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Boyhood and Other
Days in Georgia

BY

GrorceE W. Yarsroucu, D.D.

SUPERANNUATE MEMBER OF THE NORTH GEORGIA CONFERENCE OF THE
METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, SOUTH

EDITED BY

H. M. DU BOSE, D.D.

BOOK EDITOR METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, SOUTH

NASHVILLE, TENN,
DALLAS, TEX.; RICHMOND, VA.
PUBLISHING HOUSE OF THE M. E, CHURCH, SOUTH
SMITH & LAMAR, AGENTS

197

 

atc}

 
A 1473
70
EDITOR’S NOTE

BroGRrapuy is the soul of history; without it the annals of
no nation would possess relevancy or carry a teaching force.
The present volume belongs to the class of biography, but it
is biography of a unique character; it is doubtful if it has a
parallel in our literature. During the latter years of a min-
isterial career of more than half a century, Dr. George W.
Yarbrough, one of the veteran itinerants of the North Georgia
Annual Conference, has been associating his maturest thoughts
on all great subjects and the results of his happiest medita-
tions with a record of the passing incidents and reminiscences
of his life. These records have taken shape in a series of
newspaper articles which, from the printing of the first, many
years ago, attracted general attention in the Church and have
been repeatedly called for in the permanent form of a book.
To these reminiscential writings have been added several dis-
courses and addresses which, for the most part, are carried
along with the same historical and reminiscential current. Also
there have been added some personal sketches and stories
which give to the volume a delightful flavor of quaintness and
indigenous humor. The author is himself that catholic man
in whom all happy moods and pleasant aptitudes unite. His
writings only express his natural self.

From his own personal experience in going through these
chapters preparatory to sending them to the press the editor
feels confident that they are to have a wide reading, that they
are to carry a message and ministry of inspiration and cheer,
and that they are also to appeal with a true literary force and
effectiveness. They are full of consciousness, genuineness,
and faith, and overflow with the love of the grand old man
who gave them shape, not with the purpose of making a book
of them, but of making them voice, each at the time of its
writing, the measure of the honest, happy, Christlike soul that
all men know him to be. In some useful way there is in these

3
BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

papers an inside history of the Methodism of Georgia for the
past fifty years. Voices will herein be heard that otherwise
had become silent; others that never can be hushed will be
heard again, cach in its own accents. [very younger man in
the ministry of the Church who reads these chapters will real-
ize that giants were afoot in the days just behind him, and
that at least one of these mighty ones remains to tell how the
deeds of those days were made possible.

As a fitting part of this introduction to Dr. Yarbrough’s
volume, the editor appends here a letter to him from Dr. Young
J. Allen, whose name is itself a token of might. These two
were comrades in college and were knit together in life as one
soul. The letter, which is dated at No. 90 Chapoo Road.
Shanghai, China, January 24, 1905, reads as follows:

My Dear Old Friend: The mail bringing the H'esleyan of December 1.
containing appointments of the North Georgia Conference, after an un-
usual delay, has just reached me; and as the interval is already long s:nc«
our last letters were passed, | avail myself of this opportunity to write
you again immediately after ascertaining your post office. JT see that you
have completed the entire circuit of the Conference, one vrand revolution
of forty-seven years bringing you back to the point of departure in 1857.
Well, my dear old comrade, | must congratulate you. What sights and
seenes and notable experiences have been yours! And now you retum
laden with the spoils of years to enrich those who, like yourself, in the
days gone by are gathered at the dear old village and Alma Mater, pre-
paring to take up the grand march for the conquest of the world. I wish
T could be with you once again and revisit and recall the places and expe-
riences of those “brave days of old,” when we had a “heart for any fate.”
Our lines have widely diverged since then; but, thank God! long before
we heard of wireless telegraphy we had that equally—yea, more—wonder-
ful revelation of spiritual communion, the fellowship of the skies, which has
never failed. The Iesleyan's report of the Conferences, North and
South, were very meager: and had at not been for a sight of the Atlanta
Constitution, 1 should be in almost entire ignorance of what was done
outside the usual minute business of the session 1 have just had my
usual Conference letter from dear George Gilman. He referred to you
most affectionately, and of himself he spoke rather pathetically. A letter
from Bishop Galloway also mentioned you and George Smith and Cofer
and Candler— to all of whom he referred most tenderly as speaking of my
dear absent friends of whom he knew IT should be glad to hear.

Well, now, my dear “Yarberry,” you will be surprised to hear of a new
name which you have recently acquired in your old age. Your recent

4
BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

article in the Wesleyan about Chalmers and his experience fell into my
hands at an opportune moment, and so I translated it into Chinese and
made it the basis of an editorial for the next number of the Chinese Chris-
tian Advocate (February). But I could not translate your name, and so
had to transliterate it; and in Chinese it has become “Yarbooloo,” almost
Apollo. But to the Chinese it is all the same; really much better so, for
the Asiatic is no more a match for the pronunciation of pure English
words than an American is for the pronunciation of Chinese. In fact,
in order to get along at all we missionaries have to surrender on arrival
here and submit to be renamed altogether and then learn the language;
otherwise our mission would be one protracted or impossible undulating,
a genuine non possumus,

Well, George, as I see it, now is your opportunity to give us that long-
promised book. It has had a long incubation or gestation and should be
something large, either an albatross or an elephant. Your articles in the
Wesleyan have prepared your way, for all your friends now know what
to expect of “Yarberry,” or, better still, “Yarbooloo.” My name, by the
way, is not Young J. Allen in China, except among Europeans and Ameri-
cans, but “Ling Lo-Chee,” or, in Chinese, as on the card which I inclose.

I fear you will not find many of the dear old friends left among the
good citizens of Oxford. The Stewarts, I suppose, are still there, and I
wish to be remembered particularly to them. Your sister Mollie (Mrs.
Haygood) I have lost sight of. She is due me a letter; but none has
come for more than a year, and I should like to know her address.

Please write me soon and locate yourself at Oxford, for I should like
to know just where you are living; and please tell me something of the
dear old friends there and elsewhere. Such “personals” would be greatly
enjoyed. Tell me about Lovett, Cofer and Candler, Glenn and George
Smith, and any of the “boys” whose lives and lines have crossed ours.
I must close now. With kindest regards to Sister Yarbrough and all
your family, believe me, my dear “old-log”* comrade, ever

Yours affectionately, Youne J. ALLEN.

It is also to the suggestion of Dr. Allen that this volume
owes its title, “Boyhood and Other Days in Georgia.” No
little interest for many will be added to the book by this asso-
ciation of his name with its title. H. M. Du Boss.

NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE, March 15, 1917.

 

*The “old log” was the rallying place for our grove meetings during
our revivals at Oxford. When Dr. Allen made his first visit to the home-
land after going to China, he went, soon after reaching Oxford, to the
old log, which had begun to crumble. He picked up a fragment of it and
carried it to China, That was “hallowed ground,” as it is still to the
attenuated line of his survivors who prayed with him there. G. W. Y.

5
PREFACE

My life has been undulating. There has been in it less of
monotony than of anything else.

If I were to leave to the public an autobiography, its read-
ers, if they should become interested in it and should be asked
to give a reason for it, might reply, like the man found intent-
ly engaged in the perusal of a dictionary: “We like to read it
because it changes the subject so often.”

I have climbed the mountains and have luxuriated in the
valleys; the great cities have opened their wonders to me, and
I have gone from them into the quiet and simplicity of the
country; I have mingled with the great and have been happy
with the lowly. In the mansions of the white man I have
shared an abounding hospitality and have relished a frugal
repast in the cabin of the negro; I have been honored with
the companionship of the learned and have received from
those of less attainments many contributions to the education
of a side of my life without which any life is sadly deficient.

Having touched all conditions of society, running back to
my third year of age, and connecting those years with the
years that have succeeded to the present like a shifting pano-
rama, I have found my pen with enough to employ it without
attempting the realm of fictitious genius or magnifying the
matters of real life into tedious and burdensome ‘proportions.

My aim has been to give the plowboy something that he will
read while his pony is feeding at noon, and not wholly to dis-
appoint those of better advantages.

The book originated in the mind, wish, and request of
others.

Dr. Young J. Allen, my college mate and club mate and for
more than half a century my intimate friend, riding with me
on a buggy road while on a visit to the homeland, turned his
large, soft gray eyes on me and said: “George, you must
write a book.” We talked it over and fixed on a title.

=

/
BUYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

Deeper than the suggestions of many others, highly as they
were appreciated, did the request of this, to me, the grandest
of men sink into my heart. The world has never been the
same to me since his death.

Yet it does seem to me that an apology is due my readers
for sending forth another book, when this old globe of ours
may be fitly compared to a vast library wheeling around the
sun.

This response to the wish of many friends whom I love
may be read. If so, it will need no apology; if not, an apology
will not help it, and this is my apology for not offering an
apology. (3, WEN,

March 10, 1916.
CONTENTS

Part One. REMINISCENCES oF CHILDHOOD AND BoyHoop

CHAPTER PAGE
I. In the Bend of the Towaliga.........00 0... ceececececcuceuees 13

If. Boyhood Recollections of Meriwether County, Georgia, in the
Binst: Pitties: syses ges ceccc b caicaiauh ede ou ¥4a8 ccunuauaden leanne 19
III. Roamings, Reminiscences, and Reflections, 1881................ 26

Part Two. CoNcERNING OxForp AND Emory Days

I. My Emory and Conference Classmate, Rev. John T. Norris, of
the North Georgia Conference............. 0.00. eccececeeees 37
II. Oxford’s War Heroine...........0..0. ccc cece ec eeceneeuecen 42
III. Let It Speedily Rise to His Honor and Glory.................. 47

IV. The Enthronement of Christian Principle the Condition of At-
taining the Best in Character.............0.. 00 cee eeeceeveees 50

Part THREE. RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ITINERANCY
I. Packing and Unpacking............ 0.00... eee cece eee e ee eees 65
II. My Forty-Fourth Move in the Methodist Itinerancy............ 69
III. April 20, 1853-April 20, 1898.......... 0... cece cece cee eee eee 73
IV; From. West to Easts: sugewcnc seers iecirasues tia de iscntaa bbc 80
V. A Month’s Release for Rest........... 00. ccc cece cece ee seeeeee 87
VI. Spring Days at Miccosukee............ 0.00 cece cece n eens 92
Part Four. Gerorcia STORIES AND SELECTIONS

I. How the Cats Helped to Cure the Croaker.................... 99
II. Hannibal and Rowland.............. ccc cece ee eee ete ees 102
III. Dogs of Other Ownership........... 00.00 cece eee eee eee ees 105

IV. Dick’s Chum—Vagabond Bob—Senator Vest’s Classic Eulogy on
the DO eek tne Oe eR 64 cceca a btiemhar a eels, bana Ii
V. Romance of Cracker’s Neck.......... 0c eee e scene teen nee 114
VI. WHICH? 2cveide Seve seus Hemknemid eiadlooe se Sagan eds ke ages ees 124

Part Five. PersonaL SKETCHES AND ELSE

I. Bishop E. M. Marvin at the Session of the North Georgia Con-
ference itl (872scieciwes sas soxsderes aus gs 9554 Hogegeeeiag ene: 129
II. Decatur, Georgia, in the Latter Forties.................00. 000s 137

9
BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

CHAPTEL

Hl
IV
Vv

. A Social Function in the Mountains of Upper Georgia.....
. More: Girafles than: Stalls. .icasvecucieodpceweiy aioe meds
. A Countryman’s Sunday in the City.........6.0 0 pees eeeee eens

Pant Six. Monocraris AND MEDITATIONS

L.A Response to a Wishacceccccs ssecceeendan a: ofa teat edith
II. A Promise Remembered...................-- . Tasceoes

IIl.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VII.

I;
III.

The Authority of the Pulpituicccsseccccces o4 gaGzteeret esas
chhe> Falling: Off, oschceneeasvasiecesed Gcanes vised ees

The Devotional Use of the Holy Scriptures.............. .-- ‘
Knowing Our Families after the Flesh and Not after Christ...
The Night Interview in Jerusalem........... 00 ©--...--250---.

Part SEVEN. SERMONS AND OTHER ADDRESSES

. The Law of Mutual Dependence in the Formation of Character.

Death before Lifes. cxsadmiiurscac Geeawbes Sore tees se AGL ee aeteee

First Half-of Our ‘First ‘Centufyss coc saccasseigs. apiioegied abies
10
PART ONE
REMINISCENCES OF CHILDHOOD AND BOYHOOD
CHAPTER I
In THE BEND OF THE TOWALIGA

M* heart for many years had been set on a visit to the
bend of Towaliga River near High Falls, in Monroe
County, Georgia, where I lived when a child three years old.

Let me say to the brethren of the Methodist itinerant ranks
that they will find it a great help to rest a little after getting
their appointments, and a little well-chosen solitude will prove
a great advantage. It soothes the asperities, quiets the nerves,
closes the ear against much that it ought not to hear, veils the
eye from much that it ought not to see, opens the heart to
many soft, sweet, refreshing experiences, and will enable it
to weigh its pinions against another year’s battle with the
storm. Solitude is the pavilion into which our Captain invites
his soldiers to confer about the battle.

I took a rest of two days, including a Sunday, after the ses-
sion of the North Georgia Conference of 1900.

My dear friend, Tom Cochran, of Barnesville, was kind
enough to place at my disposal his wife’s elegant turnout,
Flora and the buggy, and I was soon on the old Alabama
Road, one of the historic highways of Georgia, heading for
one of the dearest spots on earth to me. All the old stage-
coach lines in Georgia are historic. Along this route the great
“Harry of the West” was drawn by six splendid claybank
horses when he was the idol of his country, and Martin Van
Buren made a tour along the same route. One fact about the
latter that I heard years ago came to mind. In a group of
distinguished gentleman, of which he was the center, a bet was
made that he could not be induced to answer directly any ques-
tion. This question was put to him: “Mr. Van Buren, does
the sun rise in the east or in the west?” As quick as thought
came the reply: “East and west, gentlemen, are relative
terms.”

13
BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

I was also reminded of the only politics I ever had or ever
intend to have—a Henry Clay Whig. I had many a fight over
this ground in my boyhood; and if all of us would let the
whole truth out, we would confess to a kind of all-gone feel-
ing ever since this star of the West faded from the heavens.
During the war of the sixties I rode through the slashes of
old Hanover, Virginia, near where he was born and went to
mill, and I felt like rising in my stirrups and giving a whoop.
The sixties would not have rolled their floods of war over our
country if Henry Clay had been followed. The hills, the
trees, and the streams along the old .\labama Road that after-
noon seemed to be trying to tell me that Henry Clay once rode
where I was riding. Will the twentieth century, or any cen-
tury, send another Henry Clay to Washington City? Better
take time in answering that question.

Just as the sun was setting that Saturday afternoon and all
nature was lulling to rest I reined in Flora on the crest of a
hill commanding an entrancing view of the Towaliga Valley
and caught the roar of High Falls, which had not blessed my
ears since | was three vears of age. With the rush of the
waters came a rush of recollections that submerged my whole
being. Change had left its autograph on everything else in
sight; but the keyboard of the old Towaliga organ was still
there, and not a note of its grand music was lost. It is with
sadness that I have to record the fact that money has taken
the place of music there, as in many other places of our fair
land, where God's concert halls have been silenced for the
revelings of Mammon.

How often in my little trundle-bed in the itinerant preach-
er's home had it soothed me to sleep, my imagination mean-
while peopling the dark valley with strange beings that walk
forth in the darkness!

The good Lord gave me one of the brightest days I ever
saw for my rambles. Not a cloud cast its shadow. The sun
on his royal pathway in the firmament was all smiles and
seemed to say to me: “T caressed you here when a child, and

14
BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

I will attend you to-day. I have much to do in keeping the
earth bright and warm and mending the fires on other worlds,
but I will guide you to the places where the old trees stood
and where the squirrels chattered at you from their boughs;
to where the little rabbits sat high on their supple haunches
with hearts beating with a curiosity to know who you were;
to the patches of weeds and briers into which the partridges
glided from your intrusions; to the sand bottoms and the
damp places where your little feet left their tracks.” And it
was So.

There was no sanctuary worship in the neighborhood that
day; but I went to the sacred spot where the old Methodist
church, Providence, stood on the hill to the east and beyond
which memory cannot find a place, where I was carried to
public worship. This was the first I can remember; but about
the old hill all was as vivid as if I had been the day before
led by mother’s hand into the strange precincts and placed by
her side on the old bench in the midst of the curious-looking
old men and women, with my mind, more than on anything
else, on the long, high bridge over the river that we would
have to cross on our way home after meeting. Hardly any-
thing occupied my mind in those childhood days as did that
bridge across High Falls.

One day father and I had crossed it behind old Jack, our
family horse, on our way from preaching, when, hearing an
awful rumbling and rattling, we looked back to see Uncle Will
Freeman’s horse, Fox, coming at full speed, with Aunt Free-
man and mother in the carriage screaming for life and their
bonnet ribbons streaming in the air.

Again, a carriage drawn by a pair of horses and containing
husband, wife, and babe was crossing the bridge when the
horses took fright, became unmanageable, and backed until they
broke down the railing. The mother was thrown from the
carriage, now hanging over the broken railing, and clung to it
with one hand and to her babe with the other, over the boiling
waters below. A brave man plunged in and begged her to

15
BOYHOOD ANID OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

turn loose, and he would save her and her child. He caught
them in his arms and carried them ashore unhurt.

The road running down to this side of the river and to the
other side looked strange to me, and the bridge across the
river seemed to be at the wrong place. This part of my visit
would have been far from satisfactory had I not found the old
road and the old spot where that long, high bridge of my
childhood spanned the river.

“Tfeaven lies about us in our infancy,” sang Wordsworth.
[am sure there was a time in my life when I knew of no other
heaven and where no other heaven could have taken the place
of that little home of two small rooms and a single chimney
in the bend of the Towaliga. Father and mother were my
only divinities, and sister Mollie and baby Martha were the
only angels I knew or cared to know. All my world was
there. The stream of smoke rising from the lone chimney
was the tether that kept me from slipping too far into the
wierd haunts filled with wonders upon wonders. To me the
sun in all his glory had nothing to do but to light that little
home by driving away the darkness of the night. The moon,
with her retinue of stars, had no mission but to paint beauti-
ful pictures for us on the floor and on the walls of that little
home and out in the yard and fields that lay about us.

I knew nothing of sin, had never felt a sorrow, had never
seen anything dead. There was a time when nu serpent’s hiss
was heard in the tender verdure and among the sweet flowers
of my little heart's garden; and, blessed be God. I can re-
member it as if it were yesterday.

Most of the time father was from home on a circuit that
took in much of that part of Georgia, returning for short
visits to see that we lacked nothing. Our queenly mother
reigned in his stead when he was away. In cold weather our
frugal meals were served near the wide, deep fireplace; and
sister Mollie and 1 would chatter and sport with the large,
many-colored cats that would come up from the river swamps
and surrounding woods and creep under the house to be fed

16
BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

with the fragments through the cracks of the floor. How we
wondered where those cats came from and how they kept so
fat and how they kept warm through the cold, stormy nights!

The fact that my dear father and mother did not draw nigh
and join themselves with me on that Sunday ramble satisfies
me that such favors are withheld from the glorified. “We,
according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new
earth.” If in the recasting enough of the Towaliga home
place can be retained to insure recognition, I shall feel that I
have gotten back to heaven again.

So many are saying that memory is their weakest faculty,
that they forget almost everything; and the mental philoso-
phers are not agreed on the position memory holds among the
intellectual powers. Let not memory be underrated; mem-
ory is queen over the intellectual household.

“Lull’d in the countless chambers of the brain,
Our thoughts are link’d by many a hidden chain;
Awake but one, and lo, what myriads rise!
Each stamps its image as the other flies.”

Let’s see, my friend, if in your case memory is really as
unfaithful as you say it is.

“Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber,
Holy angels guard thy bed,

Heavenly blessings without number
Gently falling on thy head.

Sleep, my babe, thy food and raiment,
House and home thy friends provide,
All without thy care, or payment,
All thy wants are still supplied.

How much better thou’rt attended
Than the Son of God could be

When from heaven he descended
And became a child like thee!

Soft and easy is thy cradle,
Coarse and hard thy Saviour lay;
For his birthplace was a stable,
And his softest bed was hay.”

es 17
BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

Riding with Dr. Weyman IL. Potter a year or two before
his death, I quoted to him the last four lines of Dr. Watts’s
“Cradle Hymn,” as written here. He dropped his large, fine
head thoughtfully, as if to recall a lost strain of song, and
then said: “George, go over those lincs again.” A few days
ago T quoted them to a saintly pilgrim, many, many miles
from her cradle, and «a smile kindled in her care-worn face
as if an angel had kissed her.

Our cradle songs are not forgotten, and of much clse this
is true.

Sunday afternoon I took leave of Mrs. Head, my kind
hostess, and her interesting family. They had entertained
me most hospitably; and they kindly entered, as far as they
could, into my soft experiences.

For miles as I rode away I would get up in the buggy,
tighten the reins on Flora, and stretch my neck to catch part-
ing glimpses of the valley of enchantment.

The sun gathered up his golden banners and waved me a
parting salute, and another of the brightest, sweetest days I
ever spent—God's precious gift—was gone.

Memory has driven its golden staple into the family room
of that humble home, holding securely the first link of a chain
that will never end.

On the other side all is as dark as if I had never existed; on
this side the chain grows brighter as it grows longer, in full
assurance that there is never to be a last link.

1s
CHAPTER II

BoyHoop RECOLLECTIONS OF MERIWETHER CouUNTY,
GEORGIA, IN THE First FIFTIES

Beeson life is rarely, if ever, forgotten. One incrus-

tation after another may settle upon it until the layers
grow thick and manifold, sufficient, it would seem, to suffo-
cate the young life; but ever and anon it is found fresh and
green in the meditations, dreams, conversations, and writings
of riper years.

I once met in the lunatic asylum at Milledgeville, Georgia,
an old friend whose face was blank, whose eyes had lost every
spark of intelligence, whose locomotion had been narrowed to
the shambling gait of the asylum. Hearing the voice of his
old schoolmate and looking into his face, he readily called his
name, and there came back to his face the old-time playground
smile, and he called the name of our school-teacher and the
name of the place where we went to school together and the
names of a number of our playfellows.

It is said that the early German settlers in this country,
when on their dying beds, would often begin to talk in the
German language, the tongue of their childhood, although
they had long ceased to speak in the language of the Father-
land; and while in health and the rush of business and the
forming of new associations they seemed altogether to have
forgotten it, it would return to them in their last hours.

Doubtless this is true of all nations under similar condi-
tions.

It requires no effort on my part to drop back into 1850 and
1851 and jot down some reminiscences of those happy years.

There being no parsonage in Greenville Circuit at that
time, my father, who had been appointed to it, had to arrange
a home for his family. He and my mother, having been
reared in the country, found it agreeable to their rural tastes
to rent a little house two and a half miles from town. Isaac

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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

C. Bell, a royal soul, met us in Griffin and piloted us to his
home and then to ours.

The Thorntons, Rossers, McClendons, Stroziers, Gastons,
and Hattons were our neighbors, Newnan Thornton being our
nearest neighbor.

I had always been hearing about the Primitive Baptists
(commonly, but not disrespectfully, called ‘‘Hardshells’”), but
had never been thrown with them. Flat Rock was not far
away. I heard my first sermon from those brethren in 1850.
Like other preachers, this Primitive preacher got out of wind
several times in his sermon. To rest himself and avail him-
self of what the rhetoricians call transition, he would tell
little incidents and give out little scraps of information and
talk along quietly until the time came to give the trumpet an-
other blast.

Stopping suddenly on this occasion, like a bird shot in the
air, in modulated tone he said: ‘Brethren, as I was a-comin’
along this morning I seed a notice stuck up ag’in’ a tree what
give an account of a claybank mare what had run away. She
was blaze-face, my brethren, had one eve out, a saddle gall on
one side of her back, three white feet, long mane and tail and
kukkleburrers tharin.”” Clearing his throat and rubbing the
floor with his foot, he was soon on his gospel tone again. It
sounded a little odd to me, but his congregation took it as
seriously as any other part of the sermon.

In those days preachers were newspapers as well for their
people in many localities. They were expected to carry them
both the gospel and current events.

I intend to visit old Flat Rock again if I can. My father
was reared among the Hardshells and never got wholly rid of
them, and I like them, too, for his sake and their own.

T loved that little home; and T went out there from Green-
ville seventeen years ago mainly to see the little hillock on
which my beautiful little dog, Rowland, would sit wagging
his tail and looking for me and the little school bucket of
scraps on my way home from school.

20
BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

T. P. Crump, a Virginian, was our school-teacher in Green-
ville. It was said that he had in his veins some of the blood
of Pocahontas. I hardly ever saw anybody from that old
State that didn’t have. George Grant assisted him awhile. I
imagine the old schoolhouse is gone. It stood between the
Howard Hotel and Mr. Gresham’s, just above Mr. Grant’s gin
shop, a little east. I was among those who enjoyed the honor
of being the last subjects of effort to teach the young idea how
to shoot in that temple of learning. There was not a shade
tree, shrub, or flower near it. The recitation bench was the
only bench in the house that had any back. Here and there
was a desk, unpainted, rough, forbidding, big prisons cut in
them for caging flies in the summer months, stained with ink,
and stuck over with paper wads that the boys would exchange
with one another when the teacher’s back was turned.

Our class had reached ‘“‘Czsar’s Bridge’ in Latin. We
stalled and had to stay in at play time and be ready the first
thing after dinner. We did our best, but no go. Right there
we had our first experience in taking in Latin through the
pores of the skin, as it were. It was too far to the woods for
“hickories,” and the teacher came down on us with a piece of
green leather fastened to a handle about eighteen inches long.
I have been afraid of bridges ever since. The pontoons dur-
ing the war always alarmed me more or less. But that recita-
tion bench had a back to it, and the teacher was so set on
getting us over the “Bridge” of the Roman warrior that he
never detected that his lash was wasting its force.

John Ragland, George Heard, Dump Jones, Jim Banning,
John Grant, Tobe McMath, Pres Hatton, Pope and Bob Park,
and Marshall and Jim Pope Martin were some of my school-
mates. Dr. J. H. Hall, of the Baptist Church at Newnan,
was also a schoolmate whom I loved much and whom I love
still.

Capt. W. T. Irvine, of Chattooga County, and his brother
Tom, noble boys and brave soldiers, were my closest friends.
Bobbie Ellis was on the roll, or Henry, perhaps both.

2a
BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

Town ball, knucks, marbles, bull pen, sweepstakes, leapfrog,
and fights were the athletic sports. As to the last diversion, I
am proud to say that I never saw a knife or pistol drawn.
There was no gouging. Plain fist and skull was the code; and
when the fight was over, it was over, and each combatant felt
that his honor had been preserved. John Grant and Tobe
McMath were lightweights and could most easily be drawn
into a fight of any of the boys. I never saw either one of
them whip anybody, but they could not be “run over.”

Another thing in those days of thrilling adventure dating
back several years: A valuable mulatto slave ran away from
his owner, Mr. Bohanan, of Coweta County. He went to
New York City and established himself in business, of which
he felt so proud that he had to write back to his friends about
it. :

Mr. Green G. Howard, who kept a hotel in Greenville, en-
tered into an agreement with Mr. Bohanan to restore to him
his runaway slave. Taking his son, Columbus, he started for
New York. Arriving there safely, they secured lodging at a
hotel; and Columbus was left in the room with sealed orders
one Sunday afternoon, while his father took a stroll into the
lower part of the city. Passing many crowds, he finally halted
at one group of whites and negroes having a social time to-
gether. His suspicions were aroused. Calling for refresh-
ments for the crowd, he added: “If there is anybody here
from Georgia, IT want him to come up first and drink.” Up
walked his man, very proud of his State and of the honor he
was sharing with one of her citizens. He drank freely, his
fellow Georgian taking pains to appear sociable only, avoiding
quite adroitly everything that could interfere with the regular
beating of his pulse or the coolness of his head. He was fast
winning his way to the other's admiration, so that when he
started back the negro accepted promptly and with increasing
pride the invitation to accompany him. Refreshments were
served as they were needed along the walk, until a passing car-
riage suggested the idea of a ride. In the meantime the ne-

2
o«
BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

gro had given his name as Bohanan, of Coweta County, Geor-
gia, and had much to say of his people, of whom he was very
proud.

A short ride brought them to Mr. Howard’s hotel; and an
invitation to go with him to his room was accepted, where he
met another Georgian. The key was turned and orders issued
for silence until he was asked by one of them to speak. A
closed carriage soon had the three at the wharf; and a safe
voyage brought the trio to Georgia, and rail and stagecoach
put them down in Greenville, where old friends were soon
shaking hands and old associations happily renewed, for the
New York Bohanan seemed about as glad to get back as the
Georgia Bohanans were to have him back.

But the cotton rows of Coweta grew monotonous in con-
trast with the stirring streets and attractive scenes of New
York City after a while; and the farm hand hung up the shovel
and hoe, left the farming interests in other hands, bowed him-
self out again, and has never been heard of by his Georgia
associates since.

When once tasted, the charms of city life are hard to resist;
and the negro is not, by a good deal, an exception to the rule.
Columbus Howard became a member of the Georgia Confer-
ence, entered the Confederate service when the war broke out,
and fell gallantly in battle while leading his command into
action at First Manassas. Father and sons were brave men,
and Sallie was as beautiful as a spring rose. She and her
mother and one brother are still living.

Another incident: We found Col. Walton Ector in Meri-
wether. The gold fever was contagious in Georgia in the last
forties, and he had been to California. On his return, leaving
the highway one day, he came upon a sack of unminted gold
that had fallen from a pack mule, it was supposed, while graz-
ing some distance from the thoroughfare. He placed it on
another pack mule, brought it to Georgia, published his find,
and, upon its being strictly identified, turned it over to the
owner. He was quite a favorite with my father, who asked

23
BOVHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

him one day: “Walt, will you be kind enough to tell me what
vour first thought was when you found that gold?" The no-
ble fellow responded at once: “As God is my judge, my first
thought was that the gold was not mine.” My father was
studying the doctrine of total depravity at this time. Here
was a young man unconverted, wild, a stranger to transform-
ing grace. Ilow about it? Facts before theology. .A discrim-
mation relieves the perplexity | Honesty is a natural virtue,
not necessarily a spiritual grace. A man cannot be a Christian
without being honest; he can be honest without being a Chris-
tian.

During the great revival there under my father’s pastorate
he saw his friend one morning sitting in the rear of the
church, a very respectful attendant, although he had never
professed conversion. He walked deliberately down the aisle
and said t» him: ‘Walt, since we had that talk I have been
determined that the devil shall not have vou. Come along
with me.” And he went. J hear the name occasionally, and it
is still dear to me.

Drs. Terrell, Wimbish, Reese, Dannelly, and Turrentine
were living in Greenville then. Memory is a little indistinct
about the first-named. 1 am writing wholly from memory.

The lawyers were: Judge Hiram Warner and his brother
Obadiah, Colonel McMath, the Hall brothers, and James Rus-
sell. Likely there were others there whose names have es-
caped me. I am inclined to say that William Harris, brother
of Hon. H. R. Harris, belonged to that noble group of men.
Anyhow, he was one of the finest characters | ever knew. My
father had great respect for his literary criticisms and his the-
ological lore as well.

James Russell was considered a little skeptical in religious
matters, but he and my father were fast friends. I have a
hook in my library, a present to my father, with the name in it.

Judge Warner had but one child, a lovely, queenly daugh-
ter, whom Hon. Warner Hill may always feel proud to call
mother.

24
BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

I have written before of the old family names of Greenville
and Meriwether County.

My dear friend, Hon. Henry R. Harris, whom I have
known from the flush of young manhood and whom I have
always honored and loved, imagines of late that he detects the
approach of twilight; but in the spiritual realm the sun never
goes down, and that is the only realm worth a thought.

Walter T. Colquitt was the hurricane orator in politics, as
well as at the bar, in our part of Georgia in those days. He
said slavery must go into the territories; others said it must
not. It looks now like it has gotten into many of our States
and that whites and colored are becoming bondsmen.

Lest I forget, let me say that I rode into Richmond one
morning just after the Yorktown retreat, and whom should I
see in front of the post office but our old Greenville teacher,
T. P. Crump! He was very kind to me, wanted me to go
home with him, and I don’t know what else; but I remembered
the day that he and our class tried to get over “Czsar’s
Bridge” in our Latin lesson in the old schoolhouse at Green-
ville, and I didn’t know what might turn up, so I bade him an
affectionate farewell and rode back to camp.

P. S.—Of course we “Cesar’s Bridge” boys were going to
whip that teacher when we grew to be men; but when that
time rolled around we had our hands full whipping the Yan-
kees, and Mr. Crump got off light.

25
CHAPTER III
ROoAMINGS, REMINISCENCES, AND REFLECTIONS, 1881

CCORDING to an arrangement of our presiding elder,
some of my time recently has been spent away from the

regular post of duty. This shifting of troops from one part
of the line to another part is an old-time custom of our Meth-
odist itinerancy; and it can be made, as it has been, very prof-
itable to preachers and people, to the preachers especially, for
with them it amounts to a short vacation without laying off
the harness entirely. If the preacher has any “‘sugar sticks”
out of which he has not licked all the stripes and sweetness,
he can take them along and appear fresh before those who are
hearing them for the first time; and, in the meantime, his
mind can be lying fallow.

Five miles from my first stopping place on the railroad is
a little village where my grandfather lived in my childhood.
Here the heaven that “lies about us in our infancy” included
years beyond. My heart inclined strongly to this spot, bathed.
as it had been, in heavenliness for thirty-six years, and early
the next day I was there. Without a single direction from
anybody, the remains of the old home were found; and al-
though time had written change in deep characters upon all
the premises, the spots dearest to me were readily identified.

There was the old sand bottom at the foot of the little ave-
nue leading down to the big road where sister Mollie and I
made frog houses after a rain. A little beyond was the old
church. A little to the left lay the route of my first trip to
school, along which, with my first little tin dinner bucket and
my first hook, T reluctantly made my way, stopping occasion-
ally and putting my bucket and book on the stumps and taking
aery, my heart almost breaking for my dear mother to be
with me there, to go to that schoolhouse on the hill, the great-
est sorrow that had yet cast its chilling shadow upon life's
early pathway.

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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

All entrances to the old house were closed except one, a
small window. Climbing over piles of rubbish to this, I thrust
my body through as far as I could; and there was the old
family room in which my father and mother were married,
and where in after years my grandfather fondled my little
sister and me so tenderly on his knee while father and mother
were far away helping to lay the foundations of Methodism
in Florida. There was the old mantelpiece; the steep stairway
running up to Aunt Winnie’s room, up which we had clam-
bered hundreds of times; and the broad old hearthstone
around which we sat in our little chairs in the long winter
evenings to hear read the letters from father and mother, and
to be thrilled with grandfather’s stories, and then to be awed
into devotion by a chapter from the old family Bible and the
songs and prayers of the best man I ever knew. Here my
head rested awhile on the little window sill. The angels had
not left the old house, and a face not often wet with tears
was soon bearing testimony to how easily memory can make
the past and the present one.

There was not time enough for a visit to my grandfather’s
grave, but some old citizens told me that “a better man than
Uncle Sammie Lane never lived in that country.” O.how my
heart warmed again! The dear old man was not rich, neither
did he fill any of the high places of the earth; but to this day
his grave can be found without the aid of a monument or any
stone whatever to mark his resting place.

A reflection just here. Are we not confining the Holy
Ghost too exclusively to the sanctuary, the closet, the family
altar, and to special means in his glorious work of developing
our characters and of making us religious? Shall we be ex-
cluded from the field of associations through which my soul
passed that morning at Corinth? Are there not other means
of grace? Was it not the Holy Spirit making the goodness of
God for a lifetime pass before me almost in the twinkling of
an eye? Were not the old home, the old church spot, the
sand bottom, and all that hallowed ground avenues of ap-

27
BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

proach to my heart? Then why did I receive a richer spiritual
baptism in that little window than I did at the camp meeting?
The “Emerson school” may have gone too far. We are in
danger of not going far enough in this direction to reap all
the blessings in store for us.

“And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy
God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble
thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart.
whether thou wouldst keep his commandments or no” Here
is a text for some preacher who may want to show what God
can do for us through the memory. That is certainly the dia-
mond point upon which the passage turns.

The old log schoolhouse was gone, and the large oak and
hickory trees had been ruthlessly cut down. Only a few old
stumps marked the playground of other days. It is a grave
misdemeanor, an act of vandalism, to cut down a tree close te
a church, schoolhouse, or old homestead. ‘Woodman, spare
that tree” should take the form of law under certain lmita-
tions. The little spring at the foot of the old schoolhouse hill
had been filled with washings from the hillside, but its sweet
and refreshing waters had broken out higher up. I dipped my
old felt hat into it for a draught and thought of the days
when, perched on the roots of the old trees that shaded it, I
waited my turn.

