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Ihe Golden Age
(SUCCESSOR TO RELIGIOUS TORUJI)
Published Ebory Thursday by the Golden f%ge Publishing
Company (Inc.)
O111CES: LOWNDES VUILDINQ. S9TLANIA, GA.
WILLIS9M D. UPSHSfW. .... Editor
MRS. G. ». LINDSEY - - Managing Editor
LENG. 9ROUGHTON - Pulpit Editor
Price: $2.00 a Pear
Ministers $1.50 per Year.
tn eases of ferettu address fifty cents should he added to eober
additional postage.
Entered at the Post Office m Atlanta, Go.,
as second-class matter.
A jC ojfep
A Great Tearn.
It is difficult to express the feeling of enthusiasm
that yet abides when we think of
Wright
and
Covington
Yoked Together.
As leader of the prohibition forces on the floor
of the House and author of the House bill, respec
tively, “Seab” Wright and Judge “Lon” Coving
ton made a reputation almost as wide as the nation.
And now at a time when the work of the League is
needed in one sense w'orse than ever, the leadership
of these truly great men will give tone and dignity
to the work of enforcing the law. Judge Covington
is one of the keenest, strongest lawyers in the South,
and the very mention of his name as prosecuting
and “investigating” attorney will strike terror in
the camp of evil doers. Every prohibition state
needs just such a combination to make the law 7 vital
and victorious.
It goes without saying that Dr. J. C. Solomon and
J. B. Richards, who have carried on the work of the
League with patient and vigorous fidelity, have been
continued as superintendent and assistant. They
are the “Siamese Twins” of loyalty in the work in
which they have been so successful. The sky is
bright in Georgia. Let other states “go and do like
wise.”
His Mother's Bible.
It was a beautiful thing when Robert F. Maddox,
the new Mayor of Atlanta, elected to take his
oath of office by pressing his lips to the Bible which
his Christian mother had given him in his boy
hood. Such an act would have been fitting at any
time, but it seemed especially so in this instance,
because Mr. Maddox was the emergency candidate
of the awakened conscience of Atlanta where the
sacredness of the home and the purity of woman
hood had made the issue definite and desperate in
a campaign glorious and victorious. 0, these
mothers of ours and the Bible they have taught us
to love and honor! Without the two, hand in
hand,
“The world would soon to ruin go
And the sun forbear to shine.”
As was expected, such a mayor elected on such
an issue gave out the statement on assuming office
that every law on the statute books coming within
his jurisdiction must be enforced. This meant that
the prohibition law, so flagrantly defied for a few
months, would be carried out with that fidelity that
marks the enforcement of other laws. And now
you can just tell it —feel it —see it as you walk
through the streets of Atlanta. The motley
“cussing” crowds that used to gather around
certain street corners have moved on, or out—or
they have decided to be more decent, and help
build a great and beautiful city worthy of the
platform on which was elected the man who honors
his Mother’s Bible.
the recent action of the Georgia
Anti-Saloon League in electing
Hon. tSeaborn Wright as President
and Judge W. A. Covington as the
League’s Law and Order attorney.
The Golden Age for January 28, 1909.
We read in the Telegraph of January 17 an in
teresting story of the renwal of Breathitt county,
Kentucky, where a few years ago Judge Hargis
hired Curtis Jett and Tom White to kill the state’s
attorney, Mr. J. B. Marcum, in the court house at
Jackson. A feud between the Hargises, Caldwells
and Crocketts had kept the people of that region in
terror for half a century. Here a year or so ago
Beach Hargis shot and killed his father, who was
drunk and was making a murderous attack on the
younger man. All that has been changed. Mrs. J.
B. Marcum, the widow of the lawyer slain by the
feud power, has devoted her life to the establish
ment of law and order in Breathitt county. She has
prosecuted offenders. She has sued for damages.
She has carried her suits from court to couft and
when earthly courts have failed has appealed with
striking results to the court of heaven. A number
of the law breakers are in the penitentiary. Out of
those two have been guilty of murder. In the last
few years nearly a score have died violent deaths.
Os this number Judge Hargis died by the hand of
his own son. But the remnant of the people have
risen up and declared themselves at the call of a
brave woman. The result is peace and law and or
der in Jackson and Breathitt county.
This story suggests the propriety of saying some
thing about“( Law Enforcement.”
The feuds in the Kentucky mountains descended
from the unavoidable lawless conditions that pre
vailed during, and immediately after, the Civil
War. Feudism is not absolute lawlessness. The
feudists themselves have a law and they enforce it.
But it is the lowest grade of law. Its chief aim is
self-aggrandizement, and its only visible motive is
revenge, yet it is true, as Ed. the
saved from the Hargis Clan, says: “The feuds are
between factions; if one faction did not hold the
other faction in check there would be no limit to
the excesses of the unrestrained faction. That is
true of any country where anarchy has had rule for
awhile. ’ ’
But law is REASON. Law is RIGHT. God gave
to Mose§ a code which amplified, amended and cor
rected the laws that were in force in the civilized
nations of his times. God put His Great Seal upon
human laws and permeated them with divine au
thority. The laws of Moses survive in the Christ
ian world today, in two great systems, namely:
The Justinian Code and the English Common Law.
