to me an unanswerable argument
in favor of providing entertainment for the
sisters and encouraging them to attend our
meetings. They are not only raising now a
large proportion of the money contributed
to our Boards, but they will very greatly in
increase these contributions as they have op
portunity of attending our Conventions and
Associations, and catching the enthusiasm
which they inspire. Would that more of
our people who entertain these bodies had
the spirit of the good doctor in Waco who
made special request that his guests should
consist of “60 women and no men,” and who
afterwards complained;of,the committee that
they sent him “only 48 of his number.”
THE SPEAKING
at the Convention did not at any time rise to
the very high standard sometimes reached,
but was, on the other hand, much above the
average on such occasions.
Dr. Wharton captured the crowd at the For
eign Mission meeting by his pleasant way of
telling what he had seen of our Italian Mis
sion, and Dr. Curry moved them by his mag
nificent speech on the general subject. Our
Missionary to Mexico, Rev. W. D. Powell,
showed himself a “prince of agents,” by
keeping the crowd in a good humor and
holding them until a late hour while he got
out of them more than the $5,000, for w’hich
he asked to build “church houses” for his
important field.
Drs. Eager, of Mobile, and Felix, of Ky.,
made admirable speeches at the Home Mis
sion meeting, which put them in the very
front rank of our rising preachers.
And there were several notable speeches
on the floor of the Convention ; but we can
never expect speeches of much value in the
regular proceedings of the Convention until
we devise some meansof changingour present
vicious methods of conducting our meetings.
We usually consume the first day in or
ganizing, and hearing the reports of the
Boards, and the second day in attending to
matters of routine, appointing the twenty
five or thirty committees, to which the re
ports of the boards are referred, and then
waiting until the cumberous machinery of
the committees can be gotten to work. It is
rare good fortune if even a few of the com
mittees are ready to report Friday morning,
while the balance, embracing a very large
THE CHRISTIAN INDEX r MAY 31, 1883.
part of the efficiency of the Convention, are
out concocting their reports. The commit
tees which are ready to report Friday morn
ing get a fair show at the members of the
Convention present, but Friday afternoon or
early Saturday morning the Convention sud
denly discovers that there is very little time
more left than to barely read the multitudi
nous reports, the speeches are limited to five
(sometimes to even two) minutes, there is an
unnecessary scramble for the floor, the re
ports are “put in” without the slightest re
gard to orderly continuity of subjects, the
Convention becomes impatient of even five
minutes speeches, the most important re
ports are passed without consideration, the
whole proceedings degenerate into an un
seemly haste to “get through” by 12 or 1 o’-
clock Saturday night—the interest, value,
and impression of the meeting being sadly
marred by these hurried, if not disorderly
proceedings.
There has been rising, for several years, a
very strong undercurrent in favor of a very
decided
REFORM IN OUR METHODS OF PROCEDURE,
and I venture to voice this sentiment, and to
make several practical suggestions in that
direclion.
1. We ought to have a standing committee
of arrangements [I can think of no reason
why the president and secretaries of the Con
vention and the secretaries of the Boards
might not constitute ex officio such a commit
tee] whose business it should be to arrange
and announce beforehand a general pro
gramme for the meeting.
2. The time usually devoted to the meet
ing of the Conventions should be equitably
divided between the two Boards, and such
other general objects as may properly come
up for consideration, and such order of bus
iness adopted as would bring up each sub
ject in its appropriate place, and give it a
proper consideration. As it is now, when
the 25 or 30 committees begin to report, no
regard whatever is had to relation of sub
jects or their comparative importance, but
the China Mission and New Orleans, the Af
rican Mission ami our foreign population,
the Italian Mission and Indian Missions, are
all jumbled in together according as the
chairman of each committee may be nimble
enough to catch first the eye and ear of “Mr.
President,” upon whom a score of others are
frantically calling. What is to hinder an
arrangement by which each Board and each
committee shall have proper time and place
in the programme without being compelled
to resort to this unseemly scramble?
