Texas Christian Advocate (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 50, No. 7, Ed. 1 Thursday, October 8, 1903 Page: 1 of 16
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G. C. RANKIN, D. D., Editor.
Official Organ of all the Texas Annual Conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.
L. BLAYLOCK, Publisher.
Vol. L.
Dallas, Texas, Thursday, October 8, 1903.
No. 7
Editorial.
APPLICANTS FOR ADMISSION INTO
OUR CONFERENCES.
Our conferences are coming on apace.
They will soon be upon us. Among the
other weighty duties devolving upon these
bodies will be to pass upon the fitness of
many young men for the itinerant minis-
try. A goodly number of them will apply
for admission, and we rejoice that such will
be the case. But we need to exercise a great
deal of care, as is our custom, in those whom
we give a place in the permanent work of
the pastorate. They ought to be men of a -
very sound and unmistakable experience of
grace. We want no one in the ministry who
has not this definite and well-defined experi-
ence. Head religion is not enough; the
heart must be right with God. He must
know beyond the peradventure of doubt that
God for Christ’s sake has pardoned his sins,
adopted him into the heavenly family and
made him an heir of God and a joint heir
with Christ. Nothing short of this will do
for the man who is to make it his life-work
to call sinners to repentance and build up
ine 7 a gdcre e. Christ. Then they must be
men who have counted the cost and have
some sort of clear idea of what is involved
in the sacrifices of the itinerant ministry.
It is no child’s play to enter this work. It
is one of service, self-denial, discipline. It
means that they must obey and go wherever
they are sent and do it without grumbling
or complaining. The life upon which they
are to enter is to be one of persistent stu-
diousness and consecration to the one end of
saving men and establishing them in right-
eousness. Their work then is not temporary,
but for all life. When they put their hand
to the plow they are not to look back,
much less to turn back. And they must not
expect large remuneration in the way of
pecuniary gains. They may expect a living,
as the servant is worthy of his hire, but
nothing more. Too many men come into
our work as an experiment and after a few
years drop out and take up secular callings.
All this is a waste of time and of energy
and nothing is gained by it. Our ministry
is not tentative. Those who enter it with
this idea are not informed. Better settle all
these questions before the door of the con-
ference is entered. But last, though not
least, they ought to be well educated men.
We would not yet make a college education
oneof the qualifications for entering the min-
istry, but a sound education is essential and,
if possible, a college education is better.
Our people are being educated and this is
one reason why our young men entering the
ministry at this day ought also to be edu-
cated. But this is not the chief reason.
They ought to be educated because thorough
mental training will better prepare them to
understand the word of God in its deeper
meaning, and it will prepare them for a
better type of pulpit work. It is far easier
to work with sharp tools than dull ones.
And we have colleges whose business it is
to give young men this sort of training.
If they are not willing to go to them and
do the laborious work needful to educate
THE COLLECTIONS ORDERED BY
THE CONFERENCE.
It looks like a useless task to exhort the
the preachers and the people on the urgent
necessity for securing the collections order-
ed by the conference, and yet a reminder
now and then may stimulate interest in €
these important matters. The causes rep-
resented by these collections are vital to the
great work of the Church, and its enter-
prises can not make progress without them.
The missionary interests, the Church exten-
sion and educational work all depend upon
these collections. Then in addition to these
there is that sacred cause belonging to the
worn-out preachers and to the widows and
orphans of deceased preachers that no pastor
ought to neglect. We have no fund asked
by the Church more pressing and righteous
than this one. To get these amounts require
energy and persistence, but they can almost
invariably be gotten if the pastor and the
people will put their consciences into them.
The probability is that we will have a good
increase in our membership, as the reports
of revivals arc most encouraging; and in-
stead of lagging in our collections we ought
really to increase them. Let these interests
keep pace with our increase in membership
and in material growth. Texas ought to
make one of the finest showings this fall
in her history. She never stood out more
prominent in her progress in all other mat-
ters, and the Church ought to be equally as
conspicuous in all departments of her work.
An advance along all lines ought, therefore,
to be expected. Her spiritual and financial
development ought to quadrate beautifully.
It is to be hoped then that every charge
will make special effort to pay everything
assessed against it so that the work of next
year can be inaugurated with a clean bal-
ance sheet. A long pull and strong pull
and a pull altogether will accomplish the
desired result.
themselves, it is strong evidence that they
are not the men to do the hard work of
the ministry. In other days we had great
men who never went to college. Yes, but
had they lived in this day with the advan-
tages we possess, they would have gone and
perfected their education. They did the best
they could under the circumstances. Young
men to-day have these advantages, and if
they are too lazy to avail themselves of
them, they will never rival the men who did
their best at a time when college education
was not within their reach. We want the
best training possible for our young men in
this age. Therefore all these points need
to be guarded every scrupulously by our con-
ferences this fall. Let us know very thor-
oughly the type and cast of young men
whom we admit into our traveling connec-
tion.
THE ADVOCATE AND LOCAL
OPTION.
The Advocate is the only paper with a
State-wide circulation that has persistently
devoted itself to the cause of local option in
Texas. From the very beginning it has put
itself on record as an uncompromising op-
ponent to the licensed liquor business. Ev-
ery editor who has had charge of its conduct
and policy has spoken out with no uncer-
tain sound on this subject and the present
incumbent is no exception to the rule. We
have striven to be true to the history and
tradition of the paper. In season and out
of season we have written and spoken in no
false notes touching the evils of the saloon.
