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" 9 ESTABLISHED lb. WChristianlndex FublHUel Every Tburiday By BELL At VAN NEBS Address Christian Indkx, Atlanta, Ga Organ of the Baptist Denomination tn Georgia. Subscription Prick: One copy, one year is.oo One copy, six months I.M About Oub Advbrtisbrs.—We propose Aereafter to very carefally Investigate our •advertisers. We shall exercise every care to Allow only reliable parties to use our col umns. Obituabibb.—One hundred words free of Bharge. For each extra word, one cent per word, cash with copy. TO COB.RBSPONDBNTS—Do not use abbrevi ations; be extra careful tn writing proper names; write with Ink, on one side of paper. Do not write copy Intended for the editor and business items on same sheet. Leave off personalities, condense. Business.—Write all names, and post Offices distinctly. In ordering a change give the old as well as the new address. The date of label indicates the time your subscription Expires. If you do not wish It continued, or der It stopped a week before. We consider Each subscriber permanent nntil he orders Als paper discontinued. When you order It stopped pay up to date. Remittances by registered letter, money order, postal note -THE CONFLICT WITH EVIL. Having thus surveyed the vari ous joys and satisfactions which mav make civilized life happy for multitudes upon multitudes of our race, 1 hasten to adn.it that there are physical and moral ovils in this world which impair or interrupt earthly happiness. The worst of the physical evils are lingering diseases and un timely deaths. I admit, too, that not a few men do, as a matter of fact, lead lives not wor+h living. I admit, also, that there are dreadful, as well as pleasing, sights and sounds in this world, and that many seemingly •cruel catastrophes and de structions mark the course of nature. Biological science has lately impressed many people with the prevalence of cruelty ami mutual destruction in the animal and vegetable world. From man down, tlm creatures live by preying on each other. Insidious parasites infest all kinds of plants and animals. Every living thing seems to have its mortal foe. The very ants go to war, for all the world like men. and Venus’ flytrap (Dionaea) is as cruel as a spider. So human society is and wrongs, some, like Armenian massacres, due to surviving sav agery, and some, like slums, to sickly civilization. It would seem impossible to wring satis faction and thoughtful happiness from such evils; yet that is just what men of noble natures are constantly doing. They fight evil, and from the contest win content and even joy. Nobody has any right to find life uninter esting or unrewarding, who sees within the sphere of his own ac tivity a wrong he can help to remedy, or within himself an evil he can hope to overcome. It should be observed that the in animate creation does not lend it self, like the animate creation, to the theory that for every good in nature there is an equivalent evil, and for every beautiful thing an ugly offset. There is no offset to the splendor of the heavens by night, or to the glories of the sunset, no drawback on the beau ty of perfect form and various line in crystalline minerals, and no evil counterbalancing the se renity of the mountains or the sublimity of the ocean. Again, the existence of evils and mysteries must not blind us to the abounding and intelligible good. We must remember that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never come, as Lowell said. We must clear our minds, so far as possible, of cruel imaginings about the invisible world and its rulers; and, on the other hand, we must never allow imagined consolations, or com pensatory delights, in some other world, to reconcile us to the en durance of resistible evils in this. We must never distress ourselves because we cannot fully under stand the moral principles on which the universe is conducted. It would be vastly more reason able in an ant to expect to under stand the constitution of the sun. We must be sure to give due weight in our minds to the good side of every event which has two sides. A fierce northeaster drives some vessels out of their course, and others upon the ruth less rocks. Property and life are lost. But that same storm wa tered the crops upon ten thou sand farms, or filled the springs which later will yield to millions of men and animals their neces sary drink. A tiger springs upon an antelope, picks out the dain tiest bits from the carcass, and leaves the rest to the jackals. Vi e sav, Poor little antelope! We forget to say, Happy tiger! For tunate jackals, who were seek ing their meat from God, and THE CHRISTIAN INDEX. y _ , , -• "■"■"J ( SUBSCRIPTION, PllTui,'. 