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The Golden Age
(SUCCESSOR TO RELIGIOUS PORUN)
Published Ebery Thursday by the Golden fXge Publishing
Company (Inc.)
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WILLHXM D. UPSHfXW, - - - - Editor
A. E. RAMSAUR, ... Managing Editor
lemg. broughton - - - Pulpit Editor
HEN 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. No
advertisement will be accepted which we believe
would be hurtful to either the person or the purse
of our readers.
Conference Tor Education.
The Conference for Education in the South, which
will meet at Pinehurst, N. C., on the ninth of
April, will be another one of those notable gather
ings of educators and philanthropists whose annual
convocations for several years have meant so much
to the educational revival which this section is now
enjoying. The recent serious illness of Mr. Robert
C. Ogden, the great-hearted organizer of the north
ern part of the movement, has caused deep concern
among his friends everywhere, but it is joyously
expected that he will be able to attend and preside
as he always does with such grace and ability. His
has been the head and hand of a master, and his
personality is so strong and his spirit so beautiful
that he impresses all who come under his influence
with a sort of overpowering benediction.
It is well for the conference to meet again in
North Carolina, for that good state has led all
others perhaps in responding to that spirit of
progress which is at once the watch-word and the
pulse-beat of these builders of the nation.
Here Charles Duncan Mclver lived and dreamed
and taught and wrought —and died! It is the first
meeting since this great statesman-educator joined
the “choir invisible,” and whether in a great
memorial sendee or in private speech, on every side
we are sure his name will be mentioned in softness
of speech, in tenderness and tears. If the spirit
of Mclver rules the conference the sessions will
be inspiring and fruitful.
* M
The Mother and the Professor.
Dr. Charles A. Eaton, the stalwart and conse
crated pastor of Euclid Avenue Baptist church,
Cleveland, is authority for the statement that up
in Ohio there is a college where only one of the
faculty was a church member. Supposing that his
church-membership meant that he was a Christian
man, an anxious mother, sending her young son
to the institution, and feeling deeply concerned for
the moral and spiritual welfare of her boy, -wrote
the said professor as follows:
“Professor
“My Dear Sir: I am sending my youngest son
to your institution, and he will be in your class
room part of the time. I have heard that you are
a Christian man, and if you will look after my
boy’s spiritual welfare you will receive the abid
ing gratitude of an anxious mother’s heart.”
To which the professor replied as follows:
“My Dear Madam: The state pays me to teach
your son mathematics. There my responsibility
ends.”
That professor was a modernized mess — no other
term will describe him. True, the state paid him
to teach the boy mathematics, and had no right to
pay him to teach religion in any form. But the
The Golden Age for April 4, 1907.
state had no right to buy, nor had the teacher any
right to sell, his personal influence as a Christian
man either in the school-room or in his private
life.
The trouble was, he didn’t know the first princi
ple of real Christianity, or he could not have an
swered such a request from such a mother with such
careless cruelty.
“Am I my brother’s keeper?” was rebuked by
God when it fell from the lips of Cain; and its
modernized form, “Am I my student’s keeper?”
will be likewise rebuked here and hereafter when
uttered, or even thought, by the teacher who pock
ets his stipend and imagines his responsibility has
ended when equations have been sought and sines
and cosines have been explained in the school room.
“I do not teach Biology—l teach boys.” declared
Professor George W. Macon, of Mercer University,
in a great speech before a young people’s conven
tion at Rome. And when he uttered that sentence
you could hear the bell ring on earth and in
Heaven.
Mind or character —which? That is the question.
Which is worth more to society?
The picture of President J. C. Hardy going in
and out 'before nine hundred boys at the great A.
and M. College of Mississippi, yet with time al
ways, and heart and love enough, to be up every
morning at 6:30 for the sunrise prayer meeting,
and then staying through every after meeting in
the Y. M. C. A. services with his arm around some
penitent student, showing him the way of life—this
picture will live with, and inspire the writer till
life’s latest sun shall set. And a man who does
not feel that way toward his students —helping
them above and beyond the mental and material—
has no business in a school room.
* *
And Bainbridge!
We have ceased to wonder when a state like Ten
nessee “volunteers” to drive John Barleycorn to
the corner; when South Carolina unhorses the dis
pensary and calls for straightout prohibition in
stead; when Mississippi makes it Five Thousand
Dollars worth of crime for an express company to
deliver the liquid dynamite in counties that are
“dry”; or when plucky Lawrenceville stands on
tip-toe (while her sister towns admire, but fear
to follow), and fights, single-handed and alone, the
Liquor Association, express companv and lawyers
all, to a stammering hush and a withering finish —
all these wonderful things, we say, have ceased to
be wonderful in these high times of vigor and vic
tory, but the most wonderful thing in the line of
prohibition effort which we have heard of since
Columbus discovered America, is the news that
Bainbridge has gone “dry”!
