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The Golden Age
Published Ebery Thursday by the Golden Age Publishing
Company (Inc.)
OFTICES: AUSTELL “BUILDING. ATLANTA, GA.
WILLI A M D. UPS HA W - - - - Editor
MRS. WILLIAM D. UPSHAW - Associate Edi.or
MRS G. B. LINDSEY - - Managing Editor
LENG BROUGHTON - ■ - Pulpit Editor
Price: $2 a 'fear
Ministers $1.50 per Year
In cases of foreign address fifty cents should be added to cober
additional postage
Entered in the Post Office in Atlanta, Ga.
as second-class matter
"Spiritual Hooklvorm.”
It has remained for a North Carolina preacher—
erstwhile Virginian, when we first knew him a Ten
nesseean, and when we best
Rev. R. L. Motley knew him, a Georgian—to coin
Coins a Striking a phrase that must become a
New Phrase. classic in the religious world.
The editor had spoken to a
large and generous crowd on a recent Sunday after
noon at the Southern R. R. Y. M. C. A., Spencer, N.
C. The theme was, “Not Slothful in Business, Fer
vent in Spirit, Serving the Lord.” Now Spencer is
a twin town to Salisbury, where “we” were assisting
Pastor Motley in a series of meetings, and this good,
wide-awake little man was present. When the mes
sage was over Pastor Motley looked like he had just
had a vision of some deacons, maybe, and lay mem
bers he had known in Georgia, or possibly in North
Carolina, and then he said with wan, wayward
smile: “I have it —I have it —they are afflicted with
the spiritual hookworm.”
“Happy coinage,” I echoed, “that superb descrip
tion of a universal malady shall have a special edi
torial.”
And why not? Since the hookworm afflicts men in
the physical world, may it not be charged with
some of the “high crimes and misdemeanors” of the
religious world as well?
At the request of a busy editor, Mrs. B. W. Hatch
er, a gifted, consecrated woman in Pastor Motley’s
church, furnished the following:
The hookworm was discovered in 1838, and it
thrives largely among those of unwholesome envi
ronments, where God’s pure sunslight seldom falls.
Though it is said to begin its ravages in the mouth,
it often afflicts the entire system. For instance, when
you call upon an otherwise talkative brother to tes
tify for Christ and you see him become suddenly
' rigid and temporarily dumb, why the hookworm of
selfishness has afflicted his tongue. If he haply gets
a blessing, he keeps it to himself.
Why is it that church members are failing to
meet at the mid-week service, their pastors to
greet? Ah, the hookworm of laziness has got in
their feet.
But the little animal doesn’t cease with one or two
achievements; for, when the mission basket is pass
ed for an alms, the hookworm of stinginess is clinch
ing his palms; and the hand that oft spends a dime
for a drink holds a nickel from God’s treasury more
lightly tnan you’d think.
Why is it that Christians know so little of the
paslor’s sermon, that even the text is forgotten?
The spiritual hookworm of indifference has closed
the ears to God’s Word, and the mind feeds on
things material, hearing only the call of worldly
honor and money-making.
Some Christians never see the one thousand
blessings, that grow in the fields of opportunity,
where the roses of love and service send out their
holy fragrance, free for the taking. Why is this?
The little king of the eye, the optic nerve, which
opens and closes the windows of the soul, has been
dethroned by the hookworm of spiritual blindness.
Death, man, is upon thee
Watch for Satan’s sly dart,
....... , And drive this “spiritual hookworm”
From the depths of the heart.
The Golden Age for June 2, 1910.
AN EDITOR ’J 'SERMON to the CHURCH”
It is a wholesome sign indeed when a great secu
lar paper like The Atlanta Constitution feels called
upon to mount the pulpit
Constitution’s Clarion
Call in Behalf of
Neglected Negroes.
occasional discord on pro
hibition and put that discord into italics by contin
uing, like most other dailies, to soil its columns with
liquor advertisements, but it speaks with sage-like
wisdom and sound orthodoxy on the question of sav
ing ourselves and the negroes by giving them the
Gospel. The Constitution finds a text for its ring
ing sermon in the recent allotment of Bishops by the
Methodist Church, South, to Japan, Corea, Brazil,
Mexico, and other foreign countries, while no ap
pointment was made for work among the negroes.
This arraignment could have been made of other
denominations, of course, for, outside of a few
schools planted by the whites here and there, little
indeed is being done to really preach the pure, full
Gospel to the negroes at home. One should be done
and the other not left undone.
Referring to the effort to evangelize the heathen
and foreigner, The Constitution says:
“That is admirable! It is a scriptural injunction
that the Gospel of Christ should be carried to the
heathen. And, in this twentieth century, obedience
to the injunction harmonizes with the most conse
crated thought of our day.