52.00. ITO MINISTERS, 1.00. V/- fouri_ > A house which stands in open ,/ound must have a sun ny side as well as a shady. Be sure to live on the sunny side, and even then do not expect the world to look bright, if you habit ually wear graybrown glasses. We must assiduously cultivate a just sense of the proportion be tween right and wrong, good and evil in this world. The modern newspaper press is a serious ob stacle to habitual cheerfulness; because it draws constant atten tion to abnormal evils and crimes and makes no account of the nor mal successes, joys, and well-do ings. We read in the morning paper that five houses, two barns, three shops, and a factory have burned up in the night; and we do not say to ourselves that with in the same territory five hundred thousand houses, three hundred thousand barns, as many shops and a thousand factories have stood in safety. We observe that ten persons have been injured on railways within twenty-four hours, and we forget that two million have traveled in safety. Out of every thousand persons in the city of Cambridge twenty die in the course of a year, but the other nine hundred and eighty live; and of the twenty who die some have filled out the natural span of life, and others are obvi ously unfit to live. Sometimes our individual lives seem to be full of troubles and miseries—our own or those of others. Then we must fall back on this abiding sense of the real proportion be tween the lives sorrowful and the lives glad at any one moment; and of the preponderance of gain over loss, health over sickness, joy over sorrow', good over evil, and life over death. I shall not have succeeded in treating my subject clearly if 1 have not convinced you that earthly happiness is not depend ent on the amount of one’s pos sessions or the nature of one's employment. The enjoyments and satisfactions 1 have described are accessible to poor and rich, to humble and high alike, if only they cultivate the physical, men tai, and moral faculties through which the natural joys are won. Any man may win them who, by his daily labor, can earn a whole some living for himself and fam ily. I have not mentioned a singl" pleasure which involves unusual expense, or the posses sion of any uncommon mental gifts. It follows that the happi ness of the entire community is to be most surely promoted, not by increasing its total wealth, or even by distributing that wealth more evenly, but by improving its physical and moral health. A poorer population may easily be happier than a richer, if it be of sounder health and morality. In conclusion, let me ask you to consider whether the rational conduct of life on the this-world principles here laid down would differ in any important respect from the right conduct of life on the principles of the Christian Gospels. It does not seem to me that it would. —The Happy Life — Eliot. For the Index. Men, Measures and Means; Boards and Their Agents. BY REV. Z. C. TAYLOR. No one who loves our Lord Je sus can look without concern on any important question of the day. The question, “Who is on the Lord's side?” is as necessary to-day as it was in the time of Moses. The amount of opposition to missions (running under the name of ways and means) calls to mem ory the head line of a humoristic paper published in Portugal, 1 saw a short time ago: “Organ, opposed to all other papers and institutions.” It had faith only in opposition, lived by opposi tion, enjoyed nothing but opposi tion—it opposed everything and everybody. Love for souls is with some the unknown quantity, but opposition to men, measures and means is their ruling pas sion. Every good institution, every school and every church (can there be any exception) has its sad story of oppositions and divisions, and now for the last, the most glorious of institutions, this clog of evil was reserved. Missions, the holiest, the sub limest work of Jesus on earth, has always felt the icy hand of opposition. The church has sur vived all the fiery opposition of her enemies, all the martyr fires have been extinguished by the blood of her sons and daughters —her history is like that of the burning bush, never consumed. All those who have betrayed her came to a fearful end, or died off, all heresies she has lopped off, and the glory of the Lord has shone out more brightly about his tabernacle. When all are agreed on doc- ATLANTA, GA., THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12. 1896. trine, simple opposition to meas ures and means is the coldest and most disastrous of all evils to the church. The Israelites never overcame the evil influence of the ten unfaithful spies. A very few set the whole nation to grum bling, to bickerings and finally to opposition against the plain will of God and his chosen leader, -Moses. And that is what will be the result of the modern spies. Christians, who did not wish to give to Foreign Missions, now, will refuse; many will be down right opposed to missions, and many that did give willingly will now give sparingly, while the few will continue to give, perhaps, more. The whole result will be to scandalize missions. We exclude heretics and adul terers, but their sins do not half the evil that contention does over measures and means. Must the church hold on to these modern grumblers and wander about in the wilderness of inactivity till they die off? Contentiousness is the most deceitful and difficult of all sins for the church to deal with. But for this reason should it be allowed to take up its abode with us? There are diseases in which amputation is the