3. The number of committees to whom the
reports of the Boards are referred should be
greatly reduced. If there be a “multiplying
of words without wisdom,” much more are
we accustomed to multiply committees with
out bringing additional light or increasing,
in the slightest degree, the wisdom of the
Convention. The truth is thata Board which
has had the matters under its charge under
constant supeivis'on for 12 months and pre
sents its mature report to the Convention at
the close of the conventional year, is much
more competent to present a proper state
ment of them than a committee which can
give it only the hurried consideration
which can be snatched from the press of
work at the Convention. We ought, by all
means to reduce the number of committees
to one half, or one fourth of the number we
have been accustomed to appoint. But why
should we refer the reports of the Boards to
committees-at all unless there be some spe
cial reason, in given eases, for doing so?
Why would it not be as well to discuss the
several parts of a report in committee of the
whole, according to a pre-arranged pro
gramme, and thus save for valuable discus
sion and consideration of the real questions
at issue, the time which is now frittered a-
, way and wasted by the ponderous machin
ery of twenty-five or thirty committees?
4. I think that our Northern brethren are
on one extreme in having everything too
fully “cut and dried,” and leaving no time
or place for free discussion, or independent
action, but we are too much on the other ex
treme of leaving these important matters to
the hap-hazard of such volunteer speeches as
can be w’edged in under the pressure of the
five minutes mill.
Let the secretaries of the Boards engage
beforehand suitable brethren to open each
topic in its order, and then throw it upon
the Convention for general discussion, and
there would be a vast improvement in the
character and value of the speeches, and the
impression they would make on the Conven
tion and the people.
But I will not now further elaborate these
or indicate other points, but I propose a free
discussion of these points during the com
ing year, and that we see if we cannot make
these great gatherings of our Baptist clans
more interesting and effective.
But I must touch on one other point in
which the late meeting of our Convention
was sadly defective. I mean the almost en
tire
LACK OF A DEVOTIONAL SPIRIT,
which characterized our session. The for
mal opening and closing with prayer was all
we had. No pausing in the press of business
to voice our feelings in sweet song, hearty
thanksgiving or fervent prayer; no special
hour set apart for devotional services, nosun
rise prayer meeting such as we had at Green
ville last year, and no opportunity whatever
for these widely scattered laborers to mingle
together in social prayer. This “ought not
so to have been,” and it is hoped that it will
be different if we live to see Baltimore next
year.
THE PREACHING
was of a high order and made a profound
impression, although we missed from the
meeting some of our ablest pulpit orators.
The sermon of Dr. J. A. Broadus was one
of the grandest efforts of his life, and it will
rejoice lovers of the truth everywhere to
know that he is now preparing it for the
press, and will soon publish it in such form
as will give it the widest circulation.
On Sunday I heard Dr. Mell preach his
clear, logical and tender, old fashioned gos
pel sermon, Dr. W. A. Nelson, of North Car
olina, his sound doctrine on sin and its rem
edy, and Dr. Boyce his unanswerable argu
ment on the philosophy of prayer. I beard
good accounts from the other sermons
preached to the vast crowds who assembled
to hear the preached word, and it is hoped
that lasting good was done by the faithful
ministers of the word.
But your printers have doubtless already
cried “enough,” your readers will say “dit
to,” and I will stop right here.
On the cart, May 14, 1883. J. W. J.
Atheism.
But few in any age, or in any stage of
civilization have denied the existence of
God. To be an atheist requires that we
should ignore our innate consciousness, stem
the current of our convictions, and stifle the
decisions of common sense. I am satisfied
from close observation that the avowrl, or
adoption of the doctrine, that there is no
God, originates in a desire to get rid of our
inborn sense of moral obligation, and is
cherished and cultivated by an intellectual
monomania, or a moral obliquity—one, or
both, that necessarily follows in the wake of
the moral wreck, wrought by principles so
entirely at variance with the natural de
mands of the human soul.