“But—we look vainly throughout the allotments
for Bishops who are to minister to—more than
10,000,000 semi-heathen at our doors, the mass of
negro men, women and children who today consti
tute one of the greatest sources of potential menace
to the material and spiritual and physical welfare
of the Anglo-Saxon in the southern states.
“The plains and the jungles and the strands of for
eign nations offer an inviting field for evangeliza
tion.
“In America, at this moment, millions of negroes
are living in figurative jungles of ignorance, of actual
or passive immorality and criminality, of contempt
for or ignorance of law, of brooding resentment and
of fetichism to evil and superstition beside which
the darkness of Africa and China and South America
is as noonday.
“The test of missionary activity is—need!
“Where is need more tragic, more urgent, more
impelling than right here at our doors?
President Crenshalv.
Cox College, that splendid center of consecrated
culture in the beautiful Atlanta suburb of College
Park has treated the whole country to
a delightful surprise in the election of
Dr. William Crenshaw, of Atlanta and
College Park, as its new President. But
why a surprise? Just because nobody
was expecting it. As Dean of the
Atlanta Dental College, where he has
Cox
College
Makes
Fortunate
Selection.
done such magnificent work for many years, it was
supposed that Dr. Crenshaw was a fixture. But he
is in every way fitted for his new position. A high
toned Christian gentleman and cultured in things of
literature, science and art, Dr. Crenshaw will bring
to his new position a blending of high reputation
and conspicuous ability, while Mrs. Crenshaw (for
merly Miss Mamie Cox), who comes with him back
to her long-cherished work, will help her gifted hus
band to add new laurels and achievements to this
honored institution.
A Noble Woman Gone.
The mystery of death is sadly augmented when a
consecrated preacher loses a faithful wife —one who
has been his helpmeet indeed in every good word
and work.
This is the “crown of sorrow” that comes now to
Pastor John A. Barnard of the Tabernacle Baptist
and preach a sermon on
evangelism to the church.
That paper may sound an
“These people are not far off, their salvation is
not abstract or academic.
“Reach out a hand, and you touch one. Every
day they come in contact with your family. Momen
tarily they shape or distort our own civilization.
“They have their own preachers and teachers, it
may be said.
“The excuse is a travesty! The average—not the
exceptional—negro preacher and teacher* is more
blind than his followers. Eyes sealed, often with
vice, often with superstition and prejudice, they at
tempt to lead through the intricacies of history’s
most complicated era, followers whose vision is
equally blurred.
“Why does not the great militant Methodist
church—and others as well —more vitally recognize
this illimitable, appealing field?
“The churches are the sponsors of civilization, the
mainstays of civilization.
“How do they discharge their functions when they
virtually neglect a horde of semi-barbarians within
call of their altars?
"How do they reconcile strenuous activity abroad
with quiescence at home, while millions of a child
race yet in the twilight of the jungle complicate the
lawless and primitive impulses of jungle-land with
the vices and criminality of the white man?
The darkest shadow that sits upon our destiny to
day is the menace of the creeping outlawry, the en
croaching disease, the intruding vices of this race
so inextricably imbedded in our social structure.”
Verily, as The Constitution says: “The test of
missionary activity is—NEED.” And while the ne
groes have preachers at every “cross roads” and
while we do not enter at all into the wholesale
charge of some blind WHITE HEATHEN that “no
negro preacher can be trusted” the sad fact re
mains that, upon the whole, the negro masses need
to be saved from their preachers. We rejoice and
thank God that here and there can be found negro
preachers like Walker, of Augusta, and Carter and
Bryant and Jackson, and Proctor, of Atlanta, ana
others who stand with them who give as much evi
dence of love for God and loyalty to His cause as
any white man in the cities where they live, but
these brave, true men reach out their hands in
pleading supplication for the Gospel-uplift of their
race. Hear it people—if the real Gospel of Christ
doesn’t save the negro NOTHING WlLL—and in His
name let us save ourselves and our neighbors by
giving this Gospel to the negro at our doors.
SSS
Church, Valdosta, Ga. Only a few months ago she
went to that splendid South Georgia city full of hope
and purpose for her husband’s great new work. Now
she has been called to “rest from her labors,” while
he works in sorrow alone.
Some time we’ll “read the meaning of our tears —
and understand.”
In the beautiful cemetery at Cartersville, Ga., a
community so blessed by her consecrated labors
when her husband was the successful pastor there,
this good woman’s body sleeps—
“ All the heart’s wild longings ended —
All life’s wearying struggles past,
And the way-worn body resting
’Neath the sweet spring flowers at last.”
NOW IS THE TIME TO GET YOUR NAME ON
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' EVER MADE. SEND TODAY TO THE GOLDEN
AGE PUBLISHING COMPANY, No. 814 AUSTELL ''
ii BUILDING, ATLANTA, GA.
