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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!