only remedy to save life. I speak from personal experi ence. We have now a member in our church; he came in about four years ago. Shortly after his entrance he commenced agitat ing—first one thing, then an other. He had large opinions on small things, and small opinions on some large things. With a certain show of zeal, he does not seem to enjoy religion or cede to the transforming power of grace. He always managed to occupy a prominent place in the church by this show of zeal. First he opposed social meetings on the score that the sexes might come in too close contact —just the thing needed in a community of ex-Catholics. He next opposed Christmas trees or exercises on December 25, and so our Christ mas trees were frostbitten. Next he became a stickler for the Sab bath. Everybody should there and then be put out of the church who did anything else but sing songs and go to meeting. This, in a Catholic country where all work on Sunday, is more a ques tion of growth among Christians. I have made a practice of not baying bre-.d nu.de on Sunday, beef killed on Sunday, or fish caught on Sunday, or anything else procured specially on that day, even on Monday, but never judged it my duty to oblige my brethren to do so. It is the rule of our church to require candi dates to promise to keep the Sab bath holy, but at times it is over looked. The man rode that hob by till he wore it out. From one extreme he went to another. He opined that the hours of worship were too long. His time was too precious to give an hour, or an hour and a half, to the Lord's service on Sunday. He got tired or had something else more important and could not wait, even though sinners were hearing the Gospel of eternal life for the first time, or the last time. So he set to work and got up a party and with that party he at tacked the pulpit. Then he found a rock. I had ceded on all sec ondary and side issues, but when the sword was placed at the mes senger’s neck, there and then he saw the thrust was at the Gospel. When he found he had come at last to an insurmountable imped iment he resigned his place and has struck out for a new field, it seems. Now the man believes in the Gospel, is obedient to all its outward precepts, lias shown some zeal, nearly always against imaginary evils, and no accusa tion can be made of his character —he is contentious only—con tentious always, but how to get rid of such a person —that’s the question. The religion of Jesus teaches us to be zealous in preaching and living the truth, but when zeal causes contentions, hatred and divisions, then it becomes fanaticism. Love is the charac teristic of the religion of Jesus. If this is lacking, all is lacking. Love works no ill to others. To contend for the truth (or princi ples) in love is a virtue, but to contend over plans is plainly sacrificing Christianity. Under the head of ways and means the attack has turned squarely against boards and agents. When the Shepherd is smitten the flock is scattered; so if our Boards and agents are re moved the death blow will have been given to evangelization. What was the condition of the churches and the w’orld before the day of boards and agents? The churches were doing noth ing, and the world lay undisturb ed in its darkness and desola tion. Some notable exceptions, as the apostolic age, and some individual efforts at evangeliza- tion could be given, but in gen eral the churches were opposed to missions. Centuries and ages rolled on during which neither boards nor agents could exist, and of course no one can blame the dormant state of the churches during those desperate times of pagan and pa pal persecution. Even after lib erty was gained the churches did not realize the privileges of that liberty—they scarcely recognized each other —they scarcely hung together. The world slept on its death sleep. Passing over some weak efforts at organization, we come to Carey and his board, with their first agent, Fuller. Around these two names centered the hope of the benighted and the glory of the churches. Then the heathen began to receive tiie Gospel— then the churches awakened to activity and got into living union. Who can calculate the immense power and influence of that organization and of that agent ? Where werb our Ameri can churches before their first board? Never did anything. With boards and agents the Gos pel has been sent to all nations within a century*. What strength and prosperity have come to the home churches through these ef forts? The more they have evangelized, the greater has been their prosperity. This attack on boards and agents will diminish not only activity, but also the growth and prosperity of the home churches. Could the churches without boards and agents have accomplished the great work done? As well ask. if a nation can conquer another, allowing a few of the most pa triotic to struggle, one here, an other there, to attack the enemy, on the pretext that it is too ex pensive to sustain a general with ammunition for an army. It is no offense to say to a na tion, If you have no officials or directors you can have no order or government. Neither is it an offense to good Christians of any local church to say, If you do not have a pastor your church will soon go down. Nor is it an of fense to say to the churches at large, If you have no boards and agents the work of missions will go down. Order is the first law of heaven. Church -clerks, asso ciations, conventions, and Sun day schools were instituted with the church, but who ever heard of a live Christian opposed to them? Boards, agents, clerks and Sunday-schools were all im possibilities at the foundation of the church. They had some thing better than order, and that was the baptism of the Holy Ghost and the gift of tongues from the great urgency in pub lishing the Gospel immediately in all the world. If God had continued these gifts in the church, we to-day would need no boards, clerks or Stfnday-schools, because we could preach the Gos pel in every corner of the earth in a very few' years. To balance, or in some wise to count in place of those gifts, we to-day have lib erty, and therefore need order and union. Cannot God direct us in order and in union to-day as well as he did individuals when the world was in moral and spir itual slavery? We shall need boards and agents as long as there are lost souls to be saved. Native churches should be taught self support and to evangelize them selves, and boards will be formed in all nations. If a brother has discovered a better plan or way than his brethren, and has not the patience to teach them, nor the grace to hang with them, why can he not work on quietly and contentedly alone? It would be much more like the Master, and many other sweet spirits who enjoyed more and accom plished more than ordinary Christians, but living at the same time in love and harmony with their brethren. Another wound still is inflicted upon our noble men of the boards and our agents—brethren chosen for their superior sanctified talent —and that is, that they are dom inating the churches, they are accumulating property and so becoming a monied power in the land, and that they govern the missionaries. As to the first, such a thing is an impossibility. There is no taxation; all who give do it freely. Is there one church that can accuse our board of having oppressed or ruled it? Did not the churches, through their messengers to the conventions, create the boards, and have they not directed them up to this time? To initiate and facilitate the work in the principal centers of the world our Foreign Board by the will of her constituency has bought or aided in the pur chase of property for native churches. This property must be bought in some one’s name; the missionary is loth to hold it in his name. It is unwise often to purchase in the name of natives. As the money is given through the board, it is more or less re sponsible for the proper disburse ment and preservation of these buildings, so that in case of perse cution or dissolution the money may come back to its donors. But does this give our board any power? Where has it been of any ad vantage to one of them, or given them any superiority to their brethren? No rents are received from this property —it serves only as houses of Worship for na tive Christians. As to governing the missiona ries, I have been one for about fifteen years, and never felt that I was governed or oppressed, but only cooperating with other brethren for the salvation of these people. When I went be fore them for examination I came away feeling that I had had an excellent conversation. I did not ask, neither did they tell me, what I was to receive, nor how I was to receive it. I have never lacked, nor have I any over. Neither have I ever attempted to rule the board. I have worked with Jesus as Lord and Master, made reports to the board, sug gested methods and improve ments, all of which had respectful attention. When they could or judged best, they approved; if not, I have continued satisfied with what I could do. We are brethren and Christ is our Mas ter. There is no ruling among us; no victors, none conquered. “He who loveth God, loves his brother also.” We missionaries have better opportunity to know and appre ciate the board and those who compose it. Without them we missionaries would be left on foreign shores among enemies, in sickly climates, to battle pell mell for existence, instead of giving our whole time and ener gies to preaching. It is tempting the Lord for a missionary to cast himself among the heathen, and, without working, look to him for a support. Satan carried Jesus to a pinnacle and tempted him to cast himself down. Preach ers even at home among friends rarely possess such faith, or at tempt such a sacrifice. The apostles were at first sent out without any provision, but before the final great commission to all the world Christ put the responsibility back upon Chris tians. “When I sent you with out purse and scrip and shoes lacked ye anything?” And they said, “Nothing.” Then said he unto them, “But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword let him sell his garment and buy one.” But we do not interpret the mind of Christ in this day of liberty to be that preachers and missiona ries should sell all they have and do all the work unaided. It is by bearing one another’s burdens tiiat we fulfil the law of Christ. Improvements in methods have been welcomed. Economy has been practiced. The number of missionaries lias been diminish ed, the amount of work has been limited, till it has suffered from excessive economy. Expense there is in everything. When a church says, “We will dispense with the pastor in order to save expenses,” you may write “Ichabod” on its door. Let us give up contentions, give up our avarice and give in our tenth til! there be an abundance to send all God-called missionaries to the perishing, and God will pour out such a blessing on his church that there shall not be room enough to receive it. But give up our boards and agents, never! They are needed to accomplish quickly the evangelization of the world in this age of general peace and prosperity. Take your minds off the alabaster box —it is for Je sus’ head—the little we have done with all our advantages is a tiny expense for so great an end. Too much attention is being given to the bag. Love supreme to Jesus and to souls will bring up the bottom dollar, will call forth superhuman sacrifice, will bring all wealth to support his cause and the most brilliant tal ents for counsel and direction of the work and workers. The work all belongs to Jesus. Let us do it, as he commanded, in his spirit of love, with the Christian ar mor. The inferior matter of plans or methods is more of an individual one than for boards or others to dogmatize on; and this has been the fatherly policy of our Foreign Mission Board, as I can testify by experience. The boards have kept to their mission, which is to receive and disburse monies intrusted to them according to the will of the donors; to decide on the qualifi cations of candidates for mission work, with a general oversight of the work ami workers, to main tain order and purity of doctrine in all their missions. They can do no less. Long live our boards, and our faithful agents, through whom great nations have been won for the Lord! For the Index. Reminiscences of Georgia Baptists. BY S. G. HILLYER No. 14 REV. JOHN E. DAWSON, D-D. The design of this series of reminiscences, let me say most emphatically and once for all, is not to supercede, but to illustrate and confirm the notices of our great men which are found in our Baptist histories, and to scatter broadcast among the many thousands of our people who have not had access to our pub lished records, some knowledge of them. If our historical rec ords were as widely circulated, and as generally read, as are the columns of the Index, then there would be but little need for these reminiscences. Thirty-six years have passed away since the death of Dr. Daw son. During those thirty-six years, the generation with which he was identified have, with few exceptions, followed him to the grave. Especially is this true of those who were associated with him in his ministerial life and la bors. The great majority of Georgia Baptists now' living have no personal knowledge of Dr. John E. Dawson. For their ben efit, I propose to give .my own recollections of the man. I first he..rd brother Dawson preach in November, 1834. He was then about twenty-nine years of age, and the sermon which I heard was one of his earliest es. forts. He was not yet ordained. His manner in the pulpit was easy, unaffected and graceful. The sermon was short, but ear nest; and in some of his para graphs he gave indications of that tenderness and pathos with which he was endowed. He was four years my senior, but we were both ordained in the same year—lß35 —he in Jan uary, and lin August. In No vember, 1835, we met at the meeting of the Georgia Baptist Convention at Shiloh church in the near m ighborhood off Pen field, then the seat of the Mercer Institute. That was the first convention in which I ever sat as a member. It was a very im portant occasion. Mercer Insti tute had been only two years in operation. It, and Judson’s mis sion in Burmah were the topics of absorbing interest. The In stitute was designed to encour age the education of our young men w ho desired to enter the min istry. Os course the time and place demanded a sermon on the education of ministers; and Bro. Dawson w’as called upon to preach it. I suppose he was the most recently ordained minister in the house except: one, and that one was myself; and yet he was selected to perform that impor tant service. And, if my mem ory is not at fault, he did not know, till he reached the Conven tion, that he would be called upon for such an effort. Nevertheless he accepted the appointment, and performed the duty assigned him with such success as fully satis fied his friends and the Conven tion. An old man perhaps would, under such circumstances, have declined the appointment, as Dr. Thomas Curtis did, not quite ten years later, at another meeting of the Convention with the church at Penfield in the same neighborhood. But Bro. Dawson did not fail. He was fortunate in possessing just such qualifica tions as fitted him for just such an emergency. He had a clean-cut perception of his own want, at