I do not now propose to combat the ab
surdities of atheism. From very early times
this doctrine has had some advocates. We
have first the Atomic theory, by which the
origin of the universe is accounted for, by
what, in later days, has been termed” a for
tuitous concourse of atoms.” The father of
this system was Leucippus, an old heathen
philosopher, who flourished in Southern
Europe about B. C. 428, and to the Grecian
philosophy, as taught by Democritus and
afterwards crysta lized into a course of study
m the atheistical schools o f Greece and Rome.
Since the Reformation of the sixteenth cen
tury, atheism has found its ablest and bold
est advocates in Spinoza,Hobbes, Hume and
Voltaire. These have been triumphantly
met at every point by Watson, Dwight, Til
lotson, Faleyg and others.|sNow, while the
gloomy absurdities of atheism have been ex
posed again and again, we may be still in
structed as to its true character by observing
some of its results.
As one result, tben, w’e claim that to ban
ish from human faith the idea of the being
of a God —the Christian’s God—leaves man
without a model of intellectual perfection.
Atheists claim above all others to exalt Rea
son as the only umpire in all matters of doubt
or inquiry, and yet would, if they could, de
stroy the only model of perfection known to
the aspirations of man, after which he may
form and develop his own intellect.
In all the world’s history, sacred and pro
fane, outside of Divinity, we find no perfect
intellectual standard. Even atheists must
confess that the human mind is continually
leaching out after the higher and grander
attainments, conceived to be concealed in the
womb of future possibilties. In 1440 we
have the wonderful art of printing, at
tributed to Lawrence Koster and afterward
perfected by John Faust, Gutenburg and
others. With no certainty as to who in
vented the {telescope, we know that it w’as
not brought into general use until the be
ginning of the 17th century. In 1807 the
use of steam as a practical motive power was
applied by Fulton to steam navigation.
About 20 years later George Stephenson ap
plied steam to the locomotion of the steam
engine. Then comes Morse with his tele
graph. Then the telephone, then the elec
tric lights. The Suez canal is a success,
the Panama is assured, the desert of Saha
ra is to become an inland sea, the Alps
and Pyrenees have been tunnelled,; protoplasm
has been guessed at, and still the human
mind, like Newton, feels that it has only
been “picking up pebbles,” while the great
ocean of possibilities lies out in the dis
tance.
These untiring aspirations and conceived
possibilities, with the consciousness of intel
lectual imperfection is an argument at once,
for the existence of intellectual perfection
somewhere : n the Universe, and for the ne
cessity of a perfect model after which man,
as he grows in mental development, may
continue to grow and model his powers of
thought and knowledge. We can demand
no higher grade of intellect than that, whose
wonderful powers are displayed in the phys
ical Universe.
Nothing short of infinite wisdom could
ever have brought into being so many mul
tiplied millions of objects, animate and in
animate, having such an endless diversity
of characteristics, all blended in one, grand
harmonious whole.
Strike God out of the Universe and leave
man without faith in the existence of a
model of absolute intellectual perfection,
and you degrade him at once in his own
eyes.
Another result of accepting the theo
ry of atheism is, man is thus left without a
model of moral perfection. I .know tuat
atheism, denies the existence in man of
moral faculties, and of the necessity of mor
al teachings. With the atheist conscience is
a humbug and religion is hypocrisy. With
these convictions, the atheist Fean look no
higher than his own level for a model of
moral purity. Finding his own heart like
a cage of unclean birds, and. judging all oth-
ers by himself, he can never have moral de
velopment beyond the demands of civil law,
and the conventionalities of society. And
this development is more mechanical than
moral —more artificial than real.
The destruction, so far as this can be done,
of man’s native sense of moral obligation is
another result of atheistic theories. The
fact, that in every age, and in almost every
stageof civilization man has de vised,or adopt
ed some plan by which he might atone for his
guilt, is proof, in point, that he has a sense
of moral responsibility. Without faith in a
moral law, without faith in God as a future
judge of human conductand human motives,
man is left not only without a model but
without restraint.
The French Revolution of 1789—95, will
forever stand as a terrible illustration of
what atheism will do for individuals and
nations, when allowed the full and untram
melled application of its principles. During
this “Reign of Terror” the most barbarous
and shocking scenes were continually trans
piring, and more real human wretchedness
and ruin was occasioned by the inhuman
practices and fiendish horrors of French
atheism than the world has ever witnessed
since the beginng of the Christian era.
