Newspaper Page Text
2
English Paper Gives Stirring Story of Masterful Sermon by Spurgeon*s Successor at the Metropolitan Tabernacle.
(Note: Dr. Broughton’s sermon failing to
reach us in time we are filling his page this
week with a story of the work of his old North
Carolina colleague, Dr. A. C. Dixon.)
MERIC ANS and especially the peo
ple of his native Southland, will
always rejoice to hear good things
about A. C. Dixon. He is the one
luminous light in a most remark
ably gifted trio of brothers who
has stayed in the pulpit and been
true to the Book and the Blood.
In pastorates in four great
I
American cities —Baltimore, New York, Bos
ton and Chicago, he stood always as a Gibral
tar for orthodox Evangelical Christianty, and
when he went to be pastor of Spurgeon’s Tab
ernacle, London, we all rejoiced in the thought
that at last that great citadel of Bible loyalty
and victory would be manned by a man — a
man sun crowned, forceful, fearless and faith
ful —a preacher of towering gifts, unspoiled by
praise, untouched by the taint of heresy and
unbought and unbuyable, thank God, by greed
of gold or thirst for fame.
We have told in these columns how, accord
ing to English papers, he has been packing The
Metropolitan Tabernacle almost as in the days
of its illustrious founder.
We are reproducing now from “The Chris
tian World” the story of how Dr. Dixon has
gone beyond his own great pastorate and made
a conquest of that formidable body—that vari
colored theological complexity, The British
Baptist Union, and the Editorial following the
report of his sermon, shows that he made no
sacrifice of Truth in order to make the con
quest.
Dixon With The Golden Age “Launching
Party.”
Our grateful pleasure in the English victor
ies of A. C. Dixon is not diminished by the
memory that he was in the “launching party”
of The Golden Age— that he has been our all
time friend and occasional contributor, and
that he has promised us frequent echoes from
his labors in his now world-famous field. The
Christian World, telling of the meeting of the
Baptist Union at Cardiff, Wales, has the fol
lowing to say of Dr. Dixon’s sermon which
closed the session:
Sheep and the Shepherd.
The Session closed with a sermon by Dr. A.
C. Dixon. There had been such a crowding
in as the time approached that a stop had to
be put to the influx, and hundreds were turn
ed away. With no “preliminaries,” Dr. Dixon
at once plunged into the sermon. He treated
his text in the ingenious and fanciful way fam
iliar in American preachers of his school, but
the “red-veined humanity” of his practical
teaching, the illustrations which he introduced,
and the tremendous power of his delivery,
swept away all desire to criticize. As he warm
ed up, the swift outward sweep of his arms so
menaced the head of Dr. Ewing that he moved
his chair out of range. Dr. Dixon took his
text from Luke. He had been tempted, he said,
to preach on “The Fruits of Liberal Christian
ity,” because he saw so much of the fruits of
that tree in New England before he came over.
Then during the last few weeks he had been
tempted to preach on “The Origin of Life,”
because he thought he knew all about it. The
first chapter of Genesis gave them the facts,
though they might not conform to the facts of
certain scientific romances. He then thought
of a sermon on “Pure Evangelism: Its Mean
ing, Its Method and Its Utility,” but in the
truly noble address of Dr. Ewing, which had
stirred him to the depths of his heart, that had
been worthily dealt with. He therefore fell
back on the text in Luke xii:32, “Fear not, lit
tle flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure
to give you the Kingdom.” There were three
A. C. DIXON A T CARDIFF, WALES
The Golden Age for November 14, 1912.
worlds packed into that verse —the worlds of
the shepherd, father, and king, and the same
God was Shepherd, Father, and King. The
sheep were dependent upon the shepherd for
food, leadership, defence, everything. The
shepherd “led them beside the still waters” —■
that was rest in activity. Loyalty to Christ
was implicit in the idea. That was a good old
Baptist word. If Christ was leading to Dis
establishment, they must be loyal to Him; if He
was leading to prohibition of drink and purg
ing from gambling and impurity they must
follow Him.
“Ownership” and “Possession.”
