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The Golden Age
(SUCCESSOR TO RELIGIOUS FORUM]
Published Ebery Thursday by the Golden Hge Publishing
Company (Inc.)
OFFICES: LOWNDES BUILDING. ATLANTA. GA.
Price: $2.00 a Year
Ministers $1.50 per Tear.
In cases of foreign address fifty cents should be added to cobet
additional postage.
Make all remittances payable to The Golden Age Publishing Company.
WILLIAM D. UPSHfZW, .... Editor
A. E. KA MS A UR, - - - Managing Editor
LENG. BROUGHTON - - - Pulpit Editor
'BEN S. THOMPSON, - - Business Manager
Entered at the Post Office tn Atlanta, Ga.,
as second-class matter.
To the Public: The advertising columns of The
Golden Age will have an editorial conscience. Nc
advertisement will be accepted which we believe
would be hurtful to either the person or the purse of
our readers.
Some letters written by Father George Washing
ton in his early days have been discovered. It ap
pears from them that he spelled lie, “lye.” So it
is proven that he not only could not tell a lie; he
could not even spell one.
The Atlanta papers duly announced the pres
ence of an Atlanta man at the Thaw trial. They
are everywhere; at least they are either there in
person or have a relative or proxy on the spot. We
know a place where we are willing to wager At
lanta is well represented, also —but as the Asso
ciated Press has no branch down there we have no
reliable information.
Mr. Bealer’s Articles.
“Clippings From The Ancient Press,” the series
of articles by Rev. Alex. W. Bealer, ■which closed
in last week's issue of The Golden Age, held a
wide interest for our readers. The fact that Mr.
Bealer was so long an enterprising newspaper re
porter before he entered the ministry has given
him a “reporter’s eye” for everything he sees,
and it was a thoroughly unique conception which
caused him to imagine himself a reporter on the
Jericho Tribune and the Jerusalem Journal, report
ing the deeds and doings of Bible days as if he
were a modern newspaper reporter “on the spot.”
The suggestion has come to us that these Clippings
from the Ancient Press ought to be put in book
form, and we are sure that all who have followed
them ■will agree that the collection, with such others
as the gifted “reporter” might add, would make
a thoroughly charming book. We hope Mr. Bealer
will decide to bring out Clippings From The An
cient Press in book form.
Ringing Words.
William J. Neel, of Cartersville, whom The At
lanta Georgian calls “The Galahad of Prohibi
tion,” never speaks without saying something.
He has a ringing letter in The Georgian, com
mending, as we have often done in these columns,
the exemplary and inspiring course of that great
daily in excluding all liquor advertisements. But
Mr. Neel goes The Georgian “one better,” calling
for a definite, everlasting crusade on the part of
that paper against every form of the liquor traf
fic. And we believe that time will come. Among
other good things Mr. Neel said:
“The state has been afflicted long enough—yes,
too long—with barrooms and other devices for the
sale of whiskey. The time has come to quit. If
your paper will take strong, clear position against
the legalized liquor business and step out on the
firing line with a vigorous ‘defy’ to the en
trenched hosts who cater to depraved appetite and
debauched morals, there will rally to your support
and follow your leadership a host made up of the
brightest and best men and women in Georgia.
The Golden Age for February 28, 1907.
“I was once a local optionist, but local option
has been largely nullified by the jug traffic. Pro
hibition communities seem practically powerless to
protect themselves against barrooms in counties
where local option has not been strong enough to
drive them out. We want something better.
“If local option could be made to ‘work both
ways,’ it would be more satisfactory. If the ‘local
option’ that permits the sale of whiskey would be
content to remain in its own territory and let alone
the ‘local option’ that is exercised against whiskey
there would be good reason for continuing it.
“But when the Atlanta type of local option in
vades the Cartersville kind and seeks to do a liquor
business in dry territory, the law of reciprocity
as well as the law of self-preservation compels us
to fight. And that is just what we propose to do.
Local option has been made a farce. Every liquor
dealer, liquor drinker and liquor organ has grown
to be a noisy and pestiferous local optionist.”
Let sensible people learn that the only cure for
the liquor traffic is not “regulation,” but extermi
nation.
Justice to Mr. Rockefeller.
When a man gets to be known as “the richest
man in the world” it is only natural that newspa
pers and the people that read the newspapers
should talk about him. And sometimes the para
grapher will turn a bright sentence at the rich
man’s expense. This is often done without any
form or semblance of ill will. But simple justice—
indeed, “common decency”—demands that these
criticisms do not deal with motives and character
without a cause.
Everybody knows that for years when it has been
announced that Mr. John D. Rockefeller has made
a large gift to education or any form of benevo
lence some paragrapher has felt called upon to re
mark: “Now watch the price of oil go up.”
But many times the price of oil did not go up.
Still the unthinking went on saying it. After Mr.
Rockefeller's recent magnificent gift of $32,000,000
to the work of the General Education Board, some
body remarked that the price of oil went up again.
But a thoughtful, honest man investigated and lo I
it was the price of crude oil that advanced. And as
the Standard Oil people are large buyers of crude
oil, this advance took many dollars out of Mr.
