The Golden age. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1906-1915, April 22, 1915, Page 6, Image 6
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HOSOEVER is born of God doth not
commit sin, for his seed remaineth in
him, and he can not sin because he is
born of God.” I John 3:9.
♦ * *
Every man who believes in revealed religion
should be willing, nay glad, to know and re
ceive its highest truth. The man who receives
that highest truth should be passionately anxi
ous to attain to its utmost fulness and realize
its divinest fact.
Here is an inspired statement which sums
up the ultimate facts of religion as a spiritual
experience—the possibility of bringing into the
soul a power which will give it personal and
complete victory over sin.
The lust for power is a world disease. There
is the lust for imperial power, which has en
gulfed the world in terrible war. There is the
lust for commercial and financial pow'er,
scarcely less terrible in its consequences than
war. There is also the lust for social power,
embodying the follies and selfishness of mis
guided generations, as there is, at last, the lust
for intellectual po-wer—“The sin by which the
angels fell?” It is all a power of the earth
earthy.
But there is a power after w T hich the soul
may thirst with boundless passion, and be ever
only more blameless as the flame of desire deep
ens in the candle socket of life. It is thirst
after that hidden power of the Spirit which
makes the soul likest unto God and arms it
against the destroyer, sin.
Two stages of the emergence and growth of
this power in the soul are indicated in our
Scripture text, namely, the stage of birth and
the stage of growth into spiritual consciousness
and activity. The sweetly simple theology of
the Book is, that when a soul is born of the
Spirit its sins are not only forgiven, but purged
Great Anti-Saloon League to Meet in Atlantic City
AM the sworn, eternal and uncompromis
ing enemy of the liquor traffic.” declared
Dr. William A. Sunday recently in Phila
delphia. His call to the men of that city
g
is the call of temperance workers everywhere to
the men and women of our country: “Stand by me,’’
he pleaded, "in my fight for your homes, your
families and your decency. The saloon is doomed;
the anti-saloon sentiment already holds the bal
ance of power in the United States. In God’s good
time we are going to sing ‘My Country, ’Tis of
Thee,’ and there wouldn’t be a saloon in it. We
might as well try to dam Niagara Falls with tooth
picks as to try to stem the great tide of temper
ance reform that is sweeping our country.”
The great American Anti-Saloon League Conven
tion, which is to be held in Atlantic City, New
Jersey, July 6th to 9th, is arousing much interest
throughout our land. The five hundred hotels of
that city are preparing for a vast army of not less
than twenty-five thousand temperance enthusiasts
who are expected to be present. Prof. E. O. Ex
ceil, the popular choir leader, will have charge of
the music. The Hon. John G. Woolley, Hon. Mal
colm R. Patterson, Major Dan Morgan Smith, Sam
Small and many other widely known men, will be
among the speakers. Encouraging reports are be
ing received almost every day of the progress of
prohibition.
The Alabama prohibition law becomes effective
July 1, 1915; and on January 1, 1916, Arkansas,
A BIRTH TO POWER
By Rev. H. M. Du Bose, D. D. Pastor First Methodist Church, Atlanta.
THE GOLDEN AGE
away. The stage which follows, being a life
out of that birth, is also one purged by the
Spirit, and therefore should be without sin.
The significant word, “seed,” which is here
given as the reason for the sinless faith of the
regenerated soul is none other than a name for
the life of the Spirit of God, which remains in
the soul both as the destroyer of sin and the
creator of righteousness. There are two Scrip
tures that recapitulate this doctrine of the
birth and life power of the Spirit-born. The
first is: “If we confess our sins he is faithful
and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse
us from all unrighteousness.” The other is:
“If we walk in the light as he is in the light,
we have felloAvship one with another, and the
blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from
all sin.” To escape sin, confession must be
made; to continually escape, the soul must walk
in the light of confession.
The Christian life begins in a birth to spir
itual power. This is the power of a renewed
mind. The new' brth is a. birth into new
thoughts. There is the story of the daughter
of a Scottish laird who. born in a home in
which there was only, coldness, wealth and
lack of love, went once to the home of a peas
ant, and finding there love and unselfishness
mixed with poverty, left her proud ancestral
home and went to live with the peasants. She
was happy there because she had learned to
think new thoughts of the life within.
