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olden Age
’ SUCCESSOR TO RELIGIOUS EORU7I
Published Ebery Thursday by the Solden Age Publishing
Company (lot.)
OFFICES: LOWNDES ‘BUILDUdG, ATLANTA, GA.
WILLIAM D. UPSHAW - - - - Editor
MRS G. B. LINDSEY - - Managing Editor
LEN G BROUGHTON - ■ - Pulpit Editor
Price: $2 a '{ear
Ministers $1.50 per Year
In cases of foreign address fifty cents should be addea to cober
additional postage
Entered in the Post Office in Atlanta, Ga.
as second-class matter
The Passing of Rufus N. Rhodes.
General Rufus N. Rhodes, the heroic editor of The
Birmingham News, has been called to the great
majority. His greatness as a news-
Heroic paper genius was proven by his build-
Editor ing The Birmingham News from the
Who Swung untried sheet of the beginner into
Birmingham one of the most powerful newspapers
News Against in the South; and his greatness as a
Saloons man was shown by the fact that
Lays Down his paper stands like a rock wall
His Fearless against all forms of evil. When
Pen. the local battle against saloons was
launched in Birmingham tw r o years
ago, he swung his great paper into the fore front
of the conflict and royally helped to drive bar
rooms forever from the “Pittsburg of the South.”
Rufus N. Rhodes was no weakling. He didn’t
stand, hesitating, and say, like some editors: “I’m
afraid if I don’t advertise liquor, which is regarded
by the national government as a legitimate business,
I will be prosecuted.” But he did say: “My paper
shall not be used by the barbarous liquor traffic
as a channel through which they may reach and
debauch the citizenship of my state.”
He knew that the liquor traffic not only blights
every individual that comes under its power, but is
the shame and the menace of every government,
municipal and national, which offers it shelter
for the price of money that is dipped in blood.
And he made no compromise with the devilish
thing.
Would God there were more editors as brave
and true as the knightly Rufus N. Rhodes.
*Brenau Still Has "Th? ins.”
From morning’s dawn to the full sunburst of
“meridian splendor” Brenau has proven to the
world that it pays to have “twins” in
Pearce the most successful type of the educa
and tional family. The Lowrey brothers
Simmons and Berry at famous, delectable Blue
Will Keep Mountain; the Beeson brothers in the
The Standard startlingly successful “Meridian
High. College Idea,” and VanHoos and
Pearce in the “triumphal march” of
Brenau —all speak the wisdom of strong personal
combinations in building and maintaining great pri
vate institutions of learning. And now President
H. J. Pearce, who has been the “quiet man of power,”
in building Brenau College and Conservatory for
years finds even thus early that it is not good
for an educator to be alone in the furtherance of his
plans, and although that genial genius of school
builders, Professor A. W. VanHoos, “laid down his
lines” since the opening of the present college year,
President Pearce has succeeded already in forming
just about the strongest combination which he could
possibly have made in the South. The highly suc
cessful administration of President T. J. Simmons
at Shorter College, Rome, Ga., for a dozen years
and the wide reputation of Mrs. Simmons as a musi
cal master gives shining assurance of what their
acquisition will mean to the fame and efficiency of
Brenau. The massing of such gifts under the banner
of one institution is an event of commanding inter
est in the educational world.
The Golden Age For January 27, 1910.
SHORTER’S NE W PR&SWENT
The program of the Caesars is to be reversed.
In olden times Romans invaded and conquered Brit
tain —but now Brittain is to invade
It Will Be and capture Rome. Hard upon the
A Case of announcement that President Sim-
“Great Britain” mons of Shorter College would go
Capturing to Brenau, comes the significant
Rome. news that Prof. M. Luther Brittain,
superintendent of the Public Schools
of Fulton (Atlanta) county has been elected Presi
dent of Shorter. We have no hesitancy in saying
that the trustees of Shorter College could not have
A PREACHER "DOWN IN THE MOUTH"
“If you get down in the mouth think of Jonah —
he came out.”
Thus the smile goes round, and
Overshadowed the optimistic wag preaches the doc-
By the trine of habitual good cheer and ever-
Shadow lasting hustle.
That “Makes A poor, pathetic preacher away up
Milwaukee in the city which a certain brand of
Famous.” beer made famous seems greatly in
need of that wholesome doctrine. It
is not the beer, of course, that has affected him;
but it is the spirit that makes the beer possible.
It is the dominance of that deviltry that demands
a “wide-open” town and refuses to record and pun
ish the crime which it encourages. It is the influ
ence of this surrounding sea of darkness that has
dispirited Rev. Edward Lewis, of Milwaukee, cloud
ing his faith and vision and making him feel that
the earth is going to the “bow-wows” and life is
hardly worth living.
