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The Golden Age
SUCCESSOR JO RELIGIOUS TO RUM
Published Ebery Thursday by the Golden Age Publishing
Company (Zm)
OHICES: LOWNDES BUILDING, ATLANTA, GA.
WILLIAM D. UPSHAW - - - - Editor
MRS G. S. LINDSEY - - Managing Editor
LEN G. BROUGHTON - - - Pulpit Editor
Price: $2 a Year
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In cases of foreign address fifty cents should be added to cober
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• Entered in the Post Office in Atlanta, Ga.
as second-class matter
c ouncQ
Judge Late son a "Sunday School "Boy. ”
It is a favorite saying of the editor of this paper
when making Sunday School talks to the childern, to
refer to the men present, es-
Eatonton’s “Grand pecially the old men, as “gray-
Old Man” Renews haired boys,” “long-bearded
His Youth in Chris- boys,” “bald headed boys,”
tian Activity. and the like, usually giv
ing the name of each “boy,”
much to the merriment of the real boys
and girls present. If he were at Eatonton,
Georgia, some Sunday morning he could point to a
grand old man past seventy years, who was one time
in the United States Congress and who could have
been Governor of Georgia if he had wanted to be,
and refer to him in the presence of the happy chil
dren as “Little Tommie Lawson.”
Sometime ago we asked a brother from Eatonton:
“How is our church down there getting on?”
“Oh, splendidly, splendidly!” was the answer.
‘What.about the Sunday School?”
“Finest on Fbcord!” came the enthusiastic, reply.
“Over three hundred on the roll —more than there
are members of the church! Isn’t it great?”
“That record is unusual,” was the glad comment,
“how did it come about?”
“Well, Judge Lawson took a Sunday School class,
and he put so much fire and soul into it that the
class began to grow and grow until it stirred the
whole community. Other classes began to grow.
Parents who ought to have been there all the time
became interested and came with their children,
while other families who had rarely gone to church,
and never to Sunday School before, came, parents
and children, and now the Sunday School is about
three times as large as it used to be.”
Three cheers and the doxology for “Little Tommie”
Lawson at Sunday School! We waft to him and the
great class he inspires every Sunday and all the
week between, the ardent, joyous wish that the New
Year will bear to them on its radiant bosom the best
that Heaven can give on earth —yes, and this other
wish—that his sensible, beautiful example will in
spire other “gray-haired boys” not to send but bring
all their boys and girls, young and old, to study
God’s Word at God’s house on God’s holy day. It will
make a better community—because those who fol
low Judge Lawson’s example will be better citizens
of the kingdom of men as well as the Kingdom of
God.
*
Griffin Grandly "Knocks’em Out."
Hurrah for Griffin! We feel like Tom Dixon’s
‘’Methodist John” at the soup house when he was
warned not to shout on pain of
Five Thousand getting no soup. But the spell of
Dollars License the testimony meeting took hold
and Near Beer of him and he shouted: “Soup
Saloons “Skidoo.” or no soup, I’m jest erbleeged to
holler —glory!”
Griffin, the progressive manufacturing city of Geor
gia, had had varying experiences with saloons. Be
fore state prohibition came she swung backward and
forward between saloons and no saloons, with pro
hibition on deck when Georgia went dry. Then the
lawless, carousing element walked in through the
“near beer” loophole and put up seven beer houses.
The inevitable pool-room flourished near by, and
The Golden Age for January 6, 1910.
A ’BATTLE ROYAL— tfeteW
Widespread interest has been awakened by the
announcement that certain prominent Christian men
of Georgia have challenged
Tom Watson
Challenged to
Meet William T.
Ellis in Debate on
Foreign Missions.
abroad at the request of prominent
business men to study the foreign mission question
with an open mind and report just what he found.
Since then, as the reading public know, William
T. Ellis has been a wise, enthusiastic advocate of
preaching the gospel in foreign lands.
In the event the challenge is accepted, it is
expected the debate will be held in Atlanta, in the
Auditorium-Armory, in a short while.
The challenge says:
“You, sir, are the only man of standing
known to us who openly criticises and antag
onizes foreign missions. Many persons have
been greatly surprised by your utterances
upon this subject. Believing you to be sin
cere and open-minded, and willing to defend
your views upon all proper occasions, we,
in behalf of the men of the church of your
own state of Georgia, desire to challenge
you to a public debate upon the proposition
to which you have so vigorously given your «
indorsement: ‘Resolved, That the foreign
missions, as at present conducted by the
Christian churches, is unwise, unnecessary
and fruitless.’ Any other phrasing of the
subject that would better express your well
known views would be acceptable to us.”
Mr. Watson says he is in favor of simply “pro
claiming” the gospel, but after that, and outside
of that, all missionary effort should cease.