Near this spot I first heard “school butter.” It was in the
spring and noon playtime. .A young man rode by on his way
to the field; and as he passed by the schoolhouse he straight-
ened himself on his horse and in a very defying manner shout-
ed two or three times, “School butter!" The boys did not
stop to pick up their marbles or balls, but in a moment were
after him in hot pursuit. Being about the smallest boy, I was
late in catching up, but reached the scene in time to see a
cloud of dust rolling upward as if a bullfight were raging. 1
never expected to see the “school butter” man emerge from
that stack of boys and young men. Every boy that could
stick to the pile was on him, and many were standing around

28
BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

ready for him if he should slip out. When they let him up
he was a fearful mixture of soil and man, with barely enough
strength left to finish his day’s work.

Another man came near losing his life from a similar banter
given at another school. He was a remarkably stout man and
gloried in his strength, and he was riding a blooded animal
of whose speed he had reason to be proud. Passing his neigh-
borhood schoolhouse one day, he offered the same insult; and
as the boys began to pour after him he galloped leisurely
along, keeping close enough to them to tantalize them. But
that school had some tactics of its own of which he was ig-
norant. His immediate pursuers reduced their speed until he
brought his horse down to a walk. Entering a long, narrow
lane with a high fence on either side, he turned in his saddle
to look after his line of retreat. There was a division of the
school that had swept round him by a rapid flank movement
through the woods with sticks, rocks, and broken fence rails,
dropping over into the lane in his front. Now he had to think
of something besides “school butter,” and that quickly. Both
ends of the lane were full of insulted boys, both fences were
too high for his horse to jump, and there was too much in
horse and rider to be surrendered. So, laying his face as
close as possible to his horse’s neck, he set spurs, and through
the shower of rocks and rails and other missiles he plunged,
saving his life and his horse, but paying dearly for his fun in
hair and blood.

By reference to “Georgia Scenes,” by Judge A. B. Long-
street, the origin of “school butter’ can be ascertained. It
degenerated from “school better,” which meant “T am better
than your school.”

The dinner hour found us back with the brethren; and in
the afternoon we were in our buggies, heading for the point
of the compass indicated by our presiding elder, Warm
Springs Camp Ground, in Meriwether County.

What a number of subjects two preachers can talk about
riding along the big road in a long afternoon! Eternal pun-

29
BUOVHOOD ANS) OTHER DAYS IN CEQRGIA

 

ishment was a prominent topic on that ride. All men (shall
T say all Methodist preachers?) are not believing that doc-
trine these days. There were some rather startling develop-
ments during that afternoon ride.

Without reviewing that discussion, [ shall say that it 1s
not a doctrine to be apprehended by human reason, but a doc-
trine which must not be ignored because human reason cannot
grasp it. “I cannot see how a merciful God can send a soul
to hell for the sins of a short lifetime” is a lame argument
against the doctrine, and Mr. Beecher’s horror over God
“sweeping souls into hell like so many flies’ makes the argu-
ment no stronger. God does neither. The “how” in all the-
ological matters may as well be dropped, and we must be sat-
isfied with very little sceing and cultivate the belicv'ing dispo-
sition. The theological perplexitics of the present day arise
from the disposition that found expression during that night
interview in Jerusalem, “How can these things be?" and by
overlooking the multitude of Bible passages that fix man’s
loss and ruin on himself. “We walk by faith and not by
sight" and vet everybody wants to sec, and some think that
they do see. That Jerusalem discussion was the most impor-
tant in which two men ever engaged. It contains the germ of
all religious discussions since.

Night found us in a comfortable parsonage in a quiet, easy-
going town—Greenville. This is not the best thing that can
be said of a town in times like these, but worse things can be
said of some towns. Two of us lived in that county in our
boyhood, and we were in the midst of tender associations.

A short walk next morning brought us up to one sight of
progress—a little steer, with a blind bridle on, hitched to a
cart. If the checkrein and the crupper had been added, the
omens of improvement would have been somewhat more aus-
picious. As it was, there was a step forward. It did one
man’s soul and body good to see how hard the little steer,
blinded by his bridle, tried to keep from getting frightened at

30
BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

what was going on around him that he could not see. There
are no such turnouts in Greenville now (1916).

We left him and his blind bridle, and two of us started for
the country where we lived when we were boys. A Methodist
preacher’s son has many homes in a lifetime; and, as hard as
the world is, most of them are happy homes.

There was one spot near this home that I had longed to
visit. It ranked all others in interest to me, and a short ride
from town brought me to it. Some of the preachers have
gone to England this year, some have gone on tours North;
but I have stood on the knoll where my little dog used to
meet me when a little boy on my return from school about
sundown to wag his warm welcome home and to get the
scraps from my tin bucket. Another softening season just
here. The buggy wheels grated upon my heartstrings as they
rolled over the spot.

Our camp meeting was pleasant and not altogether unprof-
itable. More cannot be said, owing to the fact, mainly, as we
were impressed, that the concert was over before the instru-
ments were tuned. Snapping the strings when the tune ought
to be waking the echoes will never insure a grand occasion.
The tuning must be going on all the year to secure a grand
concert at the camp meeting.

If my life is spared, my eye, rather my soul through my
eye, shall feast again on the majestic white oak immediately
at the rear of the “preachers’ tent.”” Another oak of a differ-
ent family and of a different style shades a large part of the
path down to the pulpit. It is a beauty, standing there in its
native loveliness to lend its symbol to the portraiture of
Christian character, the leading features of which are sym-
metry and deep, broad anchorage.

God favored me with another visit to Warm Springs Camp
Ground in 1915; and there were my grand old oaks still
standing guard over one of the classic grounds of Methodism
and Western Georgia, and the dear old spring was preserved
in granite walls and cement and substantially and tastefully

31
KhOYHOQOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

pavilioned, a symbol of the ever-flowing and inexhaustible wa-
ter of life. And those blazing fire stands at night! I found
it hard to keep away from them. Shall we see those trees,
that spring, those fire stands again? May the Lord be pleased
to grant the favor!

I missed meeting Dr. Gillespie, my first school-teacher. My
heart was saddened when told that he was dead. In 1881,
after preaching to the people, I was sent for to meet an old
friend who was anxious to see me. I found the old gentleman
sitting in his chair, with a smile on his face. “Come here,
George,” he said. “I taught you your letters at Corinth.”
“Then,” I replied, “it is Mr. Gillespie.” It was a happy meet-
ing. He seemed to rejoice that he had lived to hear the little
boy whom he had started in his education preach the gospel.
I hope to meet him in heaven. I want all who bear his name
to know that it is a name still precious to me.

Before the visit to the Corinth home of my childhood I
found myself, in 1870 or 1880, living over in a dream its
sacred scenes. I was at the little window that opened to the
east, near which grandfather sat while reading the Scriptures
to the family by the carly morning light. The old family
room opened to me quictly, and a few precious moments were
spent looking around at the walls and up to the high, long
mantelpiece on which the Bible was kept and into the little
room in which we slept. Then 1 went out into the rear yard
and stretched my neck to see the little pine thicket, a few
hundred yards away to the west, where grandfather would
pray with sister Mollie and me as he returned from his work
at the close of the day and when we were through playing in
the branches and chasing the butterflies and plucking the wild
flowers, for our company was that dear old man's delight
through his days of toil, There stood the little cluster of
pines, as young and fresh and green as when I first saw them.

My next halt was over the grassy spot in the front yard
where I was playing with the grasshoppers when grandfather
interrupted me with the chilling announcement that I must

Ee
BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

start to school that morning. I was moving in my dream, as
if an angel had me by the arm and had but a moment to give
me for each scene of enchantment. Now down the avenue to
the big road and the frog houses in the sand bottom—all as I
saw them when I was six years old. Forgetting for a moment
a little sloe tree that stood near the front door of the house,
where the mocking bird sang and nested, I ran back to find
the little tree gone, except a little rough stump sharpened by
age and wasted to a point about sixteen inches high.

Resuming my walk, I was by my grandfather’s side, hold-
ing his hand, on our way to the old church, which we entered
over three short sills for steps, my grandfather’s left hand
holding my right. The second step, from long use and neg-
lect, had worked out of position, and the left end would shake
as our feet touched it, many a time causing me to fear a fall
when a child. In that dream I felt it careen under me as
distinctly as I did in the churchgoing days of childhood. Go-
ing to the old bench on which I sat by my grandfather in those
tender worshiping days and casting my eye at the familiar
pulpit, the sweetest dream-vision of my life vanished; but,
unlike most dreams, every incident of it remains with me, its
beauty and aroma as bewitching and as sweet as when revived
by the breath and touch from heaven in the seventies.

“Beaten Tracks” must have come to Margaret H. Lawless
after a visit of this kind, and her sweet poem must have been
inspired by it:

“Sky spaces have no beaten track
Whereby the fledglings may come back;

And they? They never look behind,
Where empty nests swing in the wind.

The yellow path the children wore

In the green stretch before the door
Still shows a slender, curving thread.
If with light step or with bent head

They come to seek a tardy rest,
They will not find an empty nest;
For, if they miss her form and face,
The mother’s spirit holds the place.”

3 33
BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

T must put a question to every parent and grandparent as
a close to the present chapter. Did you ever pray in private
with your little child? There is in every little heart a soft
opening into which can be dropped a delicate support which
will broaden and strengthen into a defense against which no
attack from earth or hell will ever prevail. This is child-
hood’s spiritual organ.

I have been skeptical without ever becoming an infidel.
Doubts and fears have fallen to my lot, as tu most other men.
“The waves and billows,” as with one of old, “have gone over
my head.” I have cried out from the darkness: ‘‘Watchman,
what of the night?” I have been entangled in the metaphysi-
cal subtleties of the great thinkers; I have plunged with the
scientific explorers as they have sought to mend what has ap-
peared to them to be the limping gait of inspiration. But that
little cluster of young pines a few hundred yards from my
grandfather’s door into which that venerable man would soft-
ly step as the sun was bathing it in its parting beams and
kneel down, my little sister on her knees on one side of him
and her little brother on the other side and his hands on their
heads, and then with upturned face looking into an invisible
beyond somewhere that made him smile and talk as if he saw
somebody, we in the meantime straining our little necks to
see who he was talking, to—that scene! that scene! that
scene! Its beauty has never been marred by the tumults of
time, nor has Satan’s foul breath ever poisoned its heavenly
sweetness.

Through her long, laborious, unflinching life as the wife of
a Methodist itinerant preacher, sister Mollie Haygood was in-
terpreting that scene, and her Methodist itinerant brother is

finding out more and still more of its meaning every day of
his life.

34
PART TWO
CONCERNING OXFORD AND EMORY DAYS
CHAPTER I

My Emory anp CoNFERENCE CrassmatE, Rev. Joun T.
Norris, oF THE NorTH GEORGIA CONFERENCE

| January, 1854, I found the freshman class at Emory

College half advanced, with John T. Norris and Samuel
K. Cook in the lead. From then until graduation neither of
those splendid young men missed a question in any depart-
ment of the college course. At graduation, in 1857, they
shared equally the highest honor of the class.

Like others of the young men from Columbus in those days,
young Norris had been well prepared for college by his teach-
ers in the academy, by his social surroundings, and by intelli-
gent and religious parents. His brother, George Walter Nor-
ris, Hugh Dawson, George Dawson, Robert A. Chambers,
Threewitts, and other Columbus boys reflected great credit on
their city and their family names. Norris’s many excellencies
of character made him one of a group of young men whom I
delight to remember: Young J. Allen, George G. Smith, Atti-
cus G. Haygood, W. P. Pattillo, J. Tabor Payne, George A.
Harrison, Frank L. Little, Louis D. Palmer, J. T. Lin, W. A.
Bass, John W. Simmons, and a number of others.

Writing to me of our dear friend, Dr. George G. Smith
says: “I loved no man more than I did John Norris, and I
knew no man better. He was noted for his girlish face, his
boundless love of humor, and his consistent piety. In com-
mon with Leake, Allen, Haygood, Simmons, and others, he
became deeply interested in the Wesleyan doctrine of entire
sanctification.”

The interest in that important subject did not reach the
extravagance of later times. Indeed, there was nothing that
went beyond a good case of spiritual experience carried to a
higher temperature than common.

The old farmers tell us that corn in the growing season
down in the rich bottoms will pop like pistols after a rain; and

37
BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

they say the corn is growing then and slipping its joints, and
that makes the noise. So it was with those college boys, and
so it is now, and so it will be to the end.

Life everywhere has but one beginning. This is as true of
spiritual life as of the life of the corn in the field, of the roses
in our flower gardens, or of the trees of our forests.

About that time one of my roommates, W. P. Pattillo,
joined himself to Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress.” Retiring
one night after reading the book until a late hour, he had not
much more than touched his bed before his happy soul opened
into an old-fashioned shout, and it seemed to me that he
would shout all the night long. But he never named or num-
bered it. We called such experiences “blessings,” “salvation
times,” “times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord,”
and went along. Getting the blessings experimentally was too
big a thing to become confused about them numerically.

Our way of thinking about it was that the Holy Spirit was
always on the giving hand, taking the things of Christ and
showing them unto us, “even the deep things of God.”

Salvation, in the sense of pardon, we understood to be com-
plete and the work of a moment. Salvation, in the sense of
character, we understood to be a process, a gradual work.
This communication of the divine life to our life we supposed
would go on “until the day of Christ.”’

If a surviving member of the class of 1857 whose name was
on the senior program of that year should see this tribute to
our dear classmate, he may know that his name is in the cor-
ner stone of Seney Hall with that of John T. Norris and oth-
ers of the class who were together for the last time in the old
chapel (the chapel that preceded Seney Hall) on commence-
ment day of 1857. [Not one of the class is now living (1917)
except the chronicler of the sad fact.]

In the winter of 1857 John T. Norris, George G. Smith.
and fourteen others, including the writer, met at Washington
to be admitted on trial in the Georgia Conference.

The Committee on Public Worship appointed Norris to

38
BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

preach one afternoon, a recognition of attainments rarely be-
stowed on an applicant then or now. His delicate frame trem-
bled under the strain, and his face flushed from embarrass-
ment, but he met the responsibility in a most becoming and
creditable manner.

I am glad to be able to say of my friend that in all thoughts
of self he was modest. He was adorned with this grace at
college and as long as I knew him as a Conference classmate.
He aspired to nothing beyond the consciousness of trying to
be useful and of the Master’s approval of his effort.

I never saw him under the dominion of any of the small
passions of rivalry that belong to men generally and occa-
sionally to ministers of the gospel. He envied no man’s
genius or position.

Rich in intellectual gifts, familiar with the classics of the
ancients, his style of thought and expression formed after
the model of the best writers of his own tongue, what had he
to covet in others? I am satisfied, from my long and intimate
acquaintance with him, that his main energies as a preacher
were directed to the cultivation of his spiritual faculty,
through which he could move and still more clearly behold
the King in his beauty and revel in the manifestation of his
glory and then communicate of these ineffable experiences of
soul to his fellow men.

His life was beautiful in those years when as a young
shepherd he fed the flock of God.

His first appointment was Milledgeville, Bethel, and Eaton-
ton as assistant, or junior, to Dr. Lovick Pierce, another mark
of the high appreciation in which he was held.

It was during this first year of his itinerant life that he met
Miss Ella R. DeJarnette, of Putnam County, whom he mar-
ried in 1860, while stationed at Wesley Chapel, Savannah.
He was a junior preacher on the Lexington Circuit in 1859
with John S. Dunn.

This meant horseback and saddlebags, rain, wind, sleet,
snow, mud, and all of old Oglethorpe County for his territory.

39
BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

I said to myself: “What is John going to do? He knows
nothing about a horse and saddle. And, then, he is so deli-
cate, and the winds and other bad weather will be too much
for him. And how will he know how to get along with the
people in the country, having spent all his life in the city?”
Having been on the circuit in 1858, I could easily keep up
with him in 1859.

The precious and noble young itinerant had learned the
etiquette of heaven from the Master, and that made him at
home in the cabin and in the mansion, among the poor and
among the rich, with the saints and with the sinners, helpful
to the old and companionable with the young.

The little iron-gray horse and the rider, with his saddle-
bags, were soon as familiar along the lanes and among the old
hills of old Oglethorpe as if he had been one of the oldest of
the itinerants.

In 1860 our presiding elder had Isle of Hope and Wesley
Chapel, Savannah, in one Quarterly Conference, and this
made us members of that body. An incident occurred in one
of the Conferences that showed how the gentle and heroic
graces can live in the same heart.

A committee of three reported on the conduct of a member
of the Conference. The finding of the committee was that
the brother had done wrong, but it recommended the passage
of his character if he would acknowledge that he had done
wrong. This the brother declined to do, adding that he could
not acknowledge what he knew was not true or what he could
not see to be true. Josiah Lewis was a clear-headed and rigid
disciplinarian. He was about to pronounce the consequences
when the young Wesley Chapel pastor addressed the chair
most respectfully but unflinchingly. “I hope,’’ said he, “that
this Conference will not seck to extort from this brother an
acknowledgment of a wrong that he tells us he cannot possi-
bly see." The brother’s character was passed.

Brother Norris was ordained deacon at the close of 1859
and elder in 1861. Tle served Washington in 186r.

40
BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

In 1869 he was in charge of Cedartown and Van Wert,
having located his family at Cartersville. Before this he
filled the Lumpkin and Dalton Stations.

The death of the lovely, devoted, accomplished wife and
affectionate mother of his children, the companion of the itin-
erancy of his younger manhood, was followed by other losses
in his family, until only a sister, Mrs. Myra Graves, wife of
Mr. F. N. Graves, of Atlanta, is the survivor of the happy
Columbus family of which my dear classmate was a member.

In her bright, beautiful girlhood I met Miss Eugenia Bass,
daughter of Col. N. H. Bass and sister of my old college mate,
Josiah Bass, in Macon, Ga. When I saw her last she was the
second wife of Brother Norris. She was richly endowed in
mind and heart for the delicate and sacred responsibilities she
assumed in taking the place of wife and mother in his home.
The radiance of her congenial, refined, religious life cheered
and sustained him in the feebleness of his declining years.
Kind angels on earth vied with those from above in the last
hours as he passed into the heavens.

At the Dalton Conference in November, 1896, three dear
old Conference classmates were in the pulpit together one
afternoon. All three had been pastors there. How soft our
hearts were! How mellow the reminiscences of thirty-eight
years! It was our last meeting together on earth. John T.
Norris, George G. Smith, and the writer of this tribute must
meet again!

4l
CHAPTER II
OxForp’s War I1EROINE

A November, 1864, Sherman left Atlanta with sixty thou-

sand men and started toward Savannah.” Thus opens
Chapter XXVI. of the “History of Georgia,” by Charles H.
Smith (‘Bill Arp’’), a book that lies on my table and that is
read by my wife and boys and myself. I want the time to
come when every boy and girl, white and colored, in the South
and in the North, in the West and in the East, at home and
abroad, on the land and on the sea, will have a copy of that
book. It is arranged somewhat after the order of our Church
catechisms; and, next to taking down our religion right, I
want us all to take down right the history of our dear old
Georgia. I have always admired the author because, among
other good things, he is so much like Georgia.

But, of course, all the facts of Georgia’s history did not find
record in that book, comprehensive as it is, and many have
never gotten into any book.

On a Thursday night of that November in 1864, about
eleven o'clock, a young lady living at Oxford, Georgia, quietly
left her home without an intimation to any one, not even to
those of her family or her most intimate friends, of her des-
tination.

Her uncle, with whom she lived, was an elegant South
Carolinian and a blockade runner, who arranged a home at
Oxford under the impression that so quiet and unpretentious
a little village of Methodist preachers and teachers could not
possibly attract the attention of the invading army.

Our heroine was a young lady of rare loveliness, intelligent,
refined, religious, and her whole being was a flame of devotion
to the Southern Confederacy. She was an angel of mercy in
the hospital that stood where Seney Hall, the old college build-
ing, now stands. She would go to the Covington depot and
cheer the soldiers as they would pass to the front, and de-

: 4
BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

voured the newspapers in informing herself as to the move-
ments of both armies.

Physically she was quite delicate, her weight being between
eighty and ninety pounds. Her eyes were black and keen,
complexion brunette, as fearless and graceful as an Indian girl
on horseback, and crowned with a suit of long, silken hair.
Added to this was her bewitching low-country brogue.

But what was all this to a Southern girl when her country
was in the throes of the death struggle? She must go to
Sherman’s headquarters in Atlanta and capture the details of
his purposes against her people.

She burned her beautiful hair to a crisp, singeing it until it
looked like a negro’s. With walnut juice she stained her beau-
tiful face and hands until the last vestige of her high lineage
disappeared, and then she put on a garb that gave her the
appearance of an old Georgia negro woman. Any effort at
securing a horse and saddle would have interfered with her
plans. Afoot she was at Yellow River, two miles distant, near
midnight. The railroad bridge had been fired by Sherman’s
raiders; and, on her hands and knees, she was soon across the
river over the dam of Torrence’s old mill. Now came the
long, dark forty miles and more to Atlanta. Ignorant of
everything but her glowing purpose, she pressed on, following
the sound of an occasional cannon shot. Reaching the out-
posts, her tale of woe—her lost husband, who had run away
from the white people and gone to the Yankees, told in her
soft, plaintive South Carolina brogue—softened the hearts of
the sentinels and kindled their sympathies, and she was soon
in the midst of the brilliant pageant of the Northern army.

There were keen ears, as well as keen eyes, in that camp,
unusually keen for an old darky.

Most cheerfully did she perform the small servile favors
she was called on for during her short stay; but the best pay
she received was the information she got in little drops about
the march to the sea as she courtesied her little self about
among the tents.

43
BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

Sherman's plans having been thus duplicated upon her
memory, and failing to find her old runaway husband about
the camps, she concluded to look for him elsewhere. Per-
haps he had repented of his rash act in leaving her, the spouse
of his early troth, and had returned to the scenes of their
early romance.

AAs hard as it was to get into Atlanta in those days, it was
harder to get out.

Our heroine’s last afternoon in camp was now drawing to
a close. Afternoons in November were short then, as they
are now. Turning her dark eyes east, Oxford and her loved
ones and our dear soldier boys were soon pulling at her gir-
dle. Very soon night would be pinning her curtains all over
Atlanta. Now, while the guards are being mounted and the
evening gun is booming and the scouts are returning with
their clatter, is the time to pass the pickets. The old woman
had lost a key and was looking for it when she reached the
last picket line. This last picket was the most watchful and
suspicious of all. He had many questions to ask as she
scraped her feet on the ground looking for livr key and was
getting nearer his line all the time. As he passed her the last
time, now dark, and reached the terminus of his beat, a strange
strength filled the limbs of this old woman; and, with the sup-
pleness of a cat, she was soon beyond his line and, bounding
like a roe through the dark woods, was soon out of danger on
the homeward trail, having been complimented by a shot from
the picket, who had too much to intercept his aim.

Next morning was the precious Sabbath. The old village
bell had called the devout to public worship. Their songs
were being responded to by Sherman’s guns, with which they
had grown too familiar to be interrupted by them in their
devotions. My mother was spending the morning in our
heroine’s home to cheer and comfort the family in their deep
grief. A door opened quietly into the family room, and in
crept the lost one, with swollen hands and bleeding feet and

44
BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

low, bent form, but with a face all lighted up with the smile
of triumph.

The commander of the Confederate forces must hear from
her first. Her communication, embracing the full details of
the invader’s movements and purposes, was sent, but it was
captured by the enemy. She then imparted her experience to
her neighbors and friends, but it was too much for their faith.
She told them the day the army would be in Oxford and
much else that would have been profitable to them if her in-
formation had been respected. They could have saved much
valuable property, and then the Silver Grays (a military
company organized for the common defense and that of Ox-
ford in particular) would have been saved a power of hard
running.

When the fatal hour struck, the little village was black with
the enemy, and they wanted the Oxford spy! A guard was
stationed at every house and every possible hiding place care-
fully and repeatedly searched. The hours for family prayer,
meals, and going to bed were the auspicious moments for rav-
aging the homes of the little village in quest of the spy. One
stalwart fellow paused in one of the rooms where the little
children were asleep. Halting his men a moment, he looked
down into their faces and said, “God bless the little children!
How sweetly they sleep! I have some at home,” then brushed
the tears from his face.

Our heroine’s home at that time is now the home of Pro-
fessor Bradley, of Emory College. Another house, the Ox-
ford parsonage, now stands on the spot (1917). The fa-
vorite scout of the army and another soldier having been
killed by Mr. Presley Jones, a private citizen of Covington,
the neighboring town, the soldiers were enraged all the more
for having missed the Oxford spy.

Through the earnest intercessions of Mr. John Harris and
other citizens of Covington, an order from the commanding
general was secured which allowed none of the army to halt
for the night west of the Alcovy River. But for this, Cov-

45
BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

ington and Oxford would have been wrapped in flames before
morning.

Our heroine’s terrible exposure on her walk to Atlanta and
return brought on consumption. Her family returned to
south Carolina. She died in Orangeburg, dictating a letter to
Mrs. Susan Capers Stone and other friends at Oxford, where
the angels guarded her in her concealment, and the brave,
sweet spirit of Zora Fair swam quietly into the galaxy of glo-
ried Southern women who gave all to God and their country.

The house in which Zora Fair was concealed as Sherman’s
army passed is still standing in Oxford. It is next to the
district parsonage, to the north; and in one side of the room
on the second floor, to the right, there is the small opening
through which she crept to the shed room of the house. The
depth of the room was barely sufficient to afford her protec-
tion, and the opening was concealed by an empty barrel.

46
CHAPTER III
Let Ir Sprepity Rist to His Honor anp Guiory*
BY BISHOP W. A. CANDLER

I AM glad Emory College is to erect a memorial chapel in
honor of Dr. Young J. Allen, Emory’s best-beloved and
most illustrious son.

He loved the dear old college with the tenderest and most
profound affection. When he returned for brief visits to
America during his long life in China, he would on landing
hasten first to Oxford as an exile might quickly seek the home
of his early love on escape from banishment. I was present
at Oxford when he returned in 1878, the first time he returned
to America after going out to China, in 1859. He preached
to the people assembled there to hear him from these words:
“And thence they sailed to Antioch, from whence they had
been recommended to the grace of God for the work which
they fulfilled. And when they had come and gathered the
Church together they rehearsed all that God had done with
them, and how he had opened the door of faith unto the Gen-
tiles.” Very tenderly he reverted to his going out from Em-
ory, and then he proceeded to rehearse the story of the work
in China and to tell of how God was opening the doors of the
Celestial Empire to the coming of Christ and his gospel. I
can see now the radiant face of the venerable Lovick Pierce
and the seraphic countenance of his great son, Bishop George
F. Pierce, as they listened to the burning words of the returned
missionary and caught the vision of triumphant Christianity
which he unfolded before them. It was a great hour. On the
platform sat the Pierces, Haygood, James E. Evans, H. H.

 

*This letter from Bishop Candler, referring to the proposed chapel at
Emory College in memory of Dr. Young J. Allen, is put here as a fitting
introduction to the address of Dr. Yarbrough delivered at the laying of
the corner stone of this structure, June 8, 1909.—Enzrror.

47
BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

Parks, James W. Hinton, J. O. A. Clark, W. H. Potter, and
many others. If we could secure an expression from all who
sat about him that day as he talked of Christ’s conquest of
China and who have now welcomed him to that high company
who walk in white and bear palms in their hands, I doubt not
with one voice they would give united approval to this pro-
posal of a memorial building at Emory.

1. It is a proper and well-deserved honoring of Dr. Allen.
No man among us has wrought more effectually than he, and
none who have departed from us are more worthy to be held in
grateful and reverent memory. And where else on the planet
could such a monumental structure be raised to his memory
more appropriately than on the campus of Emory College ?

2. It will serve the interests of the great cause to which he
gave his life. Many men are needed for the foreign field, and
many more will be needed as the work develops. The men
needed must come from our Christian colleges. Emory has
already made many contributions to the great work, especially
to the work in China. Allen, McLain, Loehr, Park, Burke,
Hendry, and Campbell have all gone out from Emory to serve
the cause of Christ in China. They have drawn after them a
degree of interest in that great field which tends to make Em-
ory a plant bed from which to draw for the replenishment of
the China Mission. This memorial chapel will deepen and
intensify that influence. It is said that on one occasion, when
Adoniram Judson, the great missionary, was, in company with
a friend, passing a Christian college in this country, he said:
“Do you know what I would do if I had one hundred thou-
sand dollars?” “Yes,” said his friend; “you would give it to
missions.”” ‘‘No,”’ replied Judson; “I would put it into a col-
lege like that. Building Christian colleges and filling them with
Christian students ts raising the seed corn for the world.” It
may be doubted if any better investment for the China Mis-
sion can be made than the building of this memorial chapel.
It is harder to get suitable men than it is to get money for
foreign missions.

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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

3. Emory College has been in existence since 1837—seventy
years. Before the war a splendid chapel was on the campus;
but during the war it was condemned for hospital purposes,
and it was so damaged and neglected during that trying time
that in 1872 it was necessary to pull it down because it had
become unsafe for use. Since then the college has had no
chapel, its daily prayer services being held in a small stuccoed
building wholly inadequate for commencement exercises, and
the exercises of commencement being held in the rambling old
house used as the village church. Thus for half of its useful
life the college has had no suitable chapel for its work. It is
time it had one. It ought to be a grand structure, in keeping
with the lofty life of the great man whose name it will bear
and in keeping with the glorious history of his Alma Mater,
from whose instruction he went forth in the class of 1858 as
a strong man to run the race of honor and usefulness which
reached its goal at Shanghai, China, on May 30, 1907, when
he went from his earthly toil to his heavenly reward.

Let this noble structure be built speedily. Lay deep and
strong its foundations, and let its towers quickly rise until its
capstone is brought forth amid the acclamations of the thou-
sands who loved him, crying: “Grace, grace unto it!”

ATLANTA, GEorGIA, July 18, 1907.

4 49
CHAPTER IV

Ture ENTHRONEMENT OF CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLE THE CONDI-
TION OF ATTAINING THE BEST IN CHARACTER*

ADIES AND GENTLEMEN: This memorial service 1s
not to be interpreted as detracting in the least from the
worship of Him whose name is above every name. The beau-
tiful and imposing structure that is to rise above this corner
stone will for generations to come be filled with the sweet in-
cense of prayer, praise, and gospel preaching due only to
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

God allows himself to be glorified in good men. His serv-
ants are his friends. He recognizes them as one with himself
through his Son, who is not ashamed to call them brethren.
They are his jewels, set in his crown, catching his light and
reflecting his luster, his witnesses to the ends of the earth, his
charioteers and horsemen in the day of battle. They were per-
mitted to behold the glory of the Transfiguration on Hermon,
two of them wearing the court dress of heaven. Jesus said to
his disciples: “‘“Where I am, there also shall my servants be.”
They heard the Master again say: “Ye are they which have
continued with me in my temptations. And I have appointed
unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed unto me.”
Together with the angels they surveyed the discomfiture of
earth and hell at the mouth of the empty sepulcher and saw
him ascend in his cloud chariot to his Father and their Father,
to his God and their God, after listening to his parting words
and receiving his parting blessing ; and when Heaven's greatest
purpose is consummated through their girdling of the globe
with his gospel and unto the end of the world, he will receive
them unto himself, that where he is, there they may be also
to share all the glories with which he shall be crowned.

 

*Memorial address delivered at the laying of the corner stone of the
Allen Memorial Church, Oxford, Georgia, June 8, 1909, by George W.
Yarbrough, last of the class of 1857.

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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

The artist charges us with no disrespect to himself when he
catches us lost in admiration of his work; and all that we can
do this day in our loving tribute to one whose consecrated life
claims this recognition of his exalted worth will be accepted
as done to Him who made it possible for us to rejoice in the
unfolding of such a life in the homes of Oxford and amid the
classic groves of Emory and in the heart of the pagan empire
of China as Young J. Allen.

It comes to us (Dr. J. M. Buckley, Christian Advocate,
New York) that “before the late emperor and dowager em-
press of that empire have been laid away with their ancestors
it will have cost China and the estates of their late majesties
about six million taels, equal to four million two hundred
thousand dollars. Ten thousand persons knelt in the dusty
streets and bowed their heads as the cortége passed for
hours.” In impressive contrast to all this transient brilliancy
of official greatness and the short-lived trappings of barbaric
splendor was the simple burial service of a Christian Church,
breathing in softened accents, “I am the resurrection, and the
life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall
he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never
die,” at the grave of one who had shed the halo of a holy life
upon millions who sat in darkness and whose life and labors
will be an unfading light unto the Gentiles

“When victors’ wreaths and monarchs’ gems
Shall blend in common dust.”

The gorgeous pageant of their majesties was a flitting pa-
renthesis in the bewildering drama of princes. It will require
but a few revolutions of the wheel of time to shroud in ob-
livion the fact that their late majesties ever lived and played
a part in the riddle of court intrigues and the vaultings of
earthly pride and ambition; but when the stone is rolled away
from China’s sepulcher there will mingle with the glories of
her resurrection morning the vision of a young man and his
labors, whose monument in the hearts of two continents the
convulsions of time have not been able to efface.

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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

That was a wonderful and divinely founded discovery of
one who said: ‘‘God’s tally of the ages is different from ours.
Kingdoms, conquering armies, diplomatic agencies, and mate-
rial progress elicit no paans in heaven. God marks off the
cycles of time by spiritual progress.” Who can study the
movements of this world’s history and overlook the contribu-
tion it makes to the illustration and confirmation of this state-
ment? And for the encouragement and ennoblement of all who
cooperate with him in noting what the real progress of this
world means, it is recorded in the ancient oracle: “They that
be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they
that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever.”

“In the unity of a great movement of nature lies a logic
which makes the succession of events in its career a continu-
ous development. Behind and within the latest is the signifi-
cance of its earliest fact. Psychology now sees the whole man
in the most seemingly partial exercise of the soul.” (Gun-
saulus.) ‘The personality,” continues this scholarly author,
“so reigns supreme and infuses itself through the division
lines which any mechanical geography may have made of the
realm of our interior life that every power is seen to be con-
cerned in and to condition the action of every other.” Apply-
ing this principle to the study of the history of Emory College,
it is pleasing and instructive to note the unity of purpose lying
at the heart of her great achievements from the time of her
birth amid the silent and unbroken groves of Oxford and after
the counsels and prayers of our godly fathers to secure for all
time the enthronement of Jesus Christ and sanctified learning
in the hearts of the generations of young men to be gathered
to this sacred spot. That this joyous occasion excites no sur-
prise is in keeping with the “logic which makes the succession
of events in her career a continuous development’—illustra-
tive of her spiritual vitality in bringing many sons to Christ,
commemorative of her most illustrious product, and prophetic
of increasing contributions to the Church and the uplifting
forces of humanity.

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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

When has Emory College been found engaged in any other
business? Where are the eddies in this stream of life? What
arid waste has it touched that it has not turned into a garden?
What darkened spot that has been brought within range of this
source of intellectual and spiritual fire that it has not bathed
in light and quickened with heat?

This corner stone we lay here to-day will both support and
unite, and it will support by uniting. Considered in relation
to God, this stone, uniting the two sides of the building rising
above it, will be interpreted as connecting the two dispensa-
tions of our holy religion, the Old Testament and the New,
and, as it relates to him of whom the building will be a loving
memorial, as uniting the West and the East, the leaven of the
West with the meal of the East. In Dr. Allen science and
religion met, and he was disturbed by no antagonism of the
two. In his broad, warm heart the West and the East were
one in Christ Jesus.

It is strange that the denominational college, and in our
times, should have to contend so vigorously for its place
among the forces directed to our highest civilization for the
lack of breadth of conception and furnishings for efficiency, as
has been alleged. What is broader than the world? Has not
the denominational college embraced it in all its purposes and
equipments? Is there any speech or language where her voice
is not heard, her line having gone out through all the earth
and her words unto the end of the world until there is nothing
hid from the heat thereof? What is higher than man? Does
not the denominational college embrace him in his highest de-
partments? To what elevation can he rise above that of be-
coming conformed to the image of Him who created him and
having restored to him his alienated affection for his Father
and reéstablished his fellowship with heaven? Has not the
world always depended on it in reaching the deepest sources
of the heart and the noblest and most enduring transactions
of the life? It devolves on those who challenge our place in
the front rank of forces for accomplishing the best for man

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to point out a single light needed for the guidance of his steps
that we are extinguishing or obscuring.

The neglect of the religious sense inevitably leads to the
most assiduous cultivation of those senses that remain; and we
need not be surprised to find in those institutions of learning
that underrate the enthronement of the religious principle
intensified human agency, multiplying millions, and diver>i-
fied expedients for making the most of a purely intellectual,
animal, and material life. Here is the philosophy of the un-
precedented outlay of money and the aggregation of worldly
wisdom in making up for the loss of what the denominational
college has alone furnished in the past and what it makes most
prominent for the future—indeed, keeping constantly and for-
ever before it that no institution of learning drawing its in-
spiration from the springs of earthly wisdom can be depended
on tu conquer a single vice or implant a single virtue. Princi-
palities and powers and spiritual wickedness in high places
must be assailed by spiritual righteousness in high places.
The battle is spirit against spirit, with the odds in favor of the
institution of learning claiming that there is not a single proof
anywhere to be found that mere human knowledge or natural
science is capable of producing a substantial, symmetrical, and
enlarging moral improvement. The currents of water that
throw their highest diamond jets are fed by the highest head-
land springs. The discerning eve will readily detect in all the
late pretentions of secularism a tribute of acknowledgment to
the superior impulse given by the Church college to the high-
est education, expressing itself in the millions of money
contributed and all the other opulent furnishings to over-
match it. They have not found themselves confronted by a
trifle.