Steady, Brother! If you were the only preacher of
righteousness in all of Milwaukee’s three hundred
thousand, you would still have as much reason to
rejoice and believe in ultimate victory as Jonah had
at Nineveh, as Paul had at Athens, as John Knox
in Scotland, Carey in India, Judson in Burma, Moffatt
in Africa, Yates in China or John G. Payton in
the New Hebrides.
The greater the darkness around you the greater
opportunity you have to show what Faith, Hope,
Work and the wonders of Redemption will do. This
theme is such a vital one to the world’s best work
ers that we give large space this week to a glorious
and inspiring message from Lucian L. Knight in The
Atlanta Georgian:
“If the World is Growing Worse —Then Why?”
When a minister of the gospel reaches the
mildewed state of mind at which the Rev. Ed
ward Lewis, of Milwaukee, seems to have arrived
when he told his congregation on last Sunday
that the world was growing steadily worse,
it is time for him to question seriously his
fitness to continue in the pulpit; for unless
the clergyman has been grossly misrepresented
by his home press, the propei- course for him
to take is to surrender to some one of saner
temperament his office as a bearer of the good
news.
“Let us think for a moment upon the serious
implication which such a statement carries.
“If it be true that after nineteen centuries of
evangelistic effort, involving the expenditure of
millions of dollars, the sacrifice of countless
lives, the consecration of the world’s best schol
arship, and the galvanized activities of loyal and
devout believers the world over, it still remains
that Christianity at the commencement of the
twentieth century is losing ground—then the
prospect of ultimate success is only a phospho
rescence —a will-o’-the-wisp.
“If the watchman upon the walls can detect
no light on the horizon, how can the dweller
within the citadel be expected to see the dawn
in the east?
“If the general who plans the battle and heads
the column and says ‘Forward, march!’ gets
panic-stricken in front of the enemy, how can
the private soldier who looks to him for leader-
beaten it if they had looked the earth around.
Professor Brittain is an educator of ripe experi
ence, an author of note, a Christian without osten
tation, “a scholar and a gentleman.” As secretary
of the Education Commission of the Georgia Baptist
Convention, he occupies a position of honor and
influence in his own denomination ,while his golden
heart and his splendid equipoise of mind and man
ner make him universally popular with the masses
and the classes. We waft heartiest congratulations
to Shorter and her superb new President! Romans
will declare it a case of Great Brittain adding his
throne of hearts to Shorter’s Throne of Hills.
ership be expected to plunge into the iron grap
ple of death?
“The men who minister to us in sacred things
must lack neither the faith to discern nor the
courage to face what lies beyond.
“But is it true that the world is getting no
better?
“We live in an age of widespread publicity—
of newspaper activities which leave no item of
scandal undisclosed to the light of day; but
it does not follow from this process of journal
izing that the world is really growing worse. On
the contrary, the detective agencies which the
newspaper employs in the discovery of crime
tends to diminish rather than to increase the
amount of lawlessness; for as light advances
crime recedes.
“Os course the best of us are given to occa
sional moods of 'depression. The most san
guine temperaments at times £ield to doubts
and misgiving. The Tishbite himself
an exception to the rule; and when threatened
by an irate woman, the boldest character of
the Old Testament flung himself down under
a juniper tree and prayed to die. But the man
who in this enlightened age of the world refuses
to take note of the good which abounds upon
every hand and sees only the conquest and
carnival of wrong over right, of falsehood over
truth, of vice over virtue, is either a dyspeptic
whose liver is hopelessly diseased, or else he
puts no faith in the leavening power of the
gospel which he preaches.
“It is ofttimes the spectacles through which
we look that make the world appear to be dis
colored.
“We know little concerning the degree of
success which Dr. Lewis has attained as a min
ister, but his testimony gives no evidence of
abundant harvesting; and, perhaps, his failure
to realize his own ideals has to some extent
blurred his outlook upon the world. At any
rate, we commend to him the reasons —seven
in number —whjch Dr. Wilbur Chapman, the dis
tinguished evangelist, recently gave of why it
is that some ministers fail. Here they are:
“ T. Because preaching to them has become a
profession instead of a passion.
“ ‘2. Because they use the wrong method of ap
proach, by the door of the head rather than by
the heart.
“ ‘3. Because they have departed from the
Bible as authority.
“ ‘4. Because they have lost the evangelistic
note.
“ ‘5. Because they have lost the note of au
thority in the pulpit.
“ *6. Because they do not spend enough time
in devotional Bible study and private prayer.
“ ‘7. Because, even with all else, they are with
out loyalty to Christ.’
“Over against the doleful pessimism of the
Milwaukee preacher, The Georgian desires to
place the sunny optimism of the grand old divine
of Manchester, England, Dr. Alexander Maclaren.
Some one twitted him with the slow progress
which Christianity was making. ‘Ah,’ said he,
‘it is true; but think how glorious will be the
noontide when the dawn has lasted for nineteen
hundred years!”’