We didn’t mean a bit of harm by this “wonder
ment,” but we cannot help saying: Who would
have thought it? Four years ago the writer spent
a few days in Bainbridge, companymg with as noble
a band of Christian men and women as the world
» affords; but the odds were so heavy in favor of
saloons that, humanly speaking, a man would have
been considered mentally unbalanced who would
have predicted so soon a majority of four hundred
against those defiant gateways to eternal darkness.
Might as well talk of Macon’s going dry, or
Louisville or Chicago almost, as to predict such a
thing of Bainbridge and Decatur county!
But several genuine revivals of religion came to
Bainbridge—and liquor and religion do not go to
gether, or stay together! And then the preachers
—those dear, brave fellows, who are warned by the
conservative to preach the “gauspille” and “keep
out of polities,” just would not keep either quiet
or still! And the women —God bless them —the
women on the altar of whose hearts the passion
against barrooms, like the fires of the vestal Vir
gins, is kept forever burning—the women, the wo
men prayed and worked and worked and prayed'
The men, young and old. were at last awakened,
and Bainbridge was redeemed!
The saloonkeepers—poor fellows—got generous,
scared or something—and closed up a few days
before the election just to give the people “a.taste
of prohibition,” and it tasted “so good” to the
wise and true of the town that they decided to or-
der it for breakfast, dinner and supper hereafter
midnight lunch and between meals!
Moral: And now there is hope for Albany—
or any other rum-cursed spot on earth!
Message Trom Wales,
Recently the Congregational church at Cam
berwell Green was crowded to the doors to hear
from the lips of the pastor. Rev. 'l*. Stephens, a
message from Evan Roberts.
Amid intense silence the message was read just
prior to the sermon, and created a profound and
deep impression.
It stated that if the Church of God in Wales
would advance she must know that the forces ot.
hell were against her, endeavoring to cheek in her
the deep workings of the Spirit of God. The dan
ger is, that if Wales will not advance, the enemy
will ultimately bring her lower than she has ever
been. The message proceeded:
“Therefore, steady. Wales! Steady and onward!
Stay not to think of defeat, because victory is
thine if thou wilt hut stretch out thy hands to
receive, and wield the power of the death of Christ,
as victory over principalities and powers. Ye
weary ones, hold on, faint not, for the forces of
hell cannot prevail against the Church of God.”
“There are three great powers at work in us
continually—the power of His blood to cleanse,
the power of His death to separate from sin, and
the power of His life to conquer. Then, these three
fold powers operating in ns, we need have no anx
iety as for ‘the power of service,’ because
through the blood we have the power of purity—
without which no other power is guaranteed as
coming from God.
“May God make Wales a victorious people
through the victory of the death of Christ. Let us
continue praying that the arm.of the Lord be re
vealed, and that a holy shout of victory shall echo
and re-echo throughout the valleys of Wales.”
•5 *
We deplore the increasing number of divorces
occurring in this country. We publish elsewhere in
this issue some startling statistics of the number
of divorces granted during the last twenty years;
but there are times when divorce should not he
refused. News dispatches tell of a ruling made by
a St. Louis judge recently in the matter of Green
against Green. Mr. Green sued for divorce from
his wife on the ground that she drank on an aver
age a case of beer per day. The judge refused the
decree on the ground that Green knew of his wife’s
appetite for beer before he married her. Maybe he
married her to reform her. A matrimonial reform
administration is usually a failure.
*
Helicon Hall, the home of Mr. Upton Sinclair’s
socialistic colony, was recently destroyed by fire.
That is a pity, w’e think. We may not have the
proper conception of the institution, but as we un
understand it, Mr. Sinclair had gathered together a
number of distinguished people, mostly writers, who
wanted to get away from some of the things that
made the rude outside world a distasteful place to
live. They worked the matter of living on the co
operative plan; taking it time about cooking, and
passing the hat when expense money was needed.
They could dress just as they pleased—wear one
suspender or none, go bareheaded or barefooted or
both; uncombed or not, as suited their sweet fancy.
It was something like a college mess-hall when it
came to the matter of food; the batter-cake was
the staple diet—but for this fact we might have ap
plied for admission ourselves. The co-operative
batter cake is a delusion and a snare, as we know
operative plan taking it time-about cooking, and
from our experiences at a college mess-hall. No in
stitution can last founded upon the battercake. We
are willing to back it to knock out anything in this
world, if it is persisted in long enough
* *
The "Best of Tlventy.
I congratulate you most heartily on the magnifi
cent paper you are making. Out of twenty period
icals which come to my study, I must declare The
Golden Age the richest and best of all.
“Douglas, Ga. a. D. Kendrick.”