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T.he Golden Age
(SDLCZ.SSO* TO KtLIGIOUS JORUM)
Tnkliehed EPery Thursday by the Goldin Sigs Publishing
Company (Inc.)
OHICIS: LOWNDZ.S WILDING. ATLANTA. GA.
WILLI Si 'M D UPSHSiW .... Editor
MRS. G. 9. LINDSEY - - Managing Editor
LEN G. 9ROUGHION - - - Pulpit Editor
Price: S2OO a 'lear
Minister* i'.fo per Year.
teer ferett* utiiriji fifty eentt ehould be added M eebet
edditicttl potUtte.
t
Leltted ut the Teel Office m Hiiaeiee, Ge.,
tee leeeted- iuue mutter.
Our Nelv Sunday School Department.
We feel like our readers had a pleasant sur
prise last week when they turned to the elev
enth page of The Golden Age and found there
a clear, concise exposition of the Sunday
School lesson.
We have long wanted such a department,
and many of our subscribers have asked time
after time why we did not edit a page giving a
brief and comprehensive resume of the lessons.
The only reason we did not do so earlier was
because of lack of space and the further fact
that we found it so difficult to get a capable
person. But the way opened so beautifully
and so unexepectedly we are patting ourselves
on the back and rejoicing alternately over
the discovery and acquisition of our Sunday
School Department editor, Rev. B. Lacy Hoge,
of Charleston, S. C., Pastor of one of the oldest
churches in America.
For a number of years Mr. Hoge was a
prominent and successful lawyer in Roanoke,
Va., but tbe Spirit the Lord got hold of his
heart and the’’ one cltfar call to preach the gos
pel took possession of the man. About a doz
en years ago he entered the ministry. Pursu
ing his new vocation with the same zeal, earn
estness and enthusiasm that crowned the old
profession with success, he wields an influence
in the Church and community life that is far
reaching and permanent.
In handling the Sunday School lessons, his
legal poise enables him to draw terse and con
clusive reasonings, and set up the facts in pithy
sentences that appeal to the busy teachers who
have only a limited time for preparation. His
warm-hearted, ardent love for Christian Truth
then blends these facts together and sends
them out pulsing and throbbing with Divine
love.
We are glad to present to our Sunday School
workers such a clear headed, orthodox, conse
crated man as Beverly Lacy Hoge.
* *
"Neber Stop My Paper.”
The Golden Age, Atlanta, Ga.:
Please find enclosed money order for three
dollars. This pays up and renews for six
months. Never stop my paper; It will be im
possible to get along without my Sunday ser
mon, and am cheered and helped in so many
ways by our Golden Age. It is full of golden
thoughts on every page.
Success to you.
Sincerely,
e. McDonald.
Chadbourn, N. C.
M *
Everybody that has read it declares that Dr.
Broughton’s '‘Religion and Health” is the
greatest thing on the new health movement
that has yet been written. Order from the
Tabernacle book stall, care Baptist Tabernacle,
Atlanta, Ga.
4
HARVARD'S PRESIDENT ANUCK |
The pathos of this generation is the pitiful
Dr. Eliot Loses
Head and Heart
While “Blasting
At the Rock of
Ages.”
for blasting at the Rock of Ages!
Ordinarily these stunning stunts are perpe
trated by some young scholastic who is anxious
to impress the world with the fact that he is a
sort of theological or philosophical or scien
tific Herschel sweeping the intellectual and re
ligious firmament with a mighty telescope of
his own making and startling the world with
the discovery of some new star in the gloom
of Superstition’s Night. “E pluribus unum!”
But the latest feat of this kind comes not
from a young man flushed with newborn pride
over his clinging cluster of degrees, but from
an old man whose gray hairs call, not for
lightness of treatment, but for that solemnity
which comes from the veneration of age and
the sacredness of the theme under considera
tion.
Dr. Charles W. Eliot, so long the honored
President of hoary Harvard has startled the
world and saddened countless thousands of de
vout Christian hearts by his recent iconoclas
tic utterances concerning the verities of the
Christian religion.
Not content with compiling a list of books,
from which is omitted that dear old Book of
books which has been a Lamp to the feet and
a Light to the path of millions of the best
and wisest of earth, he spoke the other day in
an address before the Harvard Summer Theo
logical School these deadly, blighting words
concerning the “new religion” which he says
is coming to grip the world:
“It will not be bound by dogma or creed.
