The Golden age. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1906-1915, November 29, 1906, Page 5, Image 5

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the Spirit of God, under His direction and power, and that constantly looks up and communes with God. That kind of a prayer life will bring fruit. Jesus Christ emphasized it in His own prayer life. Jesus spent more time in prayer than any other one thing He ever did. He spent one whole night in prayer before He selected the twelve disciples. The night before He delivered the Sermon on the Mount He spent a whole night in prayer. And if Christ should need to spend a whole night in prayer before He could trust Himself to the selection of His disciples, what about us? More and more I am getting to believe that a man who claims to be a Christian has no right to engage in any busi ness of whatever character until he has first asked God’s will about it, and if every man today who names the name of Christ should practice that, what a different world we would have! Iremem ber a time in our church when there was a young man who was going to embark in a business which was new to him. He called me up over the tele phone and said, “I am going to engage in a cer tain business at a certain time and before I dare complete my arrangements for it, I want to know if it is God’s will, and if it is not, I don’t want to do it, and that I may have help in trying to find out if it is God’s will, I want you to come over and let us have prayer together about it.” We met in a room, got down before God and asked Him for the revelation of His will, and God gave it, and that man’s business has prospered and His Christian life has been a blessing to Him and a blessing to others. BIBLE STUDY. Then* again, growth in grace comets through Bible study. By prayer we talk to God. Through the Bible God talks to us. God uses the Bible as His phonograph in which He has spoken His mes sages to the world, and in order to have God to talk to us, we have got to learn to use God’s phonograph. This is a day of phonographs. Here is a phonograph made before any of these modern instruments. God has spoken His message once and for all into this divine phonograph that we call the Bible, and we come to Him through prayer and connect ourselves with His phonograph and He speaks from heaven to us a message that is just as fresh as it was the day when it was originally given. We are bound to have God’s message if we grow. We may pray ever so much and not read the Bible and our exercise is one sided. It is just like a man talking to a deaf man. He may be able to talk back to him, but he cannot hear you talk to him. How many of us realize the place of the Bible in Christian growth? Some time ago a woman came to my study asking if I would not take her name 1 off the church book. I asked her why? She said, li ßecause I do not be lieve that I have any business in it.” “Well, why?” said I. “Well,” she said, “I do not be lieve I have ever been saved.” I said, “Why?” “Well, because I do not believe that I am any better than I was when I was converted ten years ago. ’ ’ After talking with her I found that she was mistaken about her salvation, for she had exercised faith in Jesus Christ and was saved. Then I took her up on the subject of growth in grace. I said to her, “You are honest where a great many people are dishonest, that is the only difference between you and a great many people in the church. You have made no growth and neither have they, and you are just honest enough to confess it.” I asked her if she was willing to grow in grace. She said, “I do not know how.” I then took her along the points I am taking you this morning, first, dedi cation, and that dedication to be complete, then the appropriation of the Holy Spirit in all of His rvn A A/TI>T>I?T T A/THDr ( ANT , Q exposition of the bible will be published in the -L/Jlv. \j. vj/iIIVLa lVlV7lxvr/\i>l O golden age beginning about January Ist, 1907. dr. morgan IS KNOWN THROUGHOUT TWO CONTINENTS AS THE GREATEST EXPOUNDER AND INTERPRETER OF THE TEXT OF THE BIBLE NOW LIVING. THE SERIES OF ARTICLES WHICH WILL APPEAR IN THE GOLDEN AGE WILL COMPOSE THE CONTENTS OF A WORK TO BE PUBLISHED BY AN ENGLISH PUBLISHING HOUSE, THE GOLDEN AGE HAVING SECURED THE EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS TO SERIAL PUBLICATION IN AMERICA. THE WORK WILL COVER THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS, AND WILL BE INVALUABLE TO THE LAY MAN AS WELL AS THE BIBLE STUDENT. ALEX W. BEALER’S ''Clipping's from the Ancient Press” will begin with our first December number. The Golden Age for November 29, 1906. fullness to dominate and control the life. Then I took her through prayer, and finally I came to the Bible. She said, “Now that is exactly where I am lacking. I simply stopped reading my Bible. I have not read my Bible in months and months, and you need not go any further; I see exactly where I am lacking.” After we had finished our conversation, she went home. In about three weeks after that she came to see me again, and she came with a smile on her face that told me of the work of grace in her heart that she had never had before, and just as soon as she entered, she began to talk about the Bible. She said, “I went home and began to read the Bible and study it, and I have gotten in love with it, and I have got more joy and pleasure out of it than I have ever gotten out of the past ten years of my Christian life.” She began to grow and is growing yet, and will keep on growing as long as she lives up to what she bus begun. My brethren and sisters, it is utterly im possible for a Christian to read the Bible and not grow in grace. If you read the Bible, it is going to keep you from sin. It is going to send you to your knees in prayer, and you are going to see less in self and more and more in Him. EXERCISE. The last point I want