They must be God’s possessions as well as
His ownership. There was a difference. He
owned at least ten good umbrellas in London,
but he did not possess one of them; he once
owned a first-class overcoat, but a gentleman
took it from his study, and carried it through
the audience —he still owned it, but he did not
possess it. He knew an old negro Christian
in the Southern States, where he himself was
born. He asked the negro one day if he did
not have temptations. “Oh, yes!” he said,
“but 'when they come I run to God and say,
“Father, look after your property, it is in
danger. ’ ’ Their citizenship was in heaven. God
pity the man who had no better citizenship
than that of England or America. The citizen
* A'
IF
wF
of heaven was a better citizen of Cardiff or
London. God’s ownership and good citizen
ship went together. Sheep went in flocks. The
most lonely thing he ever saw was a solitary
sheep on a mountain side; the next most soli
tary thing was a lonely Christian who would
not join the Church, but tried to kindle the
fire with one piece of coal and one stick. If
they were to do anything for God there must
be more than herding together—there must be
fellowship and co-operation. Democracy was
the hope and menace of the age. It was the
hope if it referred to a democratic theocracy
with Christ at the head; it was the menace if
it rotted to a democratic anarchy in which lib
erty degenerated into license. The sheep’s
greatest need was courage. Sheep were cow
ards and foolish. They got so frightened that
they could not run, or if they ran they ran into
some fence-corner where the enemy could catch
them. The courage of the sheep was not to fight,
but to follow, to trust, to defend, which was a
higher form of courage. He had a friend in
the States who preached on “The Divinity of
DR. A. C. DIXON.
Humanity,” but he so far forgot himself in the
heat of political conflict that next Sunday he
preached on “The Deviltry of Tammany Hall.”
“I,” said Dr. Dixon, “know something about
the deviltry of humanity. I have lived in Chi
cago.” Humanity needed the divinity of
Christ. Weakness appeals to strength, and
noble strength responds to the appeal of weak
ness
“Frightened at Hell.”
“As a boy, he was not ashamed to say he
was frightened at hell. He read his Bible and
believed it; but he learned that Christ was.
made sin that w’e might be saved, and he fell
at the feet of Christ, and His omnipotence
linked with love had supported him ever since.
Christ had borne him lying limp upon His
shoulder, and what strength he had come to
him from that utter helplessness in absolute
dependence. It was God’s “good pleasure” to
give. He w r as no tradesman. He gave them
kingdoms and He had plenty left. He gave
them heaven now. The consciousness of pleas
ing God was heaven. This made all the differ
ence between leaders of men and prophets. The
leaders might be very useful men, but the
prophets, spurred forward by the desire to
please God, were the men who carried the race
forward on the lines of truest progress.
The Christian World Editorial.
The sermon by Dr. Dixon at the close of
Tuesday morning’s Session was a notable dem
onstration of preaching power. The pastor of
The Metropolitan Tabernacle, in a mischievous
spirit, started fears at the beginning that he
might be going to attack freedom of theological
or critical scholarship, or “go for” evolution
—his heartiest aversion. He soon dissipated
the fears, however, and for an hour held the
audience almost breathless with a most tender
discourse on the relation of the “sheep” to
the “shepherd.” He is a great “human”
warm-blooded, with the shrewdness and wit of
his countrymen. He had an irresistible spell
over the most powerful preachers of his denom
ination, and alternately wreathed their faces
with smiles and moved them to tears. He is
no rhetorician, consciously aiming at dramatic
effects, but he gets the effects by simple, nat
ural means, direct appeals to the common
heart. One story, of a hunted fawn saved by a
friend of his, who fought the dogs for twenty
minutes —“and, a year after, at his country
house, there was a beautiful deer, playing with
his children on the lawns —was so told that the
audience gave a general sigh of relief at the
denouement. We have had our differences with
Dr. Dixon, over matters on which Dr. Dixon
seemed to us, to be out-stepping the limits of
his knowledge and genius, but we rejoice to
recognize him as a born genius of the pulpit,
who, by cultivation of his heart and mind, and
sympathetic study of human nature, has cul
tured his genius to perfection. He is an in
valuable accession to the strength of the Brit
ish pulpit, and we most cordially wish him con
tinuing success at The Metropolitan Tabernacle.
GOOD, EASY CHRISTMAS MONEY
You Want Some Christmas Money?
All Right—We Have It For You
Write The Golden Age, Atlanta, Ga.,
and learn about our liberal opportunity
for raising a Christmas Club with the big
gest commission we have ever offered.
The paper is to be enlarged and beauti
fied soon, and it will be easier than ever to
“talk it” and spread it everywhere.
Boy or girl, man or woman, write us
about that Christmas money!