These differ from one another and from Moses’ Law
in the methods of administration, but there is no dif
ference in the Principles. Law is reason. Law is
right.
God has not followed up the giving of law, by in
structions about its administration. That, he has
left to the brains and the industry of men. The er
rors that are made in interpreting the will of God
in the laws in one place, are corrected by other men
in another place and thus the rulings of our courts
are approximating more and more the will of the
Supreme Law-Giver.
The laws of Georgia that forbid the pursuit of all
avocations of a business kind on Sunday, works of
charity and necessity excepted, are not to be sneered
at as “blue laws.” They are God’s law. Every
person that violates the state’s Sunday laws vio-
THE HOjIL FOR REV. A. J. HUGHES
When a young man with ordinary faculties of
mind and body determines to give his life and his
powers to his fellow men for the Lord’s sake, he
bars himself from accumulating worldly goods. We
all know and love two great men in our city. One
is a bishop, honored the world over, the other a
capitalist of great popularity and influence, who has
accumulated a vast fortune and won an exalted
place in the business world. These men are brothers.
The bishop may not be any better man than the
capitalist. We do not know about that, nor is that
question before us; nor are we concerned about
which has the best grade of mental gifts. But one
of these men in his youth gave himself to his di
vine Master and to his brethren in the service of the
gospel. The other, looking out on the world consid-
LA W ENFORCEMENT
lates God’s laws and commits sin. He comJmlts a
crime against the state and his own body in robbing
it of the rest that God intended it to have.
So the law against gaming is another instance in
which our laws are interpreting the will of God,
who said: “Thou shalt not covet*.”
So the law that prohibits the sale of liquor is car
rying out the will of God, who forbids murder, adul
tery, theft, lying and covetousness which are all the
constant fruits of drunkenness. Besides profanity,
blasphemy, desecration of the iSabbath and dishon
oring of parents. In fact, the whole decalogue is the
football of the drunken. And God tells us: Put no
stumbling block of occasion to fall in thy brother’s i
way. When we licensed the liquor traffic we were
doing that very thing. We were building the town
in blood. Prohibition put the state out of that busi
ness.
But how about the blind tigers? Whose duty is
it to remove these stumbling blocks? and so fulfill
the law of Christ? The governor has something to
do with it. The (Supreme Court and the Appellate
Court and the Attorney General are concerned in
the administration of this law. Thdn the judges,
solicitors, sheriffs and constables in all the trial
courts are directly charged with the enforcement of
this law. And then in the cities the police are
bound to enforce it. From the city council that ap
points the police commission to the newest patrol, or
even the latest supernumerary, every one is bound
by his oath of office to enforce that law. But a
mightier power than all these combined lies still
further out and that must be engaged to enforce the
law. That power is the PUBLIC WILL. That pow
er goes into the grand jury rooms and indicts of
fenders. It finds the evidence against transgress
ors. It inspires the verdicts of petit juries and
sends the guilty to their punishment. It is promul
gated through the columns of the newspapers and
thundered from every pulpit. If the public will is
for the enforcement of law, the problem is solved.
Then what is the duty of THE POWERS THAT BE
including the press and the pulpit ? Manifestly they
must -unite in calling out the public will for the
service of God and the salvation of the state.
An exchange describes the marshalling of all of
the forces enumerated above in order to enforce the
law in Wilmington, N. C. That is a seaport town,
yet Wilmington is dry. The other day in Atlanta
a loving daughter became alarmed at the continued
drunkenness of her father. She set to work to find
tiger and she found it and turned it over
to the police. And now one of our Greeks is pay
ing a city penalty for “keeping liquor on hand for
unlawful sale,” and is also under a bond to answer
before a higher court for the violation of the state
law, and the evidence of that girl convicts him.
Our law must be enforced, and all must help.
Every preacher should make his pulpit ring with
the duties of voters and jurors and witnesses. This
thing is everybody’s duty. And everybody must
help. The next victim of the blind tiger may be
your son or mine. Who knows? It may be your
daughter, or sister, or mother. Do you know that it
will not? Then lend a helping hand to save a
neighbor’s child.
(egg
ered how he might contribute to the enjoyment of
his fellow men in away that would be harmless to
them and profitable to himself. All men can not be
preachers. God needs business men. Both have
succeeded, but the bishop is comparatively poor, ?
while the other is one of the rich men of our coun
try. These two are men of extraordinary natural
gifts. Few there will be, who will attain to so much 4
as they have done. But every youth must make a de
cision for his life as these men did, and in practi
cally every case the man who gives himself to the J
work of the ministry of the Word deliberately for- a
sakes the paths of worldly gain. And the woman I
who becomes his wife turns her back upon a life of 1
ease.
Rev. A. J. Hughes, a man of devoted spirit, fine ]