Rockefeller’s treasury.
Let justice be done though the heavens fall!
The writer used to meet Mr. and Mrs. Rockefel
ler and their son, John. D. Rockefeller, Jr., occa
sionally at their church in New York, and since
seeing their simple, unostentatious life and hear
ing the comments of their neighbors on their de
voted home and church life, he has never been pre
pared to relish the caustic criticisms of the secular
press concerning the great financier and philan
thropist.
We believe John D. Rockefeller loves God and
humanity.
The “Impossible” in Memphis.
Philosophy cannot explain it.
Humanly speaking, the impossible has been ac
complished in Memphis. But God, everybody knows,
was necessary to the wonderful achievement. The
greatest revival of religion, many believe, since the
days of the apostles, has stirred Memphis for four
solid months. Five thousand conversions have oc
curred. This—this in Memphis! the most “wide
open” town and the hardest to reach in spiritual
things, of any city in the South, except Rome
ridden New Orleans.
Beginning last October, under the auspices of the
Baptist churches, the meetings soon assumed such
wonderful proportions that George Cates, the
leader, was not allowed to leave at the end of his
engagement, and all evangelical denominations
united in a great union service at the Second Pres
byterian church, the largest in the city, and there
as the center of effort, day after* day, and night
after night, the mighty movement swept on, turn
ing the holiday season into a heavenly carnival of
soul-saving and consecration. Time and again,
when the meetings would be scheduled to close
other cities importuning Mr. Cates to come to
them —the great Memphis congregation would rise
with one voice and plead that the meetings go on.
Last Sunday night the papers stated that Mr.
Cates would preach his last sermon, but the five
thousand new converts, and the thousands of other
Christian workers who have been vitalized by the
meetings into active “soul-winners,” declared that
the revival spirit and work will continue until
the Great Day of Days!
Men and women of all classes have been “made
new*” by the meetings. The moralist and the lib
ertine, the gambler and the drunkard, the society
queen and the prostitute, the philosopher and the
atheist have all found God through Jesus Christ
and the miracle of regeneration, and when this
miracle has taken place, these men and women
have hastened —sometimes at mid-day and some
times at mid-night—and finding their friends and
companions in strongholds of iniquity and “pal
aces of sin,” have brought them to the house of
God where, “in a moment —in the twinkling of
an eye, ’ ’ they have walked by faith out of the night
of sin into ‘‘the marvelous light and liberty of the
children of God.”
Five thousand transformed like this in Memphis
alone, while all the regions round about the great
metropolis have felt the awakening influence of
this wonderful visitation of God.
And who is this man who has been used of God
so mightily in leading the most wonderful religious
revival that any city in America has ever known?
George Cates is just an earnest, honest preacher
of the Gospel who, like Paul, “comes among you
with all plainness of speech.” He talks little and
prays much; and when he does speak, he has one
supreme theme in a two-fold message: “Have
faith in God,” and the “atoning blood.” Over and
over again he declared that “the sinner, unrepent
ant and out of Christ, is lost in hell,” and he stress
es with awful zeal human responsibility in warning
the lost. But one thing stops the mouth of the
unbeliever: Under such preaching, and, especially,
under such praying, lagoons of stagnation, putrifi
cation and poison are bursting forth into spring's
of beauty and streams of blessing, and before such
triumphs of redeeming grace infidelity staggers into
a stammering hush.
Many of little faith, or none, believed such a
meeting in Memphis impossible. But as the Lon
don editor, who went to “investigate” the Welsh
revival, wrote: “There is but one explanation —
God!”
Matthew Cole.
A great benefactor of mankind passed away in
Newnan, Georgia, last week when Matthew Cole,
at the ripe old age of eighty-four, went to his re
ward. Through the greater part of his long and
beautiful life he had been a devout Christian, bless
ing all who knew him with his life and his means
of unselfish consecration.
The partner of his honored brother, R. D. Cole
(who yet survives him and is now eighty-six), in
building up the great manufacturing firm of R. D.
Cole and Company, he was worth much to the com
mercial life of the South; but his greatest benefac
tion was in giving to the world such a royal family
of sons —stalwart Christian business men —who
not only rise up to call their father blessed, but
who will bless the world more and more because of
the life their noble father lived before them. Such
a man as Matthew Cole does not die. His going
away is like the calm, sweet going down of the
evening sun to rise and shine again with new and
infinite brightness in the Paradise of God.
His funeral was conducted at the Central Bap
tist Church in Newnan, of which he was a devoted
member, and the tribute of his pastor, Dr. J. S.
Hardaway, was, in its beautiful truth and simplic
ity, an ideal portrayal of an ideal Christian life.
For a long time Matthew Cole, or “Uncle Matt,”
as everybody loved to call him, stood on the moun
tain height of faith and achievement, and then the
Redeemer, whom he loved and served so well, whis
pered to his listening ear: “Come up higher”
while the many who loved him “stood, gazing stead
fastly up into Heaven,” hearing his tender voice
calling to ns: “Live for God and follow me.”