It is just about the strangest thing in the world
that a man of Mr. Watson’s sense about many
things, who is now using the education which he
received (he openly confesses it) through the kind
ness of others, should acknowledge it to be right
for the Baptists and Methodists of Georgia
MRS. MARY E. BRYAN’S SORROW
Major Iredell E. Bryan is dead.
And our own brilliant and beloved Mary E. Bryan,
whose masterful pen has de-
Her Honored Con- lighted thousands for over fifty
sort of Half a Cen- years, is passing through the
tury Passes Away, deep w’aters.
His death last week in Clarks
ton, Georgia, removed an honored landmark in South
ern history. A brave officer in the Confederate Army,
and since then living among men with words of cheer
and deeds of kindness, his greatest service to hu
manity, after all, perhaps, was the love, loyalty and
encouragement he gave to his gifted wife, the work
of whose prolific pen has given her little less than
a national reputation. First on The Crusader, with
John H. Seals, then on a periodical in New Orleans,
then bidden by Col Seals to help him launch The
Sunny South, where she did such remarkable work
for years, then captured for a time by the famous
publisher, Munroe, to edit his magazines in New
York, and writing a number of stirring books between
good citizens looked on to see beer-drinking, carous
ing and idling mowing down the sons and fathers
of the city and especially making havoc among the
thousands of mill operatives.
The shame simply had to stop! And the city coun
cil —stalwart guardians of the peace and prosperity
of the community, with regnant conscience and the
backbone of real manhood, arose in their right and
might and put a city license of five thousand dollars
upon every near beer saloon. And they all shut up
shop.
There was some talk of all the beer sellers “pool
ing their interests” and putting up one great big sa
loon and paying the five thousand. But the council
Thomas E. Watson, the brilliant
belligerent, to meet William T.
Ellis, of Philadelphia, in a debate
on foreign missions. Mr. Ellis
is the newspaper man who went
build and sustain such Christian institutions’®!
Mercer University and Emory College for the train*!
ing of youth and leadership in this country, and yet
grow red in the face and vehemently declare that
we ought not to foster such institutions for the
training of Christian leadership in China and Japan.
It seems unutterably strange that Mr. Watson should
think it right to build hospitals in America to care
for the bodies and souls of men in the name
of Him who “went about doing good” and yet deny
the duty of Christianity to supplant the barbarous
practices of heathen doctors by the skill of the
Christian physician, thus opening the heart of the
suffering heathen and winning his soul to Christ.
Mr. Watson seems to forget the whole spirit of
Christianity when he takes the position that it is
wrong to help any black, brown or yellow man any
where as long as any self-blind Anglo-Saxon suffers
from ignorance or darkness in America.
The great trouble with Mr. Watson’s energies
against roreign missions is this: he does not make
any of his kind give more to home missions, and
has the tendency to dwarf the gifts of many toward
those who are suffering and dying in heathen
darkness.
Here is a truism which everybody knows and which
we believe Mr. Watson can verify around his own
door:
THOSE WHO GIVE TO FOREIGN MISSIONS
ALWAYS GIVE AT HOME, WHILE THOSE WHO
DENOUNCE FOREIGN MISSIONS SELDOM GIVE
AT HOME.
We grieve that a man of
powers dedicates them so
and L
He could ao so much to b/f
happiness—if he would.
Let the debate come cm!
far happier man when he seM|
way, and, honest,
powerful guns on his present position. He could be
such a stalwart champion of our conquering Chris
tianity wherever sin and suffering are found—in—
America, China, Japan and —
times, Mrs. Bryan came back to her beloved South
land, to whose literary fame she had contributed
since she was a girl of fifteen, to spend life’s even
ing in the mellow aftermath of past achievement,
present opportunity and future promise—as long as
God will lend her to the world. It seemed indeed
highly fitting that Mary E. Bryan should come back
to bless and brighten The Sunny South in its last
days and should now divide her time and labors be
tween its natural successors in the South, Uncle Re
mus’ Magazine in the monthly field, and The Golden
Age, as a weekly paper for the home.
In her departmental work on this paper and in the
magnificent story, “Hickory Hill Settlement,” now
running as a serial in The Golden Age, this wonderful
little woman, who, though near her three-score and
ten, yet dips her tireless pen in the fountain of youth,
has thrown her chains of gold about ten thousand
thousand hearts who now give back to her and her
sorrowing loved ones the best they have to give—
their prayerful sympathy and their unfailing love.
whispered around the answer: “All right—and then
we will make it ten thousand.”
Hurrah for Griffin! Let every other town in the
land, afflicted with the “near beer” outrage take cour
age from Griffin’s example and ACT!!!
Mississippi and Alabama have no near beer sa
loons, and if Georgia has the right kind of “grit in
her craw,” she will rise up and sweep them into the
sea.
Hurrah for plucky Griffin!
*
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