The memorial church will commemorate the sources of the
hope and joy of a great soul, the principles of his activity, his
desires and aversions. To all who will pass by it when we
are gone it will tell that the scope and end of his life were
from distinctly spiritual impulses, coming down, like every

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good and perfect gift, from the Father of lights through his
Son and made perennial by the Holy Ghost ever abiding with
him. :

Our only hope for the highest results from the boastful
foundations of secularism is that a branch from the tree of
life may be plucked and cast into their waters until they shall
become more healing, sweeter, and more invigorating.

Daybreak is a trying moment to the vision. There is a be-
wildering mingling of objects, large and small, their shadowy
outlines giving wide play to the imagination. A master in the
science of optics tells us: “It is not easy to conceive the confu-
sion and mischief that must ensue were men to act through the
day on the visions thus obtained and were they not to allow
their misconceptions to be corrected by the clear light of the
sun as it brightens into perfect day.” Our friends of the
millions have their eyes cobwebbed by the mists of the early
dawn in their efforts to get their strange movement on its feet,
and they see men, if they see them at all, as trees walking.
They have not come to full vision. Their horizon is filled
with fractional ideas of man and his capacities and destiny.
Failing to discover in him a candidate for immortality, they
withhold from him the highest inspiration for the life that
now is.

We will give them time. This is a large country with plenty
of room; and God has plenty of time for them to experiment,
reserving to himself, as he has always done, the prerogative of
so overruling the devices of the crafty as to make all things
work together for good to them that love him and who are
called according to his purpose. Giving an application of the
words of another to a forecast of the final outcome of certain
unprecedented undertakings in the sacred and far-extending
field of education, allow us to say: “When the disputatious
denier has talked himself out and has nothing more to say,
when the echoes of his futile theories and voluble but irra-
tional, because inadequate, explanations have died away, there
ensues a silence in which he is likely to hear around and above

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him, like the tread of thunder along eternal hills, the footfalls
of the mighty realities and truths he has denied.”

In preparing for this occasion my mind was directed by an
illustrious Frenchman to the fact that all the European univer-
sities were founded either by religious princes or by bishops or
priests, and they were all under the direction of different
Christian orders. The famous University of Paris, whence
the light of science was diffused over modern Europe, was
composed of four faculties. It dated its origin from the time
of Charlemagne—from that barbarous age when Aleuin the
Monk, struggling alone against ignorance, formed the design
of making France a Christian Greece! Ages before an old
prophet of God made his last visit on earth to the schools of
the prophets just before meeting the chariot of fire and horses
of fire to be carried by a whirlwind up into heaven. Lord
Beaconsfield lived at a time when he could say that Christiani-
ty had changed the name of the continent of Europe, of Chris-
tendom, and that all nations that refuse the cross wither. Dr.
Busch gave to the London Times Bismarck’s belief in the
Chancellor’s own words:

I cannot conceive how a man can live without a belief in a revelation,
in a God who orders all things for the best, in a Supreme Judge from
whom there is no appeal, and in a future life. If I were not a Christian,
I should not remain at my post a single hour. If 1 did not rely on God
Almighty, I should not put my trust in princes. I have enough to live
on, am sufficiently genteel and distinguished, without the chancellor's
office. Why should I go on working indefatigably, incurring trouble and
annoyance, unless convinced that God has ordained me to fulfill these
duties? If I were not persuaded that this German nation of ours, in the
divinely appointed order of things, is destined to be something great and
good, I should throw up the diplomatic profession this very moment. Or-
ders and titles to me have no attraction. The firmness I have shown in
combating all manner of absurdity for ten years past is solely derived
from faith, Take away my faith, and you destroy my patriotism. But
for my strict and hteral belict in the truths of Christianity, but for my
acceptance of the miraculous groundwork of religion, you would not have
lived to see me the sort of chancellor I am. Find me a successor as firm
a believer as myself, and I will resign at once. But I live in a generation
of pagans. I have no desire to make proselytes, but am constrained to
confess my faith. If there is among us any self-denial and devotion to

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king and country, it is a remnant of religious belief unconsciously clinging
to our people from the days of their sires. For my part, I prefer a rural
life to any other. Rob me of the faith that unites me to God, and I re-
turn to Varzin to devote myself industriously to the production of rye.

Thus we find our holy religion, like the mighty orb of day,
lighting up the highest peaks of the mountain ranges while ca-
ressing the most lowly of the valleys.

Let the Christian college keep its colors at full mast, having
inscribed upon its folds in ever-brightening characters: “The
Enthronement of Christian Principle in Sovereign Majesty
over the Entire Man the Corner Stone of the Highest and
Most Enduring Life.”

If there had been anywhere, in the Orient or in the Occi-
dent, from the time of Confucius to the time of Haeckel, a
fountain of healing for the maladies of our race better than
that opened in the house of David for sin and uncleanness, it
could not have escaped the eye of our missionary statesman
and Christian philosopher who had followed benighted man,
like Noah’s dove, “over the boundless waters of our deluge,
weary-winged, to his ark-built nest,” Jesus Christ, his only
refuge in earth’s desolation.

And, being thus familiar with all the panaceas the ages be-
fore him and since have offered and reporting them to us
shrouded in the hopelessness of despair, we should give the
more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at
any time we should let them slip.

The East will seal for itself the doom of eternal night if
the life of Dr. Allen, spent in keeping ablaze the morning star
of its regeneration, should be ignored; and our loving memo-
rial church will fail of its sublimest purpose if we become in-
different to the fact that our religious life at home is condi-
tioned on our increasing devotion to the salvation of the hea-
then world.

This course may lose the tantalizing “pension” of the great
“foundation,” but God and the “means of being great’ will
be left you.

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Robert Elliot Speer has said: ‘Men do not need to live. A
moral code which rests upon this idea for its foundation is
rotten; and to surrender the truth which is divine and eternal
for the sake of a life, our own or another’s, is to choose the
devil instead of God and to pollute the springs of the life that
is saved at such a cost.”

“In what religion were you told
A man must live?
There are times when a man must die!”

When the wisdom of our noble Allen, in surrendering a
remunerative position in the Chinese government for a smaller
salary as missionary, was challenged by an associate official,
his reply was: “I am not working for money, but for Christ.”
That reply, in the scales of heaven, outweighed the Chinese
Empire.

Emory College has passed through tempests that have gone
creaking through her timbers and filled with apprehension all
on board; but while serving men and keeping close to God she
has kept her colors nailed to the mast, and those colors can
never go down while in the hands of men. And while making
men who can say with the immortal man whom we honor to-
day, “I am not working for money, but for Christ,’ who ts
so bold as to dare the calculation of the difference between
making a living and making a life?

I must be allowed to enlarge my apology for the existence
of the Christian college sufficiently to say that the pioneers of
education in this country, who founded Harvard, Yale, Dart-
mouth, and Princeton amid the incense of Christian devotion
and thereby laid the corner stone of this great republic, were
too religious and too careless with their money, or we will not
he religious enough or wise enough with our money if we al-
low ourselves to be mesmerized by the gfitter of millionaire
gold and allow this corner stone of the greatest government
on earth, liberty’s first-born, to be shaken from its place for
anything that may be substituted by the pretentious secularism
of the day. Blot from our firmament what Christian institu-

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tions of learning have done and are still doing for our coun-
try, and you leave us the firmament without the constellations.

Only a few of us remain whose loving memories can recall
the Young J. Allen of the later fifties as he walked through
our campus to the recitations, to the debating hall of the Few
Society, to the old chapel in the rear of Candler Hall to morn-
ing and evening prayers, and as he sat under the preaching of
the gospel in the old college village chapel, fondly named by
him “‘Siloah’s Brook.”

His ordinary carriage was firm, erect, indicating energy,
decision, and high resolve. His fellow students and the vil-
lagers of least discernment could not pass him without the
impression that he had a life work before him and was pre-
paring to accomplish it.

In our religious meetings he was exceptionally devout, open-
ing every avenue of approach to his inner life for all that the
Holy Spirit had to communicate.

In the recitation room he sought not by startling bounds of
genius what he gained and retained by systematic method of
study, making every lesson of every department of his entire
college course contribute to the rigid discipline of his mental
powers and to the deep and broad foundation of the super-
structure that continued to rise as long as he lived.

In debate he went promptly and directly to the center of the
question under discussion, always depending in unfolding it
rather upon nice discrimination and unassailable logic than
upon stretches of the imagination and flights of oratory.

His manners in social life were refined, considerate, pleas-
ing, displaying not so much the conventional niceties of artistic
society as those natural, ingenious attitudes and movements
that are the unstudied expressions of high integrity, lofty vir-
tue, and native dignity. All his features were finely cast. In
making him a gentleman nature did her best work, and grace
carried forward what nature had begun; and until May 30,
1907, when he dropped his pen and sank in peaceful weariness
from guiding an empire on its starlit path to God, he remained

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unsoiled by conscious art, meet to become an inheritor of the
saints in light and to go to be the guest of his Lord and Sav-
iour Jesus Christ.

His photograph, as it is found grouped with the class of
1858, resembles a young Englishman of the nobility. His
face, as it is preserved in the address, “The Gospel Liberating
China,” that stirred and thrilled our last General Conference
as it was never done before, suggests the military chieftain at
the head of his legions in the crisis of battle.

“O knightly-hearted liegeman of the Lord,
Soldier of truth and champion of the right,
Erst riding ever foremost in the fight,

Where for the poor and lowly it was warred,
Thy tall plume flashing far its stainless white,
And beckoning onward like a beam of light,
With all things pure and fair in bright accord,
We miss thee, and the battle presses sore,
The endless battle for the Christ of God.”

But, after all that has come to us and will come to us of the
achievements of this wonderful man, we must wait for his
full estimate for that great event to which all other events are
pointing. The gospel of the kingdom, we are told in Mat-
thew, will be preached for a witness unto all nations, and
then shall the end come. “I never read these words,” said
one, “without remembering a spectacle I, in common with
thousands, saw, and which none that saw it can ever forget.
It was when her majesty, the Queen, visited the Scottish me-
tropolis in 1842. Scarcely had the twilight darkened into
night when on every hill surrounding that most magnificent
of cities there seemed to rise simultaneously a crest of fire.
Iach mountain lifted up in his hand a torch; and from Ber-
wick to Fife, and from Fife to Sterling, the great firth was
at once illuminated. It was a witness, it was a token to the
land that its sovereign was near. It was a token, too, to the
approaching vessel, far out at sea, that all was ready for her
reception, that loyalty had gushed out into those flaming sig-
nals.

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Thus when the gospel beacons from Washington City to
Peking, and from Peking to Tokyo, and on to Calcutta are
fully lit, it will be a witness, a token to earth that the end is
approaching and a signal to heaven for the preparation of the
chariot, the harnessing of the steeds, the furbishing of the
thunderbolts, the gathering together of all the elements, the
witnesses, and the victims of that great day of God Almighty.
We must wait until this consummation, to which every event
is surely and gloriously pointing, for an adequate estimate of
Young J. Allen’s half century of self-sacrificing toil, spent in
helping to light up from land to land the signals of this great
and blessed advent of the Sovereign of all kingdoms—a life
beginning in the groves about this beautiful building that
shall be raised to his memory on our dear old campus, every
foot of which is hallowed ground, and close to the sisterhood
of sciences, rising in regal supremacy above them all, expect-
ing the sun, bright symbol of the Son of Righteousness, as he
walks his path on the firmament, to burnish with his smile
each sculptured capital and to pour through its portals and
aisles the homage of his morning and evening rays.

61
PART THREE
RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ITINERANCY
CHAPTER I
PACKING AND UNPACKING

H4vX¢ been cradled in the Methodist itinerancy, this is

to me no new business. It has been my manner of life
from infancy. Under the dispensation, quite different from
the present, we had it in its purest form. It took its features
from the governing word of the Great Commission, “Go,”
and we went.

The brethren—the “‘saddlebag saints,” as Dr. Lafferty calls
them—could, if the land lay well, stay one year, but not more
than two at a time. The ones were in excess of the twos.
My father’s preaching and singing, supplemented by my moth-
er’s singing, still talked about by the old Methodists in Georgia
and Florida, made it easy for them to stay, for the most part,
two years. And then they were genial and companionable,
and the people were glad to have them in their homes. My
mother was the only one of her kind I ever knew. There were
notes and tones in her singing, when she stood up to lead the
congregation, on the great occasions of the sanctuary, on the
ordinary occasions, and at the firesides of the people, that I
have never known reached by any other voice. If any of the
brethren and sisters stand in dread of moving and want all
the law allows, I would advise them to learn to sing well, for
the people generally like it. Nothing patches a poor sermon
like a good song.

A fact was revealed to me at Epworth (my last charge)
that surprised me. I thought it would be an easy matter to
run into Atlanta and pick up boxes enough for packing any-
where without any trouble; but Atlanta has become a great
wholesale center, and boxes are used for shipping goods.
And then a sharp negro there is running a corner on the
surplus boxes and making a good living at it, as all the cor-

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nerers do. But Chamberlain, Johnson & DuBose, who always
have enough of good things to spare, let me have the needed
boxes for my packing.

“Three moves are equal to a fire’ is an old saying. If this
is true, I have been in ashes often enough to sprout a Phoenix.
But it is all in the family. I went into the itinerancy when I
went in, and I cannot remember any night at an Annual Con-
ference when ] would have turned over in my bed to stay
longer than I could get away at any appointment where an
effort to stick to my hollow was necessary.

They have never had to twist me out or smoke me out.
(The grave Magi are not supposed to grasp this figure of
speech, but the boys who have been rabbit-hunting will be in
it.) There is more go than stay in the commission. The long-
termers miss the luxury of frequent packings and unpackings.
Their books collect dust; they lose many things they hide
for safety; they lose sight of the amount and variety of things
they own. It is astonishing how little preachers have until
they begin to pile things around them to be put in the boxes.

Then the debates as to how the things are to be placed;
whether the crockery is to go by itself or folded up with the
quilts, blankets, sheets, bolsters, pillows, etc.; whether the
waffle irons and wafer irons are to be tied together and kept
to themselves or thrown in with other cooking utensils to take
their chances; whether the preserves and jams are to be kept
apart from the pickles and chowchow or put in just like they
were one and the same thing. Time and again I have heard
this: “Better let me pack those things. Men don't know how
to pack, and they don’t know nearly as much as they think they
know about household matters.” Getting warm now. A
large box had been filled with bedding, pictures, ete., for which
it had been sct apart, and we were arranging to nail down the
top when here came a quilt that had been overlooked. “We
have another box over there; let it go in that. Plenty of
" “No; no use for so many boxes. A man doesn't
know how to pack like a woman does.” Off came the top,

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and in went the quilt. Women can beat men at this business,
as they can at much else.

All things were now ready to be carried three miles to the
depot, and up rolled the wagon. After some lifting, puffing,
and blowing, the driver announced that three large trunks
would have to remain over until morning. Our program was
to vacate the parsonage that evening and spend the night in
the city. Part of the family had gone in. Two of us had
to stay with those trunks and the dog until morning. That
was a solemn time, but life is full of solemn things. It went
worse with the dog than with either of us. He would walk
about and then come in where we were, lie down before the
fire, stretch out, blow, try to sleep, then get up, look at us, drop
his tail, and walk about again.

My neighbor, T. N. Morgan, rendered great service from
beginning to end, day and night. He packed like he had been
a Methodist itinerant preacher all his life and seemed sorry
that there was nothing more for him to do for us. This was
the first service of the kind ever rendered me, and it will be
an evergreen in our family. And Sister Morgan’s fat, two-
story biscuits will not be forgotten soon, and so of other good
table things she so kindly prepared for us.

-Unpacking is very interesting, especially when we fail to
indicate on the boxes their contents. A simple mark or two
on each box would have done this, but we neglected it, and
finding the things goes to the list of problems we are trying in
this our day to solve. When we want anything, we keep up
the lick of unpacking until we get to it; and then when we
want the things we put back in the boxes, we forget where we
saw them and have to go over the same work to find them.
For instance, we want the saw, hammer, screw driver, and
other tools. We open on the biscuit grinder and the meat
grinder and other items that belong to the kitchen, all of which
we place back carefully, and when we need them we have for-
gotten where we left them in our search, and so on. We don’t
sing much while thus engaged and bewildered.

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I would say to all the itinerant sisters not to make preserves,
jams, jellies, and the like, unless you are reasonably sure that
you are not going to move at the end of the year. They are
all good things to have in a family; but when a preserve jar
breaks in «a box it will never stop until it sweetens everything
in it, and you will be finding mischief it did in moving for
most of the year.

I lost my ax and one of our dogs, Dock, our pointer. If
anybody should find him, please send him to me at Oxford,
Georgia. I am not so anxious to get my hands on the ax.

Well, we are under shelter again, ahead of the blizzards,
and at dear old Oxford, a place I have been visiting, off and
on, ever since I was in my mother’s arms. I have seen no
better home for an itinerant preacher of our faith and order
in Georgia.

“My willing mind would stay
In such a frame as this.”

The houses, the trees, the streets, the ravines, the hills, the
streams are aglow with reminiscences, and they soften my
heart, a sweet blessing to any man.

Our own Stanton, in his column in the .-ftlanta Conshtution,
said, some days ago: “Winter is a great blusterer, but he can’t
rumple the roses in the beautiful garden of memory.” Now.
you knights of the quill, beat that for poetry if you can!

We are now in the midst of Christmas, and I am glad for
many reasons. One I note is that it has helped our bill of
fare. For a while it seemed to me that everything was nar-
rowing down fearfully—everything covered up and hidden
away for Christmas, even the things we brought with us and
the nicer things the neighbors sent in.

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CHAPTER II
My Forty-Fourtu Move 1n tHe METHopIST ITINERANCY

HAvne been cradled in the itinerancy, ten of these moves
were made with my father; the other thirty-four were
my own. My first move with him was made at the close of
1838 from the home of Captain Partridge, in Jefferson County
(now Leon), Florida, not far from Union Church and Mic-
cosukee Lake, about the time they were gathering up the frag-
ments of the Seminole War. I have heard my mother say
that she has run and hid with me in her arms time and again
when the whites and Indians were fighting within her hearing.
My first move was from there to the Cassville Circuit,
Georgia Conference, including what is now Cartersville,
where, by request of the North Georgia Conference, I
preached my semicentennial sermon November 20, 1907.

From Bishop Robert Paine, Washington, Wilkes County,
Georgia, to Bishop Seth Ward, Cartersville, Georgia, I count
thirty-four moves of my own as a Methodist itinerant
preacher.

In my private journal I put down the names of the bishops,
with the names of the places to which I have been assigned
and the moves I have had to make to get to them. They are
all first-class. I want those who come after me to know who
have been handling me in my life work.

Some of the people have thought they could have done
more for themselves than the bishops have done in some of
these Conference moves, and I have thought I could have
beaten them and the bishops in those very moves. The people
and the preachers think sometimes they could do wonders if
they could take this thing of moving preachers in hand. I
have seen it done, and I have seen the wonders follow before
the first lizards of summer were throwing the sand.

I believe that all the bishops and presiding elders came
down from Adam like the rest of us, and I have been inclined

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to the impression that occasionally they did not have more of
original righteousness than they ought to have had; but I will
take them every time in place of the Annual Conference Sat-
urday and Sunday pest that lights down on the cabinet to see
how the land lies, whom they are going to get, whom they want
and whom they don’t want, and what Colonel “Squeezlephant-
er” says he and his family and friends will do if Brother Tight-
squeeze or Hardy Hardrun is sent to them. And as to Dr.
Lazenby Longwind—if he comes, the young people will go to
the Presbyterians and the Episcopalians and some to the Chris-
tian Scientists, and a number of the older ones will quit and go
to the Two-Seed Baptists or any kind of Baptists nearest to
them. And as to Maj. Purse Bulge, he says his money must
go a certain way, or it won't go at all, etc.

The general impression, as far as I can catch it, is that a
“kerrekter’” of this sort is about as appropriately employed as
a canebrake raccoon would be conducting a camp meeting.
Quit it. Some charges have been almost ruined by it, and a
few more trips of this sort will complete the work. Go to
Conference if you can; and if you can’t turn up until Sunday.
turn up at the love feast, go to hear the bishop or some
other good preacher preach, then go to the memorial serv-
ice and hear how good men and women have lived and died
and catch inspiration to go and do likewise, and let all that
other bobtail business alone. The best the Inshop will have
for you will be his sermon.

As poor as we preachers are, we are always adding some-
thing, and it turns up when we go to packing and unpacking.
This time T moved a fat lightwood stump, six hens and a pul-
let, the old rooster and a young one to come on next spring,
and eight fat, juicy, frying-sized chickens that we had Dr.
Fakes, our presiding elder, to sample when he came to our
quarterly meeting. In addition to all this, I found myself
confronted with a splendid Berkshire pig, highly blooded, a
compliment from my friend Col. Gus Morrow, of Jonesboro.

Frank, my bench-legged fice, was still with me; but he seems

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new to others every time I move, and I have to keep answer-
ing questions about him over and over again. “What do you
mean by a bench-legged fice?” they ask me, when there are a
great many questions of greater import that could be asked.
The boys, particularly, all want to know about this bench-
legged kind of dog. Well, he is half a dog high and a dog and
a half long, with broad breast, thick neck, medium head, short
and sharp ears that stand up like the ears of a red fox when
he first hears the hounds, front legs shortest and turning out,
and hind legs standing out like a pair of plow hames. Frank is
as black as a crow, breast white, eyes thoughtful, air independ-
ent, tail high and curled until the tip almost touches his back,
white toe points, and well-behaved unless other dogs crowd
him. He can fight other dogs on top and under them, but
they can’t get under him; and the nearer the ground dogs keep,
the better they fight. It is the same with a raccoon and with
some men. Now, boys, cut this out and keep it.

Frank has moved with me so often that we had no trouble
in getting him through. It was very different when we had
to move the Berkshire. Time was short, bad weather was
upon us, and worse was coming. No time for killing and
salting and boxing, and I never could sell a present; so we
boxed him on his feet and put him on a freight car with our
other things and lost sight of him for days and nights.

When we met again he had been turned into the horse lot
and was standing in the middle of it, as far as he could get
from any object that could conceal anybody, his bristles half
raised, his ears fierce, the whites of his eyes all in front, hard-
ly drawing a breath. He seemed fixed in his purpose against
all comers, and every flash of defiance seemed to carry with it
“After that car ride, from now on, give me liberty or give me
death.” For some time if while at his trough he could hear
the slightest footfall or the breaking of a stick underfoot, he
was off to see who was after him to ship him again.

How homelike all this makes a new place among strangers
—feeding the pig and chickens, hearing the former grunt his

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recognition of you as you pass his bed, and watching your own
chickens in the evening going to roost and exchanging their
impressions of the new home as they nestle close together on
their new perches.

May the Master give to all his servants as much content-
ment as he has to us!

Tue Rock (my last appointment).

72
CHAPTER III
APRIL 20, 1853-APRIL 20, 1898

yo and recession are often found together. To

eliminate from history its backward movements would be
the destruction of history. In all great military movements
there are retreats as well as advances. We are endowed for
looking backward as well as forward.

If our readers blame us for going backward occasionally,
and even abruptly, let the blame be laid on the tide that has
taught us the lesson, the purpose of which is to cover the
beach, although, some time before its destination is reached,
every wave falls back as it splashes the sands.

It is now April 20, 1898, forty-five years from April 20,
1853.

On the latter date Rev. B. Jenkins, our missionary to
China, was with our family in the parsonage at Greensboro,
Georgia, showing us some shoes such as Chinese women wear,
a Chinese boy, and other curiosities from that far-away land.
He wrote his name in Chinese in my father’s Bible (now near
me), the first of that language I ever saw. The boy gave us
great entertainment at the table eating rice with his little chop-
sticks.

The board on which I do my writing is covered with pic-
tures; and among them is the photo of Li Hung Chang, Chi-
na’s Bismarck, and a copy of his visiting card in his language
is just under it, each given to this country when he was on
his visit to us.

Hanging in our family room is a mandarin overcoat, lined
throughout with goat’s wool captured in the mountains of
China. This coat was made in Shanghai and was worn by
Dr. Young J. Allen when he was grouped with Bishop Mar-
vin, Dr. Hendrix (now Bishop), Brother Parker, and the
native preachers in that picture which found its way to our

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homes and hearts. Little did the tailor who made the coat
know that it would be worn by a Methodist itinerant preacher
over the playgrounds from which China received her great
missionary in the last of the fifties. And those mountain
goats little thought of raising wool to supplement the bed
furnishings of cold nights ten thousand miles, and the rise,
away off in America. The coat is very dear to my family.
In the service it renders it is constantly reminding me of our
blessed Christianity. It is warm, roomy, protects against the
storm, is durable, is made of the very best material, and can
adapt itself with equal ease and sufficiency to a mandarin and
a circuit rider.

On the second day of April, ultimo, Dr. Allen stepped into
our little parsonage, that stands on a part of his former in-
heritance, and brightened my heart with the old familiar
Emory smile of the fifties—the friend and companion of my
boyhood, the missionary of forty years’ experience, the trav-
eler just completing his fourth circuit of the globe.

After a ride over the scenes of his young manhood about
Grantville and to the spot where the bright face of her who
shares his missionary life first touched his heart and an eve-
ning of refreshing by the fireside, we were off Sunday morn-
ing to Prospect, on the Grantville Circuit, near the home of
his infancy, childhood, and boyhood; and at eleven o'clock,
within a few feet of where he jumped from the windows to
get away from the old Methodists when the battle waxed
warm in the revival of 1851, he stood in a wagon and
preached the gospel to the vast multitude that had assembled
from every point of the compass.

A carpet covered the bed of the wagon, and the beautiful
chancel table from the church held the books. All this was in
a beautiful grove under a bright sky and much else conspiring
to make us feel like the very angels were “ministering unto
the heirs of salvation.” The second Psalm, read by the pastor
at the missionary’s request, fell upon our hearts like a bugle
note in battle, and the sweet missionary songs filled the air

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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

and went up in praise to Him who washed us in his blood and
who was that day fulfilling the promise, “Lo, I am with you
alway, even unto the end of the world.”

From ‘The New Era in China,” by Henry C. Mabie, Home
Secretary, contributed to the Baptist Missionary Magazine,
we have a statement that will surely electrify all thinkers upon
advance mission work. In closing the review of the “Tenth
Annual Report of the Society for the Diffusion of Christian
and General Knowledge among the Chinese,” after recounting
the wonderful facts of the distribution of books at the exam-
ination centers, Mr. Mabie says: “By this magic spring the
whole of China can be touched in one day.”

That others may know how the mighty movements of mis-
sions in that great empire can influence one heart, this same
Baptist Missionary Magazine informs us of the bequest to
foreign missions by the late Mr. J. F. Morton, of Aberdeen,
Scotland, by which the Moravian Church is to receive one
million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and the China
Inland Mission will receive about seven hundred and fifty
thousand dollars, all of which must be expended in advance
mission work in China. That word “advance” is becoming a
key word in missionary parlance, qualifying, as it does, the
movement of this day and intimating features not appreciated
formerly as they are being appreciated now.

Outside the Acts of the Apostles no achievements are more
entitled to the most serious and thoughtful consideration than
these bulletins that are being flashed before the people from
the front. They mean more than all the battle thunder from
Tybee to Port Arthur.

China is waking up. Yes, and that is only half of the state-
ment. China is waking us up—a work as greatly needed as
the other, one on which hang issues as vital and far-reaching
as any beyond the seas.

We would do well to let our commentaries rest awhile and
study the Bible in the light of current events. Take Pentecost,
for instance. We must enlarge the scope of our vision until

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we can grasp a better conception of the first import of that
stupendous event than that with which we are mostly familiar.
Successive steps and stages are the condition of realizing all
great ideas everywhere. Most strikingly is this true of the
greatest of all ideas, those of the divine mind, as recorded in
suggestive and quickening outline in the Bible.

Is it too soon for all of us to be believing and saying that
Pentecost was the inauguration of a dispensation for the cap-
ture of the tongues of the earth under the leadership of the
Holy Ghost? Here is at least one landing place from which
we can approximate more nearly the limit of the divine pur-
pose, as far as this dispensation and order of things is con-
cerned, than from any by which we have been formerly bound.

The great question of the Church of Christ to-day is that
recorded in the second chapter of Acts and the last part of the
twelfth verse: “What meaneth this?” Here is a text for
missionary sermons and a point of inspiration for missionary
anniversaries. There is a title for the next book on missions ;
and when that book is properly answered and the answer be-
comes embodied in the activities of the Church everywhere,
then another question will be heard that will hardly need an
answer: “How hear we every man in our own tongue, where-
in we were born?”

Tongues glow along the account that Luke gives of Pente-
cost. Five times they come to the surface in eleven short
verses of the second chapter of Acts. In the thirty-third verse
of the same chapter we have that sublime utterance of Peter:
“Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and hav-
ing received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he
hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear.’ What did
they see? What did they hear? Those questions, if not im-
properly answered, leave the languages of the earth in the
hands of the Holy Ghost as instrumentalities for bringing the
world to Christ with swiftness and power.

Pentecost was a great day for foreign languages, we may
be sure, for starting a highway and highways along which the

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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

gospel chariots would roll to the end of time, and from which
were to be thrown out unstintedly and universally everything
needed for the enlightenment and ennoblement and salvation
of man—yes (blessed thought!), of man, the whole man, man
all around, all through, and all over. Not man the sinner
exclusively, but man the citizen, man the father, man the
thinker, man spiritually and man morally, man in his affec-
tions and in his will and in his imagination and in his pur-
suits.

I know not how to bow to man, and it is too late to try to
learn; but when one of these “princely plodders” among lin-
guistic mists, hieroglyphics, and enigmas comes along, one
who for forty long, wearisome years and more has been “wed-
ding thought to sound and sign” until I can see the tongue of
the mightiest pagan empire hanging in his girdle, I do feel
like uncovering my head.

Hail, mighty men and women of the past, the present, and
the future! “God,” says one profound in scholarship and
aspiring in devoutness, “seems to have waited four thousand
years for the development of a language fit for him to speak
to men with, and then he used its wonderful capacities to the
utmost.” He is still concerned about those who, in the face
of all difficulties, defying all opposition, patient under all bur-
dens, are seeking to unlock his vast storehouses and circulate
his treasures among the hungering and thirsting of heathen
lands, purifying literature of their own where they exist and
creating them where there are none. The Holy Ghost has
been with you, is with you still, and will be with you to the
end in this glorious work of “carrying over” into the lan-
guages of the earth the precious things of our Christianity,
our science, our philosophy. Translation—‘“carrying over”—
from one tongue to another the riches of heaven and earth
for time and eternity! Heaven arranged for it at Pentecost.

The schoolboy whistles the bobwhite’s notes as he re-
turns home in the evening; and instantly, in the covert of
grass and weeds and rushes, the covey give attention and

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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

prepare to receive a friend. The stateliest and shyest bird of
our forests walks gracefully up to the huntsman’s blind in
response to the captured vernacular of his native haunts.

“Canst thou speak Greek?” ‘And when they heard that
he spake in the Hebrew tongue to them, they kept the more
silence.” Great help and timely. “As certain also of your
own poets have said,”” came in good time and answered a
good purpose at Athens. And that other speech from above,
on the way to Damascus, in the Hebrew tongue!

How neighborly, how congenial on our missionary’s last
voyage to the homeland, when those Chinese passengers found
that the man who gave them the history they were reading in
their own tongue (the history of the late war between their
country and Japan) was a fellow passenger!

Our dear brethren and sisters in China say they want a
jubilee over there this year. Shall they have it? We have
jubilees, and they do us good.

“We are closing,” says one who has been long on the watch-
tower of Zion, “one long morning of nearly nineteen hundred
years. We look on gray tints in the east, on auroral rays that
shoot up the sky, on clouds that change from darkness to
glory, on morning stars vanishing into greater brightness.
We quaff fresh morning airs that seem like breaths from
heaven; and we hear songs not only of birds, but of happy
nations.” A missionary jubilee in China? Yes. They have
won it. Let them have it; help them to have it.

We will not doubt; we will not hesitate; we cannot, except
at our peril, be disobedient to the heavenly vision and fail in
thus being witnesses to Christ even unto the uttermost parts
of the earth.

There need be no trembling for the ark as we heed the ear-
nest call for contributions of men and money for appliances
for fear that we may do despite to the Spirit by multiplying
and diversifying and enlarging the channels of his communi-
cations. We must enthrone Christianity and amply allow
for all that follows in her train. Let the central luminary be

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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

attended by all her radiant family of satellites. Give them
the Bible and all that it creates and fosters, for as certain as
vegetation yields to the quickening of the sun will a nation
be stirred to life in all its departments by the introduction of
Bible truth.

Count not on making a nation godly without anticipating,
by wise and generous outlay, for its elevation in the scale of
intellectual being. Christianizing the heart gives animation
to the intellect, and we must never be surprised to see hunger-
ing and thirsting after righteousness associated with hunger-
ing and thirsting after information.

As soon as it can be said of a nation that its God is the
Lord, it will also be said of it: “Surely this great nation is
a wise and understanding people.” (Deut. iv. 6.)

The tree of life, wherever planted, by whatever river, bears
at least twelve manner of fruits, and even the leaves of the
tree are for the healing of the nations.

79
CHAPTER IV
From West to East

OVING from one appointment to another at the begin-

ning of the Conference year is my vacation, about all I

take of that luxury which falls to the lot of so many. I wish
that an occasional rest would become even more general.

Bad weather forced me to take the railroad last December ;
and I had to be on the route ten hours, when, if I could have
driven Flora through the country, I would have been on the
road well-nigh a week, stopping with «ld friends of nights,
talking over the war of the sixties and nineties, eating spare-
rib and sausage and backbone, and brains scrambled with eggs.
and sweet potatoes roasted in oak and hickory ashes.

I feel as if I have missed something, and I shall feel it all
the year. My boys and I took out our pocket map of Georgia
after Conference and soon had our route arranged for Sparta,
our terminus ad quem. There was more than one candidate
for the second seat in my buggy.

Our buggy route would have carried us across the Towa-
liga River at a point beyond which my memory cannot go.
A little house of one room in the bend of the Towaliga River
and belonging to Mr. Phillips was our home in 1841, when
my father was on the McDonough Circuit. How my heart
warmed for that spot! If any of the descendants of the
Phillips family can identify that hallowed ground, I should
be glad to know it by mail; for I must go there and stand
once more by my third milepost on life’s journey, near the
stage route on which Martin Van Buren made his tour and
created such enthusiasm that the boys named their colts and
little steers for him. My father named our calf for him, and
the first sorrow I ever had came with the announcement that
“Van" had been sold.

Some arrangement ought to be made to save our itinerants

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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

from selling out everything to get out. It is no new thing.
It is old enough to have been retired some time ago. I knew
a Methodist itinerant preacher who, when a brother came for
his family horse to finish a balance for rations, threw his
arms around the neck of the family pet and wept like a child.
Folks will do these things and then jump the rope under the
mulberry bush day and night for weeks at a time on their way
to the New Jerusalem.

The Phillips family will never be lost to my memory for
their kindness to my father’s family in my childhood. There
is where I owned my first piece of property, an unpainted
hickory high chair, in which I sat at the table three times a
day.

I was sorry that I could not, before starting to my new
field, visit once more other places of my childhood in the dear
old Sixth District of Coweta County. I wanted to see the
Stokes place again and the Cook place and the place where I
went to school to Mrs. Ann Stark and learned to read the
New Testament. I was there once last year, but I wanted to
go again on my exodus east.

The Stokes house was the first frame house of its kind,
painted white, in Coweta County. The Cook house was the
next. Both were built after the same style, near neigh-
bors, and are still standing. I boarded with the Cook family
and went to school. After Mrs. Stark’s marriage to Hon.
Ebenezer McKinley, I boarded with them at the Stokes place.

In that day this was the garden spot of Western Georgia.
The citizens were religious, educated, refined, abounding in
hospitality. They had wealth, but their wealth did not have
them. They were considerate one of another, neighborly, and
had much in common. It was a great neighborhood for big
weddings, rousing infairs, and stirring parties of all kinds,
except dancing parties. I never heard of a dance while in
that blessed old neighborhood. I believe that if a little danc-
ing master had gone along there in those days trying to teach
grace and manners and “poetry of motion,” so to speak, they

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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

would have set their dogs on him and run him out of the
neighborhood if he had not yielded to higher persuasion,

We had two schools, not far apart—one for advanced boys
and young men, and the other, a mixed school, for more ele
mentary scholars. The latter was taught by Mrs. Ann Stark.

