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N all the realm of storm-tossed Alabama
there is not a saner, sounder, safer man
in the ministry than L. C. Dawson, of
Tuscaloosa, Ala. Indeed, if we should
widen the boundaries from ocean to
ocean, we doubt if Dawson’s superior
could be found as a preacher of wisdom,
prudence and love. For seventeen years
he has been pastor in the cultured city
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of Tuscaloosa, and so loyal and royal have his people
been that great churches in great cities with great
salaries have called him in vain.
Listen to him on “The Minister in Politics”:
There is great need for quiet and calm thought on
the subject of “The Minister in Politics.” It was
useless, or worse, to ask for it a judicial considera
tion during the struggle through which our State has
just passed. But now that the smoke of battle has
cleared away, maybe there are some who will care
fully w r eigh the words of one who was out of the
State during most of the last year, and who took
almost no part in the questions agitating our peo
ple during that period.
What I shall say is not a criticism of any man’s
action, nor a reply to any man’s written or spoken
words. It is merely an earnest effort to present a
matter of vast moment to the sober, second thought
of the people.
There are few laymen, and still fewer preachers,
who think it proper for the ministry to take part
in partisan politics. The minister has all the rights
that belong to other men, but, for the sake of the
people, has surrendered many things that by every
iu«.zk he has a right to claim. One of the things he
lays aside is active participation in personal and
party politics. Most preachers are, indeed, close stu
dents and keen observers of every po.xvical struggle
from neighborhood to nation; but few wish to get
in the battle, and nearly all desire to keep out. They
have no personal political ambition. Almost with
out exception they seek no office. The few who do
seek office usually do so under abnormal conditions,
and even then they offer for minor positions. They
have neither honor nor money to gain by the as
cendency of any man, party or clique. They some
times seek the preferment of a friend, but it is the
CLIPPINGS FROM THE CHINESE PRESS
Article Number Three.
Changsha (Hupeh)—Analysis of the 'Riots.
FEW days’ residence in the city has en
abled one to take stock and think out
some of the causes that have been at
work to produce the havoc that is visi
ble, dotted about in every quarter of the
city and in every suburb but one (the
east). There is much to learn from
various buildings that have not been de
stroyed, as well as from the different
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kinds of destruction which have been dealt out to
different classes of buildings. Three kinds of distinc
tion can now be clearly made: First, the diffeience
between the looting that occurred on the first night
of the riot and that of the two following days and
nights. Second, the difference between the treat
ment of property that foreigners had rented and that
which they had purchased. Third, the difference be
tween the treatment of foreign-style property in
which the Changsha gentry had monetary interest
and that in which they had none.
One compound only is left with the mark of merely
the Wednesday night riot; everything else that has
been destroyed has either been revisited or was vis
ited for the first time on the Thursday or Friday.
The Wesleyan Methodist Mission, in the Hai-ch’an-
Kai (Long West street), was, perhaps, the very first
mission to be attacked. The mob, after passing the
mission and insisting on its doors being opened, had
tasted the pleasure of hearing glass break and doors
smash at the Imperial Bank, a few doors away. Then,
paving forced open the doors, they made no attempt
THE PREACHER IN POLITICS
L. C. Date son, of Alabama, Defends the Minister-Citizen.
The Golden Age for August 11, 1910.
friend who gets what the office holds of honor, pay, or
opportunity for service. His name, and not the
preacher’s, lives in history. It is absurd, except for
campaign purposes, to charge these men with po
litical parsonry. Then, by a high sense of duty,
(mistaken duty, if one wishes to think so), they
are forced into a special campaign, they go into it
knowing that personally they have much to lose,
nothing to gain, and with a full knowledge of all its
consequences to themselves and to the people.
I have not recently examined the figures, but I am
approximately correct when I say that the average
salary of a Methodist preacher in Alabama is not
far from $250 per year. The Presbyterian pastor
gets something more, the Baptist something less.
This money comes at irregular and uncertain inter
vals and with it the pastor must maintain a credit
equal to that of his banker. Woe to the preacher
whose bills are unpaid. Those pastors whose sal
aries are larger, have charges that leave no time
for outside investments or plans to accumulate a
competency. The demands made by the pastoral
office of any given church practically consume all
the salary paid by that church, whatever it is. There
are not a dozen preachers in Alabama who will
escape actual want in old age, or when health fails
unless they are provided for by some other means
than their salaries afford. They all know this. It
is the one great dread of the preacher’s heart, that
after he can work no longer, he may be unable to
die. He does not expect to be cared for by any
body’s bequests. Men sometimes make provisions in
their wills for faithful family servants, for favorite
cats, dogs or horses, but a pastor is seldom remem
bered in the will even of those whose fortunes and
families he has helped to build. I have in my life
time known of one such case, but that will was con
tested. The preachers make no complaint at this
certainty of dire need, but in the face of present
necessity and approaching penury they are, as a
rule, the most cheerful set of men under the sun.
