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ECHOES EROJYNORTH GEORGIA CONFERENCE
Mar bin Williams, Er stlvhile Platform Star, Gibes 'Breezy Write-Up of the Methodist Gathering at Athens.
ROM THE Hoss Meetin’ to Bishop
Kilgo’s climax —won’t that be a gaunt
let to run? And Brother Marvin, here,
is going to run it for The Golden Age—
next issue.” Thus spoke my old chum,
Editor Will D. Upshaw, as he stood
talking with an almost Methodist lick
to a group of circuit riders.
And it is almost half an education to
’ - ■ 1 "~~r
attend a session of an Annual Conference. If you
ever get a chance, you go!
It takes eighteen secretaries and fourteen treas
urers to keep up with the work of an Annual Confer
ence. It takes twenty-nine committees with mem
berships ranging from three to twenty-two, besides
a host of specials. The business goes on from 9:30
B
REV. MARVIN WILLIAMS,
Former "Platform Star”, Now a “Live
Wire” Preacher.
a. m. until late into the night, with scarcely a break,
though from Bishop to the humblest Saint of the Sad
dle-bags they do manage to get in “a powerful sight
of eatin’. ” It is an enormous machine of wonder
ful practical effectiveness. Needy missions in the
mountains, superannuated preachers, every preach
er’s widow or orphan child, every poor church that
needs help in building, even to every preacher’s dead
horse that needs replacing, every detail of church
work, however humble, is looked after with a fidelity
that overlooks not the slightest atom of demand. It
is marvelous.
But the one supreme spectacle that is unique and
without a parallel in the world is the hour when the
BISHOP KILGO CROWNS CALVARY—PAGE FOUR.
ATLANTA, GA., NOVEMBER 24, 1910.
Bishop reads out the marching orders for another
year.
It is an electric hour. The church is packed from
pit to dome and every auditor holds his breath; the
layman to hear “who’s to be our preacher next
year,” the preacher to hear his “shoulder arms,” and
go forth to new honors or new trials. No matter
which, one thing only is understood, it must be with
out a syllable of hesitance or one heart murmur
of dismay. It is heroism incarnate that must be the
very heart-throb of this soldier of the cross.
“Rawbone Valley, Simon Saddlebags.” It is hard
er than he had last year, and last year, Heaven
knows, was scant enough. But not a sigh breaks
the tense stillness. Brother Simon has long since
learned that nothing ever awaits him but the hard
est they can find. But he has found, too, that God
is ready to go with him though he make his bed on
the rocks. Two hundred and fifty dollars, including
home-knit socks and turnip greens. While you read
this, gentle reader, he is packing a faithful wife and
seven children in an old buggy, a small problem to
him, and setting out over the mountains to Rawbone
Valley. “High-steeple Avenue, Robustus Speakwell.”
Big lift for the young man, pays $500.00 more. I told
you he was a coming man, you must go up directly
and shake his hand. He always spoke well on Fri
day afternoons, I knew him when he was a boy. “Sub
urb street, U. R. Comingdown.” “Why that old man
used to preach at First Church, it will break his
heart.” No, it won’t, quite. The dread shadow of
superannuation is lifted for another year. He’s not
out yet. “Thank God,” he whispers, “I’ve got a place.”
Shoulder arms! Forward, march! And off marches
every soldier in a different direction, to love and
plead, to rebuke and exhort, to hope, to dare and if
needs be, to die!
Yes, whether you like the system or are wedded
to another, matters not. It is a thrilling spectacle.
You can’t behold it and not be ashamed at the
air-castles you have built out of mere little round
dollars. Doctor Lee’s Lectures.
Dr. Lee’s lectures on science and the Gospel were
one of the star features of the Conference. So many
people have an idea that a mere glance into a book
of sicence will make your faith curl up, and that a
mention of it in one’s sermon makes the Devil go up
and down sticking his head between his knees for
glee. But no one could hear Dr. Lee’s two splendid
lectures, specially arranged for the Conference by
its Board of Education, without feeling that here
was a great mind and a greater heart whose research
had only confirmed his hope and established his
faith. Each address culminated in devoted and rev
erent tribute to Christ the atonement and “the power
of His Resurrection.” There was no other note in
the whole Conference and again and again it rang
out, clear, resonant and true, as men who knew
Whom they had believed and you could hear Dr.
Lee’s shrill voice pitched high above the rest. There
was issue between Dr. Lee’s lectures and the Bish
op’s addresses as to how far the knowledge of the
Gospel could be deceived by the scientific method;
but what that knowledge was every one sang, prayed
and preached as Jesus Christ, crucified and resur
rected from the dead.
Dr. Lee in his first lecture said that for years men
of science had rested in the absolutest confidence
that the atom was the last absolute division of mat
ter —that you could not possibly divide a particle
further; that many scientists had imagined that by
varying arrangement of these atoms all matter and
its conduct could be accounted for. But the discov
ery of radium had jarred the scientific world. Ra
dium was composed of atoms that were breaking
down. These broken atoms were self-luminous. Now
gio x
jiil,
BISHOP A. W. WILSON,
The “Old Man Eloquent” of American
Methodism.
light travels at the rate of 180,000 miles per second,
so these constituent parts of the atom must be
revolving at the rate of 180,000 miles per second
within the atom. So, he affirmed, scientists had
reached the absolute conviction that all matter is
force working on ether making it into varying com
binations by the varying force employed. But mat
ter could not generate its own force and so scien
tists were brought face to face with God in every
particle of matter in the world as they had never
been before. This was the conclusion of the best
and greatest scientific minds today. God was never
so evident, never so inevitable.
(Continued on page 5.)
TWO DOLLARS S 9 YEAR.
FIVE CENTS A COPY.