A maximite shell has in it enough explosive
force to destroy a ship or raze a fort, but you
might pave the streets with maximite shells
and drive over them the most heavily loaded
wagons without danger. But when one of
them is fired from a cannon charged with two
hundred weight of powder its explosive power
is let loose.
It is so with the mind. When left to its
Idaho and lowa will have state-wide prohibition,
which will make a total of eighteen prohibition
states. On March Ist, Governor Hammond signed
the county option bill recently passed by the Min
nesota legislature. The law becomes effective im
mediately.
It is also cause for boundless gratitude that
prominent men once committed to the liquor inter
ests, are now seeing their duty with clearer vis
ion and are bravely working for a saloonless na
tion. Major Dan Morgan Smith, of Chicago, is
a notable illustration of this. Although never per
sonally addicted to the use of strong drink, yet he
was for several years the able general counsel of
the Model License League. He is now a zealous
advocate of temperance, and thus writes: “Argu
ments that once seemed so plausible have failed
me! for the foundation of my faith and the cor
ner-stone of my arguments was the failure of reg
ulation and the success of prohibition. My faith is
gone, and my corner-stone is displaced; my struc
ture has fallen, and it remains for me to help build
another, founded on a new faith, with a corner
stone as enduring as the truth, and that faith sha'l
be .called Temperance, and the corner-stone shall
be Annihilation. I shall never make another speech
in behalf of the Model License League. I am
through with the wet side. My intelligence insists
up it; my conscience demands it.” Major Smith
is now under contract with the National Anti-Sa
loon League as one of its regular national cam-
By Allan Sutherland.
selfish, fleshly ends it is menial and impotent.
Pleasure and commerce use it as a servant, but
when the power of the Holy Ghost enswathes
it, it becomes, in explosion, a dynamic that
shakes the world.
This is a birth into the power of renewed af
fections. A Mohammedan asked a Christian:
“Do you believe that Jesus can forgive sins,
and that he will forgive the sin of every one
who asks him?”
“I do,” was the Christian’s answer.
“Well, then,” returned the Mohammedan,
he will conquer the world, for he will finally
have the love of every heart.”
The crowning truth of the gospel life is not
only that it begins in a spiritual birth, but
that it continues forever in an experience of
spiritual power.
This life is the power of discernment against
sin. The world’s religious experience breaks
down at this point. Men and women do not
desire to know truly and convincingly what
is evil, as against what is true and good. Comr
promise is at the bottom of the world’s spirit
ual breakdown. The failure to know, the wish
not to know, is the manifest of tragic weak
ness. Self-imposed ignorance is the deadliest
of sins.
This life of conscious power in spiritual w r alk
is victory over sin. Can men live without sin?
If Christian men do not. so live, it is no proof
that such a life is not possible. If the soul
can accomplish one moment, one hour, with
out sin, then it may live whole days of such
consistency, ay, a. lifetime. It is the ideal, the
demand, of the gospel. The sum of all this is
the power of attained holiness. Is there not on
earth a perfect day for the disciple, that he
niav be as his Lord?
paign speakers. He recently made a great plea
for temperance before an audience of not less than
seven thousand in Texas. His first address in be
half of temperance was delivered at the Ohio State
Convention of the Anti-Saloon League. It wi 1
be recalled that five hundred and four thousand
votes were cast last fall in Ohio for prohibition
after only ninety days’ work This was the larg
est number of prohibition votes ever cast in any
one state.
Senator Albert B. Cummins, of lowa, who is
spoken of as a candidate for president on the Re
publican ticket, has announced his platform, in
which the fourth plank is: “The saloon must go!
Sobriety must be the rule of conduct for the fu
ture” He is the first man prominently considered
as a presidential possibility in a dominant party,
who has declared himself for nation-wide prohibi
tion.
With such leaders, with our hope in God, with
a great nation to be saved from the curse of rum.
surely we too should heed the command given
of old to Jushua: “Have I not commanded thee?
Be strong and of a good courage, be not afraid
neither be thou dismayed; for the Lord thy God
is with thee whithersoever thou goest.”
All persons shall be recognized as delegates who
are appointed by local church, Sunday school, Gid
eons. Young People’s Societies, Temperance Or
ganizations, W. C. T. U., Y. W. C. A., and Y. M.
(Continued on page 15.)
April 22, 1915