Carnot, Robbespierre, and those who acted
with them, ordered to be written in all pub
lic cemeteries this inscription:—“Death is
an eternal sleep.”
In broad, open daylight Chaamette led one
of the handsomest prostitutes in Paris, to a
throne, in the presence of the French As
sembly, and crowned her as their only deity
—the best personification of the " Goddess of
Reason." With no model of intellectual ar d
moral perfection, with conscience throttled,
and a sense of moral obligation obliterated,
within ten years of atheistic reign, at least
three millions of human lives were destroy
ed as the result of the demoralization of the
teachings of Diderot, Voltaire and the En
cyclopedists.
While the athiest would destroy the faith
of men in the Christian’s God, he only offers
in return doubt, uncertainty and everlast
ing night. Col. Ingersoll says: “If there is
a God I do not know it.”
Ingersoll’s ignorance then must become
the law of human belief. This modern Ti
tan of atheism turns up his nose at what he
is pleased to style the Christian’s supersti
tion, because he is so silly as to believe in
the miracles, etc., of the Bible, and because
he crowns his folly by believing in the God
of the Bible.
Now, this same leader of Advanced
Thought (?) requires in his duped followers
a blind acceptance of the monstrous folly,
that this wonderful universe was the crea
tion of accident, or chance.
Darwin prefers the elevating theory that
man sprang from an original protoplasm,
and then had his descent through the mon
key and the gorilla, to the Bible statement
that —“God created man in his own image.”
Gen 1: 27.
With all the light of the centuries, stream
ing in upon this generation, like the pyra
mids of Egypt looking down on the soldiers
of Napoleon, we have some examples of a
bold, blatant, brawling, blaspheming athe
ism. Galen, an old Roman physician,
though a thorough atheist, became convinced
of the existence of a God, from the evidence
of intelligent design displayed in the con
struction of the human body. Galen flour
ished B. C. 190. He was without Bibles and
without Christianity.
Col. Ingersol flourishes A. D. 1883, and by
his atheistical lectures coins money out of
the ignorance and prejudices of his deluded
followers. Galen and Ingersoll. We leave
our readers to draw the contrast.
E. R. Carswell, Sr.
Hephzibah, Qa.
More Slip-gaps down—A Cheese
Factory Supplied.
“Deacon,” in the Index of the 17th inst.
in making “Pertinent Inquiries,” is about
to leave the impression that “Wiregrass” is
a regular Comanche with a brace of bowies
and a belt of scalps. But he is mistaken. I
am no warrior thirsting for blood. I would
harm no one—in fact I have no horns I
lost them in early life in the pugnacious
sports of the calf pasture. I would not in
timate that Gwin and McDonald and War
ren and Holmes and Provence are disloval.
They are true men, and I like them. But
some peripatetic milkers will bear watching
By the by, I see Nunnally and McCall left
the slip-gap down and Dr. Teasdale came in
and filled bis bucket and hurried away to
the Bible Convention to have the curd man
ipulated in that little Northern cheese facto
ry. I wonder if these brethren who supply
the milk expect to nibble the cheese.
Georgia Baptists are so afraid that they
will miss an angel visit they entertain eve
ry stranger that knocks at the door. “Died
of hospitality,” would be a fitting epitath
upon many an enterprise. If The Index had
the Georgia patronage which is given to pa
pers published in other States, Tucker and
Nunnally had been still on her staff. If
Mercer University had the boys and bonds
which have been given to Colleges in other
States we had not wept over Woodfin gone
and Battle lost. •
I know “the Kingdom” ignores all |State
lines and river boundaries and mountain
ranges, but I would have brethren know
that according to Baptist usage each organi
zation is an imperium in imperia and its inter
ests should be respected. I am opposed to
selfishness, but Ido believe in self-support
and self preservation. Let us feed our own
pigs, for I tell you, when we want bacon, we
will not be allowed to get it from our neigh
bors’ smoke-houses. Wiregrass.