I must be indulged in a little more than the bare mention
of the name of this noble woman, who was my guardian angel
at this tender period of my life. My father and mother had
been appointed to Florida in the early history of our Confer-
cence there, and I was left in Mrs. Stark's care. She was a
lady of rare accomplishments, tall, queenly in her carriage,
intellectual dark eves, a face as bright as sunshine, a merry
laugh, and as she encouraged the timid little boy in his les-
sons her voice was soft and tender, like the cooing of a dove.
She kept me in her room and would kneel down by me at
night when the time came to pray. In the daytime I was in-
trusted to her faithful colored boy, Ember, who would have
given his life for me. Of course I had to go with her and
Dyonitia, her daughter, when she became the wife of Rev.
Ebenezer McKinley, of Newnan.

This took me out of Mr. Cook’s family, a family I shall
remember for their kindness to me as long as I live. Caleb
Cook and his family belong to the evergreens of my heart.

When I visited the old homestead last year 1 found Sam
Stokes (colored) and his wife, “.\unt Ollie,” in charge. I
begged them to let me go through the dear old house alone.
I went first into the Cook family room, where they had fon-
dled me in my childhood ; then into the parlor, where I had seen
Aunt Ann and Uncle Mac married; then up the old. stair-
way to Aunt Ann’s room and knelt on the very spot where
my little knees touched the floor fifty-four years ago.

Kev. Ebenezer McKinley was a local preacher of the Meth-
odist Church, a distinguished lawyer, a graduate of Franklin
College, a classmate of A. B. Longstreet. He was abundantly
endowed for all the positions he filled. His son, Charles

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Archibald (of his first marriage), was the constant compan-
ion of my boyhood, whom I loved as I did my own life.

Miss Junia McKinley, of Atlanta, and two brothers (if I
mistake not) are the surviving children of my dear Aunt
Ann’s second marriage. Were I another brother, I could not
feel nearer to them nor they dearer to me.

The McKinley family, like many of the illustrious families
of Georgia, is passing out. The men were noted for great
integrity of character, scholarliness, and culture; and the
women were noted for gentleness, refinement, great beauty of
person, and were queenlike in their homes.

Near the old Stokes place stands a pear tree seventy-two
years old. A colored woman moving from Oglethorpe Coun-
ty hid the scion in a bedtick and set it out soon after getting
to the new home in Coweta. If it is ever cut down in my day,
I want a piece of it.

I would, under more favorable circumstances, have made a
last visit to the dear old Hunnicutt home spot, where I played
with the Hunnicutt boys. I roamed all over it last summer.
The house is gone—the houses, I may say—but the beautiful
trees are there: one old chestnut, a large hickory, several oaks,
a number of beautiful cedars, a stately spruce pine, and rem-
nants of vines and smaller bulbs.

From choice, I was alone in those walks over the scenes of
my childhood, and I wanted to go again. I wanted to be alone
again, especially at those old homestead springs that remain
when the beautiful forests disappear and the delicate flowers
no longer delight the eye and sweeten the breezes with their
perfume, when the old fences rot, when the houses sink into
decay, when the songs of the birds are hushed. A gray-
haired man—whose little knees, when a child, left their print
in the white sand as he quaffed the sparkling water and lis-
tened to the soft music of the little stream as it stole away
through the weeds and rushes—will feel, if alone, that he is
there again.

We did not dance in the “old sixties,” as already men-

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tioned, but we had our harmless amusements. Heaven would
give us a beautiful moonlight night. Out in the yard girls
and boys would form in line, and one of their number, stand-
ing in front, would sing out:

“Blacksmith, very fine,

Can you shoe a horse of mine?

Yes, master, than I can,

As well as any other man.

Lead your mare to the stall,

One nail drives all;

Whip Tom, spur Jack,

Blow the bellows, good—old—man !”

Each boy and girl would get a word until “man” was reached,
when the one thus designated would have to catch all the rest.
Every one caught would become an ally until all were caught.
Such scampering now around the house, through the garden,
over the fences, and the girls outrunning the boys!

After several rounds of this kind, we would rest awhile,
exchange compliments over our wonderful athletic achieve-
ments, and try something else. Next time it would be:

“William A. Trimble Toe,

He’s a good fisherman;

Catches his hens,

Puts them in pens;

Some lay eggs, and some lay none.
Wire brier, limber lock,

Three geese in the flock—

One flew east, one New west,
One flew over the cuckoo’s nest.
O-u-t spells out!"

Now for the “out” boy or girl, for there was no telling where
the “out” would fall. If it fell upon a girl, and she had a
good many sweethearts, the race for the boys was soon over;
and if it was a popular boy, the girls were not hard to catch.
We had no gymnasiums then. We did not need them. By
the time we had raced to the schoolhouse and back, over the
fences and fields and through the woods, bending down the
tender saplings, and making the swings for the girls out of
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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

the long, wild grapevines, our chests were sufficiently expand-
ed, and our muscles needed no more toughening.

In those days the towns drew on the country for school-
teachers. If I mistake not, Mr. Kellogg went from the Cook
neighborhood to Newnan, and he was the first President of
College Temple. Rev. Cosby W. Smith went from Long-
street, of the same neighborhood, to Greensboro, Georgia, in
1852, and from there to Wesleyan, at Macon. Truth is, the
country was in the saddle in those days, and the towns had
to ride behind; the country had the pick, and the towns had
to put up with what they could get.

Coke’s Chapel was our rallying ground for the gospel once
a month, and the people went in great crowds. Charlie Mc-
Kinley and I had to ride the same horse, and we would take
it turn about riding behind. Little boys as we were, our
pride revolted whenever the time came to extend the blanket
and get up behind. As to a devotional frame of mind, that
was simply out of the question. It was a positive humiliation
to a boy to ride up to church on Sunday, among the boys
and girls, behind anybody. Boys were not allowed then to
roost as high as they do now. If I should ever become an
expansionist, it will grow out of a distaste, formed in my
boyhood on the Coke’s Chapel Sundays, for riding behind.
While I live I want to see my country in the saddle.

I wonder if Mrs. Cosby W. Smith, of Macon, will ever see
these lines about the Sixth District of Coweta. I would think
of her at every dear spot and at every turn of the road in my
wanderings there.

Very unexpectedly I found myself at the home of one of
my playmates and schoolmates, Ann Eliza Stokes, now Mrs.
Major W. W. Thomas. We were not at a loss for something
to talk about.

“He maketh the heart soft,” says the Book, and this is one
of the many ways. There was one calling my first name who
called it at Aunt Ann Stark’s schoolhouse fifty-four years ago

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and who has played with me under the great poplars and oaks
that shaded the schoolhouse spring under the hill.

“Ts life worth living?” is one of the many questions going
the rounds. The man who started that question knew nothing
of the Sixth District of Coweta in the carly forties.

Ilere the curtain must drop, with the following words in-
scribed on it: “And thou shalt remember all the way which
the Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness,
to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine
heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no.”
(Deut. viii. 2.) And I must be permitted to add, out of a
heart overflowing with gratitude, those other words «of the
great lawgiver before the gathered tribes in the plains of
Moab, words of which I can make a personal application:
“Not one thing of all that the Lord your God hath spoken
hath ever failed.”

What a miracle, constantly before us in the group of our
mental faculties, reproducing for us ourselves, summoning to
our side the heaven of childhood when we cannot shake off the
falling snow nor put down our feet as firmly as formerly, when
the eyes need help and solitariness curtains us, is memory!

The night of the 13th of December found me in the east,
at dear old Sparta. When I write “Sparta,” I have written
enough.

86
CHAPTER V
A Montu’s RELEASE FoR REST

At the close of 1908 my brethren of the North Georgia

Conference, after more than a half century of unbroken
service in effective ministry as an itinerant preacher, voted
mearest. This is my fifth year of rest—time enough to learn
what this rest really is. It, as well as activity, makes its de-
mands, one of which is an occasional release, paradoxical as
it may sound. It will be understood by those who are coming
after me better than I can now make it appear by entering
into a philosophical analysis, but there is philosophy in it. My
brethren will some day find out for themselves what it is to
grow weary of resting.

Bishop Pierce once said to a preacher at a camp meeting,
after the brother had returned to the preachers’ tent from an
old-time Middle Georgia camp meeting dinner and was loung-
ing in a comfortable chair, his eyes almost closed: “Joe, do
you know what I think is your highest idea of heaven?” His
brother Joe replied rather lazily: “No, but I should like for
you to tell me.” “Well,” said the Bishop, “your highest idea
of heaven is that it is a place of eternal rest.”

Rest is not all here; and from the limited revelations of
what heaven will be, we are quite sure that rest there will not
be of such a character as to exclude service. I have taken a
vacation every one of the five years given me for rest. I have
needed this release, and I have enjoyed it.

Brother Sims, near Corinth, Georgia (the pastor, J. T.
Robins, kindly concurring), invited me to spend a week with
him and preach at his church the first and second Sundays of
May. This opened the way for another visit to the home of
my childhood while under the care of my grandfather, Rev.
Samuel Lane, my father and mother being in Florida render-

ing pioneer service for Methodism.
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My dear sister, Mollie Haygood, would have been with me
had she not passed into the heavens a few weeks before.
Among her last strongest desires was to go with me to this
old home in which father and mother were married seventy-
seven years ago, in which she was born, and where heaven lay
all about us in the sweet morning of life. I was there for
her and for myself. May I be allowed to say with her?
But little of the old home remains except the window near
which our venerable grandfather sat as he read the Bible
at family prayer by the morning light. It cast its spell over
me again; and the spirit of the place stole quietly over me
until I was a child again, and not a room, fireplace, shrub,
tree, or flower was missing. From the rear of the old
home I cast my eye over the spot where at the close of the
day our grandfather, returning from his work, would kneel
down in a thicket of pines and, placing Mollie on one side and
me on the other on our knees and laying a hand on each head,
look heavenward and commend us, with himself and family
and our dear father and mother in far-away Florida, to his
God and our God.

Add to this that my son John, in this same town, settled
the matter of his life work and preached his first sermon, and
it will appear to the least emotional that memory must have
forgotten its office, and the heart must have lost all sentiment,
if I could have walked away from the enchanted spot without
a movement in the deepest places of my being that will never
subside.

Brother Sims has the art of making a Methodist preacher
feel at home when he goes to see him. He must have had
them about him a good deal, it comes so easy and natural to
him. Finding that I could sing the old Methodist hymns and
the old Methodist tunes, he drew on me freely and found that
I had what he wanted. The week was divided out between
preaching and singing and fishing and talking over days and
times never to lose their sweetness, out on his shady veranda
and along the road in buggy and automobile. l-or the correct

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thing in the line of old-time chats, I will take a gentle horse
with a quarterly meeting trot and a rubber-tired buggy in
preference to the automobile.

Brother Sims and Miss Sallie, his home-keeping daughter,
and his other daughters and sons planted an evergreen in my
heart in that first week of May.

The strangest thing I saw that week was some new ground
of one hundred and twenty-five acres, more or less, along the
road leading from Corinth to Newnan, not far from the latter
city. It was native forest when the axes struck it. That was
the largest piece of new ground I ever saw.

A few days later found me in the midst of my annual joy,
the Wesleyan Female College commencement. For a long
time I had been preparing for this as I do for my Annual
Conference—so many preachers and other old friends to
meet; so many learned discussions to listen to out on the
magnificent veranda, from President Wilson’s administration
down to the correlation of our institutions of learning. Such
big preaching and speaking from pulpit and rostrum, such
enchanting exhibitions by the students, such rapturous shouts
over the prospect of soon being at home! The colors of the
dear old college were at full mast. She is pushing back her
horizon, and this much may be safely counted on whether
all of her ideals are realized or not just now. There is scrip-
ture for not despising the day of small things, but there is no
scripture for being satisfied with such a day.

A portion of my time usually given to Macon had to be
given to my sister and nieces in Milledgeville, who wanted
to see me, and to my son, Dr. Young Harris Yarbrough, of
the medical staff of the Sanitarium, and his Ohio bride. Ohio
and Georgia, I found, had met and were getting along joy-
ously together.

Having been in charge of the Methodist Church there as
early as 1865-66, what I saw while last there was like a
dream. This was strikingly so as I viewed the growth of the
city, its expanding provision for education, but, above all, its

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crowning glory, the improved and enlarging arrangements
for alleviating the sufferings of the most unfortunate of
Georgia’s sons and daughters in our Georgia Sanitarium.
The father of Raphael’s masterpiece, “The Transfiguration,”
pointing his lunatic boy to the Saviour, poised in the clouds
above the holy mount, has in it an inspiration for the utmost
that can be done for maintaining that institution.

Right nobly are the men and women in every position, from
superintendent down, at work, showing all faithfulness, that
not the slightest matter affecting the interests of the unfortu-
nate be neglected.

“All's well that ends well,’’ and such an end came to my
vacation in LaGrange, Georgia, with the ending of the term
of our LaGrange Female College.

When President Rufus WW. Smith and I first met, we were
on the roll of the academy in Greensboro, Georgia, Rev.
Cosby W. Smith, his brother, being our teacher. Later we
were matriculated at Emory College, Oxford, Georgia, where
his record from entrance to graduation, at the head of his
class, was that of a model student.

I was present, shortly after, at his marriage, in Oxford,
and the ties of friendship have held us intimately together
through the succeeding years.

His marriage was according to the law of the eternal fitness
of things. Husband and wife were never more happily adapt-
ed to each other. Their second marriage was to teaching as
their life work, and it was never put asunder until death dis-
solved the union. Until his evening star faded away he had
a source of sympathy, cooperation, and strength in his lofty
calling unsurpassed in the work of training the daughters of
our Southland for the highest type of womanhood.

My heart swelled with pride as I looked upon the manly
form of my schoolmate of earlier days as he stood at the
front of the noble column of Georgia’s college presidents on
his twenty-eighth commencement day, and the foremost sen-
timent that welled up within me was:

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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

“These are the sons of sacred flame,

Their brows marked with the sacred name;
Souls that have built up our faith in man,
And lit the ages as they ran.”

Deep, broad, and firm as is the foundation on which this
college stands, its superstructure has loftier heights before it;
and the upward spirit of LaGrange, its beautiful and historic
home city, is equal to their attainment.

My home while there was with the family of Brother C.
V. Truit, where I have been most kindly and elegantly en-
tertained on several former occasions. I formed a new ac-
quaintance in the family. Tar Baby, Sister Truit’s buggy
horse, large, of symmetrical proportions, as black as a crow,
stately in his step, free and elastic in all his movements, and,
with an elegant buggy, was made mine during my stay in the
city, to go and come according to my heart’s desire.

Now, if any of the brethren failed to get recognition from
me as Tar Baby and I took in the city, they will under-
stand it.

gi
CHAPTER VI
SprinG Days at MICCOSUKEE

(= children at Miccosukee, Florida, complimented their

mother and me with a trip to their pleasant home in
March, 1909, the first trip of the kind we have taken together
since we were married and my first vacation in fifty-one years.
The truth is (may as well tell it), it was our honeymoon. My
wife lived near the base of Kennesaw Mountain during the
year of our engagement and of our small talk on the steps
of old Ebenezer Church, on the Canton Road, six miles from
Marietta. There about sundown we did our talking that we
wanted nobody else to hear; and in one of those talks we
changed the time of our marriage to an earlier date than the
time first agreed on, so as not to be in Sherman's way when
he and his army started through Georgia. Having belonged
to the surveying corps that opened the line of the Western and
Atlantic Railroad from Atlanta to Chattanooga when he was
a young man, we were satisfied that he knew his route, and
there was a chance for him to break in upon our wedding din-
ner, as he did when he struck Milledgeville and got all the
chickens and turkeys and lambs and hams and cakes and pre-
serves, etc., with which the pantries and smokehouses were
stocked for the preachers of the Georgia Conference soon to
assemble.

We were sharp enough to keep out of that trap and get off
down to Oxford on the ‘“General,’” Captain Fuller, conduc-
tor, as far as Atlanta; and the next day we had our infair at
my father’s, at which Judge A. B. Longstreet, Dr. Alexander
Means, Dr. James R. Thomas, Rev. Walter R. Branham, Sr.,
Rev. William J. Parks, Rev. William H. Evans, and Rev. D.
D. Cox were present. ‘Function’ is too small a word for
that occasion, and I always refer to it under the old Virginia
trimmings, “infair.”

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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA.

 

From that time on the Yankees were pestering us so that a
honeymoon was out of the question, and we were arranging
and planning and moving about and refugeeing until the war
was over, and ever since the bishops and elders have been
itinerating us; so our honeymoon was postponed until we
went to Miccosukee. I am in favor of two honeymoons, one
in the morning of married life and one in the evening; and if
any writer should advocate making the married life an un-
broken honeymoon, I would. stand by him. Those blossoms
of the universities who are irradiating on the home life, mar-
riage, etc., are not married men, I hope, for their wives’ sakes;
and if they are not and should ever try to get married, any
woman will drive her ducks to a bad market who gets her
consent to be led to the altar by one of them. Coming out in
the lecture room before young men on such subjects so sacred
and high to civilized people, as they do, they remind me of a
bunch of donkeys braying at Bunker Hill Monument.

We reached Miccosukee on March g by A. B. and A. Pull-
man in time for my birthday dinner the next day. There is
no need of telling what birthday. The world plays shy of a
man who has too many of them, and I cannot blame my fellow
pilgrims for doing all they can to keep looking young as long as
they can. I raise no sand about others using a little hair dye,
cutting a new set of teeth, reading familiar hymns and lessons
in the pulpit without glasses, and wearing the short sack coat
and white vest all the year round—that is, if it suits them—
but I draw the line at parting the hair in the middle—that is,
by old men.

The children had the dining room decorated beautifully
enough for Christmas. My chair received some touches of
its own. But that turkey and the many things to keep him
company! The evolutionists have balked on the turkey. He
tastes to me, when properly prepared for the table, just as
he did the first time I paid him my respects on the plate, and
the consensus of really old men is that he hasn’t changed. I
accept many new things that have been worked out by the

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scientists, but I want no change in the turkey, except that we
meet oftener in our levees.

Many of the Florida homes are ancestral. Some show age,
but they are the dearer on this account. My home during my
stay had undergone many improvements, was wearing bright
colors, and was modernized in its appointments; but the fact
that it was the home of the dear ones who had gone was what
held the hearts of its present occupants. Everybody and ev-
erything is at home there—parents, children, servants, dogs,
horses, mules, cows, calves, fowls of the yard, birds in the
vineyard and on their nests—all seem to be feeling that they
are at home and that it is theirs. The brown thrush and
mocking bird and the blue jay and oriole and others were in
the magnolias and banana shrubbery of the flower yard and
in the vines climbing over the veranda. The last song of the
thrush that softened my heart before going to Florida was
on Judge Dickson’s lot, in Oxford, in 1905. I hope he and
his descendants are there still singing their sweet songs. The
birds at our home in Miccosukee are not pelted or shot or
frightened in any way. They would go to roost within a few
feet of my chair on the veranda, where I caught their last
notes chirped before going to sleep—few, but they sink deeper
into the heart than any others. Our grandson, Theodore,
was away at school; but our granddaughter, Mary Simpson,
was with us and added unspeakably to our joy.

We received the additional compliment of a picnic on Mic-
cosukee Lake, a lake fifteen miles long and in places several
miles wide. All efforts to drain this beautiful mirror and
devote it to the cultivation of cotton and other products have
failed; and the generations to come will have a rallying place
where the old people can exchange the legends of that en-
chanted country under the beautiful magnolias, and where
the young people can tell their soft experiences and pledge
their faith to each other and the children romp along the
shores and cast the line and glide over the waters. I praise
God that he has made some things for the pleasure of his

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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

children that avarice cannot bring under its dominion—
streams that cannot be drained or harnessed by machinery,
forests that cannot be cut down, and mountains that cannot
be leveled.

Near this beautiful lake I was born, and two Sundays of
my visit were spent in the neighborhood so sacred to me, at
old Union Church, where my father preached, and at Brother
Springer’s, who lives in the house in which I was born.

The old inhabitants still talk of the Indian wars, and the
younger people love to hear them. My father gave me many
thrilling accounts in my childhood, some amusing. One ac-
count was of a captain giving orders to his command on
parade one evening. He told his men of their dangerous
proximity to the Indians. He could almost smell them, etc.
“Now,” said he, “if they come to-night in that direction, give
immediate battle. If they come in that direction [carefully
pointing it out to them], deploy and make a show of great
strength; but, as far as you can, hold your fire.” Then, point-
ing down a long lane along which he most confidently expect-
ed them, he ordered that they retreat on their approach, in
good order, by the left flank, adding: “And as I am a little
lame, I will be going now.”

Florida farming lands, as far as my observation reached,
are the finest I ever saw, and I did not see all of the best. I
fear that they will all fall a prey to the land syndicates and that
the benefits our own people ought to be reaping from them and
handing down to their posterity will be found in other hands.

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PART FOUR

GEORGIA STORIES AND SELECTIONS
7
CHAPTER I
How THE Cats HELPED To CuRE THE CROAKER

A COLD, dreary day in January, 1858, found a young
preacher at the house of an old brother who had settled
down into the habit of croaking at many men and many
things. At times everything seemed to be out of gear, and
hardly anybody was doing right. It was in the good old days
when they sent a preacher in charge of the circuit and a jun-
ior—days, by the way, that ought never to have ceased.

True, the junior was not expected to do much more than
go along and rub the trees and shake the bushes and turn the
game for the senior to shoot; but it was, many things con-
sidered, about the happiest arrangement ever made by our
Church for a young preacher. It was far ahead of some of
the little squirrel-eaten stations that border our cities and
many that stand off to themselves, to which our young men
who are not wise aspire.

The junior on our old brother’s circuit was the one above
all others over whom he delighted to hold the rod. There
was always a seasoned hickory hid away in a crack for him.
When he and the junior met, if he was not in a crabbed mood,
he would soon work himself up to it, or rather down to it,
for there is a doubt in my mind to this day as to that spirit’s
being from above. But all who knew him believed him to be
a good man, and so did his young brother. There may be
zeal without knowledge, and a man may be conscientious and
at the same time be wrong.

We had been to circuit preaching and were sitting by his
fireside waiting for dinner. He had his pipe over in one
corner, and the young preacher was down over the fire trying
to warm. It was his first year from home, and his mother
had fixed him up in excellent style, giving him, among other
nice things, a pair of driving gauntlets that extended up the

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arms some distance. He had inherited a small bump above
each cye that contained a little help in the matter of reading
men, and those little bumps had been at work on the old broth-
er ina sly way.

After holding off as long as he could, he started in about
on this wise: “I have been watching you pretty closely, and I
have about concluded that you are one of those preachers that
will take to white houses with green blinds and will pass by
us poor folks." ‘You have that down about right,” said the
young preacher. “My horse shall be trained so that when he
sees one of those houses he will begin to bend in that direction.
They are good places for horse and man. And you must
move out of this old field and get you a house out on the big
road. It is troublesome to let down your drawbars, and run-
ning over the cotton ridges will break my buggy to pieces.”

This reply put him to examining his pipe to see if his fire
had gone out. ‘Why do you wear such large gloves?’ was
his next move. ‘‘They keep the cold wind out of my sleeves.
and there is something in looks.”

Just then his good wife invited us to dinner. After the
blessing had been asked, he returned to the other blessing that
he had been preparing for his junior preacher. He was not
to be outdone.

Several large, old-fashioned house cats got up lazily,
roached their backs, drew a long breath, walked gravely un-
der the table as we took our seats, gathered up their feet un-
der them, stretched their long tails along on the floor, and
quietly awaited their usual favors.

The old brother improved the time as best he could at the
table and might have made a point or two, but the young
brother was parrying his thrusts in a way he knew not of. Oc-
castonally his boot would find its way to a cat's tail and roll
it on the floor a little like a shoemaker does when he wants to
turn a piece of leather into a round shoe string or top string.

There was music, not to be accounted for except by the ex-
igencies of the science. They ran the entire gamut. They

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gave forth the air—treble, bass, and soprano. It finally reached
the point where it reminded one of an old-time singing class
(such as they still have in the mountains) taking the sound;
whereupon the old brother threw down his knife and fork
and, looking under the table, cried out: “Old ’oman, upon the
face of the earth what is the matter with the cats? I never
heard the like before!’ Imagine his countenance when he as-
certained that his growling and grumbling had done his young
brother that much good.

It was too much. His kind family had been sympathizing
with the young brother and were enjoying his mode of de-
fense; and now the old brother joined in. The storm was
over, and under the rainbow that spanned the group the chairs
were pushed back, and we had quiet and pleasure.

Many a happy time did that old brother and the junior
preacher have together that year. Together they labored and
together they rejoiced. Both had to smile whenever they met
after that occasion.

He saw at his home more of his young preacher than he had
seen of any of his predecessors, and the junior has never
heard of his worrying any of his successors.

Years after that tragic event that young preacher and two
of the old brother’s sons who were present met. The younger
said: “One of them cats was mine; and he went off after
that, and we thought he was never coming back home again;
but he did after so long a time, and he looked like he had about
enough of young preachers.”

He must have come back to find out where those new notes
of music under that dinner table came from.

IOI
CHAPTER II
HANNIBAL AND ROWLAND

() of my happiest nights in as happy a home as a boy
ever had was when Rowland came home with our father
from one of his appointments on his circuit. Our home was
in the country; and the fireplace was old-style, deep and wide,
and had a broad hearthstone. The little dog was turned out
of the basket that he came in on the floor in front of the fire;
and we crowded around to sce him, and we kept looking at him
and pointing out his marks of beauty until praver time, and
even then it was hard to keep from turning our heads and
stealing a glance at him.

He was a beauty and had smart ways from the start. He
had long, silken hair of several colors, mostly rich yellow and
white. In the sunshine his hair would glisten like satin.

You may be sure that he did not sleep on the cold floor by
himself the first night he came, and many a night after that
there was a contention for the pleasure of having him for a
bedfellow. If a boy and his dog do not sleep together, vou
may count on one thing: he will sleep on the bey’s pants and
jacket if he can get to them—that is, if the boy and his little
dog get as close together in their love for each other as Row-
land did to me and I to Rowland. Being the oldest boy, I
was allowed to claim him, but all felt that they had a share
in him.

1 had one advantage over the others: I carried the school
bucket; and no matter how little | had for dinner or how
much | loved to eat what Thad, something was left to give to
Rowland at the close of the day when I got home from school.

Smart little fice dogs know what people in the house and
about the house are talking about. Bear that in mind and be
careful how you talk. Members of the family would be talking
about the fireplace in the afternoon, and Rowland would be

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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

stretched out on the floor, apparently asleep. Mother or some
one else would say: “It’s time the children were coming from
school.” Up the little fellow would jump, and away he would
go down the road to meet us. He had one place to sit and
wait for us, a little knoll by the roadside. There he would
sit, wagging his tail and restless with joy, until he received
our salutations and the bones and scraps from the bucket.

A few years ago a District Conference of our Church was
held in the town where I went to school that year. One day
I asked to be excused from a session; and I went out to our
old home in the country, mainly to see once more that little
knoll by the roadside where my little dog used to meet me
about sundown returning from school. And I saw it, and
nobody was with me.

Rowland grew fast, gained in sense, and fell more and
more in love with us every day. At his best he was not larg-
er than a fox. It seemed to be growing in him that he had to
protect the family and was really doing it. Father was away
a good deal. We were small, and Rowland seemed to be tak-
ing the situation to heart. There was a home that nobody
could approach, day or night, night especially, without his
knowing it and letting the family know it. The burglars say
that the fice is the only dog they cannot bribe and manage.

We had moved to another town, Greensboro, Georgia. Old
John Robinson’s circus came along, paraded, showed, and was
leaving early one morning along the road that runs by our
parsonage. The little dog had been kept awake most of the
night by the music and the smell and racket of the animals
and people passing about. As we collected about the front
of the house to see the procession pass out, Rowland grew
nervous and unusually exercised about what was to become of
us. He would crouch down by us and tremble and look up
into our faces to see how we were standing it, but he kept
between us and danger. After all the wagons had rolled by
and the camels, horses, etc., were gone, here came old Hanni-
bal, the elephant, rocking along down the road, with great ears,

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like saddle skirts, flapping about, and really looking like he
Was coming right into the yard. Rowland could not stand
everything, with the elephant thrown in, that seemed to be
threatening the family. So his hair began to rise on his back,
and over the front steps he went, making a dash at old Hanni-
bal and biting him on one of his heels. Hannibal bore it the
best he could and went along, taking his own good time to
get over it; while Rowland tore up the ground where the ele-
phant passed along and returned to his charge with an air of
great triumph, with not more than three of his feet touching
the ground, and stopping once or twice to cast a look of con-
tempt upon old Hannibal, while he seemed to be saying to
himself: “Now, come this way again, trying to run over this
family, and I will finish the job.”
Boys, did any of you ever have a dog to bite an elephant?
Tf not, then I am ahead of you.
104
CHAPTER III
Docs or OTHER OWNERSHIP

[' is with dogs as with boys—some are more religious than
others. Now for it. I hear a big wagonload of boys
shouting out their dissent when we touch the religion of dogs:
“What! A dog got religion? Next thing we hear, if our
friend in the Wesleyan keeps on writing, we will have a dog
class in Sunday school, and the preacher will be putting their
names down on the Church roll as members and have them
taking collections and singing bass and all the like of that.”

Now, boys, I don’t want you to take the measles at the end
of the nice times we have been having together. We must
stick together as we have been doing all along the way. I
am not going so far out into this subject as to get in water
over our heads; but I will say, and risk it, that if some dogs
I have known and read about were to be taken into the Sun-
day school and into the church and taught awhile they would
get the prize from some sure-enough folks for punctual at-
tendance, close attention, and good behavior.

“Well,” says a jolly, rosy-faced boy, with his pants rolled
above his knees and the clay in between his toes and a toe or
two tied up with a rag, and who knows more about the rabbit
hollows and wash holes in the settlement than he does about
Elijah’s pitched battle on Mount Carmel, “if that is what you
are up to, I must say that I believe the dogs would give some
of us sometimes a close shave.”

Now, there is something so much like religious sensibility
in dogs. What is it if it is not religion?

In 1868 I was stationed in Washington, Georgia, in charge
of the Methodist Church there. My two little boys had a half-
grown brindle dog between them. He was country-raised
and a cross, but mostly fice and very smart. Suddenly one
Sunday morning a devotional wave struck him, and my wife
found, about halfway to the church, that he was following us.
I did all in my power to drive him back; and, with the help of

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a negro man and some sticks, rocks, and brickbats, we cooled
lus religious ardor and sent him home. The next Sunday
morning | went alone. The old Methodist church there had
three front entrances. As [ approached, what should I see
lying there in the middle entrance but that dog, with his eyes
fixed on me and saying, “Now say a word or pick up a rock,
and Jamin”! Te had arranged his position so securely that
it was simply impossible to get between him and his purpose
to attend meeting that morning. Sure enough, as I was lining
the opening hymn | looked out, and there he was trotting
about, saluting the audience as if the whole thing had been
arranged for his special benefit !

A few days thereafter, while walking with Gen. Robert
Toombs in his garden, I brought the incident to his attention
in detail. He listened to the simple story with respectful in-
terest. I said to him: “General, it seems to me that there
was a regular course of reasoning from cause to effect.” “To
be sure, there was,” said he. “Now, General, I want you to
tell me where instinct stopped and reason set in or tice versa.”
The great man thought a moment and replied: “I leave all
such matters to Providence.”

Said Dr. Samuel I. Prince, a man of great learning and
deep piety:

My father had a small and beautiful dog who rejoiced in the name of
Fidelity. He differed from other dogs only in being better than others or
in a peculiar attachment to religious places, people, and services. He at-
tended family worship with a punctuality and regularity that the other
members of the houschold might well have imitated and certainly did not
surpass. If a stranger were present (and much company visited our
house), the dog's attention to him ways regulated by his taking the lead or
not in the religious worship of the household. If the visitor, at my father’s
request, conducted the worsInp, the dog at once attached himself to his
person; and when he departed the dog escorted him out of the village.
sometimes going home with him to a neighboring town and making him a
visit of a few days. If the visitor did not perform any religious service
in the house, the dog took no notice of him while there and suffered him
te depart unattended and evidently unregretted.

Such a dog was, of course, a habitual attendant on the public services
of the Church on the Sabbath. It required extraordinary care to keep him

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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

at home. Shut up in a room, he dashed through a window and was at
church before the family. He was once shut up in an outhouse that had
no floor. He dug out under the sill of the door and was at church before
the first psalm was sung. In the church he occupied the upper step of the
pulpit within which his master ministered. He lay quiet during the service
unless other dogs below misbehaved, in which case he left his seat and
after quieting the disturbance resumed it. He was equally devoted to the
weekly prayer meeting which was held from house to house, the appoint-
ment being announced on the Sabbath. He remembered the evening and
place and was always present. As it was not agreeable to have a dog at
an evening meeting in a private house, he was confined at home. The
next week he went early, before the family had thought to shut him up,
and waited for the hour and the people. He knew the names of the fam-
ilies where the meetings were held and where they lived and could have
gone to any of them on an errand as easily and correctly as a child. And
the only knowledge he had of the place of meeting he got as the others
did, by hearing the notice on Sunday. These habits of the dog were not
the fruit of education. On the contrary, pains were taken to prevent him
from indulging his religious preferences. He did not manifest a fondness
for other meetings or for any individuals out of the family circle except
those whom he recognized by their habit of praying as the people in whom
he was especially interested.

My father was wont to relate many other anecdotes of this remarkable
animal, and the relation of them always caused his eyes to fill with tears.
He had a strong impression that there was something very mysterious
about this propensity of the dog; and being himself a sternly orthodox
divine, he never ventured the opinion that the dog had moral perceptions.
But I always thought he believed so.

Mr. Wesley has been laughed at for some of his intimations
on the subject of the resurrection of brutes. I do not laugh
at John Wesley. I laugh sometimes, when I feel like it, but
there are enough characters for me to laugh at without going
to John Wesley. Why not laugh at Tupper’s “Inquiry Con-
cerning the Souls of Brutes”? Tupper was a great poet, phi-
losopher, and author many times and on great subjects. Hear
him:

“Tn truth, I see not why the breath of life,
Thus omnipresent and upholding all,

Should not return to Him and be immortal
(I dare not say the same) in some glad state,
Originally destined for creation,

As well from brutish bodies as from man.
The uncertain glimmer of analogy

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Suggests the thought and reason’s shrewder guess;
Yet revelation whispers naught but this,

‘Our Father careth when a sparrow dies’;

And that, ‘The spirit of a brute descends,’

As to some secret and preserving Hades”

I am not uneasy about John Wesley’s suffering from ridi-
cule or from anything else, but why not laugh at the philo-
sophical poet? The laugh might at least be divided between
them. We return to Tupper:

“But for some better life, in what strange sort
Were justice, mixed with mercy, dealt to these?
Innocent slaves of sordid, guilty man,

Poor, unthank’d drudges, toiling to his will,
Pampered in youth and haply starved in age,
Obedient, faithful, gentle, though the spur
Wantonly cruel, or unsparing thong,

Weal your galled hides, or your strained sinews crack
Beneath the crushing load—what recompense
Can He who gave you being render you

If in the rank, full harvest of your griefs

You sink annihilated, to the shame

Of government unequal? In that day

When crime is sentenced, shall the cruel heart
Boast uncondemn’d because no tortur'd brute
Stands there accusing? Shall the embodied deeds
Of man not follow him, nor the rescued fly
Bear its kind witness to the saving hand?
Shall the mild Brahman stand in equal sin
Regarding nature’s menials, with the wretch
Who flays the moaning Abyssinian ox,

Or roasts the living bird, or flogs te death

The famishing pointer? And must these again,
These poor, unguilty, uncomplaining victims,
Have no reward for life with its sharp pains?
They have my suffrage. Nineveh was spared,
Though Jonah prophesied its doom, for sake

Of sixscore thousand infants and “much cattle.”
And space is wide enough for every grain

Of the broad sands that curb our swelling seas,
Each separate in its sphere to stand apart

As far as sun from sun; there lacks not room,
Nor time, nor care, where all is infinite.

And still I doubt: it is a Gordian knot,

A dark, deep riddle, rich with curious thoughts.”

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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

The gifted poet-philosopher had his heart softened, as we
have often had ours, by an incident that most people would
set aside as trivial. If a boy has tears, it seems to me that
this incident will find them; and when we lodge it well in our

memories we will wipe our eyes and softly say good-by, at
least for the present:

“Paris kept holiday. A merrier sight

The crowded Champs Elyseés never saw:

Loud pealing laughter, songs and flageolets,
And giddy dances ’neath the shadowing elms,
Green vistas throng’d with thoughtless multitudes,
Traitorous processions, frivolous pursuits,

And pleasures full of sin, the loud “Hurrah!”
And fierce enthusiastic: “Vive la nation!”

Were these thy ways and works, O godlike man,
Monopolist of mind, great patentee

Of truth, and sense, and reasonable soul?

My heart was sick with gayety; nor less,

When (sad, sad contrast to the sensual scene)

J marked a single hearse through the dense crowd
Move on its noiseless, melancholy way,

The blazing sun half quenched it with his beams
And showed it but more sorrowful. I gaz’d,

And gaz’d with wonder that no feeling heart,
No solitary man followed to note

The spot where poor mortality must sleep.

Alas! it was a friendless child of sorrow

That stole unheeded to the house of death!

My heart beat strong with sympathy and loath’d
The noisy follies that were buzzing round me,
And I resolved to watch him to his grave

And give a man his fellow sinner’s tear.