Its working will be simple, but its field of ac
tion limbless. Its discipline will be the devel
opment of godd will. It will at
tack all forms of evil ThCrc will be no sup
ernatural element. It will place no reliance on
anything but the laws of nature.”
Concerning this visionary platitude Lucian
L. Knight, chief editorial writer on The Atlan
ta Georgian, makes the following powerful
comment:
Alas!
If Dr. Eliot aroused the protest of the ortho
dox world when he omitted the Bible from his
list of books several weeks ago, what has he
done now?
From the rim of the frying pan we fear that
the great educator has leaped upon the live
coals.
We feel kindly toward Dr. Eliot. In the
realm of education he has held the rank of
prince imperial. He has been a power for
good. He has said and done many wise things
for which he deserves to be gratefully remem
bered.
But even the man who wrote the Book of
Proverbs was not proof against an occasional
slip; and, since relinquishing the reins of Har
vard, Dr. Eliot has apparently found it diffi
cult to keep his feet on the pavement.
Let us put what he says upon this subject
of a new religion under the microscope of
thought.
Os course, it is true that progress is the
watchword of the age. But does progress de
mand of us a surrender of the old oracles of
religion? We have been taught to believe
that the sacred Scriptures unfold to us the
truth of God; and, if truth be truth, why make
it something different?
Amid the restlessness of the times in which
we live, it is satisfying to know that there is
something which does not need to change and
which, in the very nature of things, can not
change—which is the same yesterday, today
and forever—Jehovah’s word of truth—the
Rock of Ages*
The Golden for August 5, 1909.
plight of some of those di
ciples of godless culture
who, missing the deepest
meaning of real education,
feel that their mission in life
is not complete until they
discover some “new trick”
Observe, if you please, what Dr. Eliot says
to the effect that this new religion is to con
tain no supernatural element.
For this is the contention upon which the
Bible must either stand or fall.
If the miraculous is to be eliminated, the
Book of Books becomes only a code of morals
—something like the Koran of Mohammed or
the ethics of Confucius. It is robbed of its
strength. It is shorn of its power. It is not
what humanity needs.
For once and for all, let us divest ourselves
of the idea that it makes against the truth of
Scripture to call it old-fashioned.
There are many old-fashioned things in this
world which we could never think of giving
up. It is an old-fashioned thing to love. It is
an old-fashioned thing to labor. Home is an
old-fashioned institution. The hills—the stars
—the great waters —the sunlight—these are all
old-fashioned.
But they can never be out of date because
they minister to our wellbeing.
And so with the Book of Books which the
critics are trying to pull to pieces.
It is an old-fashioned religion which the
world needs, because the ills which beset the
human race are old-fashioned ills.
Sin-sorrow—death—these are old-fashioned]
You will remember the words of Dickens in
describing the deathbed scene of Paul Dom
bey—
“The old, old fashion! The fashion that
came in with our first garments and that will
last unchanged until our race has run its course
and the wide firmament is rolled up like a
scroll—the old, old fashion —Death !”
Dr. Eliot tells us that the new religion will
be a skilled surgeon.
But he gives us no assurance that he will be
any improvement upon the Great Physician.
We can not give up the supernatural element
because in essence it requires us to give up the
Bible and we can not give up the Bible, Dr.
Eliot —even for you. It has been our pilot in
too many a storm. And, surely, if there be any
balm in Gilead, it is found in the pages of the
Old Book, whose leaves are for the healing of
the nations.
How true and beautiful, how rich and re
freshing to find such wholesome ringing ut
terance on the editorial page of one of our
great dailies! It ought to have a permanent
place in every scrap book and give complexion
evermore to every man’s code of feeling and
thinking.
One other empty, fatal utterance of Har
vard’s President Emeritus on the occasion
above referred to was this:
“In this new religion God will be so imma
nent that no intermediary will be needed.”
There it is. In the words of L. G. Brought
on, the great Atlanta preacher, speaking one
day in Brooklyn in a climax of impassioned
eloquence:
“They would climb the Mount of Calvary
and pull down the Cross of Christ.”
But Christ and His atoning Blood live on,
thank God, in the triumphs of redeeming
grace.
If you are behind on sub
scription to the Golden Age
and have not received a letter
explaining our special Sum
mer renewals, write us for our
Summer renewal price. If you
have received letter, make us
glad by renewing at once.