to mention is exercise. One may dedicate himself completely, one may appropriate the Holy Spirit, one may lead the prayer life, may read the Bible and read it regu larly and systematically every day, and still if that is all of it, fail to grow in grace. The spirit ual life is likened unto our physical life. Salvation is a new birth. We are, then, babes in Christ ac cording to the Apostle Paul’s teaching, and, alas, how many of us remain babes for the rest of our natural existence. But suppose a babe should be fed every time it cried, upon the very best food, and lie Hat upon its back forever, do you think there would be any normal growth? It would soon die for the lack of exercise. It would fail to ap propriate the food it took because it failed to exercise according to the demands of nature. And so it is with respect to our growth in grace. If we grow in grace, we have got to grow in service, and I believe that after all, this is, perhaps, the thing that is keeping most of you from growth in grace. You are not active in the service of God. Now, hear me. If you cease to be active in the service of God, you will finally cease to read your Bible, you will finally cease to pray, you will give up your dedication and call in all that you have given God, and then your life of dwindling and dwarfing begins. GO TO WORK. Is there a man or woman here this morning that feels that you have come to a standstill in your spiritual life? If there is, I want to beg you to go to work. Do not go to work until you have laid the foundations, but today lay the foundation in a definite surrender of yourself, with your struggles, with all your doubts, with all your difficulties. If some one has been unkind to you, if something is going on that you do not think ought to go on, in God’s name lay it all down. Stop nursing your difficulties and doubts, stop hugging your spiritual ailments. There is something better than that. Put it on the altar just all it is. God knows all about it. Put it down there definitely ,and say, “Oh, God, there it is and there it shall stay.” That will be the happiest day of your life. And then receive the Spirit in His fullness, begin to pray and read your Bible and “go to work.” Miss Freeman —Why, I thought you knew her. She lives in the same square with you. Miss Hutton—Perhaps. But she does not move in the same circle. Baptist Memorial to Sam Jones. An incident of striking interest occurred at the Baptist Convention when that body voted with unanimous enthusiasm to place a memorial window to Rev. Sam Jones in the new Methodist church at Cartersville. Rev. Walter Holcomb, co-laborer of Sam Jones, who is assisting Mrs. Jones in writing a life of her distinguished and beloved husband, was introduced to the convention and he made a captivating talk, asking all present who knew of any striking or significant incident in the life of the great evangel ist to kindly send it to him or to Mrs. Jones to be incorporated in the biographical volume. At the conclusion of this talk Mr. William D. Upshaw, editor of The Golden Age, arose and offered the following resolution: “Resolved, that it is the sense of the Georgia Baptist Convention, meeting for the first time since the death of Rev. Sam P. Jones, that it is fitting to take note of the home-going of this great and good man, and we hereby express to his bereaved family, and neighbors among whom he lived so long, and was so highly honored, our tender, pray erful sympathy. “Resolved, further, that we recognize the beau tiful and appropriate honor conferred jointly upon themselves, and the memory of a valiant and fear less soldier of Christ, when the church of which he was a member at Cartersville voted recently to name the new building now in course of erection. ‘The Sam Jones Memorial Church,’ and as a token of our love for the memory of Sam P. Jones, a Christian brother, and a citizen, we will count it a privilege, as individuals, to contribute an amount sufficient to place in the new M. E. church building here in Cartersville a memorial window to Sam P. Jones, as a gift from the Baptists of Georgia.” The reading of the resolution struck fire to ev ery heart and created a spontaneous enthusiasm that was beautiful in its tenderness and unanimity. Mr. Upshaw, in his pertinent talk, referred to the fact that a handsome memorial window in the Bap tist church at Cartersville had been dedicated to Rev. Joe Jones by his brother, the Rev. Sam Jones, at a cost of SSOO, and he considered this a most beautiful expression of friendship for the Baptists, and he deemed it only fitting that this sect place a memorial window in the Methodist church for Rev. Sam Jones. Rev. Alex W. Bealer, who was a neighbor of Sam Jones for a number of years during his pas torate in Cartersville, then paid a charming tribute to the brother, concluding with these words: “Over there is the window which Sam Jones, Methodist evangelist, placed in the Baptist church in honor of Joe Jones, Baptist evangelist, and I heartily endorse the resolution that the Baptists of Georgia give this expression of their love for Sam Jones.” Hon. W. J. Neel, of Cartersville, was made chair man of the committee to receive the funds for the memorial, and Mr. Robert Buchanan, of Lawrence ville, a traveling salesman and a devout Christian, with whom the idea of this memorial originated, was also placed on the committee with Mr. Neel and Mr. Upshaw. Funds will be received and re ceipted for by any one of this committee. We are sure that the response will be as prompt and lib eral as the occasion merits and that the plan born of a genuine and sincere spirit of brotherly admira tion and interest will soon take the tangible and lasting form which has been outlined. The next session of the Southern Educational Con ference, of which Robert C. Ogden, of New York, is president, will be held in Nashville, in April. 5