I left the laughing crowd and quickly gained
That dreary hearse, and found—he was not friendless!
Yes, there was one, only one, faithful found

To that forgotten wanderer—his dog!

And there, with measured step and drooping head
And tearful eye, paced on the stricken mourner.
Yes, I remember how my bosom ached

To see its sensible face look up to mine

As in confiding sympathy—and howl!

Yes, I can never forget what grief unfeigned,
What true love and unselfish gratitude

That poor, bereaved, and soulless dog betrayed.

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‘Ah! give me, give me such a friend!’ I cried.

You myriad fools and knaves in human guise,
Compared with thee, poor cur, are vain and worthless,
While man, who claims a soul exclusively,

Is sham’d by yonder ‘mere machine’—a dog!”

Boys, we may not meet our dogs in the resurrection, but I
am willing; and if they do survive death, they will rise more
heavily freighted than many a man I have known.

110
CHAPTER IV

Dicx’s Caum—VaGaBsonpD Bop—SENATOR VEST’s CLASSIC
EuLocy on THE Doc

Dick’s Chum

A NEWSBOY sat crying on the curbstone when a pedes-
trian halted and laid his hand on the youngster’s shoul-
der. “What’s wrong, sonny? Lost something?”

“Naw, I ain’t. O—O, me chum’s dead!”

“O, that’s too bad! How did he die?”

“Runned over.”

“So! Was there an inquest?”

“Inques’ nothin’! He just hollered oncet and rolled over
dead ; and I wish I was dead too, along of him.”

“Cheer up; you can find another chum.”

“You wouldn’t talk that way if you’d knowed Dick. He
was the best friend I ever had. There warn’t nothin’ Dick
wouldn’t ’a’ done for me, and now he’s d-d-dead and buried.
I’m a-wishin’ I was too.”

“Look here,” said the man; “go and sell your papers and
take some poor little ragged boy and be a chum to him. It’ll
help you and do him good.”

“Pshaw, mister! Where’s there a boy wot’d go around
nights with me and be cold and hungry and outen doors and
sleep on the ground like Dick? An’ he wouldn’t tech a bite
till I’d had enough. He were a Christian, Dick were.”

“Then you can feel that he’s all right if he was such a
faithful friend and a good boy.”

“Boy! Dick a boy! Dick warn’t only a ragged, good-for-
nothin’ human boy, mister; Dick were a dog.” —Unidentified.

Vagabond Bob
ALFRED J. WATERHOUSE, IN NEW YORK TIMES
(An incident of the Kansas City flood in 1903)

Bob was a vagabond. If you had seen
The limp of his legs and the lay of his fur,

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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

His gaunt, yellow body, disgracefully lean,
You'd have vowed he was only a vagabond cur.

The torrent swept down on a world unaware,
And women and children and men were his prey;
And death was his brother, who walked everywhere,
And the faces of mortals were white with dismay.

A babe in a cradle was rocked to and fro,

Tossed hither and thither mid flotsam and wreck,
With only grim death and the angels to know,

A mariner wee on a pitiful deck.

With only grim death and the angels? Not so.
On a mound over yonder a vagabond cur

Heard the wail of the babe, like the summons of woe.
And the spirit of herocs in him was astir.

Now, Vagabond Bob; now, outcast—what now?
The chasm is wide, by the mad current torn,
And the rescue’s a bark with death at the prow—

Still over the waters that wailing is borne.

I think that he shivered one moment in dread;

I think that he doubted ere outward he sprung-—
See now in the current the vagabond head,

The débris, the flotsam, the wreckage among'

He reached her! He saved her! No mortal had known
How long was the struggle, how cruelly hard,

But the rescuers found them, the two waifs alone;
And the babe was asleep, and Bob was on guard.

Senator Vest's Famous Classic Eulogy on the Dog

Years ago in an old town of Northern Missouri a man
brought suit for two hundred dollars against a neighbor who
had killed his dog, and he engaged Senator Vest to plead his
case. The Senator made the following remarkable address,
considered the finest classic gem of its kind in the history of
forensic oratory:

Gentlemen of the Jury: The best human friend a man has in the world
may turn against him and become his enemy, His son or daughter that

he has reared with loving care may prove ungrateful. Those who are
nearest and dearest to us, those whom we trust with our happiness and

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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

our good name may become traitors to their faith, The money that a man
has he may lose. It flies away from him, perhaps, when he needs it most.
A man’s reputation may be sacrificed in a moment of ill-considered action.
The people who are prone to fall on their knees to do us honor when
success is with us may be the first to throw the stone of malice when
failure settles its cloud upon our heads. The one absolutely unselfish
friend that a man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deceives
him, the one that never proves ungrateful and treacherous, is his dog.

A man’s dog stands by him in prosperity and poverty, in health and
in sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground where the wintry wind
blows and the snow drifts fiercely, if only he may be near his master’s
side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer. He will lick the
wounds and sores that come in encounters with the roughness of the world.
He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all
other friends desert, he remains. When riches take wings and reputation
falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey
through the heavens. If fortune drives the master forth an outcast in
the world, friendless and homeless, the faithful dog asks no higher privi-
lege than that of accompanying, to guard against danger, to fight against
his enemies; and when the last scene of all comes, and when death takes
the master in its embrace and his body is laid away in the cold ground,
no matter if all other friends pursue their way, there by the graveside
may the noble dog be found, his head between his paws, his eyes sad, but
open in alert watchfulness, faithful and true even in death.

Then the Senator sat down. He had spoken in a low
voice, almost without gesture. He made no reference to the
evidence or the merits of the case. When he had finished, the
judge and jury were wiping their eyes. The jury filed out,
but soon returned with a verdict in favor of the plaintiff for
five hundred dollars. He had sued for two hundred dollars.
It is even said that some of the jurors wanted to hang the
defendant.

8 113
CHAPTER V
ROMANCE OF CRACKER’S NECK

RACKER’S NECK lies south of Greensboro, Georgia,
the classic region of Greene County, as ity mame sug-
gests. So charmed with this portion of his county was Hon.
William C. Dawson, United States Senator from Georgia,
that he was fond of claiming that his elegant home in
Greensboro (the Clayton Place) was included in the “Neck.”

Dwellers on the dividing lines between Greene, Hancock,
and Putnam Counties aspired to association with the citizen-
ship of this highly favored region.

In its early history it was noted mainly for the sentiment
of liberty as it came down undiluted from the fathers of the
Revolution. For the most part, they were a law unto them-
selves. They interpreted courts of justice to be institutions
merely to keep up the appearances of civilization.

It was not surprising that their most historic church was
named Liberty Chapel and that the county was named Greene,
after Gen. Nathaniel Greene. the friend of Gen. George
Washington.

The rich old blood of the Revolution was leaping in the
veins of descendants of Revolutionary sires in the sixties;
and Greene County, true to her traditions, invested heavily in
that second memorable struggle for independence; and there
will always be channels for that blood to flow in, and they will
never be dry.

Let none receive the impression that the citizens of this
locality were turbulent, fractious, troublesome. Far from it.
every man had a mind of his own and did as he pleased; and
everybody accepted that order of things, and peace and har-
mony reigned.

Writing for the most part from memory, | shall not be ex-
pected to be rigidly exact as to the topography of the country.

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The Oconee River, in a horseshoe curve, keeping it fresh and
green on one side, and Shoulder Bone Creek washing it on
another side, will be sufficient for the outlines.

If these lines should fall under the eye of President Rufus
W. Smith, of LaGrange Female College, a smile will disturb
his placid countenance as he recalls a horseback ride we took
on the eastern edge of this romantic section. We were riding
two plain, unsophisticated farm horses that were altogether
unaccustomed to anything like cutting shines and showing off.
But that afternoon we could let them out a little, and they
were soon being made acquainted with resources of gait and
speed of which they had hitherto been ignorant. The coming
college president was riding a black horse (Ball, I believe, was
his name) ; and when he got down to his best and was making
the gravel fly, his ears coming to a point, his eyes dilated, and
indignation steaming from his nostrils, he would steal a look
back at his rider, inquiring: “What does all this mean?
This isn’t the way we do on the farm.” My horse did the
same. The change in the countenances of horses never inter-
ested me before nor since as it did on that ride, as new revela-
tions came to them of what they could do when their riders
were in the proper mood, and we were so convulsed with laugh-
ter that we could hardly stay in our saddles. Both of those
horses died, I have no doubt, without ever reathing a full
understanding of how those two sober, well-bred, and ordi-
narily well-behaved young men should hit upon such an ab-
rupt and apparently uncalled-for interruption of their plain,
unpretentious, measured country way of getting along under
the saddle on the big road.

Another part of Cracker’s Neck was made historic by
the “Fox Chase” of “Georgia Scenes,” when old Smooth-
tooth, after pitching his forelegs over a large log, concluded
to let his hind legs remain where they were and come to a
rest, and where the grapevine caught his rider under the chin
and came near lifting him out of his saddle as the scent of
game grew warm, and ripened him into a gallop.

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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

Here and there, scattered through the States from Georgia
to the Far West, are men and women who will have to let
nature have her own way and moisten their checks a little as
memory hovers over the old homes and haunts of the region
I am visiting to-night on the same wing.

So dear to me and to others are the names of those fami-
lies there—say, in the early fifties—that I will record some of
them. We readily recall the Armors, Dr. John Curtwright,
Col Rowan Ward, the Kimbroughs, the Creddiles, the \Wood-
hams, Brown (father-in-law of Rev. James Billingsleah and
one of the riders in the celebrated “Fox Chase” of “Georgia
Scenes”), Perkins (grandfather of Preston Wright, of
Greensboro, my old schoolmate), the Smiths, the Hutchin-
sons, Henry Walker, Rev. William Blythe, the Copelands,
Gentry, a leader in singing at Liberty, and Jernigan. We
could make this list much longer without putting down a fam-
ily not entitled to high consideration for having contributed to
the character of Cracker’s Neck.

Rev. A. B. Thrasher, of Thomaston, Georgia, found a no-
ble wife there; and he paid them back tor his prize in some
honest, faithful, permanent work in school-teaching, for which
he was eminently qualified in head and heart. Mrs. Sarah
Ward, one of the earliest graduates of Wesleyan Female Col-
lege, was the reigning queen «f the social and religious realms
of Cracker’s Neck. She was intellectual, beautiful in person,
educated and cultured, as bright and genial as sunshine, and
a shouting Methodist; plain, unassuming, uniformly neigh-
borly.

It was a district of dear old Greene

“Where rural virtues were not yet forgot,
And good old customs crown'd the circling year;
Where still contented people loved their lot,
And trade's vile din offended not the ear,
But hospitable hearths and welcomes warm
To country quict joined their social charm.”

When couples got marricd, they had big wedding suppers

and rousing infairs the next day. Cake is not piled up at

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BOVHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

weddings now as it was then and there on such occasions.
There were no buffet luncheons, menus, or functions of any
kind; and I want it distinctly understood that those things did
not originate in Cracker’s Neck, with everything running to
dishes of foreign names and to flowers and flourishes. But
the tables groaned under viands that allured the taste, sub-
stantials and delicacies home-raised and homemade and home-
named that made us feel, when it was all over, like we had
been somewhere and had gotten something worth going for
and never to be forgotten. Poundcake, among the delicacies,
led in those savory times and in that lovely region. I do not
know who invented the cake. It deserves a monument, wheth-
er the formula was born in Buckingham Palace, in the Valley
of Virginia, in Maryland, or in Georgia. As good as it is, it
is none too good to have been born in Cracker’s Neck. Who-
ever got a taste of it never failed thereafter to detect it, at
home or abroad, on the land or on the sea.

Judge Frank Little, of Sparta, Georgia, my dear old col-
lege mate, was at our parsonage table in his town in 1899,
and some of that cake was passed to him. It was made and
sent to us by our daughter, Mrs. Corinne Yarbrough, of Mic-
cosukee, Florida. The Judge had not more than fairly cracked
the icing before he cried out: “George, where did you get
this poundcake?” I told him and added: “Here are some
old-time quince preserves to go with it.” His black eyes
flashed as he smacked his mouth just like any other mouth
will do that meets the genuine article. My mouth moistens
as I write, and his will if he reads what I have written. Oc-
casionally the doctrine of evolution strikes something it can-
not tackle. Poundcake and quince preserves defy it, both
tasting just like they did when they were first made, no fore-
runner, away back in the days of protoplasm and environ-
ment and microbes and germs and eggs and shellfish, having
yet been discovered.

Well, all that was common in Cracker’s Neck in our day
and time; and folks paid the preacher for marrying them,

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too. Every bride in those parts was worth it, and all this
“TIL see you again” on the part of the festive groom was not
init. The service was recognized in heavier change than that,
gold itself being considered none too good to invest in that
part of the program.

Liberty Chapel was the center of attraction and influence
in Cracker’s Neck. It was surrounded by thickly settled
neighborhoods of the best people. The pioneer Methodist
preachers, with Asbury and McKendree at their head, had
been there felling the timber, breaking the ground, seeding
the soil, and “bringing in the golden sheaves.” They left
the purest, most Scriptural theology that man has ever been
taught, the most quickening, elevating, rapturous songs that
men have ever sung, and the most reasonable, simple, satisfac-
tory experiences that men in modern times have told.

I must be pardoned for doubting if any Church in Georgia
ever exerted a more wholesome influence over people within
its reach. And it had a good name at a distance as well as
near, In answer to Question 16, “When and where shall the
next Conference be held?” (Minutes of 1808), the answer
was: “South Carolina Conference, Georgia, Liberty Chapel.”

The Conference was held by Bishop Asbury in a farmer's
home (Mr. Bush), in a house now gone by fire. At this
Conference Lovick Pierce was ordained deacon. It was an
inspiring place for George I Pierce, his son and a native of
Greene County, to preach his first sermon, if he did mount a
kneeling stool in the high, old-fashioned pulpit and hold on
to the book board through the sermon to keep from falling.
He found the stool under the pulpit; and, having been taught
to call nothing connected with Methodism: common or unclean
or useless, he supposed it was put there to stand on, so as not
to be cramped and hidden by the pulpit.

The “mournery’ bench” was born at Liberty Chapel. A
noted revivalist, Rev. Stith Mead, was conducting a meeting
of great power. THis custom was to talk privately to every
one under conviction, to make the way of the Spirit clear.

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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

But at Liberty the work pressed him until he was forced to
adopt another method. So he invited all with such an experi-
ence to come to the front seats, where he might instruct all
together as he had been instructing them singly and alone.
It proved most helpful; and, of course, others followed his
example. Finally the custom drifted into going up to the
front to be prayed for; and we have the “altar,” or the
“mourners’ bench,” as we have been pleased to call it. In
neither form or under neither name has it ever done an ear-
nest soul any harm, but under each it has done incalculable
good and must continue to do so.

In 1871, while on the Greensboro charge, Dr. John Curt-
wright, then advanced in years and a noble specimen of Meth-
odist manhood, told me that Judge A. B. Longstreet gave him
this history and told him it was the beginning of what after-
wards took the form of going up for prayer.

It is too sacred in its traditions and in the service it has
rendered us and others to call forth the abuse that has been
heaped on it and the mean and labored wit that has been fired
at it. I have never caught one at this business who did not
satisfy me that he had a bad heart and an empty head.

‘For many years there was a large camp ground there. It
drew multitudes annually from Greene, Warren, Oglethorpe,
Hancock, and Putnam Counties, and from greater distances.
The last camp meeting I attended there was during the war
while at home on sick furlough. Dr. Lovick Pierce, Bishop
George F. Pierce, Dr. Alexander Means, Rev. Robert W.
Bigham, Dr. A. G. Haygood, and others were there. Years
after that I visited the hallowed spot, and not a vestige of a
tent or the old stand was to be seen. I went to the spring,
once shaded by large poplars, hickories, oaks, and gums, but
change lay in furrowed channels all about it. The old gum
that held the crystal water was almost gone, and the little
stream glided slowly away. Its only music was an indistinct
ripple, a funeral note over glories departed, never to return.

My first visit there was in 1852, when the camp ground

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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

was in its glory. My father was on the Greensboro Circuit.
When we reached the camp mecting he deposited his eldest
son, for safe oversight, at Henry Walker’s tent. “Uncle Hen-
ry,” as we called him, dressed in the rigid Asbury style and
reminded me of Uncle Allen Turner. He had the popular
idea of what a bey fourteen years old was made for—to be
a subject of close police inspection—and from the opening of
the meeting to its close, no bey of that age, preacher's son or
son of anybody else, could be cutting high stubble about his
tent without being classed with other offenders against Jaw
and treated accordingly.

Uncle Henry’s daughter nearest the age of his pastor's son
was Sallie. The moment J tock my first look at Sallie Walker
something within me said: “Uncle Henry or no Uncle Henry,
camp meeting or no camp meeting, the oftener you bask in
the beams of that face, the better for you.”

Now, it would not be in keeping with the dignity and sa-
credness of the occasion that called us to old Liberty Cam
Ground to indulge in any writing here woven out of the sleep-
ing lake, the silvery moon, the auspicious stars, the cooing
dove, etc. Not only might it appear undignified, but it would
certainly appear altogether unnecessary ; for what mortal man
ever reached his fourteenth year in his right mind and en-
tered a circle of environments such as was found at Uncle
Henry’s tent, when Sallie and I first met. without finding it
hard to believe all the hard things that had been said about
this world, especially if one of its fresh voung flowers has
thrown its fragrance over his path and charmed him with its
beauty?

To avoid anything more sentimental, | will simply say that
Sallie and [ were soon where we asked to be excused from the
first tables—breakfast, dinner, and) supper—and we would
have liked it still better if “Aunt Walker,” Sathe’s mother,
had pone from the table with Uncle Henry and their guests
when she had finished her meals. Occasionally there was a
knowing twinkle in her eve that looked like she had mischief

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brewing in her mind and that the young people might be sur-
prised at any time.

Sure enough, while she and Sallie and I were at dinner one
day she looked at the young people as they sat close together
at the other end of the table and said right out: “George, I
have often thought that I should like for one of my daughters
some day to marry one of Brother Yarbrough’s sons.” She
then went on to say: “There sits Sallie by you. Whatever she
says will suit me.” Aunt Walker had us and was having one
of her best times over her sharpness when “one of Brother
Yarbrough’s sons” “took up the wondrous tale” in broken ac-
cents; and before his proposal was fully formulated Sallie
relieved him of his embarrassment by saying in tones almost
killing: “George, I am willing.” The compact was sealed
right then and there in the only way considered parliamentary
in those days of innocency; and such a laugh, amounting al-
most to a shout, broke out of Aunt Walker’s heart!

The fledgling suitor had noticed the gentlemen gallanting
the young ladies to the stand (called tabernacle now) until
he was feeling that if he could do that his heart would have a
thrill that it had not yet felt. That evening he took his place
by Sallie’s side; and we walked to the seats reserved for the
ladies, her maid carrying a chair for her young mistress, of
whom she seemed to feel unusually proud. She was soon
seated where her attendant thought they could exchange an
occasional glance; and though the space between us was so
crowded that the sweet: privilege was denied us, that aspiring
youth felt about like Columbus did when he landed on our
shores.

Preachers then had all the time they wanted for their ser-
mons, especially at camp meeting and at nights. They put up
a brother that night who had more time than anything else.
The custom was to begin at Adam and end by going into port
on the “Old Ship of Zion.” The young gallant was soon
stretched on a bench fast asleep; and when he awoke there
was not a soul to be seen except one old negro man fumbling

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about in the straw with a stick, all the lights gone out except
a half inch of a tallow candle, the encampment as still as a
cemetery. And Sallie! Where, O where was she?

Av year or such a matter later [ was invited to Sallie's
marriage to Mr. Howard Hayes, of Lexington, Georgia, an
elegant Christian pentleman—a logical outcome of all such
gallantry.

During my first year in the itinerancy I entered the Meth-
odist church in Lexington, Georgia, on Saturday morning to
preach my first sermon there as junior pastor. [entering the
church, I saw a lady with her hand over her tace. There were
but two of us there, as aforetime. Others came in until we
had a fair congregation, considering that it was the Saturday
hour and the junior in the pulpit. As he proceeded in his
weak and feeble manner there was no little effort on the part
of Mrs. Sallie Hayes to uncover her face and look into the
face of the young preacher, but that hand would get back over
that face the more earnest he would become. His remarks
having been drawn to a close and the service being over, we
met, and her house had to be my home, etc.

“But,” said the young preacher and friend of the girlhood
and boyhood days, still standing in the aisle, ‘Sister Sallie,
why did you keep your hands to your face while I was trying
to preach? It is hard work at best, and you ought to have
looked at me and encouraged me all you could.” “George,”
she said, “I did my best; but that night you went to sleep
under the old stand at Liberty camp meeting and left me to
get back to our tent as best I could and waked us all up try-
ing to get in the tent long after we had been fast asleep—all
that kept coming up, and T was afraid it T looked at you I
would break out in a laugh.”

Years later | was walking along a street in Athens, Georgia,
while stationed there, when T was arrested by a soft voice
calling my name so familiarly that I knew it was a dear
friend. “You do not recognize me,” said the lady. “Do you
remember Sallie Walker, of Cracker’s Neck?" "Yes, mad-

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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

am,” was the prompt reply; “and if I had forgotten her, your
eyes would have readily recalled her. You have Sallie’s
eyes.” “Well,” she said, “I am Sallie Walker’s daughter,
married and living in Athens now. Mother used to talk so
much about you, and she would laugh sometimes while talking
about you; but she is gone.”

All smiles would make us perilously contented with our lot;
all tears would sink us in despair. A Father’s hand prepares
our cup.

During the two years of joyous boyhood in 1852 and 1853
a number of friends of the lovely girls of Cracker’s Neck
were added to my list. JI am not sure that there is more than
one of that number now living, Mrs. A. F. Gerding, of New
York. Flem Curtwright—if she will pardon me for calling
her by her girlhood name, which, I trust, is none the less dear
to her than to me—is the only survivor of that happy group.
She was married in the old family home, close to the eastern
bank of the Oconee River, in 1871 or 1872, and I had the
pleasure and honor of officiating at her marriage. The
groom, Mr. Julius Gerding, being a German and a Lutheran,
asked that we use the form of his Church, which called for
repeated rehearsals, and this gave us much enjoyment before
the intense moment came.

By the tossing of the waves of our Methodist itinerancy I
was dropped at Epworth Church, Atlanta, several years ago;
and I found on the list of my members Mrs. A. F. Gerding,
who will always be associated with the mellow memories of
Cracker’s Neck. ;

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CHAPTER V1

WHIcH?

Hl. following beautiful home circle poem is intended for

the family circle. It is founded upon an incident where
a rich neighbor offered to make a poor family comfortable
and provide for the child if one of seven were given to him.
Some one who has felt the pangs of poverty and vet been a
father with all the deep and holy feelings of a parent has
clothed it in poetical attire and breathed into it a spirit of
love, devotion, and faith that will find a holy response in the
breast of every father and mother who are blessed with little
pledges of affection, be they one or seven.

“Which shall it be? Which shall it be?”
I looked at John; John looked at me
(Dear, patient John, who loves me yet
As well as though my locks were jet).
And when I found that I must speak,
My voice seemed strangely low and weak:
“Tell me again what Robert said.”
And then I, listening, bent my head.
“This is his letter:

““T will give
A house and land while you shall live
If in return from out your seven
One child to me for aye is given.’ ”
I looked at John's old garments, worn;
] thought of all that John had borne
Of poverty and work and care,
Which I, though willing, could not share.
I thought of seven mouths to feed,
Of seven little children's need,
And then of this

“Come, John,” said 1:
“We'll choose among them as they lie
Asleep.” So, walking hand in hand,
Dear John and I surveyed our band.
First to the cradle lightly stepped,
Where Lillian, the baby, slept,
A glory ‘'gainst the pillow white.
Softly the father stooped to lay
His rough hand down in loving way,

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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

When dream or whisper made her stir,
And huskily he said: “Not her, not her.”

We stopped beside the trundle-bed,
And one long ray of lamplight shed
Athwart the boyish faces there

In sleep so pitiful and fair.

I saw on Jamie’s rough, red cheek

A tear undried. Ere John could speak,
“He’s but a baby too,” said I,

And kissed him as we hurried by.

Pale, patient Robbie’s angel face,

Still in his sleep, bore suffering’s trace.
“No; for a thousand crowns, not him!”
He whispered while our eyes were dim.

Poor Dick! bad Dick! our wayward son;
Turbulent, reckless, idle one—

Could he be spared? Nay, He who gave
Bade us befriend him to the grave;

Only a mother’s heart could be

Patient enough for such as he.

“And so,” said John, “I would not dare
To send him from her bedside prayer.”

Then stole we softly up above

And knelt by Mary, child of love.
“Perhaps for her ’twould better be,”

I said to John. Quite silently

He lifted up a curl that lay

Across her cheek in willful way

And shook his head, “Nay, love; not thee,”
The while my heart beat audibly.

Only one more, our eldest lad,
Trusty and truthful, good and glad—
So like his father! “No, John; no,

I cannot, will not let him go!”

And so we wrote in courteous way
We could not drive one child away.
And afterwards toil lighter seemed,
Thinking of that of which we dreamed;
Happy, in truth, that not one face
We missed from its accustomed place;
Thankful to work for all the seven,
Trusting the rest to One in heaven.
—Author unknown.

125
PART FIVE
PERSONAL SKETCHES AND ELSE
CHAPTER I

BisHor E. M. Marvin at THE SESSION OF THE NortTH
GEORGIA CONFERENCE IN 1872

BeHoP MARVIN presided over the North Georgia Con-

ference held in Atlanta in 1872. The sessions were held
in First Church. The opening session was largely attended.
It was an unusually large attendance for the opening hour;
for we had heard such wonderful things of our new bishop
from the West that our curiosity was at its height, and all of
us wanted to be at the beginning, lest we might miss some-
thing.

Bishop Marvin came in and took the chair on time, to the
minute, with gracefulness and ease, apparently as much at
home as if he had spent all his days with us. There sat the
man who had furnished our Church the fact that a man could
become a bishop, fill the highest place in its gift, without being
a delegate to the General Conference that elected him. Some-
thing in this kept our eyes on him.

He was neatly dressed, wearing a clerical suit, his coat
single-breasted, the buttons close together and extending to
the collar, which turned down. His coat had the full skirt
allowance of the clerical style and was worn unbuttoned—a
pattern worthy of imitation, and a large number of our
preachers changed their style after the Conference and con-
formed it to the Bishop’s. Many have found out that they
can get along with less material in the coat, but I am glad to
say that they did not get their suggestion of abbreviation in
this item of attire from any bishop I have seen. The Bishop
wore a large, soft felt hat after the style of the West and
after the style of many in Georgia. He was tall, spare, erect,
in full beard, with a full suit of hair, the latter a trifle longer
than ordinary length. He was straight and without the slight-
est sign of age.

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As the Bishop rose to give out the opening hymn, a lock of
his hair fell over his high, beautiful brow; and we listened to
his reading of the opening hymn,

“Jesus, the name high over all,
In hell, or carth, or sky,”
as we had never before listened to it. By the time he reached
the last verse, his head slightly bowed, and read,

“Happy, if with my latest breath
I may but gasp his name,”

the Holy Ghost had full charge of the service.

The prayer that followed took the warm current of devo-
tion awakened by the singing. It was not to be heard of men,
but by God for men. It was pervaded throughout with the
aroma of the mercy seat. As it poured from the heart of thc
man of God, we felt that he had carried in his girdle the key
that opened communication with the unseen world. That
morning God was not very far from any of his servants.
That song and prayer set the step for the entire session of the
Conference. I know no class of men who need more than
ministers of the gospel the prayer of the disciples: ‘Lord,
teach us how to pray.”

The Bishop surprised us at the close of the first session,
which was given to the usual routine work, by leading the
doxology to the tune of “Sessions.” It was a solo. He caught
us behind on an old Methodist tune. We almost felt ashamed
that our Conference choir had overlooked such an inspiring
song. There was quite a looking about for the old song-
books, and before Conference was over we were all singing
“Sessions” with the Bishop, and we have been singing it ever
since. T never hear it without thinking of that happy opening
hour of our Conference in Atlanta.

Part of the time we had with us Bishop Pierce and Bishop
MeTycire. Three bishops at one time made our session dou-
bly interesting. .\t one session the regular order of business
was suspended to witness the presentation of a razor to Bishop

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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

Marvin by Bishop Pierce at the request of Bishop Paine, into
whose hands it had descended from Bishop Asbury. Bishop
Pierce was, as usual, quite felicitous in his presentation re-
marks, and Bishop Marvin was equally so in his speech of
acceptance; but I take it upon myself to say that the razor was
never any the worse for wear in Bishop Marvin’s hands.

I have been asked to give my impressions of the great
preacher in the pulpit—his method of treating his text, his
delivery, effect upon the audience, etc.

Speaking generally, I was impressed that Bishop Marvin
had devoted his life to preparing to preach the gospel. The
gospel can be preached by no man as he preached it with a
divided life work. It takes a faithful fulfillment of the prom-
ise all of us made when we started, to “apply ourselves wholly
to this one thing and draw all our cares and studies this way,”
to make Marvins. Then all cannot be Marvins; but he has
had no successor and will have none where this condition is
disregarded. ‘No man can serve two masters.” “The human
heart is so constituted that it refuses a double allegiance.
This is the more difficult if the two masters are rivals, and
still more difficult if the two masters are enemies to each
other; and the difficulty is cumulative and grows into an im-
possibility if each master claims supreme allegiance.” (J. B.
Shearer, D.D., LL.D., “Sermon on the Mount,” 1906.)

In the pulpit Bishop Marvin was thoroughly, but not heav-
ily and tediously, analytical. He had a trunk line and never
left it. He made no excursions out of sight of the main thing
in hand. He was fond of illustration, but was never found
seeking to make it do the service of a demonstration. When
he was through preaching, you took away with you to abide
the text and its absorbing message. He went home with the
multitudes who heard him preach, followed them into their
daily business, and strengthened them at all points of their
daily Christian experience. He took hold on people in his
preaching; and the hold may have slackened, but was never
entirely lost.

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He was a philosopher after the purest type—philosophy in
his hands being confined to, contributing to the spiritual vi-
sion. He was a polemic when heresy stood in the way of the
victorious march of truth. He was a rhetorician only as he
was thereby enabled to make transparent the medium of truth
through which he sought to bring the light of heaven to the
lives of men.

Bishop Marvin was an orator; but his oratory had too high
an origin and aim, as did his philosophy and rhetoric and his
varied learning, to assume to supersede or embellish the Word
of God. It was the outgushing of a great soul filled with the
Holy Ghost through lips touched with a live coal from the
altar. His gesticulation was the emphasis and expression of
his great thoughts through every part of his body, that at times
approached transfiguration. The entire man took part in the
sermon.

He was habitually so thoroughly prepared when he entered
the pulpit that he could take care of himself in delivery, which
he did from his deliberate conversational exordium to his rap-
turous peroration. From none of the great preachers have I
received such an impression of the mastery of pulpit utterance.

We were carried by him into the depths and out into the
breadth and up into the heights of spiritual enlargement on
Sunday morning at First Church, Atlanta, and were made
happy in the Lord and were jubilant in welcoming this star
of the West to his Heaven-ordained place in our brightest gal-
axy of Southern Methodist itinerant preachers, where he con-
tinued to shine with increasing luster until, fading from mor-
tal vision, this star rose upon another world to be rekindled
ina dand that is fairer than day.

Bishop Marvin's text on that occasion to which this sketeh
carries us back was Ephesians v. 22-33. We had been accus-
tomed to a homily on the duties of husbands and wives from
this passage, and it was natural that we should be surprised
by such a text for an Annual Conference sermon at the most
important hour; but the Bishop's fine expository insight un-

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covered a mine of great spoil, hidden under the surface of his
text, as he developed the main purpose of the apostle, which
was to illustrate the relation of Christ and his Church by the
relation of husband and wife.

Such a portrayal of the Church I never heard before, and
I know I shall never hear again. I cannot lay down my pen
until I give one quotation; and may the Holy Spirit so im-
press it upon the mind of every preacher, every layman, every
boy and girl who may belong to the Church that it can never
be effaced! The Bishop gave it as a part of his early religious
experience. Said he:

Soon after I united with the Church I had an experience that I am sure
I can never forget. I was in the saddle on the Lord’s day on my way to
a social meeting in the country. The aspects of the autumnal scenery are
as distinct in my memory as if I had seen them only yesterday. The
warm sun lay upon the foliage, and there seemed the hush of a hallowed
peace upon the face of nature. All at once the thought came to me: “J
am in the Church; and it is in my power now, by my unholy living, to
bring a blot on the Church and dishonor the Saviour.” For a time the
reflection seemed unsupportable. It was almost more than I could bear.
“The name of God,” said the prophet, “is blasphemed among the Gentiles
through you.”

These last lines may lose their force if I add another, and
I lay down my pen in the midst of a scene of spiritual en-
chantment which has not been marred in forty-one years.

Conclusion of Bishop Marvin’s Great Sermon before the
North Georgia Conference on Sunday Morning,
at Atlanta, Georgia, 1872

Recalling Bishop Marvin’s great sermon on the “Relation
of Christ and His Church as Illustrated by the Relation of
Husband and Wife,” I will add one more quotation, his per-
oration, a gem of imperishable beauty sacredly cherished by
those of us who heard it and affording a partial insight, for
those who were not there and may never see the published
sermon, of the opulent resources and the intellectual and spir-
itual power of the preacher.

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In reading what will follow (much more as the vast audi-
ence yielded to the sway of the preacher like a field of grain
to the wind), the mind, under its law of association, connects
that Annual Conference Lord’s day with the Lord’s day vision
in Patmos, and we ask: “Did not the Bishop, in preparing for
that hour with us, have some heavenly visitant (like that in
Revelation xxi. g-11) smile upon him and say, «as was said to
John, ‘Come hither, and I will show you the bride, the Lamb's
wife?”

In copying the sermon at its close I have faithfully followed
the published form, which will readily and vividly bring to
the memory of those who heard it its marvelous utterances
and their wonderful effect. Said the Bishop:

I have seen a young man, the noble son of a noble sire, when he
brought his bride home to his father’s house. He had chosen her from
among all the women in the world; he loved her with all the fullness of
an uncorrupted heart; it was the mighty outgoing of a fresh, strong nature.
She was tit to be the wife of such a man; she was as complete in her
womanliness as he in his manliness; and now at this supreme moment of
her destiny her whole nature, soul and body, had been fused into sensibil-
ity. Her face was lit with the chaste warmth of bridal consciousness; her
light, elegant, airy form was embodied graccfulness and poetry in every
atutude, in every slightest movement. When she leaned upon her husband's
arm and looked up into his face, she was the picture of rapture in repose.
The son had the full approbation of his father. Of all the women he
knew, he would have chosen this one to be the wife of his first-born.

What a day was that when her husband brought her home to his fa-
ther's house! What preparations had been made to receive her! The
house had been renovated from top to bottom; the premises had been in
uproar for a week, making ready for the event. If it had been a queen
that was coming, interest could not have been more intense. Everything
on the place had turned to heart; every nerve tingled a delicious welcome
to the newcomer.

The day arrives at last and the hour; the bridegroom has come with
his bride; the welcome would be clamorous if it were not so deep; the
feeling of the younger children and of the servants has a touch of awe
in it,

The father receives her with quict dignity; but the respectful kiss is
the seal of purest affection, and the deep bass of his voice, slightly tremu-
lous, gives her a daughter's quiet consciousness in his presence at once.
She looks into his face and sees the glow of his countenance. From that
hour her heart is at peace under his roof, The younger children come

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hesitatingly about her chair and timidly finger the fringes of her gar-
ments. If she looks at one with a smile, he can scarcely contain himself
for an hour; a kiss upon the forehead is enough to put him in ecstasies
for a week. With what sensitive eagerness they speak to her in tremulous
undertone, calling her sister! The word never had such a meaning before,
nor the syllables of it so sweet a sound; it is another word for tenderness
and beauty. The very servants move about with unwonted activity and
interest—for there were black domestics in the house, born and bred on the
place. They have caught the infection of love and interest and joy; every-
thing the young mistress touches seems almost sacred to them; they sweep
the floor with greater care, because she is to tread upon it; the very stair-
way seems different after she has tripped up and down it once; every-
thing seems different; a new expression is on everything; the light is
purer; as the sunshine from the window lies upon the carpet you might
imagine it to be the bright shadow of God’s peace, that came into the
house with the bride.

After nightfall she walks to and fro over the greensward under the
shade trees and in the light of the full moon, leaning on the arm of her
husband and talking with him in low tones. The very moon looks purer
as it floats over her head, and the grass more brightly green after her
robe has swept over it. There was never a joy so great or so diffusive in
that house.

The day comes when the Heavenly Bridegroom will bring his Bride
home to the Father’s house. He is there now, making ready, preparing
a place for her before he comes again to bring her away. That will be
the day of days, even in heaven. It has been looked to from the dawn of
creation; angel ministers have been engaged in preparation; God the
Father looks upon the Bride with approval; the last earth stains have
been washed from the garments by the blood of the Lamb; a vast con-
course of the sons of immortality is coming to join the procession; the
frame of nature throughout the universe is to be taken down and built
anew in more perfect forms of beauty and grandeur in honor of the
event; “the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with
the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God.” Then shall he
return with the risen and glorified Church. The gates of the celestial
city are in sight; they are thrown open; the family of heaven are grouped
and waiting; a new feeling of tenderness and interest deepens the sensi-
bilities even of that world. The Church, redeemed with blood, is coming
home with her Redeemer, radiant with his glory nearest his person and
most fully in his likeness of all created things. She is the center of in-
terest and in the place of honor; she was created from his side, and the
glory of his nature is upon her. She enters, leaning on her Beloved.
Angels, quivering with delight and eager to do her service, hover about
her way; they will bear messages to and fro as swift as lightning; they
will sweep the invisible dust of the gold pavement with their wings before
her white-shod feet shall pass. The celestial glory is heightened by the

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glory of her countenance as she looks into the face of her Lord. Her
passing form is mirrored in the sea of glass; the princes and potentates
of glory await her coming with their homage; she passes into the palace
of the great King, still leaning on her Lord; the lather smiles; she is
at home; the Son takes the throne with the Father; the Bride is with
hin, throned at his side. All the harps and voices of heaven break forth
with a new song, and the music deepens, swells, and vibrates till the
very thrones tremble to their melody. The crown is brought forth, the
crown of life; the triumphant hand of her Lord places it on her head;
it 1s gemmed with diamonds, cut at ten thousand angles, every flaming
facet flashing back and augmenting the celestial radiance At the right hand
of her King she sits, regnant in beauty, with the port of an empress and
the heart of a bride, to reign with him forever; in the Father's house,
like a child at home, she shall go in and out, diffusing beauty and love
and blessedness.

The purposes «f God are consummated; created being has reached its
highest expression through the agony of the God-man; the Creator sees
himself mirrored in the creature, and the glorified Church is the crown
and joy of heaven. Even the angels come to a higher destiny in the
household of the Bride; they lend a deeper joy in her transcendent des-
tiny and threugh her find places nearer to the Lord.

Shall we be there, blood-washed, to sin no more?" We, so weak, so
polluted now? Yes, even we may have hope! Put only the power of
God can keep us against that day.

136
CHAPTER II
DeEcaTuR, GEORGIA, IN THE LATTER ForRTIES

ie December, 1847, my father’s carriage and the two-horse

wagon containing our goods and chattels halted a little
before sundown on the north side of the public square of
Decatur, Georgia, near a large two-story building used for a
drug store and Free Mason purposes.

Having been appointed to the Decatur Circuit for 1848, he
went from Conference to Decatur to secure a home for his
family. Parsonages were scarce then, and there was not a
vacant house of any kind in the little town. Father, being an
advanced and devoted brother of the “mystic tie,” managed,
through signs and wonders, to secure enough of the house to
make his family comfortable. I shall always love the Free
Masons for giving us shelter.

The square was full of romping boys engaged in one of
their athletic sports. Let me name a few of them: William
Ezzard, Green Berry Butler, Will Green, Lowndes Calhoun,
Ned Calhoun, Pickens Calhoun, William McCoy, and John
McCoy. There were several homes fronting the public square:
Col. Charles Murphey’s, Mr. Willard’s, Mr. Mason’s, Mr.
Reaves’s, Col. James Calhoun’s, Mr. George’s, Judge William
Ezzard’s, Mr. Butler’s, Dr. E. N. Calhoun’s, and Mr. William
(familiarly called “Billy”) Hill’s.

Mr. Frost, a Northern man, was school-teacher for the
boys, Dr. John S. Wilson for the girls. There were six stores
—two groceries, one cabinet shop, one tanyard, one tinnery,
and one hattery—two churches, one Sunday school (union),
a blacksmith shop or two, and a saddle shop. Mr. Kirkpat-
rick was marshal—George, I believe, was his first name. Aft-
er they required the Georgia Railroad to move on six miles
with its terminus, to save the little town from epidemics of
one sort and another, Dr. Calhoun stood guard over the health
department, and he practiced for the town and the surround-
ing country.

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Decatur Circuit then embraced the territory lying between
Lithonia and Mayson’s Ferry, on the Chattahoochee River.
The preachers in charge that year (1848) were John W. Yar-
brough and James \W Ilinton. The circuit embraced three
camp grounds, with Mount Gilead in the extreme west and
Rock Chapel in the extreme east. The name of the other
camp ground, six miles south of Decatur, was Wesley Chapel.
Here the grandparents of the Ledbetter children tented; and
Maj. WL. Hulsey's father tented there, Dr. Badger and
Oliver Jones's father, and a host of others. The Presbyterians
had a camp ground about two and a half miles east of Deca-
tur. I attended one day as the guest of Mrs. Charles Mur-
phey, and I enjoyed the occasion; but, really, up to that time |
thought that nobody except the Methodists had any right to
hold camp meetings. I can never forget Mrs. Charles Mur-
phey (McCoy at the time of her second marriage). She was
a quiet, refined Christian lady.

Dr. J. S. Wilson lived a mile out on a high hill and walked
to the academy over which he presided along a path that
brought him close to where we lived. After becoming ac-
quainted with the picture of the Duke of Wellington, I could
easily trace the resemblance each bore to the other.

“Young ladies,” said he to his school one day, “I under-
stand that there is to be a ball in town to-night. No voung
lady can attend that ball and remain in this school.’’ One
went, and there was one less on his roll. It would have been
the same if all but half a dozen had gone.

I called to see the grand man a short while before his trans-
lation. Ile was then pastor of a Presbyterian Church in At-
lanta. I held his hand a long time and looked upon the form
of the old, wayworn warrior and caught and kept the tri-
umphant expression of his noble face. He was familiarly
called by us “Parson” Wilson. He had charge, if I mistake
not, of the Presbyterian Church in Decatur, in connection with
the academy.

We had one Sunday school, held in the male academy, com-

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posed of Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists, and super-
intended by Mr. Willard, a Presbyterian and one of the best
men I ever knew.

My room in what we called our parsonage was under the
Masonic lodge. Now for it of nights! There were times
when it appeared to me that all of them were on the “goat” at
the same time, with a full purpose to stay there, and the “goat”
as fully determined that they should not. Aroused from my
sleep, anywhere about midnight, I would shudder and ask my-
self the question, “Will any of them ever get out of there
again alive and see their wives and little children?” Bang!
bang! Rattle! rattle! rattle! Then a twist at something like
rolling logs, the handspikes slipping out of their hands at
times! “Surely they will be on crutches to-morrow, lots of
them,” I would say. Then again, after somebody, over chairs,
tables, spittoons, nothing standing in the way, windowpanes
rattling, all hands, it seemed, about to break through the floor,
and that, too, just over where I lay! It would die out for a
few minutes, and then it would come to again. The “goat,”
seeming to have taken on fresh courage, made another stand,
reénforced by additional horns and hoofs, and all set on mak-
ing another mount; and I, there in that little room by myself,
with my head under the cover and wishing I was back in old
Coweta, where I came from, with Charlie McKinley and Bol-
ton and George Anderson and “Billy” Martin! The Masons
would all look as nice and complacent the next day as if noth-
ing had happened.

Tumultuous as such occasions were, they did not exceed the
meetings of St. James’s Lodge, Tarbolton, of which Burns
sang in “The Farewell”:

“Oft have I met your social band
And spent the cheerful, festive night;
Oft, honor’d with supreme command,
Presided o’er the sons of light:
And by that hieroglyphic bright,
Which none but craftsmen ever saw,

Strong mem’ry on my heart shall write.
Those happy scenes when far awa’ !”

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Those were great temperance times, and the old courthouse
was the rallying place on Friday nights monthly. Judge Ez-
zard presided and was the ruling spirit of the movement.
Great was the Washingtonian Socicty! The greatest temper-
ance meeting T ever saw was held in Atlanta that year. Judge
Joseph Tlenry Lumpkin presided, and George G. Smith, Jr.,
made a speech. It was a State rally, and people were there
by thousands.

One bright moonlight night the monthly meeting was on in
Decatur, and the orators were at their best; but there was too
much of it for the boys of the town, especially as it was Friday
night. Thinking that they had plenty of time ahead to devote
to the temperance question, they quietly retired to the public
square for a round of fun and very soon were disturbing the
audience. Marshal Kirkpatrick understood a boy through and
through; and as to those Decatur boys, he could be at home at
night and know what they were up to. He followed them out
of the courthouse; and when they got fairly down to business,
he was among them, taking down their names for imprison-
ment in jail the next morning. ‘Our Saturday in jail!” said
the boys among themselves. The next morning, by a little
after sunrise, every boy in Decatur was at Hovle’s mill pond,
about two miles out, and the town had rest. The marshal
really had his eve on that.

Several vears ago Frank Pattillo and his brother Olin took
me out to Heoyle’s mill pond to identify the place. The dam
and pond and old sawmill were gone, but-T went straight to
the spot There we learned to swim. The big boys would
make a raft of puncheons, crowd it with us small boys, float
it out to the middle of the pond, and sink it.

The old mineral spring was there, with some beautiful mar-
ble masonry around it; but the majestic poplar and the deep.
dark grove that shaded it when we were boys, the little
rail fence we jumped over getting to its delicious waters, the
climbing vines, the smiling flowers, the calamus root—all were
gone. In 1848 it was the boys’ paradise on Saturday all

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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

around there. Atlanta, six miles off, was enjoying her fresh
incorporation by the legislature and had begun to put on airs,
but we would not have given that spring and mill pond for all
of Atlanta.

Big Ben Avery was our great swimmer, and Ralph Badger
led in diving. His head was as black as a crow; and when he
went under it looked like he never would come up, but after
a while his little black head would shoot out of the water away
out yonder in the pond. Will Ezzard had a lick in swimming
all to himself. Quite a number kept one foot on the bottom,
and they had to do their swimming near the bank.

O how I love the names of the schoolmates and playfellows
of those days! In addition to those already named deeply
graven on my heart are the the names. of Larkin Farrar, Bob
Farrar, the Brown boys, the McCulloch boys, Josiah Willard,
Scott Wilson, Clem Green, Young Thompson, James Thomp-
son, Buchanan, Vol Dunning.

That year my father and his colleague received into the
Church five hundred members. I once thought of adding a
line or two about the “allowance to the ministers and preach-
ers and to their wives, widows, and children” about that time.
It is before me on my desk, in my little leather-back Disci-
pline, but I am ashamed of it and would rather bury it than
bring it to light.

Atlanta will roll its waves over Decatur before long and
wash away all vestiges of our knuck holes, marble rings, town
ball grounds, hunting woods, fishing and swimming streams,
and the old demon that passes under the name of Advancing
Civilization, here as elsewhere, will pack his insatiable maw;
but the boys of 1848, “the scattered remnants of the line,” if
we are fortunate enough to be in heaven, can stand it.

A tree stood in front of the courthouse with which was
associated a tragic death. A man had been attending a horse
race near the town and, returning intoxicated, was thrown
against the tree from his sulky by his frightened horse, and
his neck was broken.

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This man was once a member of the Georgia Legislature,
at the time Mr. Johnson, a local Methodist preacher, under
sentence of death, was pleading for pardon at the hands of
that body. A little girl connected with Mr. Johnson’s family
had mysteriously disappeared. Ile was soon suspected of
being her murderer. He asserted his innocence and joined
the party in search for the girl. Reaching a piece of woods
near his house, he told the party that they need not look there
for he had examined the woods carefully. They continued
the search and found the body in the woods.

This was the pivot in the case. He was tried and con-
demned to death. The legislature sustaining the finding ot
the jury, he went to the scaffold at the appointed time. He
selected his chapter from the Bible and read it audibly and
impressively. He then selected his hymn and sang it with a
clear voice without a tremor. He then knelt down and
prayed. Just before the cap was pulled over his face he re-
marked in a firm tone of voice: ‘As God, before whom I
shall soon appear, is my Judge, I am an innocent man.”

Time rolled on, and a negro was hung in one of the West-
ern States. On the gallows he acknowledged his guilt and
confessed the murder of the little girl in Georgia for which
Rev. Mr. Johnson, the Methodist preacher, was hung.

The judge who presided in the case, on hearing it, walked
into his garden and blew his brains out with a pistol. Nearly
all of the jury came to an unnatural death. This man who
was killed at the tree by his runaway horse was one of a
number who opposed all mercy in the legislature and added
some hard epithets about Methodist preachers. I will not be
positive, but memory intimates that the fiery bolt of retribu-
tion fell upon others of that body.

One night while sitting by a fire with a number of gentle-
men in a hotel at Griffin, Georgia, waiting for the cars, I
gave the incidents of Rev. Mr. Johnson’s sad death. When
I was through a splendid-looking gentleman remarked: “I

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have been listening to your relation of that sad event, and it
is correct. He was my uncle.”

Names could not, without great impropriety, appear in this
account. I suppose the tree is gone—I hope so—and I am
quite sure that old race track has disappeared.

There figured in those days in Decatur and DeKalb County
an old gentleman addicted to drink. It was hard to hold
court as long as he was out of jail. The mischievous ones
played a prank on him one day during court week and gave
him a list of names of those engaged in it, with the name of
the presiding judge at the head of the list, followed by the
best citizens of the town.

He walked into the courthouse with his paper in his hand
and filed his complaint in a very emphatic manner. “And,
Judge,” said he, “your name heads the list. Are you guilty
or not guilty, sir?’ He grabbed the solicitor’s hat as he
wheeled to run, and it was some time before they could put
him where he could not disturb the court.

Relatives, friends, neighbors, the law—all tried to reform
that old man. He was worth their efforts. While sober,
DeKalb County had no more lovable citizen.

At a camp meeting in Decatur Circuit he walked deliber-
ately down the aisle and gave my father his hand for mem-
bership. Said the preacher as he took his hand: “Mr. ;
my old friend, we will try you for six months.” “No,” said
he, heaven’s saving smile lighting up every lineament of his
old face, “you will take me for life.” And it was for life.

I must say just here, in passing, in a few plain English
words, that the very best way to reform a drunkard or any-
body else is to save him, and a good Methodist revival at a
camp ground or anywhere else is a mighty good place for
the business.

The memorable frost of 1849 found me at Decatur, and it
found everybody else and well-nigh everything else in Geor-
gia. I should be glad if some one who knows positively the
date of that frost would give it to the public. I write from

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memory and put it down as April 16. The farmers of Geor-
gia raised their wheat in those days, and it was in the boot
when the frost fell. Corn was up and doing well, having
been well plowed. The leaves of the woods were almost full-
grown. Everything of the kind was hung in mourning. An
offensive odor filled the air. It really looked like a premature
burial of 1&4 9. The snap was followed by intensely hot
weather. Rev. Henry Clark (familiarly called “Big Henry’)
gave my father a load of corn and fodder, and I had the
honor of going for it with a wagon and yoke of steers. The
steers were hot and seemed to be after water, and nothing
else, all the route. They would take near cuts with me
through the woods to get to water and hang my wagon on
stumps and logs and against saplings.

Being a lightweight, I was “unable to cope with so formi-
dable an adversary,” and have never been able to tell how I
got through; but this I know, I have not been caught behind a
yoke of steers since, and it is now 1&8, and I propose to have
nothing more to do with steers in hot weather and fly time.

Rev. Henry Clark and Snap-Finger Creek! And his son,
Elijah, and our frolics! Mr. Clark was a local Methodist
preacher. He was a force, moral and muscular, against all
evildoers throughout that country. A finer specimen of phys-
ical manhood I never saw. There was something of the lion's
roar in the pulpit when he struck a den of evildoers. At
Rock Chapel camp meeting a white man was caught playing
cards with a negro. Mr. Clark, alone and on his own motion,
arrested the man, collared him, led him through the camp
ground, and delivered him to the presiding elder at the preach-
ers’ tent. The weapons of lis warfare bordercd on the “car-
nal” sometimes, but he was a tower of religious strength, a
terror to evildoers, and a praise to them who did well.

That year a large animal show passed through DeKalb
County without any circus trimmings. Brother James W.
Hinton, father, and I attended at Stone Mountain. A mam-
moth elephant, gaudily capartsoned, drew the band wagon on

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the grand entrance. Strange to tell, the fathers were not
there, looking after their children, to keep the elephant, tigers,
hyenas, and snakes off of them, like they were later, when
Robinson and Eldred’s circus came along without the ‘“ani-
mals.” Herein is a great mystery!

Old Decatur will be, as long as I live, an evergreen in my
heart. I am now much concerned about the new Methodist
church building there. They need and deserve an elegant
house of worship. They ought to have it; they must have it.
Considering their financial strength, they have made the best
record I have known except Oxford, Georgia. I saw them
take three collections at Oxford one Sunday morning, and
they made the landing every whoop.

Our brethren at Decatur are a noble band. Let that new
church, Anderson Memorial, be one of Decatur’s semicenten-
nial glories. Yes, that is one way to go into the semicenten-
nial business six miles away. The spire of such a structure
would be a beautiful historical mark fifty years hence.

While stationed on the Isle of Hope, in 1860, we built a
beautiful church there. The orphans of Bethesda worshiped
there on the Sabbath. I had little trouble raising the money
when, that fact became known.

The children of the Orphans’ Home at Decatur worship in
the Methodist church there. True, the Home is under the
auspices of the North Georgia Conference of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, South; but let not this year pass without
our brave little band at Decatur receiving marked appreciation
of their praiseworthy undertaking. All this springs from the
heart, softened as it is by the recollection of other days, with-
out the slightest suggestion from without.

Thanksgiving and praise to God should be the incense of
all jubilee occasions, and the sentiment should crystallize in
works of permanent beneficence.

P. S.—A splendid granite building has gone up on the old
site, reflecting great credit to the Methodists of Decatur and
the entire city (1916).

10 145
CHAPTER III
A Sociat Function 1n THE MouNTAINS OF UPPER GEORGIA

HAPPY season it is in the life of a young Methodist

itinerant preacher when, at the close of his first year’s
work, he visits his home and the scenes of his boyhood and
renews the associations of other days.

In the earlier days great distances lay between the homes
of the young Georgia preachers and their fields of labor. A
young man receiving the call from the upper part of Hall
County, for instance, would calculate on the wire grass region
of the State as his first opportunity for exercising his gifts.

The prospect of seeing the woods and streams and moun-
tains and playgrounds about his early home, even after one
year’s absence, made the long horseback ride look short; and
the thought of sitting around the old fireplace with the dear
ones at home, visiting the cousins and aunts and uncles, shak-
ing hands with the old neighbors, and going over the frolics
of the school days with his former playfellows drove away all
anticipation of weariness by the way.

Such visits were signalized by harmless festivities. A
house-raising would be delayed, a log-rolling would be put off.
the announcement of the corn-shucking would be withheld,
and the girls would get in no hurry with their quilts, in order
that the young preacher might be on hand and enjoy the occa-
sion and spice their enjoyment with the year’s adventures.

Wednesday morning, December 20, 1807, the last Wednes-
day of the old year, memory unlocked her casket and gave me
an incident elicited by the beautiful frost of that morning,
unsurpassed by any scene of the kind T ever beheld except
among the mountains. My little boy had aroused me to go to
the window and look at the snow. Prom the high knoll on
which our little parsonage stands there was a wide sweep for
the eve; and, having strained a point, I was up before my usual
time and was soon taking in the wonderful scene over which
my little boy was so excited. Sure enough, every hilltop was

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white, and every tree, bush, brier, weed, and sprig of grass
had been levied on for a tribute to one of “Jack Frost’s” great-
est, most imposing displays.

While taking in the vision a frosty morning in the moun-
tains, of which I heard my father speak when I was a little
boy, passed vividly before me.

A young Georgia preacher was on a visit to his mountain
home. We will name the jolly, rosy-faced Irish boy John. A
corn-shucking had been announced, and the neighbors from all
around were coming in. The quilting frames were being hung
in one room, the cooks were at work in another, and the men
were out about the corn pile arranging sides.

A proposition having been made to send to the creek bottom
after some of the year’s crop that had not been hauled up,
Squire Hannibal Handy and four others, including John, were
soon on their way after a load with a cart and a yoke of steers.

Handy went by the name of “Squire” wherever known, and
he will go by his “entitlement” with us. He was the promi-
nent spirit on all such occasions in that neighborhood. He
was a loud talker; and he talked a great deal, and with a tone
of authority at times. He was at all the weddings, infairs,
quiltings, singings, house-raisings, log-rollings, corn-shuckings,
and candy-pullings, and was always full of suggestions. Even
in the small matter of going after corn in the field with a cart
and yoke of steers, he had to direct and go with the boys to see
that all went right. He attended all the funerals; and if the
grave happened to be too small for the coffin, he was the one to
make it fit.

As a compliment to John, he was invited to go. Winding
along down the hill to the creek bottom, all of them crowded
together at the front of the cart, exchanging jokes and recall-
ing the incidents of other days, the driver observed that
there was too much weight at the front and that the load ought
to be more equally divided, whereupon Squire suggested that
John and the driver were enough weight on the steers’ necks.
Suiting his action to his suggestion, Squire sat down on the

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bed of the cart, throwing his back against the gate, and, spread-
ing his long limbs apart, said to the others: “Down with you,
hoys; we must not put too much of the load on the steers’
necks.” They were soon settled in the other end of the cart,
and Squire was indulging in his pipe and some large talk.

A wink had passed between the driver and John at the front.
The body of the cart was held to the tongue by a piece of rope.
A stroke with a sharp knife would sever it and put the cart on
end. Just before them was the creek, all frozen over. The
bank on the other side was very steep. That wink between
the driver and John outlined a program that, with such natural
advantages, could not miscarry.

Into the ford the steers plunged; and as they pressed the
yoke to climb the other bank, the rope parted asunder, and up
went the cart, and out went Squire, pipe, talk, and all in that
end of the cart. John and the driver looked back to see the
Squire’s parted coat tails go over his head.

When their breath came to them, Squire suggested as he
arose: “Boys, this will never do!’ Rushing out of the creek,
they saw the driver and John breaking cornstalks in opposite
directions and doing the best that was in them to get away.
They knew that it was no accident. They agreed on the driv-
er and were soon close at his heels. John had recrossed the
creck above and from a hilltop witnessed the capture of the
driver. Three to one, and the three without a dry thread on
them, made the surrender unconditional. They lost no time
in looking for a good place to get even; but headlong through
the alders, bamboos, vines, and rocks they plunged with the
driver until they reached the creek and broke the ice and
churned it with him.

After a little while all hands were at the house drying off
before the big log fires, and everybody was hilarious over the
achievement and ready for any other part of the order of the
diy.

The cart and steers, under a fresh detail from which Squire
was excused, came up later in the day.

148
CHAPTER IV
More GIRAFFES THAN STALLS

‘TRE giraffes are multiplying at a fearful rate and at a rate

very embarrassing to those in the high places of our
Zion. The average preacher seems to be on the decline. Or-
dinary men are becoming so scarce that our bishops and their
associates in the cabinet would be able to attend the missionary
meetings, the Church Extension anniversaries, the Sunday
school meetings, and a good deal of the preaching at the An-
nual Conferences, and then have the appointments ready for
an early adjournment, if their business involved no other class
of preachers. But there are the giraffes!

They are so tall, and it requires such a stretch of the muscles
to fit collars on them! They are so long, and the work of piec-
ing the harness so as to fit them is so tedious! They are so
huge in circumference that so much patience is needed to
lengthen the girths and cut new holes for the buckles! And
when it comes to arranging stalls for them, such large timbers
have to be cut, hewn, polished, and adjusted that it really
seems a miracle has been performed when the portfolio opens
and its contents are made known.

We have heard bishops complain of having more large men
on hand than large places for them to fill. We have seen them
look sad over this poverty of accommodations, and we have
almost heard them sigh. The giraffe is an animal of fixed
dimensions, and his stall must not be made smaller. There’s
the rub. He must not be “let down.” If he is changed, he
must be changed from one large stall to another—a thing
within sight and reach were it not for other giraffes. One or
two in a Conference will give trouble enough. But they are
increasing every year.

Something must be done, and that soon, to stunt the growth

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of the species or to multiply the stalls. Who has a suggestion
to offer?

Sandy Plains, Hickory Flat, Dead Level, Esom'’s Cross-
roads, Chestnut Ridge, McBean’s Schoolhouse, Turtle Creek,
Turkey Mountain, Brandywine Bend—these and all other ap-
pointments of their dimensions can be filled as fast as nomina-
tions can be made. But what is to become of the giraffes?
Methodism looks after preachers as well as places—must do
it or change her polity.

Have we a genius or will one ever arise whose magic wand
will sweep over our territory and multiply that commodious
favor that bears the name of First Church, add to the num-
ber of St. Pauls, St. Lukes, St. Johns, enlarge Cumberland
Avenue and the other “avenues,” lift up the proportions of
Boanerges Chapel and the other “chapels.” broaden Main
Street and the other big “streets”? Something must be done.
Who will do it?

“Let them go to some other feeding ground,” it may be
suggested. But all the denominations have more giraffes than
suitable stalls, except the “Two-Seed"’ Baptists and the ‘“Hard-
shells." Some of ours have gone where the racks are higher
and fuller, but there are in all the folds an excess of giraffes
over stalls.

150
CHAPTER V
A CouNTRYMAN’s SUNDAY IN THE CITY

Te? be busy as one ought is an easy art, but to know how to

be idle is a very superior accomplishment.” This is an
observation of a writer of celebrity recorded in Newman’s
“Rhetoric,” a textbook in the English Department of Emory
College in the fifties, which I am reviewing with a delight
amounting almost to fascination. The Emory boys of those
years will remember the little book, in light-colored leather
binding, of three hundred and eleven pages and a little larger
than the last Discipline of our Church.

Lying within reach is Emory’s catalogue of to-day. I have
just been running over the present Department of English,
and it makes my head swim. With Newman’s “Rhetoric” we
could go through the lessons like a deer in a walk and have
plenty of time to write the names of our sweethearts on the
margins; but there is no time, I imagine, down there now for
writing sweethearts’ names while getting the lessons.

But I started to write about the city. I may get to the little
town before long; I now think that quite likely.

“God made the country, and man made the town.” We must
unlearn many things, this among them. Unlearning is the one
essential condition of learning. God is everywhere and at
work everywhere. He rears the forests and builds the cities.

Nebuchadnezzar, walking on the roof of his palace in Baby-
lon, said: “Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the
house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the
honor of my majesty?” That personal pronoun, first person,
drove his majesty immediately into distraction and into the
fields and subjected him to the rdle of an ox, and it was seven
years before he recovered his royal dignity. It is a dangerous
thing for men to enlarge on their exploits in building cities.

The city is indebted to God for everything except its sins,

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and I have never yet seen a city that had nothing but sin to
its credit.

On Sunday mornings out here in the country at this season
of the year | ride along to my appointments and watch the
bumblebee poise himself in mid-air and listen to his tale of
woe and then see him suddenly dash off as if disgusted
with creation; the next moment I am returning the lizard’s
salute as he raises his head up and lets it down at me from
the shade of his rail; then I am engaged with the woodpecker
as he taps his pantry in the old dead tree and turns the side of
his cardinal-capped head to the limb in solemn calculation of
the probabilities of his meal; then come the blucbirds lining
with grass the knothole in the stump and softening it with
down for the coming brood.

The odors from the wild shrubs and flowers and the singing
of the streamlets and the grandeur of the trees and the loveli-
ness of the fields—all attest the Father's creative hand and
loving heart.

A brother itinerant on a visit to his relatives and friends
took my place, and that Sunday morning found me in Atlanta
in the enjoyment of a warm hospitality often extended. |
looked out upon a far-reaching city glistening in the Sabbath
sunlight, climbing hills, spreading over valleys, breaking into
clumps of cottages, stretching in long lines of elegant man-
Sions, rising in turrets and towers and spires, broadening and
solidifying in massive structures for education and manufac-
tures and commerce, its inhabitants conversing like one family
through the telephone, careering over the vast stretches in
coaches drawn by fiery steeds that once roamed the clouds—
and in the midst of this were quiet and awe and worship.

I felt that God was in the city too. The church bells were
ringing, and the little children were flocking to the Sunday
schools. Men and women, with Bible and songbook, lesson
papers and magazines, were hurrying to their places to be led
by the Holy Spirit into all truth, to have the things of Christ
shown them by the Comforter.

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Many things have been said and written of Atlanta, so
many that an effort at details now would be tiresome and com-
monplace. So rapid is her advancement in all her diversified
interests that a visitor has time to catch but a glimpse of a
few of her brightest points. All this is more apparent to one
who saw the city in his childhood fifty years ago.

In the winter of 1857 I passed through it with my father’s
family in his barouche, along what is now Whitehall Street,
when the stumps were thick about where Trinity Church and
E. P. Chamberlain’s house now stand. The street looked like
a road cut through new ground, the stumps trimmed to a
point to turn the wheels of the vehicles. Having been badly
frightened by my first sight of a steam car, a few miles out,
my mind was in a good plight for receiving indelible impres-
sions.

Our destination being Decatur, we passed out in front of
the Thompson Hotel, near which was a hall, or parlor, in
which a crowd of young people were indulging in the “poetry
of motion” to the music of the fiddle and the bow. That was
old-time dancing—in the daytime. You could hardly raise a
reel now in Atlanta or anywhere else so early in the day.

I never pass Col. George Adair without a hand-shaking.
His chair in front of his office in the Hotel Kimball, where
we generally meet, sits within a few feet of the entrance into
the old Thompson Hotel. He was the biggest man that visited
Decatur or stirred around in Atlanta in my boyhood. Every-
body in those days and in that region round about had much
to say about George Adair. With me he was easily the great-
est man; for, having been so badly frightened by the cars,
and hearing that he not only rode on them, but was a con-
ductor, I looked upon him with great wonder and with a feel-
ing bordering on awe when he came about me. Our. last talk
was about Buchanan, the fifer, and Guilford Ezzard, the ket-
tledrummer, who furnished the martial music for that country
in those days. And I must be allowed to say in this connec-
tion that it was the best music for getting up the war feeling

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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

and keeping it up that I ever heard. There will be no trouble
about getting volunteers when they can hear such music as
that.

Another incident about that historic spot. When Rev.
John P Duncan was pastor at Wesley Chapel, Millard Fill-
more visited Atlanta and on his arrival received a salute from
all the railroad whistles in the city, all other steam whistles in
the city joining in. It was loud, far-reaching, and lasted long.
It waked the natives and made Mr. Fillmore open his eyes.

Mr. Duncan, having been reared in old Virginia, had a
drawing-room experience that met the demands of the most
fastidious in polite society. This and his charming character
opened his way to a place on the committee of reception, which
took place, according to my memory, in the Thompson Hotel.
When the time came for him to retire, some one having whis-
pered to Mr. Fillmore to call on him for a song, he gave them
in his inimitable pathos and sweetness,

“John Anderson, my Jo, John,
When we were first acquent.”

Mr. Fillmore and the party stood, and the tears flowed free-
ly over his fine face. As he gave the preacher his parting
handshake he thanked him warmly for the song and, holding
his hand, said in very tender tones: “Duncan, I must have
another song before you go.” Dropping his hat and cane on
a sofa, the Methodist preacher was in a moment melting the
party with a soft farewell song, “When shall we all meet
again?’’ The last lines were:

“When the dreams of life are fled,
When its wasted lamps are dead,
When in cold oeblivion's shade
Beauty, wealth, and fame are laid.
Where immortal spirits reign,
There may we all mect again!”

It made all present one. All hearts were softened, and from
the eyes of stalwart men and maidens tender and fair the tears

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flowed freely down, bringing vividly to mind Byron’s immor-
tal metaphor:
“Man!
Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and a tear.”

But I must clip the wings of memory a little and not travel
over too much ground, as I am writing about a Sunday in
Atlanta. (Some things that are going down here are Satur-
day and Monday things. )

I was there, for the most part, to attend the dedication of
two Methodist churches by Bishop Galloway, of the Church,
South.

Reaching the city on Saturday, I had been run up and down
by elevators and whirled about by street cars until, when the
time came to start to church Sunday morning, I had lost my
bearings and found myself confused over the directions given
me for finding St. John’s Church. There was so much street,
avenue, corner, block, etc., in the directions given that I had
to feel my way in much bewilderment.

Entering a street car where Merritt Avenue branches off
from Peachtree, we were soon joined by an elegant lady whose
hand I took and held with a familiarity a little embarrassing
to her and her gentlemanly escort. By way of relieving the
situation of its confusion, I asked the lady if she had forgotten
the young preacher who preached occasionally at Middle-
brooks Church, in Newton County, in 1857, and who was so
fond of going to her father’s for dinner after meeting, and if
she had forgotten the good times with that young preacher
and Atticus Haygood at old Salem Camp Ground, etc. That
broke the spell. Miss Georgia Middlebrooks (now Mrs. Dr.
Roper, of Atlanta) it was and Joe Y. McCord, cashier of the
Third National Bank, Atlanta, named for my father, and
from old Newton, too, on their way to the dedication. So I
felt easy, of course, about getting lost.

Let me say right here another thing about Atlanta. If you
cannot wait until you get to heaven to meet your old friends,
go there and, if it is a week day, take your stand anywhere,

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and they will be.along in a few minutes. If it is Sunday, and
you get on a street car, it matters not what linc, and start to
church, they will soon be getting on. It is a great place for
going to mecting on Sunday morning, and all the more if the
Methodists are going to have a church dedication and such a
man as Bishop Galloway is to preach the sermon.

At St. John’s, from voluntary to benediction, all went well.
The expectations of the membership and of the large congre-
gation were more than realized. Brother Ellis, the pastor, for
a man of small stature, carried an abundance of joy, and he
was full of it when I left him. He opens the door of the
church at every service—did it at the dedication. When a
certificate of membership is presented, he calls the brother or
sister to the front, welcomes him or her by extending his hand,
and tells the Church where the new member came from and
the new place of residence. Now, that is the way to do.

I met many friends again, including the Wesleyan staff:
\W.M. D. Bond, with whom I boarded at my first Conference.
and Johnson, the son of Rev. Waddell Johnson, of Henry
County, Georgia. The father officiated at my little sister's
funeral in 1842, when I was four years old, the first funeral
I ever saw. My heart is still soft. And there was another
Quillian, the one who gave me my mail and helped me in
many ways in Milledgeville when the old dispensation went
out and the new came in in 1865-66. And dear Sister Quil-
lian, advancing in years now, but still able and willing to go
to meeting—proud mother of a number of sons!

A time of refreshing at the home of the IH esleyan editor,
a good dinner, renewal of friendships, and then we were off
to the dedication of Inman Park Church at 3 rem. wAn off
pulpit hour in the city, the current clerical was secon set-
ting in. We had a preachers’ levee over in one comer of the
church before the Pishop’s arrival. Men, women, and children
were soon pouring in. Reppard was there from Savannah,
Billups Phinizy from Athens, and Dr. Mixon from Augusta.
They were there from Trinity, from First Church, Grace,

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Walker Street, St. John’s, and elsewhere, and, it seemed to
me, everywhere. The Candlers were there, without regard to
faith and order; the Quillians were there and the Pattillos;
Howard Palmer and “Miss Emma’; Billy Bass and “Sister
Mollie,” whose parents on both sides in other days opened
their homes to my itinerant father; E. P. Chamberlain, whom
I found in Lumpkin, Georgia, in 1867, and who brought his
Methodism with him and put it in when he came to Atlanta;
and many, many others whose names are in the book of life.

Many of them looked like they were used to dedications;
but I was not, having never witnessed one after the present
order until that day. Two coming so close together gave me
about all I could carry.

Not many years ago Asa Candler went to Atlanta seeking
employment. Seeing me in front of the Kimball House talk-
ing with my old friend, W. P. Pattillo, and recognizing me as
a preacher-acquaintance formed under his father’s roof, his
bright young face was soon smiling on mine. A few words
about his business in the city and a cheery good-by, and we
parted. Pattillo said to me as we walked off: “George, there
is something in that boy.”

Pattillo and I were close together again at the second dedi-
cation last Sunday and heard that same boy say: “Bishop, we
present to you this house, to be set apart from all unhallowed
or common uses, for the worship of Almighty God.”

Carry your Methodism with you, brethren and sisters, when
you move to Atlanta, and put it in as soon as you get there
and keep it in! It won’t hurt you or Atlanta. Mark that!

When the mother of John Randolph of Roanoke died, he
left the house, walked out, and looked up at the heavens to
see if the sun had not halted in his course in honor of the
event.

As the dedicatory services were drawing to a close, my eye
caught the name on a memorial window of Martha Beall
Candler just as the sun was gilding it with his parting rays—
an honor worthily bestowed. And there were other memorial

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windows—Rev. H. H. Parks, David Seitz, Mrs. Lella Gart-
trell, and Mrs. Mary Cobb Herrick—all glowing with conse-
cration, sweet with associations, and beaming with deathless
love.

Bishop Galloway's preaching, morning and afternoon, was
characterized by appropriateness, freshness, strong grasp of
the salients of his themes, splendid riches of his thought, all
clothed in faultless diction, delivered with energy, and, above
all, bathed in heavenly unction.

To the sweet singers, men and women, at both dedications
I wish to return my warm thanks for their rapturous contri-
butions to my Sunday in the city.

158
PART SIX
MONOGRAPHS AND MEDITATIONS
CHAPTER I
A RESPONSE To A WISH

ie has not been long since, while a number of gentlemen

were engaged in a conversation concerning the character
of Christ, an earnest wish was expressed that something said
by Christ himself about his divinity might be brought out. It
devolved on one of the number to furnish what our Lord said
on this subject.

As the purpose in what follows is more to get those state-
ments together than to furnish notes and comments, the pas-
sages will be produced from the New Testament as they stand
_ recorded in that part of the sacred story.

“While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked
them, saying, What think ye of Christ? whose son is he?
They say unto him, The son of David. He sayeth unto them,
How then doth David in spirit call him Lord, saying, The
Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I
make thine enemies thy footstool? If David then call him
Lord, how is he his son?” (Matt. xxii. 41-45.)

In another conversation with the Jews: “Your father Abra-
ham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad.
Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old,
and hast thou seen Abraham? Jesus said unto them, Verily,
verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.” (John
viii. 56-58. )

In prayer: “And now, O Father, glorify thou me with
thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the
world was.” (John xvii. 5.)

To Philip: “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.”
(John xiv. 9.)

To the seventy: “And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as
lightning fall from heaven.” (Luke x. 18.)

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We never find him addressing the Father on a level with
the human family. “When ve pray, say, Our Father.” He
never did. (Reference passages: Matthew x. 32; xv. 13; Xvi.
17; xviii. 19; xxvi. 39-42; Luke xxiii. 46; xxiv. 46; John v.
30; x. 29, 30; xiv. 2-6.)

With the Jews again: ‘But Jesus answered them, My Fa-
ther worketh hitherto, and I work. Therefore the Jews
sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken
the Sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making
himself equal with God.” (John v. 17, 18.)

He said to the Jews: “I came down from heaven.” (John
vi. 38.) “I came forth from the Father, and am come into
the world.””. (John xvi. 28.)

In heaven and earth at the same time: “And no man hath
ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven,
even the Son of man which is in heaven.” (John 11. 13.)

With the Jews again: “I and my Father are one.”” (John
x. 30.) After this instance of elevating himself to an equality
with his Father, it is recorded: “Then the Jews took up stones
again to stone him.”” (John x. 31.)

We are not left in doubt as to the interpretation the Jews
attached to our Lord’s sayings about his divinity.

In the treasury: “Then said they unto him, Where is thy
Father? Jesus answered, Ye neither know me, nor my Fa-
ther: if ye had known me, ye should have known my Father
also.” (John viii. 19.)

Equal in possession: ‘All things that the Father hath are
mine.’ (John xvi. 15.)

He claims redeemed men: “I am the good shepherd, and
know my sheep, and am known of mine.” (John x. 14.)

Passing from the ownership of God's children, the own-
ership of angels seems to be a fact equally familiar to him
and to which he refers just as naturally: “The Son of man
shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his
kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity;
and shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wail-

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ing and gnashing of teeth.” (Matt. xiii. 41, 42.) “For the
Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his
angels.” (Matt. xvi. 27.) “And he shall send his angels with
a great sound of a trumpet,” etc. (Matt. xxiv. 31.)

St. Paul, speaking of the Church, calls it the “church of
the living God.” (1 Tim. iii. 15.) Christ lays claim to that:
“And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this
rock I will build my church.”’ (Matt. xvi. 18.)

Power was so familiar to him that he said but little about
it. To encourage his disciples, just before he was taken up
he stepped gracefully out of all assigned limits conceivable,
whether in earth or heaven, and said: “All power is given unto
me in heaven and in earth.” (Matt. xxviii. 18.)

Thus dowered with omnipotence, the scenes of the final
consummation will be safe in his hands: ‘Marvel not at this:
for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves
shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done
good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done
evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.” (John v. 28, 29.)

Having indulged so little in criticism and comment up to
this point, my friends will pardon me if I add an observation
of a master in such studies:

Doubtless it has been a favorite object with a modern school, as men
have said, “to bring down Christ from the clouds, and to restore him, by
criticism, to the domain of history.” This enterprise assumes that “the
theological and metaphysical Christ of the creeds” is a very different per-
son from “the living Christ of the Gospels.” But when such criticism
enters upon its task, what happens? If in declaiming vaguely against
dogma men really wish to get to the bottom of this problem, they will find
that, of two things, one becomes absolutely necessary: either they must
consent to forfeit the moral ideal which they admire in the gospel and
which, to do them justice, they are sincerely anxious to preserve; or they
must fall back upon those very statements of the creeds which, by affirm-
ing Christ’s personal divinity, really and only justify his constant refer-
ences to himself and his unbounded claims upon mankind.

If this response should meet the eyes of the gentlemen who
were the occasion of its publication, it will at least remind
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them of some delightful evenings we have spent together in
warm fellowship and elevating conversation; and although
we differed sometimes until “the contention was sharp,’’ this
response to an expressed wish must be taken as a mark of my
appreciation of the intellectual and moral worth of gentlemen
whom it will always be a pleasure to meet.

164
CHAPTER II
A ProMiIs—E REMEMBERED

UITE recently, in the preachers’ tent at a certain camp
meeting, the conversation, after the night service, turned
upon the atonement. A number of theories passed under re-
view. One contribution to the discussion consisted mainly of
the statement that we were “shut up to faith,” that Gethsem-
ane and Calvary were so sacred to God that he had fenced off
all prying polemics and had made it impossible for all men
and all ages to find an alembic in which to reach a solution of
their mysteries. Human philosophy approaching those sacred
spots finds a soft cloud deftly, lovingly, wisely folded about
them, and, although it takes off its sandals, it cannot be per-
mitted to tread the holy ground alone. There are other fields
for its formula.

I gave the good brethren a quotation from Butler’s “Anal-
ogy” sustaining this view; but fearing that I had not quoted
it as it stood in the text, I promised to give the Wesleyan a
copy, word for word. Butler’s “Analogy” was rewritten
twenty times. I think it can be safely said that this piece of
masonry has never lost a particle of even its cement. Here is
the simple, clear, humble statement of this monarch among
minds:

Some have endeavored to explain the efficacy of what Christ has done
and suffered for us beyond what the Scripture has authorized; others,
probably because they could not explain it, have been for taking it away
and confining his office as Redeemer of the world to his instruction, exam-
ple, and government of the Church; whereas the doctrine of the gospel
appears to be not only that he taught the efficacy of repentance, but ren-
dered it of the efficacy of which it is by what he did and suffered for us,
that he obtained for us the benefit of having our repentance accepted unto
eternal life, not only that he revealed to sinners that they were in a
capacity of salvation and how they might obtain it, but, moreover, that
he put them into this capacity of salvation by what he did and suffered

for them—put us into a capacity of escaping future punishment and ob-
taining future happiness. And it is our wisdom thankfully to accept the

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benefit by performing the conditions upon which it is offered on our part
without disputing how it was procured on his.

By reference to my private record I find my first note on
this dated Rome, Georgia, January 17 (10 p.M.), 1878. Ever
since that night this grand conception of Bishop Butler,
clothed in its antique garb, has been, next to the Bible, a great
rock in the storms of controversy; and I am as quiet and
satisfied on that point this morning in Edgewood as I was
that night in Rome.

I find that about the same time I recorded another note in
my reading. I was that year wrestling with theories of the
atonement. I mark 1878 as the date of my rest from such
work. The young brethren who were in the preachers’ tent
taking vigorous part in the recent discussion will please take
what follows in addition to what has gone before, with my
love and best wishes. I quote from Thornwell’s “Discourses
on Truth”:

There are departments of inquiry from which the natural limitations
of our faculties preclude us; there are subjects on which we are incom-
petent to speculate, from the want of congruity betwixt them and the con-
stitution of our own minds; and as long as our powers remain what they
are they must forever be to us an unknown world.

All knowledge, as I have elsewhere demonstrated at some length, is
relative in its nature and phenomenal in its objects. Whoever, therefore,
would seek to penctrate into properties of things to which our faculties
are not adjusted overlooks a fundamental condition of the possibility of
knowledge, and his conclusions are entitled to no more respect than the
speculations of a blind man upon colors or a deaf man upon sounds.
There are conditions in the objects corresponding to conditions in the
subjects of knowledge. One thing is set over against another, and beyond
the limits of this correspondence it is folly to push our inquiries. Omnis-
cience is the prerogative of God alone. Men and angels, all creatures,
however exalted, must be forever doomed to write over boundless regions
of truth: “Hades, an unseen world.” There is light there—light in which
God dwells and rejoices, but which created eves are not fitted to receive.

To inculcate the obligation of universal knowledge is to tell men to
forget that they are men and to urge upon them attempting to be gods.
It would be to inculeate the most daring presumption, to sanctify intoler-
able arrogance and blasphemy.

The duty to seck knowledge can never transcend our capacitics. We
are not bound to know what our faculties are unable to grasp, and the

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attempt to become wise beyond the laws of our nature has always been
rebuked in the history of philosophy with the most signal and disastrous
failures. Neither is it the duty of all men to seek all the knowledge which
is attainable by any. The circumstances of multitudes are such that their
inquiries are necessarily confined within narrow limits.

What our general calling as men—made in the image of God and des-
tined to happiness or misery in a future state, according to our character
or conduct here—requires, it is incumbent upon all to see, and it is possible
for all to attain.

Now let’s pin Butler and Thornwell together as a souvenir
of that night at the camp meeting, when we waxed valiant in
fight for the truth, with this quotation from Deuteronomy
xxix. 29: “The secret things belong unto the Lord our God;
but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our
children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.”

167
CHAPTER III
INTELLECTUAL BENEFITS FROM BIBLE DOCTRINES

ONVERSION brings to us no new faculties. God in

his grace is never found ignoring any faculty with which

he as the God of creation has fearfully and wonderfully en-
dowed us. He is mindful of man, of every part of him.

We must learn to look for all the divine furnishing to be
recognized in the process of redemption. All having fallen,
all must be included in the plan of recovery.

More and more as the Bible unfolds the purpose of its Au-
thor are we impressed with the fact that it is the instrument
through which the fallen columns of the original temple are to
be replaced and made to shine with more than their first splen-
dor. Salvation, in one sense, is a finished experience; in an-
other sense it is a process. Pardon is always instantaneous
and complete. The» communication of the divine nature to
ours, thereby conforming us to Christ. the divine Ideal of
character, goes on until the end of probation and may continue
through eternity. We think it will.

The intellect is one of the pupils in this school, to be as
sacredly trained as any other and for uses as high as heaven
and outlasting all time. The divine purpose evidently is to
bring us back over the path we took in breaking with God and
departing from him. What faculty was dormant in the great
transgression? Every faculty is awake and in lively play
when the soul returns to God. The Holy Ghost uses every
one of them, hiding himself quite often in the deep recesses of
the soul's machinery so securely as to elude our notice and
carrying on his work so secretly and delicately that we find it
difficult sometimes to distinguish his work from the ordinary
operations of our minds.

The endless variety in the Word of God has been interpreted
by writers of devoutness and celebrity as intended to meet the

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complex mental constitution of man, furnishing vehicles in
which the Holy Ghost may traverse the unreclaimed territory
of the soul.

The doctrinal department of the Bible is preéminently the
arena for the training of the intellect. Here its powers are
evoked, its sinews toughened, its robustness secured as no-
where else in the training ground of the Scriptures. It may
be seriously questioned if anywhere else such advantages are
to be found for the discovery of the capabilities of the human
intellect and for the development of its noblest powers. If
we would have this faculty endowed with the highest forms
of vigor, we must set it to familiarizing itself with stupendous
themes and must keep its grappling irons fastened to truths of
the highest altitude and the most ponderous weight. God—
in the marvelous work of creation, in the intricate proceedings
of providence, in the overpowering disclosures of grace—is a
study calculated to enlarge and elevate the intellectual powers
beyond all other studies within its reach. Sin—in its univer-
sal and fearful devastations, with its skillfully organized
forces shaking the earth with their tread, shadowing the
homes of its vast population with their dark banners, striking
consternation into the hearts of the children of men, and par-
alyzing every energy of the human soul so as to defeat all
efforts for upright and holy living—is a study that must ex-
pand the intellect and give it a reach and grasp never to be
known while confined to the dimensions of subjects of ordi-
nary import. And when it is called to fix its contemplations
on the mighty enginery of heaven, planted for the overthrow of
the powers of darkness, for vanquishing the forces of evil,
for bringing man back to God and reopening intercourse be-
tween earth and heaven, it need not be a matter of wonder if
it should appear to have taken on transfiguration glory while
following the “Lion of the tribe of Judah” in his mighty con-
quests. Narrowing down for the present to the first promise,
the first ray of hope that shot athwart the Eden darkness—
“And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and

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between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and
thou shalt bruise his heel”—we do not hesitate to say that
there is an education for the intellectual powers in following
that promise to fulfillment to be sought for in vain among the
fields of earthly disclosures. Having followed the destiny of
this prophecy four thousand years; having studied it with
Enoch, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Balaam, Moses, David, Isaiah,
Daniel, Haggai, Malachi, and Mary; having climbed the
mountains of obstructions over which it fought its way;
having trembled for its safety amid the destruction of em-
pires and the enthronement of new powers; having heard the
rapturous strains of the angels as they sang it to the Bethle-
hem shepherds; having heard on the cross at Calvary, “It is
finished”; having seen the angel in the empty sepulcher and
heard him say, “He is risen”; having seen him received up
from the mount of ascension—it would be a thing incredible
if the intellect, through all these struggles, had not shaken off
its trammels and shot up into proportions to which otherwise
it never could have attained. From this deep source flow all
the doctrines of the Bible, and it would be an easy and de-
lightful task to show how each in its turn is made tributary to
the enlargement and ennoblement of the intellectual powers.

We need a revival of doctrine, of doctrinal preaching. It
is coming; it must come. Our preachers not only need more
of the personal experience in their hearts that the Holy Ghost
imparts through the instrumentality of the Bible doctrines, but
we need more of that robustness of intellect which it is the
province of doctrinal studies to impart.

All the great religious revivals have been revivals of doc-
trine. John Wesley was a doctrinal preacher, and this made
him the intellectual giant that he was in the pulpit and with
the pen.

The same was true of Adam Clarke, Richard Watson, Jo-
seph Benson, and John I*letcher. Coming down to our own
times, we find our great preachers doctrinal preachers—Lov-
ick Pierce, Stephen Olin, Wilbur Fisk, princes in doctrinal

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studies. The last named was the American John Fletcher.
He died with a book in his hands. His last words were:
“From the chair to the throne, O blessed hope!”

As I close this article here alone by my fireside to-night, a
noble host, men mighty in doctrine and made mighty by doc-
trine, pass in review. Some come to us from the law, others
from medicine, still others from college chairs, and quite a
number from the other avocations of life. Contact with these
great doctrinal themes—ruin by the fall, redemption by
Christ, regeneration by the Holy Ghost, the witness of the
Spirit, God and man working together, the possibility of be-
coming like Christ, the certainty of living with him in heaven,
if faithful, in a place prepared by himself for us—has made
them appear to me as having become possessed of new facul-
ties, so wonderful has been their growth.

In this I rejoice, yea, and will rejoice.

171
CHAPTER IV
Tur AUTHORITY OF THE PULPIT

[- is not my purpose to show that the authority of the pulpit
is on the increase or decline, but to direct attention in a
few lines to the main condition of its power being felt.

The Scriptures must have the prominence in the pulpit.
Preachers must satisfy their congregations that they are fa-
miliar with them, that they believe them, that they rely upon
them for conviction and conversion. The authority of the
pulpit does not inhere in the preacher. It is delegated author-
ity. As this fact is veiled or made luminous, so will attention
be arrested, conscience be aroused, authority felt. So long as
we speak from ourselves as preachers, men will answer us
from themselves. “That is his opinion,” they will say; “we
will have ours.”

There is one expression of the pulpit that our preachers can
drop without the fear of any serious loss, “I tell you’’; and
then, “I tell you again’; and after a while, ‘“‘As I told you in
the outset”; and in conclusion, “I tell you again and have
said repeatedly.” We may clench our fists, stamp with our
feet, thunder with our voices, flash with our eyes, but “I”
does not impress authority. It carried divine power from the
lips of the Master, but it will not from ours.

This is a keen-eyed old world with which we are dealing
from our pulpits. It is quick to discern the distinction be-
tween human and divine deliverance. It is quick to discern
the pre¢minence of the human over the divine. It knows, be-
fore we know it, when we cease to draw on the arsenal of God
for the weapons of our warfare. It knows, before we know
it, when the excellency of man’s wisdom takes the place of
divine truth.

Even Paul was among the Corinthians “in fear and much
trembling” because the vehicle of human speech might tarnish

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the glory of what had been given him of Christ—and human
speech, too, at its best.

Watch your congregations, brethren, and note the change
that comes over them when, turning from your own thoughts,
excellent as they may be, you proceed to buttress what you
have said by what the Bible has said. Now you have the at-
tention of every thoughtful man in the house, be he saint or
sinner.

An ex-senator of the United States from Georgia was lis-
tening to a sermon from one of our most eloquent preachers
of Georgia, who took occasion to draw liberally on Shake-
speare. Meeting another Methodist preacher on Monday
morning, he exclaimed: “O, why did Dr. spoil that
splendid sermon yesterday by pinning that gorgeous bouquet
right in the bosom of it?”

Henry Clay said: “If I had to go to prison for the rest of
my life and could be allowed but two books, I would choose
the Bible and Jay’s ‘Morning and Evening Exercises.’”” The
latter is almost the Bible in another form.

At a dinner given by United States Senator Robert Toombs,
of Georgia, at his hospitable home in Washington to a num-
ber of preacher guests, I heard him say that Mr. Wesley’s
sermons were his favorites; and it does really seem that if the
Bible were destroyed it might be reproduced from the use
Mr. Wesley made of it in his writings.

There must be authority before authority can be felt.
There is a sufficiency of it, and earth and hell recognize it
when they hear it. The fainting Ishmaels of our congrega-
tions need the water of life. Be ours the angel’s part to show
them the springs in the Holy Scriptures!

And, lest the tusk of the wild boar of higher criticism de-
tract from their authority, let it be borne in mind forever, as
most grandly stated by Dr. Richard S. Storrs, one of the
world’s greatest thinkers, that “whatever particular criticisms
may be made concerning writings or portions of writings in
the Scriptures as to their authority, as to their proper place in

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the sacred canon, as to the authorship of them, as to the time
at which they were written, these criticisms or critical in-
quiries no more touch this substance of the Scripture than a
minute botanical analysis the splendor of gardens or the gran-
deur of forests, or than the deep-sea soundings efface the blue
from the surface of the ocean or stay the swing of its tre-
mendous tides.”

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Tue FaLtinc Orr

feo" what has been said and written of late by men in

different positions, there must be a sad falling off in the
great matter of aggregating followers to the standard of our
Lord. This state of things has aroused the spirit of inquiry;
and men, if not angels, “desire to look into” these things.

Why all this? My answers shall come from the Bible, the
Word of God. I have read many and heard many from oth-
er sources that do not touch the issue. Here, as elsewhere
and everywhere, where man breaks with God, let God be true
and every man a liar.

“And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the
world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their
deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the
light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be re-
proved” (or, as the margin reads, “discovered”). (John iii.
19, 20.)

Let me say just here that the most important, sacred, and
pregnant interview ever held by two men in the history of
man was held that night at Jerusalem, Nicodemus represent-
ing, on the one hand, rationalism, and Jesus, on the other
hand, standing for a life from above—the soul’s only life.

Every religious issue that has ever sprung the thought of
man, or ever will or ever can, may be classed under one of
those two heads. It all lies folded there in germ, the religious
discussions that have shaken the world being simply the out-
growth.

“And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his
hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them.” (Mark vi. 5.)

When preachers are censured for placing limitations on the
power of God as if it were blasphemy, let it be borne in mind
that they have Bible precedent. The record stands, not as

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often misquoted, “he did not,’ but “he could not.”” When Mark
said “he could not,” he meant what he said. Yes, Christ could
not save some people because of their unbelief.

“For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto
them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being
mixed with faith in them that heard it.” (Heb. iv. 2.)

“But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: in
whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them
which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ,
who is the image of God, should shine unto them.”” (2 Cor.
iv. 3, 4.)

The parable of the sower gives three causes for the failure
of the gospel. Our Lord uttered that parable, all of it, and
it is recorded in three places in the sacred story. We halt
a moment at the third cause, where men so seldom halt and
from which they get away as soon as they can when they halt
at all: “And these are they which are sown among thorns;
such as hear the word, and the cares of this world, and the
deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering
in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful.” (Mark. iv.
18, 19.)

When a grain of wheat falls into the ground and germi-
nates and comes tremblingly out of the earth and starts up
to the sun, and a thorn springs up at its side and sinks its
fangs down by the roots of the delicate stem and divides the
plant food there and wraps its merciless folds around the
little green stalk at every inch of its growth and then spreads
its impenetrable shade, like a huge umbrella, over its head and
shuts off light, air, rain, and dew—when this grain of wheat
under such conditions yields a heavy head of wheat, then look
for the gospel to do something for a man who loves money.

I declare plainly that nothing in God’s Word strikes me as
more awful than these words of our Lord in this parable.
He never uttered more alarming words. His gospel choked!
Who will point out a ray of hope for a human soul in such a
state? All is choked when the gospel ts choked. There is

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absolutely no ennoblement on earth, no place in heaven for the
soul that is dominated by money. Hear it, ye sons of men!
If the love of money can choke the gospel in you, it can damn
you, and it is doing it. The gospel unfruitful! The gospel
unfruitful and made so by the love of money!

Everything else our Saviour has taught is believed before
we believe what he taught about money. The world is going
to make him out mistaken about that if it can.

John Wesley said that in a long lifetime he had met two
men who were carrying out the gospel about money, and
sometimes he doubted them. He has three sermons in one
volume on the dangers of riches, and there is a sameness of
treatment that almost congeals the blood as we read them.

Men will try to make the Bible read: “The love of liquor is
the root of all evil.” But it does not say it, and all the magni-
fying of the demon of drink cannot make it say so. Multiply
a thousandfold the horrors of liquor in any or all of its forms,
and you enforce a thousandfold what the Bible says about the
love of money. “The love of money is the root of all evil.”
(1 Tim. vi. 10.)

The frightful glare that lights up the awful work of the
hell of drink enables us the better to study the frightful havoc
of covetousness, for of the last iniquity the first was born.

Men are wondering that, after all their earnest appeals,
-their heartrending experiences woven so tenderly and might-
ily into their arraignment of the liquor traffic, the monster
antagonist does not quit the field. We say, gentlemen, your
fiery bolts are overleaping the other monster that makes him
possible and furnishes his inspiration. The love of money
boldens him, intrenches him, fortifies him, fills him with
audacity, and keeps him in league with hell. The awful fact
that the love of money can do this—can foster an enemy to
God and man whose hideousness has never yet been fully
depicted, can stand by an emissary of hell that has wrung
from our race tears enough to float our navy and sighs enough
to waft it round our globe—should arouse us who are con-

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cerned for the Church of Christ when we think that all our
interests right now are in the Greenland grip of this spawn
of hell, and this begotten of the devil, that Paul fixed his fiery
eye upon when he wrote to Timothy: “But they that will be rich
fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and
hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition.
For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some
coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced
themselves through with many sorrows.”” (1 Tim. vi. 9, 10.)

Very soon now winter will be creeping over our meadows
and lowlands, and along the courses of our branches and creeks
and rivers, and by the beds of our beautiful lakes, and will be
prowling through our lovely forests; and icy fingers will be
at work knitting their transparent covering of crystals and
icicles, sealing up the running streams, stopping the flow of
sap in shrub and tree, and hushing the music of the wild
warblers of the woods. In like manner has this accursed love
of money chilled the outgushings of our blessed religion and
hopelessly, in many instances, for the present at least, para-
lyzed the forces of our Zion. The fact, emphasized by our
analogy, that this process has advanced so insidiously as to
elude our perception makes the evil more fearful to contem-
plate.

We can get men to repent of everything except the love of
money. Who prays in the sanctuary, or anywhere else, for
deliverance from this foe that takes possession of the heart
and garrisons it until Christ, even with a passport signed with
his blood, cannot be admitted? One man in the Bible prays
that riches be not given him. Where is the man, out of the
Bible, who daily offers that prayer? Who believes daily that,
remaining under the domination of this passion, he is as cer-
tain to be damned as if he had already been pulled from the
gutter and shrouded for burial? Who, after reading this
contribution to the solution of a fearful problem involving
our Church, and other Churches too, in all its departments,
will be concerned about this anaconda whose glistening folds

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have caught us in an embrace that may well awaken our seri-
ous apprehension?

“With God all things are possible.” “They that be for us
are more than all that can be against us,’ even though the
love of money locks our chariot wheels.

Parents are concerned about the irregularities of their sons
and daughters, and their offensive immoralities give them
deep concern. But who of them feel a compunction of con-
science over the awful fact that all their training to date has
been confined to the maxims for getting and keeping money?
This is the only atmosphere of thousands of our homes. It is
choking all other aspirations in thousands of our professedly
Christian homes. The fact that a son limits the horizon of
his God-given powers to making and hoarding money does
not alarm father. The fact that a daughter has sealed the
fountain of her affections against Him who died for her and
reserves it for one who proposes as the height of his ambi-
tions to secure for her a career among the circles of the rich
does not rob mother of her sleep.

Who will deny that what we have copied from the Bible is
recorded there? Who will deny that our social life, our busi-
ness life, or our domestic life is frequently found crossing hell
on a rotten plank for more money? Who will deny that he
has seen, times past numbering, all the fearful consequences
of devotion of the passion for money that blaze on the pages
of inspiration. The Bible overdraws nothing. It has made
no mistake about this matter. Men in repenting of sin may
omit this money-begotten enmity against God and may seek
to become subjects of Christ’s kingdom while kneeling to this
scepter of silver and gold; but all the while there is hanging
over their heads a cloud in which lurks thus thunderbolt: “Ye
cannot serve God and Mammon!”

A distinguished prelate of the Roman Catholic Church has
gone on record as having said that in a long service at the
confessional he had never heard one confess the sin of the
love of money.

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CHAPTER VI
Tue Devotionat Ust. oF THE HoLy SCRIPTURES*

F, as has been said by one sufficiently furnished to be ac-
cepted as authority, the Psalms are an “epitome of the

Bible,” the first Psalm may fittingly stand for the prologue.
The germ of which this paper is in part the unfolding hes
within the second and third verses: “But his delight is in the
law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and
night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of
water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also
shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.”

To enter into the Psalmist’s beautiful conception we must
ascertain clearly the similarity of the soul’s relation to the
Word of God to that of a tree planted by the river’s brink.
As a tree, sending roots and rootlets down through the bank
of a river, appropriates the moisture and other plant food and
draws it up into its trunk and thence distributes it throughout
the tree, giving to limb, leaf, and fruit their due pertion, so
the soul by meditation sinks its family of feeders into God's
Word and collects the sustenance deposited there and divides
it among its different faculties for their nourishment, develop-
ment, and fruitfulness. The advantages of a tree thus highly
favored are made to represent the priceless boon of the Bible
to the soul of man.

The sacred writers are lavish of their imagery in making

 

 

*This paper was read before the Bible Institute of the North Georgia
Conference, Newnan, Georgia, 1u0g. It was, by unanimous vote, requested
for publication, Rev. W. H. Cooper, of our Conference, kindly asking the
privilege of publishing it in pamphlet form, free of cost after expense of
publication, the sales going to the author. This was declined, the author
having in preparation a book for the press in which he wished the paper
to have a permanent place, and promised the brethren to have it so pub-
lished Its appearance here is a fullllment of that promise. It was deliv-
ered within a few miles of where the author learned the alphabet and
learned to read the New Testament, his first reading book.

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luminous this relation of the Scriptures to the spiritual nature
of man, levying a tax upon every realm of nature to impress
us with the purpose for which they were given to the world,
more than intimating to us that the God of nature is the God
of the Bible and that nature is on her sublimest mission when
as an angel she is sent forth to minister to them who shall be
the heirs of salvation by lending her charms to paint the glo-
ries and riches of grace.

All thoughtful and devout minds must discover that God
has formed the works of the material universe to lead us more
impressively into a knowledge of those things which are invis-
ible. He has magnified his Word above his name, so that the
sun, the fountain of light and heat to the world, enthroned in
all his majesty, must not consider it a humiliation to include
in his royal leading of the armies of heaven—imparting to the
moon its luster and to the stars their light in the firmament—
the office of symbolizing the Bible, the central light of the
moral universe, giving to all and borrowing of none. The
rain and the dew and the snow have each an office above the
watering of the earth and making it fruitful; they must in-
struct the sons of men in the refreshing and vivifying work
of the Word of God, that must not return unto him void, but
cool and soften and revive the barren wastes of the souls of
men and make them bloom like gardens and wave with har-
vests. Glorious as all these works of nature are, wonderfully
as they exhibit the wisdom and power of their Creator, beau-
tifully as they set forth in figure the ministry of the Scriptures
of eternal truth, they shall wax old, as doth a garment, when
their work is done, and as a vesture shall they be folded up,
and they shall be changed, they shall perish; but the Word of
the Lord endureth forever.

The Bible is a devotional book, a book for the soul, and its
very soul the purpose of God to bring man back to himself,
and that man may have restored to him the stateliness of the
original endowment and have reconstructed and repolished the
shafts and columns of his former nobleness; and, to be there-

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by fitted for present and eternal companionship with him, he
is to be instructed in his need and in God’s help. Man’s spir-
itual need and God’s spiritual help contain the Bible. Every-
thing in it is connected, directly or remotely, with the fact that
God is in Christ reconciling the world unto himself.

No argument outside the Bible has yet been forged to prove
that God loves man which sooner or later does not fail. ‘‘The
heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth
his handiwork,” but all of them fail to reveal his nature.

“The heavens declare thy glory, Lord,
In every star thy wisdom shines;

But when our eyes behold thy word,
We read thy name in fairer lines.

The rolling sun, the changing light,
And night and day thy power confess;
But the blest volume thou hast writ
Reveals thy justice and thy grace.”

Man needs to have God restored to his soul; must be re-
minded of a home that he has left and that the door is open
for his return and that there is a guide to help him back; that
the Bible is that lamp unto his feet and that light unto his
path. The Bible is this—nothing more, nothing less, nothing
else.

The attention of mankind has been drawn to this full-orbed
Book, uttering every form of spiritual feeling, as to no other
book. Its singleness of aim and scope, more than anything
else, has riveted upon it the world’s admiration and wonder.

Most of it covers a space of fifteen hundred years, some of it three
thousand years. Parts of it were written in the center of Asia; other por-
tions in the sands of Arabia; some of it in the deserts of Judea, in the
courts of the temple of the Jews, in the schools of the prophets at Bethel
and Jericho; other contributions came from the sumptuous palaces of
Babylon and the idolatrous banks of Chebar; and, finally, additions were
made to it from the then center of the Western civilization, in the midst of
the Jews and their ignorance, in the midst of Polytheism and its idols,
as also in the midst of Panthcism and its sad philosophy. The first writer
of this book had been forty years a pupil of the magicians of Egypt, in
whose opinion the sun and stars were endowed with intelligence, reacting
on the elements and governing the world by a perpetual effluvium; and its

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last writer was a fisherman from the sea of Tiberias, called from his net
to be an inspired apostle—J. M. Matthews, D.D.

It is this sad disclosure of the interruption of fellowship
between heaven and earth and God’s purpose through the
death of his Son to restore it that makes the Old Testament
and the New Testament one. “Christianity is the treasure hid
in the field of the Old Testament.” The prophetic delineations
of the Messiah of the Old Testament are interpreted by the
many approving references of the New Testament to the Old,
revealing to us the sublime march of the single eternal pur-
pose of God under the two dispensations to its final consum-
mation, for the illustration of which nature furnishes us an-
other striking symbol, the two dispensations being like Venus,
which this year until July 5 will be the evening star and after
that the morning star, the same star rising at one time before
the sun and at another time after the sun. So there is really
but one dispensation, appearing before Christ at one period of
the world’s history and after Christ at another.

How can we escape the conviction of this constantly bright-
ening revelation of God’s purpose to save guilty men, to bring
many sons unto glory through the redemption that is in Christ
Jesus, when not a single violation of the unity and harmony—
binding all these writers with an enchantment and running
like a golden thread through thousands of years—has ever
been detected?

“Whence, but from heaven, could men unskilled in arts,
In different ages born, in different parts,

Weave such agreeing truths, or how, or why

Should all conspire to cheat us with a lie?

Unasked their pains, ungrateful their advice,

Starving their gains, and martyrdom their price?”

We must account for the fact that, from Moses, learned in
all the wisdom of Egypt, to Paul, brought up at the feet of
Gamaliel, the sacred writers were so clarified and elevated that
none of the superstitious delusions of the earlier dispensations
or any of the self-religious Pharisaism or the cultured pa-

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ganism of a later dispensation could divert them from honor-
ing and worshiping Jehovah, the covenant God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, and offering forgivencss and life to men,
and restoring the alienated throne of God to their souls
through the mediatorship of his Son, our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ. Most beautifully and truly has Richard Watson
written:

The ever-brightening pages of this Holy Bible come down to us through
generation after generation, untainted and untarnished, like the beams of
the rising sun, breaking through the mists and vapors of the morning,
touching them only to dispel them, and then to burst forth in its own na-
tive splendor

No wonder that no less a mind than Lessing’s, as quoted by
Bishop Henry W. Warren (“The Bible in the World’s Educa-
tion”), was the first to define the Bible as the ‘record of the
divine education of the race.’’ This definition is in line with
two clear statements from the Old Testament and two from
the New: ‘Those things which are revealed belong unto us and
to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this
law.” (Deut. xxix. 29.) “The law of the Lord is perfect,
converting the soul.” (Ps. xix. 7.) We find an echo to these
scriptures in St. Paul's Second Epistle to Timothy: ‘And
that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which
are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which
is in Christ Jesus” (iii. 15). “All scripture is given by inspi-
ration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for
correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of
God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good
works” (itl, 16, 17).

Revelation hinges upon the right attitude of the soul to-
ward God. The unrivaled diadem that adorns the brow of
the sacred story is that, while other books teach us the way
into the earth and the seas and the stars and give us the mas-
tery of other branches of human learning, it tells us how to
be saved from sin, to secure consociation with a personal God,
to have the inner nature in all its desires purified, so that it

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may become a dwelling place of the infinite Spirit and get to
heaven, where, awaking in his likeness, we shall be satisfied
forever. Man, in his nature, relations, history, and necessi-
ties, as a citizen of this world under the training hand of God
through the mediatorship of his Son and a candidate for im-
mortality, is the point of agreement with all the writers of the
Bible, whatever may have been their varied ages and situa-
tions. And we suffer a serious loss if we fail to detect that
his spiritual relations occupy the chief attention of those in-
spired men, which makes them unlike all other writers except
as those ideas are caught by other men.

How strange a silence on the part of these men about talent
and culture apart from the Spirit! They seem to have said
enough of Abraham, Moses, David, and others when they
have represented them as the friends of God and men after
his own heart. “Thus saith the Lord, The heaven is my
throne, and the earth is my footstool: where is the house that
ye build unto me? and where is the place of my rest? For all
those things hath mine hand made, and all those things have
been, saith the Lord: but to this man will I look, even to him
that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my
word.” (Isa. Ixvi. 1, 2.) And in the limited revelations
made to us of heaven there is this same strange silence about
the achievements. of philosophers, scientists, orators, states-
men, warriors, and kings over realms of material advance-
ment, but distinct recognition of the fact that “there is joy in
the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repent-
eth.” The sublime mission of the Bible is “to preach good
tidings to the meek, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim
liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them
that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord,
and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that
mourn; to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto
them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the gar-
ment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be
called the trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that

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he might be glorified.” Its purpose is to “build the old wastes,
to raise up the former desolations, to repair the waste cities.
the desolations of many generations."" The spiritual needs of
the race were so numerous, so endlessly diversified, so pressing
—there was so much blindness to enlighten; so many deaf ears
to unstop; so many lame ones to restore to strength; so much
hardness to soften; so much coldness to warm; so much wan-
dering to reclaim; so many maladies to cure and so many
wounds to heal; so much enmity to subdue and so many chains
to unloose ; so many prisoners to release and so much degrada-
tion to uplift; so much death to quicken; so many battles to
fight against principalities and powers and spiritual wickedness
in high places; so many victories to record; so many kings and
priests unto God to be made; so many godly heroes to be
knighted; so much enthronement to be done; so many harps
to be tuned; so many jubilees to be held; so many pzans of
victory to be sung; so many valleys to be exalted and so many
hills to be made low; so many crooked places to be made
straight and so many rough places plain; so many waste places
to be made glad and so many deserts to be made to bloom in
beauty ; so many mountains to shake like Lebanon; such crush-
ing overthrows to be accomplished by the stone cut out of a
mountain without hands—the Spirit of God seems to have
been unwilling to be diverted from his course by any other ob-
ject in his glorious work of inspiring the Scriptures.

