USA > North Carolina > A history of the development of the Presbyterian Church in North Carolina, and of the Synodical home missions, together with evangelistic addresses by James I. Vance and others > Part 12
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ience that no great Scriptural truth can be safely 'neg- lected ; sooner or later it appears in caricature."1
Yet there is this to be said, and it must be said with emphasis, that for one who is in sin and therefore abso- lutely lost there is no story which can keep and lift and save but the story of the crucified one.
Dr. Jowett, of Birmingham, England, tells the story of the late Dr. Berry which illustrates my point. He returned from his service one day to find a child waiting at his door who asked him if he would not come at once and help to get her mother in. He did not understand her re- quest, thinking possibly she was in the cold and had been turned out of her home, but at last in response to her earnest entreaties he went and found the mother dying. He did what he could to help her, but seemed utterly powerless. He told the story of the Prodigal Son, but she seemed uninterested. He brought to her attention the story of the reclaiming of fallen women and Christ bless- ing the little children, that she might know that there was no one so weak and no one so sinful as to be beyond the power of his love, and she was still unmoved, and at last he said to his friend, she drew out of me bit by bit the story of Jesus born in Bethlehem, living in Nazareth, preaching in Galilee, suffering in Jerusalem, dying on the cross, rising from the dead and.ascending into glory, and. as I told her the story her eyes filled with tears and her lips trembled and then there came a look of ineffable peace and joy, and she passed away, and said Dr. Berry to his friend, "I believe I got her in."
This is the only story for a lost and ruined race, and we cannot be evangelistic if we neglect it, nor can we expect God to bless us in the winning of souls.
' "The next great awakening."
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Third. Preaching, to be evangelistic, must be done with the confident expectation of results. The unsaved people in our congregation are quick to detect our own anticipa- * tion of failure; they are equally sensitive to our confident belief that what we say is to have weight with them and may be used of God to save their souls.
Over in the almost midnight darkness of Africa toiled Robert and Mary Moffatt; for ten years they labored on without a single convert. They were four hundred miles beyond the place of civilization. They had only about them the most degraded savages, yet they never for a moment faltered and never for a single moment did they have any other thought than this, that they were sure to be successful. A letter was received from a friend asking if there was anything of use which could be sent by their minister. " The significant answer of Mary Moffatt was, 'Send us a communion service. We shall want it some day.' It came three years later, the day before the first converts were baptized."
With such a spirit as this in the preaching, with supreme confidence in God and in his Word, with absolute certainty that if Christ be preached faithfully God's Word cannot return unto him void, there must be increased effi- ciency in our church services and great numbers of people brought to Christ. Yet if the church of Christ could only be aroused to put into practice his preaching and teaching in this present day, and other days, how men would be helped, how souls would be won and how the very wilder- ness would blossom as a rosc.
" Let us suppose a church somewhere, whose members have such an enthusiasm for humanity that when they lie awake nights they are planning not how to make money, but how to make men. Their supreme desire is to help the world in general and their own community in particu-
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lar. They are striving daily to remove every moral and physical evil; trying to give every child who comes into the world the best possible chance; longing and working and praying and spending themselves and their substance to save men from sin and ignorance and suffering! Let us suppose the whole church is co-operating to this end. What a transformation such a church would work in any community ! How it would 'reach the masses'! How it would grow! How it would be talked about and written up! Men would make pilgrimages to study its workings and its success. Yet such a church ought not to be in the least degree peculiar."1 And such a church as this is possible in every community in the world if only the Word of God is received as authentic, if only Christ is believed on and his teachings practiced. That such a church is not to be seen to-day in many of our cities and towns is to our reproach.
1 "The next great awakening."
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REV. S. L. MORRIS, D. D.
HOME MISSIONS, THE SUPREME NEED OF THE HOUR.
REV. S. L. MORRIS, D. D., Secretary.
