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Echoes From North Georgia Conference
"By Feb. Nath Thompson.
ERHAPPS you first class Baptists and
conglomerations of other clever people
who take The Golden Age, wouldn’t
mind a word concerning this last session
of the North Georgia Conference.
In the first place we have enjoyed a
great year, great in souls converted,
great in church accessions, great in col
lections, great in general and special
P
Christian living; a large company of young men
called to the ministry. Many have volunteered for
mission work.
Next place, no cloud of any sort hung over the
Conference, not even the size of a man’s hand. No
dirty linen to wash, not even a cotton sox. When
every man’s name was called there rang out clear,
“Nothing against him.” Then, if Gainesville didn’t
sho take us in! They sent us cards and maps
and other all sorts of information; met us at the
train of special coaches, in buggies, hacks, omni
busses, red street cars, walking and all sorts of ways;
gave us all tickets, red tickets for carriages, white
tickets for street cars. Some of us country fellows,
in the excitement, left our valises on the train, and
got on the wrong shebang going up town, although
there were plenty committees to show us where
we were going. I think we all got where we were
meant. Everything welcomed m»; big folks, little
folks, rich folks, pore folks, white folks, colored
folks, the bad and the good. Every dog I saw wag
ged his tail of welcome. The only thing I noticed
off were the chickens in their crow and song. I be
lieve the Methodist preachers especially ought to
erect a monument and say, Here’s to the bones of
the many chickens that have been slain in our be
half. Have a rooster on the top pinnacle and four
hens on nests, setting at the corners.
How I do love to hear a Conference of Methodist
preachers sing! Go ’way back, pipe organ, and sit
down! Piano, roll yourself to one side. Listen,
folks, if you want to hear “sho’ nuff” singing.
Won’t it be a sight when the whole concern gets to
heaven and all join in? Talk about church houses!
The Warks of the Lord Jesus.
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our church! What a change there would be in our
home! What a change there would be in our city,
if today God’s people would resolve, “I will give
myself to nothing that displeases him; in every
walk of life I will do only those things that are
pleasing to my Father in heaven.” What a different
world it would be!
DAUNTLESS COURAGE.
There were also the marks that he exhibited of
that dauntless courage that characterized him in
the discharge of duty. He had critics by the thou
sands. They were of the severest order, but his
critics never stopped him in the discharge of his
duty. On that occasion when he had set his face
to go to Jerusalem and his brethren came about him
and told him that they were on to a plot that had
been set for him in Jerusalem; that they knew that
if he went there he would be imprisoned and per
haps killed, and pleading with him not to go; listen
at him. It takes a man filled with the Spirit of
God to say what he said, “I am ready not only to
be bound in Jerusalem, but am ready also to die
for the Lord Jesus.” As I bring my life up by
the side of that declaration, it fades into utter in
significance, in spite of the fact that I thought I
was a brave and courageous man. Will you bring
your life right squarely up to be measured by that
rod? Some of us cannot even go in the face of
the smallest personal consideration for duty’s sake,
much less give up our lives for our conviction. I
thank God in all the ages of the church there have
been men that would give their lives if need be foi
Jesus. How conspicuously they stand out and how
graciously they grace the pages of the history of
Ain’t Gainesville the people? That Methodist is a
beauty and will be a joy forever, if forever ain’t
too long.
I heard a son of Ananias say once that Copeland,
the Baptist preacher up there, was mostly wind.
All I have got to say is this: If wind can cut and
lift granite rock into such magnificent pile as that
First Baptist Church, then, oh, Lord, give us more
Rev. Windmills! Turn on the breeze in many a
flabby sail, on hill and vale, from sea to sea.
Bishop Hoss is a “whole team and driver thrown
in.” I have read after him for years and heard
him before, but that East Tenneseean was at his
best this year. Clear as a bell, sound as a dollar,
brilliant and fresh as the diamond dew drop on a
summer’s morning, and as sweet as the rose bud in
whose bosom it nestled. His morning talks were
intellectual and spiritual feasts. His presiding was
without a bobble, firm, fast and fair. His preaching
was glorious.
Dr. Kilgore’s Afternoon Lectures,
or sermons, were like Jacob’s ladder, touched both
earth and sky—we saw Jesus Christ incarnated in
history, philosophy, experience and in everything,
walking about the earth, ascending and descending
that ladder.
Want to tell you another thing, Governor Smith
wasn’t gone no where in his address on education.
For plain, practical horse sense lie “got there Eli.”
That talk of his will do lots of good through the
preachers of the Methodist Church of North Geor
gia.
Well, the Appointments.
That time to most of us is like hanging up your
stocking and the coming of Santa Claus. Maybe
all didn’t get what they expected, but no stocking
was empty. I know some preachers with nothing
in their sox but a hole.
As far as I could judge the appointments gave
more than usual satisfaction. I come to.mine with
enthusiasm to preach to this large and splendid body
of mountain boys and girls and help build shelter
♦for these and many more who want to come.