Sharing all the imperfections incident to human
nature, the average preacher’s life is in the main
unselfish and spent for the public good. Take it for
granted that his so-called political activity in a given
campaign is a mistake, yet he enters it for what he
believes to be the good of the people. And he does
to touch the treasure (which was very large), but
just returned to the mission and enjoyed themselves
for an hour or two.
If that mission alone had been attacked, the mob
might have earned all the epithets for destructive
ness that the English language possesses. They
acquitted themselves in away that would earn the
commendation of their teachers and masters in the
art of rioting, whoever these might be. But now,
when the compound is compared with all the other
looted places, the unfortunate missionaries get no
commiseration whatever. They are laughingly told
to realize how well off they are. The bookcases
show marks of fire and hatchet, but the books are
left with a mere shaking. The desks were smashed
up and burnt, but the private and mission cheque
books, ledgers, etc., which were in them are all safe
and sound. Pictures and ornaments, doors and win
dows and most of the chairs were thrown on the
bonfire, which the mob began to make in one of the
rooms, but which, for the sake of their companions
in the upper story, they transferred bodily, on the
carpet on which it had been kindled, to the lawn in
front. But the fabric of the house, as a whole, is
uninjured. So with the chapel; the lamps and all the
windows, most of the benches and all the ornamental
texts are done for, but the bwlding will be ready for
use again as soon as the new woodwork is painted.
In all other looted missions there is practically
nothing left to mend. Not only were the backs of
the books broken, the pages were torn up one by
so, knowing that personal abuse and not political
preference or pecuniary reward, awaits him. How
perfectly futile, therefore, the suggestion that the
pastor be whipped in or out of line by cutting off his;
salary. If the consideration of cash could move him
he would never have entered the ministry, or hav
ing entered, he would quickly leave it, finding it
barren of financial results.
However, who is to be the judge of where the
preacher’s duty begins and ends? Shall he first get
the opinions of the people before he speaks? If the
“Political Parson” is an object of contempt, what
term can be found to fittingly describe the sycophant
whose message is dictated by policy rather than by
conscience, whose object is to placate the people who
hold his purse rather than please the King who
holds his life? The temptation to please the people
is tremendously strong. The public is vastly more
in danger from that than from any supposed poli
tical activity on the pastor’s part. He, like others,
is made of flesh and blood —is intensely human. He
does not want to antagonize, alienate or anger. He
overlooks more than he condemns, is silent oftener
than he speaks, hoping that somehow things may
adjust themselves. The church has much to gain
by a prudent ministry, but the very salvation of the
world depends upon the pastor’s honesty and truth.
The pew should help him withstand this temptation,
for a man-fearing, time-serving ministry means the
settling down of a hopeless, starless night.
And who shall say to the pastor: “This is a for
bidden topic, for men differ about it? Preach the
Gospel”? Do men forget that the great preacher
who “determined to know nothing save Christ and
Him crucified,” ran the whole gamut of human ex
perience in his preaching, talked much of how men
should think, speak and act, applied that Gospel to
every line of human endeavor, asserted the domi
nancy of His Master over every motion of the will
and dealt with the finest minutiae of men’s public
and private lives? The preachers have no power,
and certainly desire none, to tell a man how he shall
vote, but if voting is a duty, what preacher has a
right to exempt that function from his teaching as
to the duty of men, especially when a question of
morals is involved in the vote?
one. In most cases the fragments of the buildings
that remain must be pulled down, and this even when
they have not been fired.
In other words, on Wednesday night there was a
hungry mob that had a grievance and had no recog
nized leader. On Thursday there were leaders, and
the program was distinctly marked out beforehand.
The stores of oil at the Standard and Asiatic Oil
Companies’ warehouses were not burned in situ; they
were taken with proper precautions, and were used
with deliberate effect in the sixteen different fires
that were kindled in as many different sites in or
around the city.
Next, there was a distinction made between prop
erty that had been rented and property that had
been purchased by foreigners. To understand this
distinction, it is necessary to recall a few of the
events of the past few years. It is doubtful whether
a single case of land purchased by missionaries or
merchants has been put through during those years
without some amount of friction. The Provincial
Assembly has gone to the extreme of officially adver
tising in the daily press a warning to land or house
holders not to sell to foreigners. They even particu
larized the neighborhood in which the officials pro
pose to make the Settlement as being one in which
there were to be no such sales. The Changsha hsien
has been using a special block for endorsing ordinary
deeds of sale between Chinese and Chinese, which
states that if the land mentioned in the deed be here
(Continued on Page 8.)
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