Newspaper Page Text
OUTHERN Baptists are coming in
to their own. A far-reaching awak
ening, a sublime world-conscious
ness and world vision and a holy
sense of divine obligation for a lost
world has seized upon her people.
The swaddling clothes of sectional
ism have been laid aside for the
habiliments of holy conflict.
______
World-enterprises are crowding the minds
and filling the hearts and hopes of the leaders,
while the great hosts, whenever assembled in
convention, quiver with the challenge of new
and larger endeavors.
We do not now raise the point as to the
forces which have brought about this awaken
ing. The denominational press and leaders, the
World Congress and many other agencies have
conspired to usher in the new and larger day.
We take up our pen to remark upon
the splendid, almost unmatched, presen
tation of the issues of this new and
larger day of Southern Baptists, which
have been given to the public recently
by two of our distinguished Southern
leaders. For it is but just to say that “The
Unique Message and Universal Mission of
Christianity,” by Doctor J. F. Love, Dallas,
Texas and “Missions and Modern Thought,”
by Doctor W. C. Carver, of the Louisville Sem
inary, represent the best missionary thought
which has come to the public, from any sec
tion of our country, in recent months. As the
latter book has had extended notice in these
columns it will suffice to call especial attention
to the masterly message of Doctor Love.
Its significance —As voicing the issues and
presenting the message and, in large part also,
the program of the new and larger day with
Southern Baptists and indeed, the Baptists of
America, this book is unique. In no way pur
porting to be theological, it is a distinct con
tribution to the practical theological thought
of the age. Without avowing the purpose to
write a treatise on comparative religions, the
author has succeeded in placing the public un
der manifest and manifold obligations for a
worthy and admirable contribution to this
phase of religious thought and life. And not
expressly aiming to produce a treatise on mis
sions, we doubt if a more thorough, more ele
gantly written, and a more vivid, impelling
HERE is a difference. The way
faring man, though a fool, may see
it, and he who runs may read it,
the signs of difference being so
plain.
I am speaking of towns and cit
ies, of localities. . You may not
have thought of it, but the differ
ences in towns and cities are quite
T
as great as the differences in people. And
this is not strange, it is quite natural. For
are not towns and cities made up of people,
people of all kinds and classes and conditions?
Sometimes one class or kind predominate in a
place, sometimes it is the other kind or class.
The predominating class is the controlling
class. This controlling class is the element
which gives to any particular place its char
acter. The control creates the atmosphere,
civil and moral, which the closely observant
man who travels soon learns to discern intui
tively The faces of people define not only
their characters individually, but likewise cob
lectively. . .
A. short time ago I was sitting in the lobby
of the hotel at Tuscaloosa reading an editorial
in the Commercial-Appeal of Memphis. It
had to do with the respective populations of
Southern cities, Atlanta and Memphis, in par*
A MESSAGE ON MISSIONS
THE REAL DTFTERENCE
The Golden Age for April 6, 1911.
message on world-missions has come to the
public : ;i some years than precisely this splen
did volume from this busy mission secretary.
Its thcught— (Chapter I.) Man is a religi
ous being; but (Chapter II.) his religious na
ture, like his physical nature, requires the
highest training and development which can
only be had by means of a divinely given rev
elation. The fact that all ethnic religions have
certain elements in common with Christianity
(Chapter III.) in no sense precludes Christian
ity from becoming the one religion for the en
tire human race (Chapter IV.), rather, when
we come to understand the real nature of these
ethnic faiths, and consider the intellectual
trend, the social needs and the natural and in
evitable impulse for religious conquest of the
race, this is the inexorable conclusion. Part
11. sets forth the seven unique phases and sav
ing elements of Christianity,—elements which
differentiate it from all the ethnic faiths and
which proclaim it and demonstrate it to be the
one saving religion of the race, —in seven
chapters as follows: Chapter I: “A self-verify
ing revelation from God, —the Old and the New
Testament scriptures;” Chapter IL: “A per
sonally revealed deity,—the doctrine of the in
carnation;” Chapter III: “Deity suffering on
behalf of humanity,—the doctrine of the atone
ment ;” Chapter IV: “The moral transforma
tion of the individual, —the doctrine of the
new birth;” Chapter V: “The Moral invigora
tion of the individual, —the doctrine of the
Holy Spirit;” Chapter VI: “Immortality dem
onstrated, —the resurrection of Jesus;” Chap
ter VII: “A rational futurity,—the Christian
doctrine of heaven and hell;” Chapter VIII:
“The conclusion.”