We have done this because the saloon is
the enemy of the home, the Church and the
State. To reach this enemy it is necessary
to create public sentiment against it, and
this can be done only through agitation and
education. The education of public senti-
ment is a work of slow growth. It can not
be accomplished in a day, a week or a year.
It requires long years of persistent and pa-
tient work. But the result can be reached
by constant agitation and education. Out
of the work done by the Advocate and other
papers and speakers great progress has been
made. Public sentiment has finally reached
a state of development in which local option
is becoming popular. Its popularity is not
sporadic or spasmodic, but steady, perma-
nent and abiding popularity. The people
have finally aroused themselves and they are
voting out the bar-room, and after it is gone
they are enforcing the law against those
who try to degrade and violate it. So local
option has come to stay. But this result
has cost something to achieve it. Every
good cause has its martyrs. Suffering is a
part of moral and spiritual triumph. This is
the penalty to be paid by those who oppose
wickedness and advocate righteousness. The
Advocate is no exception to the rule. It has
fought the bar-rooms all these years, and
they have no love for it anywhere in Texas.
Their influence is against it as determinedly
as ours is against them. But no opposition
from that source will deter us from doing
our whole duty to this cause. On principle
we are set against the liquor traffic of Tex-
as, and not through personal bias or malice.
Our war is not upon men as such, but upon
the institution of the licensed bar-room. It
stands for lawlessness, for vice and im-
morality. Its influence is evil, and only evil
continually. Nowhere does it perform any
good for mankind. The State itself recog-
nizes this fact. And in giving it a license
it throws around it all possible restrictions
so as to reduce its evils, if possible, to a
minimum. But it turn’s out that the effort
of the State to regulate the bar-room is a
failure. Regulation does not regulate. For
the saloon violates every statute enacted
against it by the State. There is but one
way to deal with licensed liquor and that
is to prohibit it altogether. This is the only
remedy within reach of society. And for
this one end the Advocate stands in so far
as the bar-room is concerned. We will never
stand anywhere else on this subject. For
this reason we appeal to the friends of tem-
perance and of local option to give us their
continued sympathy and support. We can
not expect it from any other quarter. The
war is now on and there will be no peace
declared until every bar-room has been
driven from our Commonwealth. On with
the battle!
THE PLAN OF REMEDMPTION.
We once heard a good man say that he
saw no justice in the suffering of the inno-
cent Christ for guilty sinners. To him it
did not look right that one should bear the
affliction due to others. Looked at from a
strictly legal point of view, this may be
true. But God did not look at it in this
way. Christ by his death satisfied the claims
of justice, but it was not justice that
prompted him to give himself for the guilt
of mankind. Justice accepted the sacrifice,
but love inspired it. “God so loved the
world that he gave his own beloved Son
that whosoever believeth in him should not
perish, but have everlasting life." Had it
not been for this principle of love Christ
would never have been given and he never
would have accepted the task of re-
demption. Such was his love for men
that he cheerfully . gave himself, the
just, for the unjust. “Greater love hath
no man than this that a man lay down
his life for his friends;” but “God com-
mendeth his love toward us in that while we
were yet sinners Christ died for us.” God
not only looked upon mankind as sinners,
but as iiis children in silt. He loved them
as a father loves his children. What is it
that an ideal father will not do for his
erring children? God is an infinite Father,
possessed of a father’s pity for his offspring,
and out of this great love “wherewith he
loved us” gave his Son to make propitiation
for our sins, “and not for ours only, but for
the sins of the whole world.” Divine love
is the only explanation of the atonement.
In it alone we find God’s reason for provid-
ing redemption. Had he been a God of ab-
solute and cold justice, with the element of
love lacking in his character, then redemp-
tion would have been impossible. But love
came to the rescue. It provided a plan in
the application of which “God can be just
and yet the justifier of the ungodly.” The
whole life of our Lord from its inception
to its bloody close is one expression of love.
To spurn him is to spurn love in its tender-
ness, in its importunity, in its effectiveness.
And a persistent and an impenitent spurn-
ing of Christ is to separate ourselves from
love and to take upon ourselves all the pen-
alty of offended justice. If we reject him
and his sacrifice ’ God can do nothing for
us in the way of pardon, and we are doom-
ed. But when we repent and accept him
and strive to live according to his command-
ments, then he becomes our propitiation and
we are pardoned and justice is satisfied.
Love thus comes to our relief and God takes
us into his family. We become heirs of his
and joint heirs with Christ. Therefore, if
Christ loves us to this extent that he came
and died for us, how great ought our love
for him to become! His word ought.to be
our law, his precepts our rule of conduct
and his promises our inspiration and sup-
port. For he is God’s richest and best gift
to the world, the highest expression of his
love for mankind.
“0 for such love let rocks and hills their
last silence break,
And all harmonious human tongues their
Savior’s praises speak.”
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Rankin, George C. Texas Christian Advocate (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 50, No. 7, Ed. 1 Thursday, October 8, 1903, newspaper, October 8, 1903; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1686836/m1/1/: accessed July 8, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Texas State Library and Archives Commission.