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VOL U7IE FIVE
NUJLVEiK EIGHT
JUBILEE OPENING WESLEY MEMORIAL
Great Institutional Church Building, Costing $200,000 and Seating 3000 People, Is Tor Work and Worship—Bishop
Candler Preaches Tirst Sermon—Lincoln McConnell Leads Tirst Be bib al Campaign.
HE greatest celebration day which any
church building in Southern Methodism
has yet known was last Sunday, April
10th, in Atlanta, Ga. It was the fifth
day—the day of culmination and climax
in the jubilee of exercises which marked
the opening of the great Wesley Memo
rial Institutional Church. For nearly a
decade the brave band of Mission Work-
T
ers who started as a mere handful, under the leader
ship of Lincoln McConnell, and who, under several
successive and successful pastorates has grown to
be a mighty power, has been looking forward to
this “far off, divine event,”
and doubtless the old
Home Guard felt like
mounting the stage-like
pulpit last Sunday in the
presence of the three thou
sand people gathered in
the beautiful, new audito
rium, and singing in the
good old Methodist way:
"This is the day we long
have sought,
And sighed because we
found it not.”
The Women Came First.
Os course —it was just
what ought to have been
done. The opening service
on Wednesday afternoon,
April 7th, was dedicated to
the women o f Atlanta
Methodism, for without
their help and inspiration
Wesley Memorial would be
yet only a dream. It was
an enthusiastic outpouring
o f consecrated h a n d
maidens of the Lord who
discussed ways and means
for making themselves
mean more as a Christian
force in the great metropolis.
At seven thirty o’clock Wednesday evening the
Atlanta Stewards Association followed with a rousing
meeting. Thursday evening was characterized by
an address from Rev. Frank Eakes, of Elberton, who
did such solid work as Wesley Memorial’s pastor
during the four years that “tried men’s souls.” Fri
day night was marked by a grand concert, the
music being furnished by a trained chorus of two
hundred voices, accompanied by an orchestra of
twenty-five wind and string instruments. Saturday
night the celebrating Wesleyans rested, tuning their
harps and voices for Sunday, the crowning day.
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ATLANTA, GA., APRIL 14. l? 10.
One of the happiest men in all the land was
Major R. J. Guinn, Superintendent of the Wesley
Memorial Sunday school, who, as chan man of the
Campaign Committee, has done so much to awaken
interest in this great enterprise, not only in Atlanta,
but all over Georgia.
Smiling at his side, his elongated form seeming
to tower taller than ever, and his face looking like
he had a corner on sunshine, was Rev. Frank Siler,
the behoved new pastor, who has come like so many
other leaders in Georgia to add to the long list of
North Carolinians, who are making themselves such
a power in the religious and educational life of the
WESLEY MEMORIAL INSTITUTIONAL CHURCH.
State. Pastor Frank Siler knows how to “do
things.”
It will be remembered that The Golden Age declar
ed editorially, some weeks ago, that whatever the
distinction of any man in any land, there was just
one man in all the land who ought to preach the
first sermon in the new Wesley Memorial Auditorium,
and that man was Bishop Warren A. Candler, who, as
Dr. John E. White, one time said of him, in intro
ducing the Bishop to his congregation at the Second
Baptist Church, “is to Georgia and the South what
Philips Brooks was to Boston and New England—
everybody’s Bishop.” For Wesley Memorial was born
in Bishop Candler’s head and heart.
The great Champion of orthodox Christianity must
indeed have been mellowed yet more for his task
as he saw before him his big-hearted philanthropist
brother, Asa G. Candler, whose paid-up subscription
of seventy five thousand dollars had compassed the
completion of the new building.
Fully three thousand people heard Bishop Candler’s
great sermon at the 11 o’clock hour on “Jacob’s Lad
der,” in which he expounded the declaration. “Let
this church be a place where men can find God.”
Lincoln McConnell Begins First Evangelistic Meeting.
And the climax of the fitness of things came at
“The wages of sin is
death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Je
sus Christ our Lord.”
Mr. McConnell said, he had selected this text be
cause the first part of it was the epitome of all that
sin has done and is doing in tne world; in spite of
beautiful coloring sin brings death. While the last
part of the text is the epitome of God’s efforts to
save men from sin and its consequences. This text
is the foundation on which the plan of salvation and
the church are built. With just enough of sparkling
wit to keep the great crowd awake, with an ava
lanche of logic and a wealth of heart-reaching pa
(Continued on Page 5.)
TWO DOLLARS !A YEAR.
FIVE CENTS A COPY.
the first great Sunday
night service, when Lin
coln McConnell, Evange
list, Chautauqua Orator,
and famous platform lead
er of the great West —
the man who had done the
“mud sill” work in the
launching of the Wesley
Memorial Enterprises,
stood before that vast con
gregation in that wonder
ful new auditorium and
preached the first sermon
in the first evangelistic
campaign held in the new
building. When the tall
westernized, Georgianized
Tennessean “stood up for
to read,” making his first
bow to that great army of
the Lord, six thousand
eyes beamed on him a
welcome fairer and sweet
er far than any returning
Roman Conqueror ever
knew on entering the
gates of the “Eternal
City.”
Mr. McConnell’s tex <■
was:
