Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

Banks County Gazette. VOL I.— NO. 16. Workers Must Be Thinkers. In business, manufacturing, and farming, the man of mere muscle is not worth as much as an ox. We can not compete with animals in their specialities. In religious work the hand and mouth need a brain of fine fiber and complex convolutions. Our busy, blustering age often mistakes activity for usefulness. Chaucer hit one of our characters exactly when he said of one that he “seemed busier than he was.” Aimless shooting is more dangerous to our neighbors than to the deer. If the present wave of enthusiasm for work produces nothing but three line “testimonies” that cost no thought, it will pass unfruitful and leave disgust. Witnessing is honor able and important, but it must be from first-hand knowledge. The courts do not give weight to rumors. Happily for the future church, study is given a front place. Christian work means teaching Bi ble truth. Therefore, the workers must learn what is in the Bible. When one is in battle it is no time to mould bullets and oil rusty locks. Infidels assail the Bible, and we must he able to give a reason for our hope. There are reasons and wj must know them. I'ietv being assumed, knowledge is the next source of power. Unbelief is ignorance. The cure for darkness is light. Our young people could well afford to study the evidences of Christian revelation. Most of all, let them study the Bible itself. The best proof of a lamp’s light-giving quality is to show it lighted. Christian work is to promote God's kingdom. Therefore our young peo ple need not know w hat the kingdom is in its Bible orgin, historical career and present aspects. Christian work touches poverty as Christ did But unthinking, ignorant charity leads to the result of cruelty. Indiscriminate alms-giving fills a land with feeble paupers and poud patrons. It is not easy to help a weak brother without degrading him. In the fu ture w e shall study justice to the wage earner quite as much as charity. The vices a Christian loaths arc choked by earnest thought. The idle mind is the devil’s workshop. Where wheat is growing, weeds are held down, but rag weeds triumph over stubbles. It was into the swept and garnished empty room that seven demons came. The power to think is the power to rule. As the meek ai e to inherit the earth, let saints give themselves a princely education. Cloistered saintliness belongs not to our times. Grace church, in Philadelphia, is doing a prophetic work with its col lege. Chautauqua is a sign of hope. Soul-saving and soul-illumination are parts of one divine process. Mate rialism threatens to drown our civili zation; but it is more a product of animalism and narrow thinking than of natural science. To expel it, give us more light and on higher themes. —Rev. C. K. Henderson, in Light of the Valley. Where Christ brings his cross he brings his presence; and where he is none are desolate, and there is no room for despair. And he knows his own, so he knows how to comfort them, usiDg sometimes the very grief itself, and straining it to a sweetness of peace unattainable by those ignor ant of sorrow.—E. B. Browning. Comfort in Affliction. It was a sad affliction. Death is nearly always sad; but in this case a mother was robbed of her only boy. She was eleven years a wife before she was a mother; then the baby came to bless her. She welcomed him as a gift from God. Boy of her love. Boy of her heart Boy of her hopes. Dear boy! Dearer to her than she could tell. But now, at four years, he was dead. Dead ! How much that means! Some do not know, but she knew. Many know. All will know. The minister heard of her affliction, and went to comfort her. Her lips quivered as she said: “I don’t under stand it. My own life and my hus band’s were made better and happier by the coming of our boy to ns. I tried to teach him wbat was right, and beautiful, and good, and now he is taken from us. We are left all alone. Ido not see why he should be taken.” So it is. We do not see—our tears blind us. We do not know, but God knows. Mayhap, with our friends all here, our thoughts are too much on earth; but if some of them are there, our tuoughts will go toward those we love, and the heaven which their presence enriches and endears. And thinking of the heaven, we shall more surely long to go there our selves, and more certainly make the necessary preparation. Any way, God knows why the sorrow and where fore. And for all the afflicted there is a balm, a solace, a comfort, hope, joy even. “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning”—joy for this mother when she shall clasp her boy again in her arms, and fold tq her bosom the im mortal, whose life on earth was snort, but whose life in heaven shall be eternal, and comfort for all the sor rowing sons and dauhters ot the Lord Almighty. “Comfort ye, comfort ye, my peo pie!” saith your God. The Father will have them comforted, lie re members them in sorrow. He hears their cries, sobs; sees their tears, ’knows their griefs, and he is God, Father, Friend. To trust him, to love him, to adore him, to serve him, and to wait his own time for the vindica tion of his providences to us,will bring us that for which we wait, and the heaven and friends for which we long.—Western Advocate. There is much truth in the follow ing: “The end of church music is not to attract an audience and fill the house, but to praise God. If the leaders of the singing remembered this, they would, in many cases, make a different selection of music;. if the choir remembered this, they would not regard their part in worship with so much levity; if the congregation remembered this, they would sing ‘with the spirit and understanding.”’ Kejoiee Always. A doctor who was strolling through the woods near Jacksonville, Fla., came upon a negro who was sitting upon the fence singing. You seem to he happy, old man, said the doctor. Well, sah, I ain’t got nothin’ to ’plain erbout. Do you know that yellow fever is raging all around you ? Oughter know it, sar, when I dun buried my wife yestidy. Then, how can you sit around hero and sing? Dish yere’s God’s worl’ ain’t it? I suppose so. An’ I b’longs ter God, doan I ? Yes. Well, if de Lawd puts it into my heart 10 sing, I doan see why I ough ter keep my mouf shet. Are you not afraid to take the fever? What’s de use of bein’ erf raid ? Ef de Lawd wants me ter take it, I will; ef he doan’ I ain’t, dat’s all; an’ sides dat, I ain’ gwino ter take it no quicker ef I sings. I lay cf vo go round dat town now, you’ll fin mos’ o’ de folks whut’s got de feeber didn’t sing ertall.—Evangelical Messenger. A man who has so much to do that he wilt work nights and Sundays, as well as week-days, is not likely to do as much in the long run as the man who rests at God’s appointed times, in order to fit himself for effective work between these times. Many a busy man breaks down a great deal earlier than he needs to, because he insists on working when rest is his first duty. And many a man who observes God’s law of the night and the Sabbath, written in man’s very nature, accomplishes far more in a series of years than he could have wrought with any violation of that nOMER, HANKS COUNTY, GEORGIA, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 25,1891. law. Mr. Gladstone, speaking, not long ago, of his own experiences*in busy life, said of the high privilege of “Sunday rest:” “Personally, I have always endeavored, so far as circumstances have allowed, to avail myself of this privilege; and now that I have arrived near the goal of a la borious public career of close on fifty seven years, I attribute in great part to this practice the prolonging of my life, and the preservation ef my fac ulties.” A true man can do more in six days than he can in seven, week by week; as he can do more in six teen hours than in twenty-four, day by day, for a lifetime.—Sunday School Times. Be, not try to be, but be Christians. What we want to be is not to look Christians, or to pretend Christians, or to profess Christians. Take an anagram: read it from the right or Iron) the left, or from the top or from the bottom, it reads the same thing. Take a Christian: look at him at one angle, or look at another angle; look at him in any light or iu any direction, and lie is a Christian still.—Cumming. Only the ideal is the truly real. The tilings that are unseen are eter nal because they are the verities. Mathematical science is accounted the ideally exact science because it deals with numerically measurable quntities. And yet no mathematician oversaw the absolute straight line, or circle, or ellipse, about which he reasons, and on which he founds so many formulas and establishes so many rules for practice in the life that is seen and is temporal. The right line and the circle are unseen and eternal. The efforts to make them visible to mortal eyes are abor tive and perishable. The eternal verities are not apprehended by the eve of sense. We vyalk. by failh, not by sight.—Sunday School Times. The Christian at Work, comment ing on the alarming prevalence of gambling in England, says: “It is to a precisely similar condition of things that we are drifting in this country. What with our Ives Pool laws, the encouragement given to the gambling practice by our professedly moral newspapers in their ‘tips on the races,’ and the recognition extended to the same practice by many other wise respectable men, it will not be long before the curse will have as strong a grip upon us as it has has upon the English people. It is high time that the intelligent and Christian sentiment of the country was stirred up with reference to this subject.” The church helps this drift by its gambling schemes to raise money. It Lasts' The peculiarity of Christianity is the strong personal tie of real love and intimacy which will bind men to the end of time to this man that died nineteen hundred years ago. We look back into the waste of antiquity; the mighty names rise there that we reverence; the great teachers from whom we have learned, and to whom, after a fashion, we are grateful. But what a gulf there is between us and tne best and the noblest of them ! But here is a dead man who to-day is the object of passionate attachment and love deeper than life to millions of people, and will be to the end of time. There is nothing in the whole history of the world the least like that strange bond which ties you and me to Christ, and the paradox of the apostle remains a unique fact in the experience of humanity: “Jesus Christ, whom, having not seen, ye love.” We stretch our hands across the waste, silent centuries, and there amid the mist of oblivion, thickening round all other figures in the past, we touch the warm, throbbing heart of our friend, who lives forever and for ever is near us. We here, nearly two millenniums after the words fell on the nightly air on the road to Geth semane, have them coming direct to our hearts. A perpetual bond unites men with Christ to-day; aud for us, as truly as in.that long past paschal night, it is true, “Ye are my friends.” There are no limitations in that friendship, no misconstruction in that heart, no alienation possible, no change to be feared. There is abso lute rest for us there. Why should I bo solitary if jesus Christ is my friont]? \\ hy should any thing be burdensome if he lays it upon me and help me to bear it? What is there in life that cannot bo faced and borne —ay, and conquered—if we have him, as we all may have lum, for the friend and the home of our hearts.— Dr. Maclaren. An expedition is about to explore the famous death valley of California. It is thought extensive deposits of valuable minerals may be discovered there. Death Valley is about eight miles broad by thirty-five long. The thermometer never varies from 125 degrees, no clouds aro ever seen, no dew or rain ever falls, a dead animal uever decays but dries up, and neither man, nor beast ever enters the valley. Ip some places noxious gases come from the crevices in the rocks. This would seem to be a place to be avoided no matter what metals may be there. Skipping The Hard Places. Many persons do not look on re ligion as an entirety. They select the easy points and pass those that are difficult. It does not occur to them that the system is a unit, and so linked togother that it cannot be separated into items, and part ac cepted and performed and tho other part neglected with impunity. We inquired of an active and thorough going Church worker, whom we knew hated with a bitter spirit some members of her own Church, what she did with that petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “Forgive our tres passes as we forgive t ose who tres pass against us.” She replied with readiness, “I skip it.” Few persons would make such a candid acknowl edgment of the fact. This case is representative of a class who are in no sense insincere, but who deem tnat a full measure of work at other points will atone for neglect, or the skipping over what, in their present spirit, is to them an impracticable performance. In talking with a Church member of some prominence and of business position in a way to call his attention to his irregulai ities, his reply was a virtual admission of the facts; but he parried the attack, and excused his course by saving, that he did so much in the way of supporting the church, that on account of his liberal contribu tions, bis failures at other points would be excused. This is but the abominable Kotnan Catholic doctrine of works of superer ogation by which the gravest defects at one point are covered by the full or over-measure of doing at others— a doctrine declared, not too strongly,' by our discipline, to be arrogancy and impiety.—Advocate. Inconsistent legislation. The State of Tennessee has some very stringent Sunday laws. Under these laws a number of Adventists, who observe tho seventh’ day as a period of lest, have been subjected to indictment, trial, and penalty for working ia their fields on tho first day of the week. As to the abstract propriety of such legislation we have our own belief. The civil law cannot, of course, constrain any man’s con science; but it may, without lining charged with tyranny or oppression require small minorities of the citizens of the commonwealth to avoid any outward acts offensive to the feelings and rights of the great majority. But the thing that puzzles us is this: Why should a few obscure far mers. who arc conscientious in refus ing to comply with the demands of the general sentiment, be dealt wiih so severely, when great corporations are allowed the utmost liberty? Our railroads not only run the regular mail trains on the Lord’s day, but they also send out the freight trains just as on any other day of the week, thus imposing upon the consciences of their employees, many of whom are Christian men, a very heavy bur den. Why this inequality ? We are very well aware of the fact that we have no right to ask for civil legisla tion in the interests of Christianity as such. Nor are we seeking to do any thing of the kind. We are simply pointing out what seems to us to be a very gross inconsistency in our stat utes. If the rural communities of the state arc to be protected against the scandal of a little plowing on the Lord’s day, why should not the whole state be protected against Sunday freight trains ? There is a great army of sturdy and honest workmen, whose dependent families force them to stick to their tasks, but who would give no small sura if they could get a weekly rest. Nashville, (Tenn.) Christian Advocate. Many Christians die well, as peni tent sinners, whose lives have been greatly entangled, and which have borne only imperfect fruit. The long suffering and compassionate mercy of God is exhaustless; aud even the devil will compromise by letting us die comfortably and with hope, if he can break the influence and service of our lives for God. A penitential death may save the penitent, but it does not recover, God’s kingdom from the damaging stroke given it by our unconsecrated and worldly lives. To Girls. Be cheerful, but not gigglers; seri ous, but not dull; be communicative, but not forward; be kind, but not servile. Beware of silly, thoughtless speeches; although you may forget them, others will not. Remember God's eye is in every company. Be ware of levity awl familiarity with young men. A modest reserve, with out affectation, is the only safe path. Court and encourage conversation with those who are truly serious and conversable; do not go into valuable company without endeavoring to im prove by the intercourse permitted to you. Nothing is more unbecoming, when one part of a company is en gaged in profitable conversation, than that another part should be trifling, giggling, and talking comparative nonsense to each other.-—Legh Rich mond. Law for the lawless is the divine method, the strong arm of the law against the theater and the saloon. Nothing but rigid prohibitory law can save us from these two devouring mouths of hell. Not long since a Now York company, which had been announced for a Boston theater on a Sunday night, failed to appear. The reason was found to be that some citizeus had presented a vigorous remonstrance to the board of aider men. A negro named Rufe Hansom, from Birmingham, Ala., was arrested at Pulaski, Tenn., last week, w hile at the home of his intended bride, and while tho assembled company were awaiting the marriage ceremony. lie was charged with stealing, in Birming ham, the watch and jewelry which lie wore on the occasion.—Atlanta Jour nal. Little Ethel went to church with her grandmother, and for the first time put ten cents on the contribution plate. Leaning over she whispered very audibly: “That’s all right, granma; I paid for two.” Father: “Will you divide the mar bles with your little brother with or without being whipped?” Bobbie: “I ’spect I’ve got to divide; pa, but I’ll take tho lickiu’ first.” Sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a dosti ny.—Anon. If you make yourself a sheep, tho wolves will eat you.—Franklin. SINGLE COPY THREE CENTS, m Ungallant, but C our too an. It was on a Fourth avenue car that it happened. A snow storm had made the traffic unusually heavy, and the line was running only single cars. Tho men on tho car had all risen but one, and he sat next tho stove unmoved. The other side of tho car had been Oiled by ladies, most of whom had been given scats by the prompt sacrifice of the men, who now filled the aisle. The ladies were loosely distributed along the seat; one sat sideways, gaz ing out of the window; a second al lowed her child room enough for a good sized man by clambering around with Ids face to the pane; a third, dressed in silk, sat as though afraid of the touch of a woman next to her. A lady entered and looked around for a seat, and there was none. The men all looked at the man by tho stove, lie was a stout, hearty fellow, growing just a little old. He sat still, apparent ly unconscious. All the ladies across the aisle looked at him; tho lady in silk glared. He didn’t move. Tho lady moved up opposite him in the car and took hold of a strap, and still he sat still. “Madam,” said ho at last, courteous ly enough, but in a voice plainly heard all through tho car, “Madam, I do not feel inclined to give you my seat when so many of your own sex on the oppo site sido of the car make no move to make room for you.” And maybe there wasn’t a shuffle on the other sido of tho car. The lady in silk Jammed up against the plainly dressed woman, the child was hastily deposited in its mother’s lap and the worngn who gazed out tho window saw siometiing to attract her attention straight ahead of her. The lady who was standing apd two elderly gentle men occupied the room made.—Minne apolis Journal. ItaUlna Chick tel Cit.v. “Chicken nmt hes” an* nu'aAp-reil among tho most ; - -thehie. of Iwajg Island's industries. 'N'Jw V<;rTr&nW and Brooklyn consume 00,000 chickens aud lob.OOOe. toforo hl. ,;c proportion of the '%jS tides came from New Jersey and i'Pi terior New York. "Pennsylvania. Del aware, Mary It.;, and and even Virginia send a good m-.rij, but tho possibili ties for profit htivo Induced a great many people to ;-?> fiitotho business, so that tiier - probably "fraip or five llUlld •’CI “ranches’’ ft"! ; tween li; y Bidge find Monta.uk, on Long all kinds bring good prices in Now York, and a poul try trust w<jpd.pay aifcbig dividends ns sugar after a time. Atman can go into tho businesi ’witti very little capital, and if he knows anything at all about tho culture of foils can make a fort une in a fow years.— Now York Letter. No ?flan Ksflonthil to tho Llfo of a Nation, The graveyard grass of centuries lias been fertilized with (lie dust of grout men, who at one time or another were considered Indispensable. There is altogether too much hero worship in the world, even in this utilitarian age. It is proper to give every man credit for his worth and for his achievements, but no man should be accounted greater than the cause he represents, and when ever bo assumes to be greater it. is time be was compelled to step aside.—Scran ton Truth. Bu*A'<lii,r Griegs. The Technical Royal School : t Char lotteuburg has been making a series of experiments with sawdust, and has now proved tliat it can bo used as building material. The sawdust is mixed with certain refuse mineral products, arid compressed with a pressure of 1,500,0 bi) kilogrammes to the quadramoter in the form of bricks, and after this treatment the sawdust forms excellent building material, very light, impervious to wet and utterly uninflammable. A slab of this substance was placed for five hou s in a coal (Ire, and came out of the test intact.—New York Telegram. Ho Fvun<l It. Thera is a story about almost every inland lake that it has no bott om. .1 ohn Farmer, a New York man, has spent throe months sounding tiie lakes of that,state, and in no case lias lie found a spot in any lake deeper than ninety one feet. That’s water enough, how ever, to drown all the surplus eats and (logs.—Detroit Free Press. Tho Bhiokbfrd Days. Jars. 30, 31 and Feb. 1 aro famous in the neighborhood of Brescia, Constanti nople, Florence, Italy, and along the Danube and the Rhine, as the “Black bird days." A curious medieval legen 1 says that originally all species of the grackels (blackbirds) were of a creamy white color; that it became black be cause during one year in tho Middle Ages the three days above mentioned wore so cold that all birds in cent ral and southern Europe took refuge in the chimneys. At Brescia, Mr. Swafn.son says, tho three days are celebrated with a feast called “I piorni della meriu,"' meaning the feast of the transform,a r>u of the bird.—St. I<ouia Republic. --