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The Platform a Religious Power
Editor The Golden Age:
While thinking this afternoon of the revival cam
paign that is before us for this fall and winter,
it occurred to me that it might encourage our pas
tors throughout Southern Methodism to tell of the
prosperity of the Lord’s work in our hands, while
entering upon this fall’s work.
There is a revival atmosphere surrounding us.
During the summer months I made a preaching and
lecturing tour of some of the Chautauquas in the
Western States. Having spoken nearly fifty times
in lowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri, West Vir
ginia and Nebraska, I had an opportunity of study
ing the “signs of the times.” While some people
think a preacher has backslidden who goes upon the
Chautauqua lecture platform, I wish to say that
there is not a platform that makes it easier for a
man to preach the old fashioned religion than these
great summer gatherings.
The platform is just as real as those of our great
political parties, or the creeds of our evangelical
churches. They stand against intemperance, graft,
worldliness, and hypocrisy. They stand for the
Bible, home religion, prayer, work, and Christian
education. Audiences from 1,000 to 5,000 are eager
for the truth. Many places, where I spoke, the
ministers of the town asked me to consider return
ing and conducting union revivals for them.
It was my good pleasure to precede, preach with,
and follow the only, inimitable Sam P. Jones at
the Chautauqua. Brother Jones is the most popu
lar lecturer and preacher at these great Chautau
quas. The good he does eternity alone will reveal.
Having been associated with him, more or less, in
his great meetings, since I was first thrown with
him in a meeting at Wilkesboro, N. C., nearly five
years ago; he planning for me and my singer, Mr.
Edwin Smoot, and E. O. Excell, his life long friend
and great leader in song, to be with him in four
meetings this fall, we gladly accepted the invita
tion.
Loves the Famous Evangelist.
As Mr. Jones has been such a help to me in his
preaching and given me such opportunities to
preach and work in his meetings, I Was glad to join
him in these meeting’s. No man can associate
with Brother Jones without loving God better and
souls more. To me he is not only the greatest
preacher in America, but the purest man I have
ever known intimately. Our first meeting was at
Cartersville, Ga., in September. Here he has
preached for thirty-five years, and the people would
rather hear him today than any man he can bring
to Cartersville. To see fifteen thousand people
trying to get within the sound of his marvelous
voice, and hanging on his words, reminds one of
what the people said of our Master, “ Never man
spake as this man.”
The Cartersville meeting was the greatest and
best in its history. It was a spiritual feast to a
man’s soul. To be in Brother Jones’ home is a
benediction for a life time. Os the dozen faith
ful preachers, personal workers, gathered there
from North, South, East and West, it was the com
mon verdict of all, that such a treat and privilege
comes once in a life.
Great Meeting in Oklahoma.
At present we are in Oklahoma City, Okla.,
preaching in an immense building that will accom
modate 5,000. We came here on the invitation
of Dr. W. K. Pinner, and a more genial, godly, and
faithful man is not to be found in Southern Meth
odism.
This is a new city in a new state, people are
here from all parts of the country to get rich,
many have left their church letters and religion
'back in the other states. Many, however, are sup
porting the church with their money, prayers and
godly living. But a great majority are on the
side of the world.
The meeting is taking on great proportions.
Christians are being revived, backsliders are be
ing reclaimed, sinners are being converted, and we
SAM JONES AND HIS CO-LABORERS
The Golden Age for October 11, 1906.
are confidently expecting thousands of souls to
come back to God. The battle is a hard one. The
forces of evil are strong. The movement is going
to mean much for temperance, home and church.
Let all God’s people pray for us and the noble
ministers here that this new’ land may be won for
God.
With kindest regards for The Golden Age, its
Editors, and wishing unbounded success, we are
yours for a great victory and a soul saving church.
Yours sincerely,
Walt Holcomb.
Oklahoma City, Okla., Oct. 6, 1906.
Whiskey Men Outwitted.
Editor Golden Age:
In your article, “Whiskey Down, Property Up,”
you state that whiskey men, and some church mem
bers, say “when you take whiskey out of a com
munity you ruin business—property depreciates.”
That theory has not only been exploded, but the
experience of many prohibition communities has
proved that to be absolutely false. I could name
a number of towns and counties in which crimes
have almost ceased and property has advanced
from 100 to 500 per cent, where prohibition has
taken the place of the saloon and distilleries.
I have one county in my mind’s eye that I will
give your readers the actual experience of.
About fifteen years ago, Gaston county, North
Carolina, had two cotton mills and forty-live dis
tilleries. In each one of the “stills,” a saloon.
The whiskey ring was in control of the state and
county politics. A little band of prohibitionists
quit “resoluting” and got a bill passed by the
legislature that no distillery should be within two
miles of a church or school house. They (the pro
hibitionists) built schools and churches in less than
two miles of each distillery. The distillers cursed,
fumed and finally moved out of the county.
What about today?
