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VOLUME FIVE
NUTIVEE ELEVEN
JOHN STR A TON ALWA TS A WINNER
From School "Boy Triumphs to Present Day Victories Young Baltimore Pastor Climbs On Without a Break
—Pluck Plates Pathteay.
Ry His Mercer Schoolmate, William D. Up shall', Editor.
E IS THE luckiest mortal that ever came
down the pike!” But this enthusiastic
comment of the Mercer boys on John
Roach Straton’s unbroken chain of col
lege successes only announced results
—it did not tell of the dynamics that
produced them.
Acknowledging the rare order of
genius that hitched itself to John Strat-
H
on’s dynamo it might have been said: “He is the
pluckiest mortal that ever came down the pike”—
the Mercer pike at least.
Plowing through the rocks of financial hardship,
climbing the Alps of unremitting difficulties and
coining his passage money in the mint of his own
genius—for he was a home-made platform lecturer
at the tender age of seventeen —he entered Mercer
University at Macon, Ga., in the good year ’97.
Somehow, he seemed to bring a sort of oratorical
ozone with him. He put new life into the literary
societies by waking up the Ciceronian, of which he
was a member. He proceeded to win all the society
honors in sight. Then he won the Ready Speaker’s
medal —a ten minutes’ speech with ten minutes for
preparation. This trophy came by the skin of his
teeth —but he won —he always won!
Like Another Alexander.
And then the young forensic athlete sighed for
other worlds to conquer. He was close to John
Temple Graves in the organization of the “Georgia
Inter-Collegiate Oratorical Association”; led Mercer
into the compact and won for himself and Mercer
the state championship before a great audience in
Atlanta. And that wouldn’t do him. He got up a
debate with the State University and he and J. C.
Flannigan (now a coming young Georgia statesman)
walked off with the decision.
But that only whetted his teeth and sharpened his
appetite. He went straight on to Monteagle and
brought back to a wildly cheering student body the
oratorical championship of the colleges of the South.
After inaugurating what might be called “the
Augustan age” at Mercer, during which she won
nine successive victories in debate and oratory, it
was fitting that he should mount his well-earned
throne and reach the teacher’s hand of encourage
ment to his aspiring fellows who craved the ora
tor’s power and the victor’s crown.
“Galilean, Thou Hast Conquered!”
All these things were done by John Straton in the
stirring days when human ambition—a worthy one
withal —spread its golden wings and proudly soared
aloft.
But there came a day when some of us who had
prayed in love to see his brilliant young life mean
most to the world, found tears of gladness in our
eyes and anthems of gratitude in our hearts, while
THAT DELIGHTFUL SURPRISE-SEEPAGE FIVE.
ATLANTA. GA., MAY 5 1910.
JOHN ROACH STRATON.
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SEVENTH BAPTIST CHUPCH, BALTIMORE,
the whole student body who loved him and gloried in
his splendid powers looked on with warm approval—
and President P. D. Pollock —that beautiful soul who,
were we wearing crowns in America, would have
been crowned a king of men—smiled as only P. D.
Pollock could smile, and putting his arm around the
knightly student by whose side he had stood to cheer
in many an hour of triumph, said with the gentle
ness of a mother and the clinging tenderness of a
father and brother in one: “God bless you, Straton,
and help you to make a faithful minister of Christ
for whose glory Mercer stands.”
For John Straton, like many an ambitious student
at a Christian college, had breathed an atmosphere
so vital —so full of the breezes from Beulah Land,
that the prayers of his Christian mother and his
good old Scotch preacher-father (both gone home
to Heaven) began to call to his heart afresh; the
emptiness of mere earthly honors now and hereafter
tho’ he should cash an overdraft on the bank of
his imagination, suddenly flashed upon him, and fall
ing on his knees before the Christ and the cross
he cried in penitence and tears: “Galilean, Thou hast
conquered! ”
Nobody Has Wondered.
Os course, nobody has wondered that John Straton
has succeeded in the ministry. Having plunged head
long and weary from the dizzy castle of Doubt—hav
ing quaffed during his wanderings the cup of “higher
criticism” until he had found nothing but lees he
went from that mighty citadel of Texas orthodoxy,
Baylor University, to the very hotbed of unbelieving
devilment in Chicago.
While pastor of the Second Baptist Church under
the shadow of that blight where churches languish
and die because much Christless learning “hath made
them mad” “the young sprig from the South” proved
himself a stalwart oak amid the beating storm.
Footprints of Fuller and Dixon.
Coming to the Seventh Baptist Church in Baltimore
nearly two years ago, young Straton (whom some
college, I believe, has daubed with an empty D. D.j
has walked worthily in the footprints of such men
as Richard Fuller and A. C. Dixon. The great old
church, meeting in its white marble temple of Gothic
beauty, has taken on new life. The auditorium is
crowded. Nearly two hundred members have been
added, and the chivalric, eloquent pastor who be
lieves in plenty of gasoline In the automobile which
his church gave him, plenty of printer’s ink on the
street corners, in the hotels and in the newspapers,
plenty of “knee work” (as Lonnie Warren calls it)
in ministering to the sick and in talking to God—
this vigorous and victorious young pastor is preach
ing the “old-time” gospel to hungry, eager throngs,
who are attracted, not only by pulpit eloquence, but
(Continued on Page 8.)
EWO DOLLAKS YEAE.
FIVE CENIS A COPY.