Its style— One of the truly remarkable
things about this book is its style. From the
first chapter to the last page, there is not a
dull, —we had almost said, a commonplace, ex
pression. In epigrammatic, pointed, livid, de
finitive axiomatical statement and in the finer
feeling for and the discriminative use of the
precise word, it is almost a model of choice
English. What could be more exquisite than
the following, which we quote at random:
“To speak of a man’s getting religion is to
misstate the case. Every ynan has religion,
and needs salvation.”
“Culture may cause a man to change his
ticular. Memphis was chagrined over the cen
sus report, and was violent in its attitude to
ward Atlanta, which, to me, was amusing.
Turning to a gentleman next to me I laugh
ingly commented on the editorial, to which he
replied:
“My friend, I was born and reared in the
state of Alabama, spending three years at the
University in this place. I am now a citizen
of Birmingham. I know both Memphis and
Atlanta, well, and was just recently in both
places. Birmingham, I believe, will eventually
be the largest of the three, but neither Mem
phis nor Birmingham will ever be the city At
lanta is. There is a difference” he said, lean
ing nearer to me, “and the difference is in the
people. Atlanta has an altogether different
class of people.”
And, so, there it is. Such was the comment
of an observant, thoughtful man; and his sum
ming up of the comparative situation is not
very far from correct. The difference is,
found to exist in the people; for, after all, a
city is what its people make of it.
Within the next week my business took me
to Memphis, thus giving me an opportunity to
test the criticism made by this man. Memphis
is a great city, commercially speaking, and
with its vast area of fertile territory and tim-
views of religion, but can not change his in
stinct for it. Men may outgrow ignorance, but
not their natures.”
“Those who have had no other book but na
ture, have no other gods but natural objects.”
Christianity is not mythology, that is an is
sue of the imagination; not philosophy, a prod
uct of human reason; not invention, a thing
wrought out after a human scheme or stumbled
upon by chance; nor an evolution, something
grown out of something else by the natural
laws of human progress; not a human achieve
ment and therefore, a human boast; it is a su
pernatural religion,— the religion of salvation.”
“The critical judgment of nineteen centur
ies has left His character unmarred and His
holy name vindicated. The pure eye of the
saintliest and suspicious eye of the irreligious
critic alike have failed to find a sin-spot on the
white garment of His immaculate righteous
ness.”
“No other god, to whom is attributed the
strength to protect himself, ever consented to
suffer in the stead of the sinful and helpless
humanity. It (the atonement of Christ) stands
a solitary pyramid on the plains of human his
tory.”
“Not the Christ living a life to be imitated,
but the Christ giving a life to be appropriated,
lets us into the blessing.”
“The one event (Christ’s death) transpired
on this side of the silent grave and within the
field of our sin and suffering, and compassed
the needs and experiences of this life within the
divine compassion; the other (the ressurrec
tion) was enacted within the confines of the
life beyond the grave and gives radiance to
the immortal hope. The two are inseparable
and bind life into one unbroken whole.”
“The Christian (who thinks of the heaven
which awaits him) may dream his fondest
dreams, indulge his largest hopes, nurse his
loftiest ambitions, think his highest thoughts
of goodness, beauty, love, holiness and happi
ness, and his most ravishing ideal will tame
and dull before the bright reality which awaits
him.”
But why quote further? The book may be
had through Fleming H. Revell Co. and should
be in every minister’s library, no matter what
his denominational connection may be.
Portales, New Mexico.
By Solon H. Bryan
her interests ought easily to be the leading city
of the South. But Memphis is, in a large
measure, what is generally spoken of as a “wide
open” city. And in this is found the differ
ence. Atlanta is not a “wide open” city.
There is room for improvement even in At
lanta, but Atlanta will not tolerate such disre
gard for law as I saw in Memphis. One
truth which every aspiring city should dis
cover, is that the most valuable asset a city
can possess in this age of mental quickening
and civic reform, is the asset of civic right
eousness as expressed in the observance and
enforcement of law. Thoughtful men with
children to train do not care to rear them in
an atmosphere of disregard for law, where dis
sipation is winked at, and where the civic ideal
is low. Many thousands of dollars are being
spent for advertising in the magazines by as
piring and ambitious cities, seeming not to un
derstand that a high ideal of civic righteous
ness, expressed in a due regard for law, is
possibly the best advertisement a citv can
have. Let us advertise the material advan
tages of our localities, but let us in practice
and precept keep the standard of civic right
eousness high.
In this exists the real differences in our cit
ies, not in their respective populations.
7