There is not a single distillery but there are 38
cotton mills in that county. Under the whiskey
regime, the town of Gastonia, in Gaston county, had
a population of about 800, today it has over 7,000;
there is only one other county in North Carolina
whose real estate is valued higher per acre on the
average than that of Gaston. The people of Gas
ton county would not go back to “stills” or bar
rooms for anything.
Keep up your fight for uncompromising prohibi
tion, take no “moral institution” dispensary as
a substitute. A Subscriber.
R
An Inspiring Evening.
On Monday night, tire tenth of September, Mr.
Will D. Upshaw (whom we still love to call Earnest
Willie), delivered a lecture at the Auditorium to
the people of Fort Deposit. A large crowd gath
ered there to hear it, for only a few weeks before,
he had assisted in a revival here, winning the hearts
of every one with his strong messages and his earn
est and touching appeals.
The subject of the lecture was “Climbi f Up
ward: Hope, Ambition or Purpose, Opp tunity,
Those who love us, and through all these, m voice
of God.
He began by reciting an original poem, and then,
without notes, proceeded to tell us of the first
“voice” as he called it—Hope.
“Who shall say that Fortune grieves him,
While the star of hope she leaves him?”
would finely describe hi $ words along this line. -
Hope, he told us, was not only a blessed balm
to suffering, sad humanity, but so necessary to us
to travel that journey upward. To him this “star
of Hope” had shone “a shining, cheering spark”
through the dark clouds of his life, and soon after
his days of invalidism came, when he himself was
unable to write, he composed a poem on Hope and
dictated it to his sister, who was his amanuensis.
Here are the first four lines:
“There is a word I can’t express,
It thrills me o’er and o’er,
And were it not for its effect
My bliss would be no more.”
After listening to sweet strains of music, “Earn
est Willie” led us on to the next verse, which was
Ambition. Shakespeare charges us “to fling away
ambition, by that sin fell the angels.” But the
speaker believing with another high authority thac
“Not failure, but low aim is crime,” urged every
young life there to be ambitious; to have a purpose
strong; to patiently and persistently climb the
Mountain of Difficulty, until at last the golden
summit was reached. Only the “unfinished” am
bitions and aimless lives were:
“Baffled and beaten and blown about
By the winds of the wilderness of doubt.”
How inspiring that part of his lecture must have
been to the young people I And those who had not
already “hitched their wagons to a star,” surely
must have done so that night. And not the young
folks alone.
“But those from whom all hope had fled,
He roused to thoughts of high desire,
And bathed their hearts so cold and dead
Tn floods of living fire.”
After a beautiful song, so that we might think
over what he had said, “Earnest Willie” spoke on
Opportunity. He urged the boys and girls to
make the best of their opportunities, for “God had
gemmed their path with opportunities thick as sum
mer dew-drops on the grass.” And though some
might be tethered with bodily afflictions or poverty,
not to be discouraged, for “made opportunities”
were open to them, which, after all, were the best.
He gave many beautiful illustrations of the truth
of this; one being the case of David E. Guyton, the
“blind Milton” writer for The Golden Age.
This was hardly necessary, for many in the au
dience felt that the speaker himself was proof
sufficient. He has been truly likened to Alexander
Stephens, but it flitted through my mind as I list
ened to him, that he was not so unlike Alexander
Pope—the frail, delicate body—the lofty, poetic
soul.
“Earnest Willie” then called us to “Climb Up
ward” for the sake of loved ones—and for Christ—
truly saying how futile would be all of our efforts
and resolves unless founded on “The Rock of
Ages. ’ ’
He closed the lecture with a short tender prayer,
which was very appropriate and beautiful, and put
me in mind of the pathetic little Scotch story of
“His Mother’s Sermon.” You remember in “Be
side the Bonnie Briar Bush” the young preacher
stood at his mother’s death bed to receive her last
words. They were: “John, the first day you preach
speak a good word for Jesus Christ.”
The speaker’s voice, though not strong, was as
clear as a silver clarion, and he held his listeners in
•rapt silence, only when bursts of applause and
laughter broke the stillness. For like “The
Hoosier Poet,” he believed it well “to spice the
good a trifle with a little dust of fun,” and his
racy anecdotes, good natured sarcasms at gay youth
and the rollicking songs composed in honor of
“Mercer” during his college days and sung by six
merry girls, were especially “happy hits.”
As Dr. Johnson said of “The Vicar of Wake
field,” “it was one of the few lectures that we
wished was longer,” for “the golden hours on angel
wings” had flown over us, and too, too soon we
turned again home.
Oh, “Earnest Willie!” rightly named in thy
youth. Since thou hast taught thy hearers that
“no life can be pure in its purpose and strong in
its strife, and all life not be purer and better
thereby,” we shall ever think of thee as Pointing
Upward! Annie Bell.
Fort Deposit, Ala.
One of the greatest natural curiosities of the
world and the only one of its kind in existence is
a coal mine near Hongay in French Indo-China
which is entirely above ground. It was only nec
essary to displace a bed of thin rock underneath
which lay the coal, and the mining process is to
rut the coal away in terrace form. There are
3,500 miners employed in this work.
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