The history of the church is a history of missions. Its ratio of progress has always been measured by its mis- sionary activity. The decline of the missionary spirit is the signal for stagnation. It is the glory of the Presby- terian church that it is a missionary organization, whose purpose aims at nothing short of the conquest of the world for Christ; and this task will be accomplished largely by impressing the individual with his individual responsibility as a member of a missionary organization. Loyalty to Christ can be maintained only by the accept- ance of Christ's authority as the head of the church and obedience to Christ's marching orders-"Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature." Dis- obedienec is rebellion; and indifference is the very es- sence of disobedience.
The division of the subject into Home and Foreign Missions is a human distinction, which may be justified by the necessities of administration and the distribution of the work, but is not strictly scriptural. In Christ's analysis of the subject one shades off gradually into the other ; and Foreign Missions is simply an extension of the work to its farthest limits. " Ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth." "Jerusalem and all Judea," are unquestionably what we denominate Ilome Missions ; and "The uttermost part of the earth"
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certainly contemplates Foreign Missions; whilst "Sa- .. maria" is the connecting link between them, partaking partly of the character of each. "Samaria" corresponds to the foreigners in our land-Mexicans in Texas, Indians of Oklahoma and "the regions beyond" our organized Presbyteries. It is Foreign Missions at home! Many professing Christians "do not believe in Foreign Mis- sions," but that is no evidence that they will support the work of the church in the home field. It amounts to nothing more than an excuse to shirk the duty of con- tributing to Foreign Missions. Equally inconsistent are the Christians who rave over the Africans on the banks of the Congo, and are absolutely indifferent to the nine millions of Africans at their own door. The highest type of Christians are they who estimate the value of a lost soul in terms of the Gospel and in the mathematics of heaven, regarding the most degraded soul in heathendom of equal worth with the most refined in civilization, and considering the most cultured unsaved soul in Christen- dom as truly lost as the meanest in Africa or China.
Christ combined in his own person both Home and Foreign Missions. In his divinity as the Son of God, he was a foreign missionary, a volunteer from heaven to the heathen of earth. In his humanity, as the son of man, he was a home missionary solely, who never went beyond his native Palestine. In his command he laid the em- phasis first on Home Missions, " Beginning at Jerusalem," but that emphasis reaches "unto the uttermost part of the earth." The disciples in carrying out the instructions of the Master went first "to the lost sheep of the house of Israel," but they inaugurated at the same time the scheme of world-wide evangelism. In one sense, Paul was the grandest of all Foreign Missionaries who turned from Israel to preach Christ to the Gentiles; and yet, in another
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sense he was as truly a home missionary, for he was a citizen of the Roman Empire and never left its confines. Home Missions are always a means toward an end. Its . motto is "Save America to save the world."
I. Home Missions are the basis of all denominational growth. A church may do a magnificent work for For- eign Missions, and yet stand still, whilst other denomina- tions are growing rapidly on every side, as is the case of the Moravian Church. If this noble church had carried on the work at home and abroad pari passu, how much sooner it would have reached "unto the uttermost part of the earth." If the same zeal for Foreign Missions had characterized its efforts to expand at home, it would to-day number doubtless more than a million communi- cants. If its small membership is winning the admiration of the world, what magnificent results would have blessed the efforts of a million! The denominations to-day which lead all others in the number of their communicants in the United States are those who are conspicuous in their zeal for Home Missions. There is no surer method of propa- gating the faith of a church and no more rapid means of advancing into every nook and corner of the country than by Home Missions. If as a church we are to expand with the expansion and development of this great country ; if we are to reach the millions yet unborn; if we are to influence by our religious life and thought the destiny of our cosmopolitan populations ; if we are to multiply our- selves a hundred or a thousand fold in the coming cen- turies, we must begin at once by means of Home Missions to sow the seed "beside all waters." In the early days of Christianity it was a proverb, "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church." It is as true to-day, that the propagation of the faith costs the very life blood of the church. It means life-long martyrdom in hardships, suf-
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fering, toil and self-sacrifice on the part of our humble -- unappreciated home missionaries, who "have borne the burden and heat of the day," and prepared the way for our city pastors, who reap harvests upon which they "be- stowed no labor," illustrating the saying of Christ, "Other men labored and ye are entered into their labors." As others prepared the way for us, so we should lay founda- tions for future generations in a great wide-spread Home Mission campaign, which will mean the multiplication of our religious forces in an ever-increasing geometrical pro- gression to parallel the marvellous progress of this most strenuous of nations.
2. Home Missions are the supreme need of the hour, if we are to reach the myriads who are perishing in our boasted Christian country. It is easy enough to soothe our conscience with the thought that in this land of Gospel privileges any man can hear the message of salvation who will. But does that end our responsibility? Is it enough to ring the church bell and announce in the daily papers, " Seats free and all cordially invited"? Does the responsibility of bringing men to Christ terminate with their opportunities to attend service and our invitations to church? Is there any greater obligation to go "into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature" than to go out "into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in"? Can the great city church feel that it has met its obligation to Christ and lost souls by erecting its handsome church edifice for the enjoyment of its own religious privileges, and sending its representative to the foreign field, whilst multitudes are perishing almost within the sound of its church bells? Are we prepared to answer the question of Jehovah, " Where is thy brother?". by denying our responsibility, and @ indifference raising the indignant challenge, "Am I my brother's keeper"?
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Who are these lost in our Christian land, for whom we have any kind of responsibility however vague and in- definite? Take but the merest glance at the multitudes in a brief survey of the field :
It has been estimated that, leaving out of the calculation the membership of the various branches of the church and the children of immature years, there are at least forty- nine millions of unsaved souls in our very midst. It ex- ceeds in number the entire Empire of Japan; and they are as truly lost as the most degraded of the dark con- tinent. Are Home Missions of secondary importance, considering that there is no other means of saving these millions who are our own kith and kin? Already the tide of immigration rolling in upon our shores has passed the million limit. The province of God is bringing more than a million heathen annually into our very midst and making us wrestle with the foreign mission problem at home. Far down in the bowels of the earth are the miners who toil for our comfort, whilst their neglected children huddle together in wretched villages. By day and by night the mill people are chained to the looms of our factories, till they themselves are but part of the machinery itself, which enormously increases the wealth of the church, that passes them by in the distribution of the bread of life. Stranded among the mountains are more than three millions of people who are descendants of the Scotch-Irish practically without the Gospel, or having only a carica- ture of it. Exceeding even them in number are the densely populated slums of our great cities, where chil- dren grow up in as dense ignorance of the Gospel as if born in Thibet or the Soudan. Add to this the great West, where the tides of population roll in their floods of peoples of every conceivable character. Professing Chris- tians, once active in church service, leaving their Chris-
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tian obligation behind them, and young men free from .. -- the restraints of the home life, mingle together, controlled largely by the passion for money-getting, the flame being fanned by the business opportunities of a rapidly de- veloping country. Mothers of the East turn their aching hearts towards the West, asking themselves the question, which they fear to answer, " Where is my wandering boy to-night?" Is there any other method of reaching our sons and daughters who have left forever the parental roof for contact and struggle with the world's evil forces, than by lifting into its appropriate place the neglected cause of Home Missions, till we compel its consideration by the church as the supreme need of the hour?
3. The necessity of a new estimation and emphasis of Home Missions arises from the Industrial Awakening of the South, the marvel of the age. Buildings are going up everywhere in all of our cities, and yet the demand is greater than the supply. In many sections of the Pied- mont Belt the traveller rides hundreds of miles and is not out of sight of the smoke of a factory till another comes to view. Additional trains are added on all of our rail- roads, and yet they are so crowded as to be uncomfort- able. Railroads cannot haul the freight. Manufacturers have sold far in advance of the supply, and orders must be placed months ahead to be filled. Demand for labor is the cry everywhere. Several. States have agents in Europe offering a premium for immigrants.
The following items are' gathered at random from Herbert A. Smith, of the United States Department of Agriculture : "About one-seventh of the mineral produc- tion of the entire country comes from the Southern States. Of bituminous coal, the most valuable mineral, the South produces one-fourth ; and of iron, about one-ninth. Its coal resources amount to nearly $600,000,000,000 tons,
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or more than one-fourth of our estimated coal reserve. The showing in iron ore reserves is quite as good ; a safe minimum is over 3,000,000,000 tons, or nearly one-third- of the nation's total. On a basis of value of product, the . South furnishes more than two-sevenths of our oil, and more than one-sixth of our gas. The total value of the iron output in 1905 was not quite $7,000,000. It seems altogether safe to say that the South is now deriving $150,000,000 a year gross from its mines and quarries."
The total estimated value of timber trees in board feet is $700,000,000,000. Farm products, $941,599,856; ani- mal products, $361,495,455. The value of farm property in Texas alone amounts to more than $1,000,000,000. The cotton crop of the South has suddenly doubled itself in value, increasing from $300,000,000 a year to $600,000,- 000; whilst the entire value of the cotton crop-cotton- seed oil and kindred products-amounts to $1,000,000,- 000. The cabbage and lettuce crops of South Carolina bring in larger sums than the entire revenue of the State before the war. Railroad mileage has increased from $44,087 in 1890 to $67,129 in 1905 alone in the Southern States.
Clarence Hamilton Poe, in the "World's Work" for June says : " The last fifty years have seen the making of a dozen new commonwealths beyond the Mississippi; the next fifty years will see the remaking of a dozen old commonwealthis below Mason and Dixon's line. From 1900 to 1950 the South will be the land of opportunity. As our epic of the nineteenth century was "Winning the West," so our epic of the twentieth century will be the "Development of the South."
Taking, then, North Carolina as an illustration, he gives some startling figures-"In population North Carolina was sixteenth in rank among the States in 1890, fifteenth
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in 1900; twenty-third in rank as an agricultural State in 1890, it was twentieth in 1900; ranking thirty-first in manufacturing in 1890, in 1900 it stood twenty-eighth. For net gain of rank in population, agriculture and manu- factures it was equalled by no old State east or west of the Mississippi, and only the newest of the new States and Territories of the West-Oklahoma and Montana, draw- ing a sudden stream of men and means from all other sections-kept the same pace.
" In the last five years the people of the State have put more money into industrial establishments than they had accumulated in them for the two hundred years preceding. Every time the moon changes, they now add as much to their property values as they had averaged per year prior to 1900. . . .
" No longer content with merely supplying the wants of our own people, North Carolina's cotton trade with China is now so extensive that America's diplomatic relations with the Orient are of interest to the entire State. North Carolina's tobaccos are advertised on the Ganges and the Nile. .. Some years ago a man who had failed at another business started a $3,500 chair factory in Thomasville. Three years later one $500 stockholder refused $5,000 for his share of it. Other factories sprang up, and now the sun never sets but that Thomasville has shipped a chair for every man, woman and child in the town. High Point was only a straggling country village fifteen years ago, when three young men invested $9,000 in furniture manufacturing. To-day it ranks next to Grand Rapids, Mich., in output of furniture ; it can fur- nish a house from cellar to garret except the piano (it will make pianos before the end of the year), and has just added street car and automobile making to its list of new industries," and so the story goes, but time would fail me
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to tell of similar enterprise at Durham, Greensboro, Char- lotte, Gastonia, etc., showing that 'southward the star of empire takes its flight.'"
These figures stagger us, and yet they are just a frac- tional part of our prosperity. They cannot convey to our minds even the faintest conception of the material development and rapidly increasing wealth of the new South. Unless God sends some disaster upon the country, or in some way stops the mill of prosperity that is grind- ing out its products in streams of gold, the human mind can scarcely comprehend the wealth of the South fifty years hence. Who can estimate its influence on the char- acter of the people? Is the church keeping pace with this material prosperity ?
4. This leads to the concluding suggestion that this Industrial Awakening of the South calls for a correspond- ing spiritual awakening of the church, to the fact that Home Missions is the supreme need of the hour. How otherwise shall we contend with the spirit of commercial- ism, threatening to engulf the entire country in its in- satiable vortex of destruction. Tides of population once rolling westward will soon be sweeping in upon the South, attracted hither by this marvellous prosperity. Either we must evangelize our people or they will commercialize us. Other Christian countries have degenerated into a mere form of godliness, having lost absolutely the spirit and vital power of Christianity. Where is Jerusalem, the mother church? Where are Antioch, Alexandria, Ephe- sus and Rome, once great centers of religious life and spiritual power? History repeats itself; and our Chris- tian civilization may perish as effectually in the grasp of commercialism as any of the powerful churches in the past, at the hands of their deadly foes. The church of to-day has not a moment to lose. She needs to gird her-
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self for the tremendous conflict of the next quarter of a" century in this country. If the battle is lost, who can forecast its influence on the ultimate destiny of the world ? Who can tell if it may postpone the ultimate triumph of the Gospel for centuries or millenniums? If never before, we ought to appreciate the rallying cry of Home Missions, "Save America to save the world."
Everything in this age is being projected on a gigantic scale. Great railroad combinations control the commerce of whole States and aggregations of States. Great monopolies throttle and banish from the field every sem- blance of rival competitors. Great institutions mould the thought of the nation. Is it a time for retrenchment in the spiritual world? Do not the prevailing conditions challenge the church to put forth her most Herculean efforts to meet powerful worldly influences with more powerful spiritual forces? "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord," and yet the Spirit of God uses means. God might have employed legions of angels. Instead he has ordained that the results should be accomplished by human instrumentalities under the operation of the Spirit. Will the church appreciate the need of the hour and undertake a campaign on a gigantic scale for the purpose of saving America? Where are her loyal and liberal sons who will furnish the sinews of war? Carnegie has flooded the country with public libraries. John D. Rockefeller has contributed to Foreign Missions hundreds of thousands of dollars and awakened an interest in education by endowments reaching into the millions. Hugh T. Inman has created an endowment for the relief of aged and infirm ministers, which places them beyond the reach of want. There are millionaires in the church who have never yet awakened to the possibilities of spirit- ual good in their vast and growing fortunes. Where are
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the men who will immortalize their names by linking them - forever with the great cause of Home Missions? Where are the men who will feel the burden of their country and lay their thousands upon the altar of the church, as in the early days of Christianity, when whole fortunes were laid at the Apostles' feet. Better still, will the entire church awake to her opportunity of winning our own nation for Christ and her responsibility for countless lost souls at our very door ?
MISSION WORK.
BY REV. WM. BLACK.
Mission work is work done by one sent, and, as ap- plied to the gospel, is work done by one sent by the Lord Jesus Christ; and in this great work he, himself, was a missionary, having been sent by the Father, as is de- clared in John iii. 16; and in announcing his own mission he says: "The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost."
The right of a church to exist at all must rest upon its obedience and fidelity to the great principles enunciated by its founder, and by which it was authorized. The mission church is, therefore, the only church which could claim to be following his teachings or walking in his foot- steps. The greatest clarion call ever made to the Chris- tian is to be found in the words of the Great Commission, and as Christ has made that call to the church, so he has commanded the church to go forth on its mission, send- ing forth this great call. To the unsaved she should be ever saying "come," and to the Christian, "go." Com- bining the words spoken by our Lord Jesus Christ in the Great Commission, as recorded in Matt., chapter xxviii., and Mark, chapter xvi., we have substantially these words: "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature, and make disciples of all nations, bap- tizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world."
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