that very time, of a liberal education. He had the sense to know, by his very want of it, what must be the advantage of a wide range of knowledge to the minister of the Gospel. He had only an aca demic education —very good as far as it went, but limited in its range; and up to the time that he was baptized he had not done much to extend it. With this self-knowledge, he was prepared, without alluding to himself, to persuade the four or five hundred people before him that the best thing they could do for their chil dren was to educate them. I can not recall his lines of thought or his illustrations, but, though he did not fail, his sermon was not a fair specimen of his great abil ity. HIS ORATORY. Dr. Daw son was, by nature, an orator. He w’as not made an orator by the training of the schools; for of this he had very little. He stood before his audi- VOL. 76--NO. 46 ence as a handsome man, with graceful .movements and with an exceedingly expressive counten ance'. His voice was clear, dis tinct, flexible and melodious. While speaking its sweet and impressive tones faithfully rep resented all the pulsations of his emotional nature. This made him, without his being conscious of it, a most excellent elocution ist. This mere elocution was wonderful. Not only in deliver ing his own thoughts, but also in giving utterance to the thoughts of others. In quoting a text of Scripture, for instance, his in flections, his emphasis, his pauses, and his tones were so adjusted to the design and mean ing of the text as to give to it all its intended force. Another element of his oratory was his pure and almost perfect rhetoric. Dr. Dawson seems to have been endowed by nature with a most exquisite taste. It ruled his judgments of the “beautiful” in all its forms. He, therefore, comprehended the pro prieties of speech, and seldom violated them. In the selection of words and the construction of sentences few writers or speak ers can be found more correct than he. When to these natural endow ments we add w hat the grace of God had done for him in giving him, by his own experience, a thorough knowledge of the moral and spiritual wants of his fellow creatures, an earnest desire to save them from impending ruin, and a burning zeal for the glory of God through the preached Gospel, we can see, at a glance, that Dr. Dawson was possessed of all the elements that were needed to make him. a great and influential orator. His grdw’th in the ministry was rapid. It was not long after he preached the education sermon at Shiloh before he was held to be the lead ing preacher among our Georgia Baptists. AN EXAMPLE. I think it was in 1853, at a public gathering of some sort in LaGrange, I heard Bro. Dawson preach to a very large audience. His text was: “If a man die, shall he live again?” Job 12:14. However Job may have intend ed that question to be answered, one thing is certain: So far as our present responsibiiiiy-s are concerned, we have but one life in which to meet them. This was the preacher’s theme. His analysis of the subject was sim ple but comprehensive. 1. We have only one life on this earth. This topic was treat ed briefly, only to emphasize the fact that our present life, short as it may be, can never be re peated. Therefore, we shall have, when once it has passed, no opportunity to amend its errors, or to escape their far-reaching consequences. Yet into this short life are crowded responsi bilities upon whose faithful ful filment depends our destiny through all eternity. 2. The extent of those responsi bilities. They include all the du ties that we owe, (1) to God, our Father in heaven; (2) to our fel low’ creatures; (3) to ourselves, and (4) to our children. It w’as in unfolding the nature and the magnitude of these re sponsibilities, that brother Daw son’s effort reached, on that oc casion, the highest powers of human speech. He did what few men can do. He combined in that sermon all the elements of true oratory. He was ornate in such a degree that the imagination w’as charm ed; and we listened to his beauti ful words as one may listen to the strains of magnificent music. He was argumentative—without the stiffness of formal logic? he so marshaled his array of facts as to afford 'deductions and in ferences that should convince the understanding and guide the judgment. And then he was per suasive. In view of the solemn responsibilities resting upon us, which he had most forcibly pre sented, he did not fail to appeal, in w’ords of pathos and of power, to every class of the people before him, to remember, and, with all their strength, to fulfil the stu pendous obligations that bound them —pressing upon their hearts the fearful truth that we have but one life in which we can meet them —in which we can do our duty—if we fail now, we fail forever. Was Bro. Dawson’s sermon, which I have above described, an exceptionally good one for him to preach? By no means; it was only one of hundreds just like it. I wish I had space to tell of other cases in which he moved his hearers as the wind moves the standing corn. May our young brethren catch his spirit and emulate his zeal. 563 S. Pryor St.