SS3 SSD
the church. During the Colonial days of old Vir
ginia, at a time when men were oftentimes perse
cuted, an old Baptist preacher was arrested for
preaching the Gospel as he believed it, and was put
in prison. But that did not stop him from preach
ing. God made a preacher of him and he must give
vent to that which beat and throbbed in his heart.
The people from the neighborhood would gather
about his prison cell and stand before the window,
which was enclosed with bars, and listen to him
as he preached the word of’God. Oftentimes as he
leaned against the bars and talked, he would forget
himself to the extent that he would gesture through
the bars, and his persecutors, who were always
watching, would slash his arms with sharp knives,
so that when he died and his hands were folded
over his breast, the people in the neighborhood
gathered around, seeing those marks of the Lord
Jesus, wept tears of sorrow such as are seldom
wrung from the eyes of man.
THE NEED OF MAN.
We do not know today what it means to be
courageous. We know nothing practically about
what it is to suffer for the right. We have drifted
upon a time when conviction to duty is a secondary
consideration. Even the church itself has drifted
from manhood into cowardice. It is hard to tell
today who will be the friend of tomorrow and who
the enemy. Shifting and changing is brought about
by every breath of air. We have come upon a time
when there is a lack of manhood and humanity in
the warp and woof of the church of Christ. I thank
God that the day is passed for men to be imprisoned
for the preaching of the Gospel. I thank God that
our civilization will not tolerate it. but let us not
imagine that, because conditions have changed there
is no need for the same fortitude, and let us not
The Golden Age for December 10, 1908.
imagine that there is not about us the same spirit
of persecution. It is just as hard for a man to be
a man today as it ever was in the history of the
world. Oh, for a baptism of the Pauline spirit! Oh,
for the coming upon the church, upon the ministry
and the diaconate, the Sunday school officer and
teacher, and all the rank and file of.the church, the
spirit of apostolic manhood. All of these men gave
their lives for the Gospel. None of them ever dared
to shirk duty. The very foundation of the church
is the grave of the martyr. The privileges we are
enjoying are the product of the manhood in the
ages past. And, oh. the shame of it, that after they
have wrought out for us and made possible the
glories of the church of Christ as we have it today,
that we in turn are not sufficiently grateful to do
our part in contending for the principles for which
(hey had to give up I heir lives.
THE PICTURE OF JESUS.
My brethren, I want to bring you face to face
with one picture, and if it does not put manhood in
you, then seek the grace of God in the forgiveness
of sin. If it does not put manhood in you then it is
because your sense of perception and conception is
so blurred by self-consciousness that you cannot see
it. It is a picture of the crucified Lord, who, though
he had done nothing to deserve death, who, though
His life had been one constant stream of blessing
to the world of need, though His hands were ever
outstretched to lift up a fallen woman, or to rebuke
a physical malady, or to drive the demons from
their stronghold, who, though His life, from the very
first of His public ministry to the end of it, was one
of perpetual sacrifice in the cause of needy souls,
hung upon the cross, for the good that lie had done.
Crucified, first of all. that we, through His cruci
fixion, might have entrance info the heart of God.
Crucified in the next place that wo might see the
type of manhood that the world and the kingdom
must have it the cause of Jesus is ever planted on
the face of the earth. We have not planted it yet.
When it is planted all the ends of the earth will
bow the knee and acknowledge II in as Lord and
King.
It is said of Francis of Assisi that he became
so interested in the crucifixion cf Jesus that he
read everything he c'oul.l upon the subject, and his
mind became so engrossed that he thought of noth
ing else, and he finally passed into a trance when
the world with all its attractions and allurements
faded from his sght. and he could see nothing but
the hanging Christ and his dripping blood. When
this holy man of holy nr d tali; n aroused from that
trance, he had all the blood marks of Jesus in the
five points that eharaet'r*zed the bleeding of the
Son of God; upon the palms cf his hands, and the
soles of his feet ami over his heart, there were the
stigmata of Jesus Christ. So absorbed did his mind
become that it produced actual physical change
upon his physical body.
Oh, my brethren, when you and 1 get down at the
foot of the cross and shut the whole world out with
its allurements, attractions, ambitions, its criticisms
and its carping; when we get down there and look
into the face of Jesus, the Son of God. our Savior
ami our Pattern, we will come away, probably not
with the actual blood upon our bodies, but we will
come away with the actual sign of a conquered life
and the mastered spirit that the world needs today
that it may get a vision of the Christ of God.
S» &•
FOR THE BOYS.
A North Carolina farmer, one morning recently,
told his little son that he could go to town and see
the circus or he would pay h'm fiftv cents a hun
dred for all the cotton he could pit' I ’. The little
fellow, being cf a Hockefo!ler turn of mind, readily
agreed to pick cotton. Besides earning fifty-three
cents, he found a gold mine, which will probably
make him rich.
Two lumbermen of Oil City. Pa., recently took a
day off and went rabbit hunting. While trailing a
rabbit they ran into a hole and digging their way
out unearthed a pot containing $25,000 in gold and
silver coin.
Moral —Never attend a circus. If you have no
cotton to pick, go rabbit hunting.
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