If creative power in the vast realm of nature is to be no-
ticed, inspiration seems satisfied when God as that power has
been distinctly set forth and duly magnified, when the first
chapter of Genesis has been crowded from beginning to end
with what God created, his name occurring thirty-two times in
thirty-one verses. Creation evidently was never intended by
the inspiring Spirit to fill the highest place in human thought
nor to kindle the deepest and warmest affections in the human
heart. Moses spent, comparatively speaking, but little time
there and devoted to it but little space, only two short chap-
ters; and then comes the Lord, walking in the garden in the

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cool of the day, after a tragedy the dark shadow of which
lowers about us still. Immediately following the storm sprung
the bow of promise—arching the globe and so gently bent by
the hand of the Most High as to touch the Garden of Eden
and the “benedictus of Zacharias”—in the strange words: “I
will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between
thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt
bruise his heel.”’ “TI will put” enmity there, settling thus early
and forever the source of this antagonism and the agency by
which it is to be effected. Then, in the fourth chapter, comes
Abel with the firstlings of his flock and the fat thereof and
the sublime announcement that “the Lord had respect unto
Abel and to his offering” ; then continues mightily to grow the
inspired epic, organizing itself about the “most wonderful
personage that ever crossed the stage of history,” so influen-
tial that he needed not, like all other men who preceded him
and followed after, to be born before he could shape the cur-
rent of human events; appearing later to the enraptured proph-
et as one with “dyed garments from Bozrah, traveling in the
greatness of his strength, speaking righteousness, mighty to
save”; taxing type and symbol to their utmost to have him
apprehended and appropriated by every conceivable need of
the race of man in every zone of the earth and for all periods
of history until aflame with the honors and the glories of the
Apocalypse, where we find him still “clothed with his vesture
dipped in blood, and the armies which were in heaven follow-
ing him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and
clean, and on his vesture, and on his thigh a name written,
King of kings, and Lord of lords.”

It will help us to fix in our minds the glowing center about
which inspiration revolves to trace, with George Gilfillan, the
following line of prophecy in regard to Christ, from Eden’s
garden to Bethlehem’s manger:

Four thousand years before, in Eden, after the fall, the promise was

given that the “seed of the woman [not of the man] should bruise the
serpent’s head.” One thousand years after that Enoch prophesied: “Be-

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hold, the Lord cometh.” Three hundred and fifty years later Abraham, a
descendant of Shem, a single person, was chosen out of a world gone into
idolatry to be the grand progenitor of the Messiah. Afterwards the prom-
ise was individualized to Isaac, then to Jacob, in the very words of the
den oracle: “In thee and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be
blessed.” On his deathbed in [egypt Jacob prophesied: “The scepter shall
not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh
come.” Observe two specifications: First, of the tribe from which he
should come; second, of the tune when he should appear. Two hundred
and fifty years later Moses foretold the prophet whom God would raise
up, and Balaam saw in the hazy future a “star that should arise out of
Jacob.” Then came the mute prophecies of institutions, such as the pas-
chal lamb, the scapegoat, the day and blood of atonement. Four hundred
years pass away; and I[avid, of the tribe of Judah, forms the royal and
prophetic succession, and Messianic predictions are woven like golden
threads through the “rich brocade of the Psalms.” Two hundred years
later still Isaiah, the gospel prophet, foretold these particulars: that the
Messiah should be born of a virgin, should bear the name of Immanuel,
should be a man of sorrows, despised of men, be put to death, rise again,
and by his resurrection swallow up death in victory. Micah, seven hun-
dred years before the Advent, wrote: “But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah,
though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall
he come forth unte me that 1. to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth
have been of old, from everlasting.” Daniel prophesied the rise and fall
of four empires and the perpetuity of a fifth. He foretold the time in
prophetic weeks. Still later Haggai cried out: “Yet a little while, and I
shall shake the heavens, earth, sea, and dry land: and the desire of all
nations shall come.” And Malachi, the last prophet, joyfully exclaimed to
the pious Jews, four hundred years before the Advent: “The Lord, whom
ye seck, shall suddenly come into his temple, even the messenger of the
covenant whom ye delight in.”

In the events of Mary's life behold a literal fulfillment of this long line
of prophecies, reaching from the garden to the cross. Just as Daniel's
prophetic time has expired, the scepter departed from Judah, and the world
is waiting for his appearance Messiah appears, the seed of the woman,
the offspring of a virgin, of the Jewish nation, of the tribe of Judah, of
the family of David, born at Bethlehem, called out of Egypt, despised as
a Nazarene, a man of sorrows, bearing our griefs, expiring on Calvary,
arising on the third appoimted day out of Joseph's new tomb, and ascend-
ing in triumph.

It is said that one of the disciples of Rousseau had invented
a religion which he was quite anxtous to see adopted in France
as a substitute for the Christian religion; but, not making
much progress with his substitute, he complained to Talley-
rand of his want of success. Talleyrand suggested that it

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would doubtless help his cause very much if he would allow
himself to be crucified and to be buried and to rise from the
dead on the third day and then to show the people the prints
of the nails in his hands and feet.

We are far from a feeling of irreverence, and we think we
are not mistaken when we say that there is visible a heavenly
impatience on the part of the inspiring Spirit to get away from
Genesis and trace the fate of this marvelous prophecy as it
sweeps on bold and unimpeded pinion over forty centuries to
its glorious fulfillment.

And be it observed that the writer of the Epistle to the
Hebrews alludes to the work of creation with significant brev-
ity, closing with a single verse: “Through faith we understand
that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that
things which are seen were not made of things which do ap-
pear.” He, too, like Moses, seems to be moved by a heavenly
impulse to get away from the earth, sun, moon, stars, and seas,
with their unnumbered inhabitants, herbs, and animals, into
the experiences of men who walked with God and worked
righteousness in a new spiritual creation overflowing with
fertility, its fields in smiles, its woods rejoicing before the
Lord, its very rocks dripping honey, its floods clapping their
hands, and all led in musical concert by a mighty ocean chorus
to celebrate the victories of the great King. After one verse,
an allusion to creation, he begins to glow over Abel, the first
martyr, and Enoch and Noah and Abraham and Isaac and
Jacob and a crowded gallery of shining portraits of men and
women of whom_the world was not worthy and whom the
history of the world has not eclipsed. How instructive and
how quickening to the devotional life to follow the course of
inspiration and study the notice taken of men who, in so many
instances, had nothing to recommend them to such high con-
sideration but their devoutness, but the fact that they main-
tained fellowship with God, believed his Word, trusted his
promises, loved his service, and cultivated heavenly-minded-
ness!

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With unusual force Henry Rogers has said:

Of the great political changes that passed over the ancient world, the
Bible is almost as silent and unconcerned as sun and stars when they look
down upon the tumult and noise of man’s battle fields. We hear the sound,
but it is as the ocean on a distant shore. The intrigues of courts, the
career and achievements of great conquerors, the thrilling events which
marked the extinction or transfer of political power and civilization, the
great battles which shook the world—in a word, all those things over
which the imagination of the ordinary historian lingers with such intense
emotion are touched only as they happen to traverse the religious history
of the strange community whose destinies the Bible is tracing, or those
ulterior designs of which this people were to be the unconscious instru-
ments to the world. In brief, all is viewed in relation and subordination
to the religious ideas which permeate the Book. The fortunes of the na-
tions which surrounded Judea, as well as those of the Assyrian and Baby-
lonian empires, are cursorily referred to just so far as this; otherwise the
Bible does not deign to notice them at all. Though the world might be
ringing with the achievements of their great captain and the ground
shaking under the tread of their innumerable legions, the writers of this
strange Book are deaf to it all—all passes before them as “silent as a pic-
ture”; or, if the Bible condescends to give a transient glance at such things
(as it sometimes does, and often with touches of surpassing sublimity), it
is still only within the limits above mentioned.

Writers, devout and scholarly, while accenting the fact that
the sacred penmen lose nothing of the excellency of expression
when compared with the highest reaches of uninspired litera-
ture, insist that the controlling point of difference between
them is the sublimity and grandeur of sentiment which glow
on every page of the inspired writings, thus furnishing us an-
other point of view from which to catch an impression of the
purposes of devotion contemplated by the Scriptures.

One hundred and thirty-five years ago Laurence Stern,
A.M., “prebendary of York and vicar of Sutton on the For-
rest and of Stillington near York,” recorded the result of his
examination into the advantages of the Scriptures over the
most excellent profane authors in the matter of translation, a
short extract from which will be sufficient, we trust, to open
the view of this side of our subject:

It is observable that the most excellent profane authors, whether Greek
or Latin, lose most of their graces whenever we find them literally trans-

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lated. Homer’s famed representation of Jupiter in his first book, his
cried-up description of a tempest, his relation of Neptune’s shaking the
earth and opening it to its center, his description of Pallas’s horses, with
numbers of other long-since-admired passages, flag and almost vanish
away in the vulgar Latin translation. Let any one but take the pains to
read the common Latin interpretation of Virgil, Theocritus, or even Pin-
dar, and one may venture to affirm that he will be able to trace out but
few remains of the graces which charmed him so much in the original.
The natural conclusion from hence is that in the classical authors the
expression and the sweetness of the numbers occasioned by a musical
placing of the words constitute a great part of their beauties, whereas in
the sacred writings they consist more in the greatness of the things them-
selves than in the words and expressions. The ideas and conceptions are
so great and lofty in their own nature that they necessarily appear magnifi-
cent in the most artless dress.

Seventy-nine years ago another writer of England, not in-
ferior in learning and more noted for his devotional life than
the other, after a patient and rigid comparison of the Bible
with the lyrical productions of cultivated and classical nations,
wrote:

Take out of the lyrical poetry of Greece and Rome the praises of
women and of wine, the flatteries of men, and the idle invocations of the
muse and lyre, and what have we left? What dedication of song and
music is there to the noble and exalted powers of the human spirit! What
to the chaste and honorable relations of human society! What to the
excitement of tender emotions toward the widow and the fatherless, the
stranger and the oppressed! What to the awful sanctity of law and
government and the practical forms of justice and equity! In the times
which we call classical and with the compositions of which we imbue our
youth we find little purity of sentiment, little elevation of soul, no spiritual
representations of. God, nothing pertaining to heavenly knowledge or holy
feeling; but, on the other hand, we find impurity of life, low sensual ideas
of God, and the pollution of religion so often as they touch it.

Before releasing ourselves from the spell of this gifted au-
thor, let us catch another glowing discrimination of his pen:

Were the distinction of natural from spiritual life the dream of mystical
enthusiasts and the theology of the Jews a cunningly devised fable like the
mythologies of Greece and Rome, these few odes [Psalms] should be
dearer to the man of true feeling and natural taste than all which have
been derived to us from classical times, though they could be sifted of
their abominations and cleansed from the incrustation of impurity which
defiles their most exquisite parts.

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It must be placed to the credit of our age, fallen as it is and
despoiled so sadly by sin of its capacity for appreciating the
Bible as a religious book, the curriculum for the training of
the spiritual life, that this feature of it has caught the eye of
the greatest men of earth and, in instances past numbering
here, quickened and employed their loftiest powers.

Of John Milton it is written: “Some books may survive the
last burning and be preserved in celestial archives as specimens
and memorials of extinguished worlds; and if such there be,
surely one of them must be ‘Paradise [-ost.’"" Another gauge
of his altitude, reduced to poetic measure:

“Three poets in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn;
The first in loftiness of thought <urpast;:
The next in majesty, in both the last.

The force of nature could no farther go;
To make a third she joined the other two.”

How fortunate for John Milton and for the world that
while meditating on “Paradise Lost" he decided against the
claims of a rival theme that sought to master his contempla-
tions!

In his thirty-first year he bethought himself seriously of some great
literary work on a scale commensurate with his powers and which posterity
should not willingly let dic. He had resolved that it should be an English
poem; he had resolved that it should be an epic; nay, he had all but
resolved that his subject should be taken from the legendary history of
Britain and should include the romance of Arthur and his Knights of the
Round Table. His decision placed him in the shadow of the throne of
universal empire and set him to grappling issues infinitely transcending
the legends of carth. “As Noah into the ark of old the Lord shut Milton
in,” within the darkened tabernacle, being filled with light from heaven,
“Paradise Lost” arose, the joint work of human genius and of divine
illumination.

Pause and meditate a moment on the secret. John Milton's
great culogist, already quoted, distinetly and with fervor
states that “Paradise Lost” was written to “vindicate the wavs
of God to men.” Here are the great poet's own words pre-
served by another:

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God having to this end ordained his gospel to be the revelation of his
power and wisdom in Christ Jesus, this is one depth of his wisdom, that
he could so plainly reveal so great a measure of it to the gross, distorted
apprehension of decayed mankind.

Why wonder that a chaplet thus woven from the gardens
of God’s Book remains unrivaled and imperishable?

John Milton must forever stand alone; but God, of his in-
finite mercy and wisdom and love and power, has provided for
the relief of our powers of spiritual apprehension so sadly
enfeebled by sin. “But we all, with open face beholding as in
a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image
from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord”—not
different in process from the spirit of Raphael in the painting
of the Transfiguration, educating the eye of Sir Joshua Rey-
nolds, who was disappointed when he first saw it, up to the
point of appreciation of its merits.

We cannot pass by the indebtedness of the living literatures
of the world to the Bible without an apology. A great deal of
this has already been pointed out; the whole will never be told.
The illustrious example from the poets already adduced is
sufficient to recommend the devotional use of the Holy Scrip-
tures to the tastes and genius of all men to the end of time.

The devotional purpose of the Bible is the Joseph sheaf, to
which the whole family of sheaves in the field do obeisance;
and nothing can be more fatal to the soul than to have this
feature obscured by anything discoverable in the Scriptures
in their history or poetry, it matters not how entertaining,
instructive, or enchanting they may be.

It is a polite way, we fear, in many instances, of atoning
for disloyalty to this mind of God, that shines like a star on
the brow of night, to study such departments and expatiate
upon them as a college professor and his class in English
would if a new history or an advanced treatise in belles-let-
tres were placed in their hands. We meet this in much of the
infidel authorship of other times and of our own and in pro-
ductions not called infidel, but

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“With smooth dissimulation, skilled to grace,
A devil's purpose with an angel’s face.”

We would do well to keep awake to the ingenious, patron-
izing ways of the enemies of inspiration who would com-
pliment out of the Bible the momentous statements which it
contains by bowing to the charming vehicle by which they
are conveyed, just as they would have their fancy kindled by
drinking in all the elements of sublime and graceful scenery
while remaining insensible to Him who has set his glory above
the earth and the heavens.

There was a time when, without compromise, our enemies
went in openly and avowedly and persistently for the exter-
mination of everything that bore the Christian name. There
was nothing connected with it that they could tolerate. But
now almost every system, it matters not how visionary and
destructive of its spirit, is a candidate for its approval and
seeks, by becoming allied to it, to falsify it by diverting it
from its sublime and sacred mission. The metaphysical sub-
tleties, the ribald jests, and the downright nauseating vulgarity
of a former period of the conflict have disappeared from the
field, to be replaced by the supple bow, the favoring smile, and
the white cravat. The devil's first interview with man repre-
sents him as a candidate for the tutorship of his religious life,
and he has never ceased to urge his claims to fitness for this
place of honor.

Cowper found for his soul the soul of the Bible:

“I was a stricken deer that left the herd

Long since. With many an arrow deep infixed
My panting side was charged when | withdrew
To seck a tranquil death in distant shades.
There was I found by One who had himself
Been hurt by the archers. In his side he bore,
And in his hands and fect, the crue! scars.

With gentle force soliciting the darts,
He drew them forth, and healed, and bade me live.”

The more than seven lean years that have overtaken us have
come to us through heated theological discussions. The Bible
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has been turned into a field for intellectual gymnastics, a battle
ground for debaters. In the face of the facts that most of the
arguments against the Bible are at least fifteen hundred years
old, and that no new argument for its overthrow has been
framed in a hundred years, and that the acorns from which
the forests, that are dropping poison into our papers, books,
homes, schools, and Churches, were sown inside the first three
centuries, we ought to have had more soul rest and greater
spiritual enlargement. Our fortifications are secure; the im-
plements of our arsenal are mighty, through God, to the pull-
ing down of strongholds. “Feed my sheep! Feed my sheep!
Feed my lambs!” We need granaries now more than guns.
The Scriptures are still full of the bread of life. Of many a
famishing Ishmael wandering in the wilderness it may be said
that his bottle of water is spent, and may it never pass from
our minds that the highest office of the angel of the pulpit is
‘to show him a well of water in the Scriptures!

The great things of this world’s history have come of its
devotional moments. “God’s tally of the ages is different
from ours. He marks off the cycles of time by spiritual
progress.”

It remains for us to gather a few refreshing facts from the
New Testament and from later times to show what has been
done and what may be done by putting the Scriptures to the
use for which they were inspired. After a prayer meeting,
well attended, extending beyond a week, and no complaint of
the length of the services, Peter unfolded a part of the proph-
ecy of Joel and a part of the sixteenth Psalm, and three thou-
sand were added to the Church. About eight or ten years
thereafter Peter retired for prayer; and the gates of the Gen-
tile world began to turn on their hinges, and by the time he
was through with some other scriptures in a house where
prayer and fasting had been observed, even while Peter was
yet expounding the Word, “the Holy Ghost fell on all them
which heard the word,” and the gates of the Gentile world
were thrown open.

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At another time and place Paul was the speaker, and it was
a place where “prayer was wont to be made” (it appears to
have been a woman’s prayer meeting), and then and there was
laid the foundation of Christianity in Europe.

Martin Luther was devotionally engaged on a passage of
Scripture when he was born again and the great Reformation
with him.

John Wesley was listening devotionally to the reading of
Luther’s introduction to the Epistle to the Romans and “felt
his heart strangely warmed,” and then followed the greatest
revival of religion in the history of the Christian Church.

In the midst of the constellation of saints of all ages and
climes, which cannot be numbered, who have been made wise
unto salvation through the Scriptures, arrayed in glory that
none other can claim, shines One who honored and loved the
Scriptures. The Psalms “appear to have been the manual of
the Son of God in the days of his flesh; who, at the conclusion
of the Last Supper, is generally supposed, and that upon good
grounds, to have sung a hymn taken from them; who pro-
nounced on the cross the beginning of the twenty-second
Psalm, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ and
expired with a part of the thirty-first Psalm in his mouth,
‘Into thy hands I commend my spirit.’ Thus,” continues the
devout and learned Bishop Horne, “he who had not the Spirit
by measure, in whom were hidden all the treasures of wisdom
and knowledge, and who spake as never man spake, yet chose
to conclude his life, to solace himself in his last moments of
greatest agony, and at last to breathe out his soul in the psalm-
ist’s form of words rather than his own. No tongue of man
or angel, as Dr. Hammond justly observes, can convey a high-
er idea of any book and of their felicity who use it aright.”

May these lines of our childhood, taught us by our mothers,
never lose their sweet perfume!

“Holy Bible! Book divine!
Precious treasure, thou art mine!
Mine, to tell me whence I came;
Mine, to tell me what I am.

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Mine, to chide me when I rove;
Mine, to show a Saviour’s love;
Mine art thou to guide my feet;
Mine, to judge, condemn, acquit.

Mine, to comfort in distress,
If the Holy Spirit bless;

Mine, to show by living faith
Man can triumph over death.

Mine, to tell of joys to come,

And the rebel sinner’s doom.

O thou precious Book divine!
Precious treasure, thou art mine!”

197
CHAPTER VII

KNOWING Our FAMILIES AFTER THE FLESH AND NOT AFTER
CHRIST

(2 Corinthians v. 14-20)

O every system belongs a central idea; and it matters not
how complicated the system may be, every part feels the
force of this central, controlling idea. Every ramification of
Mohammedanism bears the loathsome impress of the purpose
for which it was originated. Everything that enters into Ro-
man Catholicism savors of political supremacy. This idea is
interwoven with all the meshes that make up its mighty net-
work. It would cease to be if universal dominion were to
cease to be its object. The pope calls himself a prisoner when
he cannot imprison. We are enlarging on this line of Christ’s
supremacy that its force may be felt in another application of
the same principle.

We come to the family, the foundation of society. Whence
the bitterness of our national life? The family is its foun-
tain. If the stream is ever sweetened, the work must begin
at the spring. Are we not knowing our children “after the
flesh” —after the spirit of the world, its manners and maxims
—rather than after Christ? All the evils that afflict us are
traceable to unlawful action. That parent places himself
farthest from God in this matter of family relationships who
is most inclined to believe that any way to train a child is as
good as God’s way. This is the height of presumption, if not
the very essence of treason itself against the divine govern-
ment. Any interpretation that we may put upon the relation-
ships of our children that does not harmonize with the divine
interpretation is fraught with incalculable mischief. The law
according to which our children are to be trained grows out of
the relationships which they were originally intended to sus-
tain. If they were originally intended for the Lord, then

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“Bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord”
is a just deduction.

Just here is our greatest danger. We love to call our chil-
dren our own, forgetting that they were Christ’s before they
were ours, and that if we cannot be our own our children can-
not be. They have been redeemed by the blood of Christ as
really as you and I have been. Independently of the atone-
ment of Christ they could never have existed. We are in-
debted to his blood for their being as much as for their par-
don. “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.”
They are born through grace as well as saved by grace. Our
children, therefore, are ours only in a secondary and subordi-
nate sense. They are ours to rear for Another, just as our
time and our talents are to be employed for Another. True,
they are “bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh”; but let us
not calculate on overlooking the first and higher proprietorship
except at our peril. “God was in Christ, reconciling the world
unto himself”—the world under every relationship—and we
cannot claim to be thus reconciled so long as we refuse to
recognize the priority of Christ’s claim to our children. We
must be weaned from all worldly standards by which the
worth of our children is computed and apply Christ’s measure-
ments to them, accepting no attainment as worthy of parental
admiration or affection that has not been reached through
strict conformity to the Master’s directions, accepting no com-
bination of excellencies as a realization of the purpose for
which they were created that leaves them without the mind
that was in Christ Jesus and unemployed in his service.

A distinguished general, in a recent address in one of our
cities, said: “I never left my mother in my life but that she
said to me: ‘I want to live long enough to see you come to
your Lord and Saviour.’ It was the conclusion of every sep-
aration; it was the burden of every letter she wrote to me.”
After witnessing one of his triumphs of popular eloquence,
she only said: “O, if I could see you stand there and talk for
your Saviour, I would ask nothing more on this earth!’ Dur-

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ing one of his terms in the legislature the liquor question was
up. The general's constituency were opposed to prohibition,
and he expected to vote accordingly. He had no scruples on
the subject at that time; and he expected to hear that his
mother was deeply interested in the passage of the measure,
but still more that her son would vote on the right side. When
the vote was called for, she was in the gallery in full view of
him. His purpose, even as the roll narrowed down to his
name, was to stand by his constituency and vote in the nega-
tive. Just as his name was to be sounded his eyes caught his
mother’s; and, to the surprise of all, and even of himself, his
sonorous voice rang out, “Yea!’’ He could not look that
mother in the eyes, though all the world were with him, and
vote for what she regarded the unrighteous side; and she was
the only one who was not surprised, but she said: “My son, I
had prayed that God would not let you vote wrong, and I
knew you would not.”” At last, during a great revival in 1876,
he was converted. He says: “I went home to that mother.
The stars in the sky scarcely could number the prayers she had
given to her Father on my behalf; and I was going home, the
last one of her band of children, resolved to tell her that her
Saviour was my Saviour and that her God was my God. We
were all there, an unbroken and redeemed family. She gath-
ered me in her arms as tenderly as when I was a helpless
child.” There was a mother who could not get her consent to
know her son, distinguished general and eloquent orator
though he was and enjoying the promotion of his fellow citi-
zens, “after the flesh.” She measured her son by his relation-
ship to Christ.

What a battle we parents have to wage in maintaining our
independence of society’s interpretation of character! “In the
slavishness of society,” says an able writer, ‘in the dominance
of conventionality over all true wisdom lies one of our greatest
hindrances in the religious training of our children.” We
must be circumspect and courageous and prove true to our
children by first proving true to Christ. Let us see to it that

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none of his claims upon them be exchanged for any that this
world can present. He has loved them enough to die for
them: the world knows nothing of such love as this. He
arose from the dead for them: the world has never had and
never can have hanging to its girdle the “keys of death and
the grave.” He proposes to restore them to the divine image:
the world has been powerless, and will forever remain so, to
effect such a transformation as this. He promises to walk
with them through the dark valley: thousands have attested
the bankruptcy of the world at the time when help is most
needed. He intends that they shall, if faithful, share with
him the glories of his heavenly kingdom: for the world there
remains naught but “weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of
teeth.” Can we afford to know our children after the flesh
and not after Christ?

Who of us to-day are taking the full measure of our re-
sponsibility as parents? How readily and at what an early
age our children detect our preferences as to their destiny!
If we prefer the worldly to the religious for them, it will
require but a hint to acquaint them, even in early childhood,
with the fact. We may in our profession be on the side of
Christ. If we belie that profession, they will be the first to
detect it. Our boys, while playing about the family fireside,
know full well whether we are aiming at worldly distinction
(as the world interprets it) for them or are anxious to regu-
late all such attainments by the Spirit which is from above.
Our little girls know whether we are preparing them for prom-
inence in gay society or striving to make them “followers of
that which is good.” They are candidates for this world’s
smiles or for the approval of heaven while about our knees and
at our dictation intimated or clearly expressed. The tiny, tilt-
ing craft points its prow to the port where the good angels will
welcome it or to the shores black with eternal night ere it has
glided out of the quiet inland waters of home while yet the
parent’s hand is on the helm.

Men and women are the net product of the educational

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forces to which they were taught in childhood to be loyal.
Have we no reason to fear that worldliness, unchecked, will
make sad havoc of our households? What dikes are we
throwing about our homes to resist the encroachments of in-
iquity in its almost numberless forms that, like mighty streams,
threaten to sweep away our children from under our very
eyes?

If we stand idly by and tamely submit to a Christless world
while it trains our sons and daughters, under a curriculum of
its own devising, to obey its corrupt behests—while it poisons
their minds with its literature, corrupts their manners with its
companionship, robs their conception of life of all its solem-
nity and reduces it to a pastime play and themselves to friv-
olous and irresponsible actors, every faculty of their higher
being arrested by a fatal atrophy and thereby incapacitated
forever for being inspired and burnished with the smile of
our Lord and Saviour and for being fitted for his exalting
service on earth and for awaking in his likeness and for re-
joicing in his eternal companionship in heaven—then the
preacher must pronounce, with all the solemnity of which ut-
terance is capable, Woe to our children, and woe to us! Woe
in this world, and woe throughout the world to come! Better,
far better for parents and children that we had never been
born! Amen.

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CHAPTER VIII
Tse Nicut INTERVIEW IN JERUSALEM

WO gentlemen met in that interview. How considerate
and courteous the bearing of Jesus and Nicodemus! We
cannot detect in either a sign of impatience, of disrespect, of
undervaluation. The Sanhedrin representative did not seek
to overawe the young Preacher, nor did the young Preacher
tremble before age, experience, and learning. The mutual
respect is bewitching. Let religious polemics learn a lesson
here. Nothing is lost by being gentlemanly in a discussion.
Matter and spirit met in that interview—Nicodemus cham-
pioning the former, Jesus the latter. Materialism strives in
vain to impress us with its freshness. The dress may be more
gaudy, but an old skeleton is beneath its folds. Nicodemus
was a materialist, and, like all materialists in his day, he was
seeking light. Jesus embraced the opportunity to impart life.
Light and life struggled for preéminence in that interview.
Nicodemus wanted to know; Jesus wanted him to live. Nico-
demus sought knowledge first; Jesus sought to put life first
and leave the way open for knowledge, always inseparable
from life, to follow. So it has ever been. Give the soul the
birth from above, and, from cellar to attic, it becomes flooded
with light. Of course we speak of knowledge and light as
they are limited to the spiritual kingdom. The “How can
these things be?” of Nicodemus has never troubled a soul that
has found the “Ye must be born again” of Jesus. When a
blind man takes in the glorious landscape and a deaf man is
thrilled by the wild music of the waterfall or softened by the
deep-toned notes of the organ, then may the soul of a man
who has never been born from above “see the kingdom of
God” and be transported by its revelations. These arctic
explorations after light among religious men are yielding
frostbites, freezes, and death. They need life more than light.
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Tfow the individual grows on us as we study this interview!
Jesus was not dependent upon a multitude for inspiration. He
could preach to one man, and so could we if we would take
our Master’s measurements of a single human soul. We are
struck with the space devoted by John to this interview. Less
space is devoted in Genesis to the first four creative days.
The interview embraced the whole plan of salvation, and Nic-
odemus was worth the amazing outlay. Any soul is worth
the best sermon ever preached. The preacher who cannot
preach except to a large, imposing, and thrilling audience has
an undeveloped faculty—is seriously lacking in the mind of
his Lord.

“The soul of man, Jehovah's breath,
That keeps two worlds at strife—
Hell moves beneath to work its death,

Heaven stoops to give it life.”

If we had seen the rigid countenance of Nicodemus during
that interview and watched his unimpassioned leave of the
young Preacher, we would have marked down the hour as lost.
Far from it. Three years afterwards, perhaps earlier, that
night’s sowing brought fruit. About that time an apologist
for Jesus was found among the Sanhedrin; and when the earth
was reeling like a drunken man and his disciples were fleeing
like sheep before a wolf, this apologist was at the cross par-
ticipating in the honors of sepulture. Jesus could wait on a
sermon three years.

What Henry Reed says so impressively, in ‘Lectures on
the British Poets,” about “‘strains of the loftiest and best po-
etry” is applicable to the highest order of preaching:

The world never yet in any of its ages has been ready for the prompt
and intelligent reception of a great poet of original powers. When poetry
speaks in its mightiest tones—those which have an echo of eternity in them
—the one living generation of mankind to whom they are addressed does
not the first moment, the first year, open its heart to the sounds. Poetry,
when addressed to the feelings, the fancy, and the imagination in some of
its lighter moods, ts listened to and admired in its earlier hour. But that
poetry for which fame, as distinguished from popularity, is in store, as

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surely as it comes from the depths of the soul, so surely it travels slowly,
often toilsomely, sinking into the deep places of the souls of men, its rest-
ing place for ages.

Let us learn also from that interview how easily we may be
mistaken in discerning the face of the religious sky in any
given place and at any particular time. The season just then
in Jerusalem was not propitious for Christianity. If one of
the disciples had said anywhere in the city or at any hour of
the morning, “This night a member of the Sanhedrin will
visit the Master to have a religious talk with him,” he would
have been counted a madman. But so it was. And his ad-
dress, “We know,” seems to intimate that he was not the only
one of the Sanhedrin concerned upon the subject.

Brother, you left your pulpit last Sunday morning under
the impression that not a soul within your reach had been
moved by the subject to which you had given your life. But
you may have touched a soul that may stand by Christ some
day too trying for his stanchest followers.

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. PART SEVEN
SERMONS AND OTHER ADDRESSES
CHAPTER I

Tue Law or MutusaL DEPENDENCE IN THE FORMATION OF
CHARACTER*

| 2b. AND GENTLEMEN: After accepting the invi-

tation to fill the place assigned me on this gala occasion
of Young Harris College, I found myself more embarrassed
than I had ever been in the selection of a theme. I was to
appear before an audience of men, women, and children long
accustomed, for the most part, to the tilling of the soil. In
emphasizing the importance of mental culture I saw the dan-
ger of creating prejudice against my cause by appearing even
to underrate the nobility of manual labor. To overcome this
embarrassment I performed a marriage ceremony by essaying
the task of making it appear that “what God hath joined to-
gether no man may put asunder.”

You are invited, for the remainder of the time I shall occu-
py, to trace the operation of the law of mutual dependence in
the formation of character. We find this law here because
we find it everywhere, and because it is everywhere it is law.

Every atom of the material universe is dependent on every
other atom. Displace one, and all the rest feel its loss. If
the smallest were annihilated, the funeral grief would be uni-
versal.

If we could travel the orbit of the mightiest of the heavenly
bodies and familiarize ourselves with all its movements and
every period of its history, we would not be able to tell the
time when it was independent of the other bodies, and we
could not detect the slightest movement in its mighty play that
was not born of association with the bright and unnumbered
denizens of space.

Then go to the little flower, blushing in the hedgerow, and

 

*An address delivered at the commencement of Young Harris College,
May 29, 1893.
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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS 1N GEORGIA

 

you will find the same law at work. The colors in the little
beauty are not essential and inherent qualities. They are only
the rays of the common sunlight which that flower absorbs by
its own peculiar texture.

(jlorious as is the sun shining in his strength, he is as de-
pendent on the little flower for achieving some of his most
delicate and bewitching wonders as the little flower is upon
him for its beauty and fragrance: sun and clouds, trees and
soil, different countries of our globe, different sections of our
own country, the social organization, rich and poor, labor
and capital, sciences. The cobbler could not paint the picture,
but he could tell Apelles that the shoe tie was not quite mght.
Bacon said: “Theology is the haven of all the sciences.”

Coming now to the departments of practical industry and
of the higher intellectualities which make up human life, we
need not be surprised to find our law in full force. Manual
labor and mental labor are not incompatible, were never in-
tended to be, and cannot be without disaster to both. We are
body and mind—not all body, not all mind, but body and mind.
Both were given to us by God; both make demands on us too
imperative to be trifled with. We must be fed, clothed, and
sheltered. We must work with our hands. Yes, manual
labor must have its place in every life that aims at the highest
excellence and the most complete fulfillment of the purpose of
our creation.

The soil must be cultivated, for the King is served from the
field; houses must be built; bridges must be constructed over
mountain chasms and rivers; ships must be launched. We
must have railroads, factories, and machinery without end.
Mines must be worked, coal fields opened, and treasures past
our numbering, above the earth and under the earth and in
the air, are to be appropriated.

Manual labor is honorable among all men. It was instituted
in the time of man's innocency; but, with shame be it con-
fessed, it 1s enterprised and taken in hand by too many of us
with too much caution and misgiving.

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Most of our definitions of education are limited to the in-
tellectual side of man. Here is one of many. “Education,”
says one of great celebrity, “is the art of urging and guiding
the growth of the human mind. It is measured not merely,
nor even mainly, by the amount of knowledge it brings in, but
rather by the amount of power it brings out. It educes the
hidden energies of the soul, strengthens them, and multiplies
and facilitates their application to the various tasks of life, as
the air, the light, the water, and the earth educe the flower
from the buried seed and evolve from the acorn the sturdy
boughs and the massive foliage of the oak.” Quite beautiful
this and sufficiently comprehensive, if man were all mind.

The world has always suffered from extremes and extrem-
ists. An overstatement or an understatement of anything is
a misstatement. One unmistakable and injurious tendency of
the times is to stop at half views of things. We magnify cer-
tain aspects of truths so as to make them fill the whole field
of vision and shut out all other aspects, thus making symmet-
rical character an impossibility. A large and brilliant flower
growing in one corner of an inclosure, the rest of which is
crowded with weeds, does not make a beautiful garden; and
no character can avoid the appearance of barrenness and de-
formity where this fractional view of life bears sway. The
magnifying of no class of functions with which our Creator
has so richly dowered us can be acceptable to him and fulfill
the high mission for which we were created so long as the
blood of other murdered functions cries into his ear from the
ground.

The mind needs the support that comes to it from a body
robust from the natural play of its functions. Horace Mann,
who thought much and profoundly on these great questions,
said: “Whoever invigorates his health has already obtained
one of the great guarantees of mental superiority, of useful-
ness, and of virtue.” Many of the great and good men of
earth have killed themselves by thinking, and many great and
good men are committing the same sort of suicide to-day.

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Here is a man with a melancholy liver (that vital part of
his organism), hanging around a drug store, when he is not
worrying over some of the unsolved problems of the country
and the times or working his way through the dark labyrinths
of metaphysics, reading what a dozen old men and women
have to say about a patent medicine, just out, that guarantees
death to everything, from the smallest microbe to the most
excruciating and obstinate spasm of bilious colic. How dif-
ferent from a grand man whom I once knew, my father, who
was brought up on a farm, who was never without one as long
as he lived, and who was not above devoting a part of every
day to some form of outdoor manual labor! I can never for-
get his ruddy face, his bright eye, his merry laugh, and his
transporting oratory, for he grew to be a great pulpit orator.
While crossing a river on a long bridge with him one day I
noticed that he was interested in the patent medicines profuse-
ly advertised on both sides of the bridge. ‘‘Well,”’ said he, “I
was a full-grown man before I knew I had a liver, and now
they are trying to make me believe that I have nothing else.”’

The body has no forgiveness for the man who ignores it;
and the transgressor may take a vacation and roam over
America and Europe, but he will nowhere find pardon for
disclaiming, as his mind’s most helpful ally, the body given
of God to befriend him in the development of his intellectual
life.

Everywhere that we meet that noble class of men called
students our hearts are pained as we trace the malign influence
of intellectual labor upon their physiognomy. This grand law
of interdependence, that was intended to associate the body and
the mind in such vital relations, can receive no deeper insult.
nor one that will be more promptly and seriously avenged, than
when the head says to the hand: “I have no need of thee.”

And then there comes a sense of self-respect and of com-
parative independence from many of the forms of remunera-
tive manual industry which enters as no small factor into the
formation of the highest type of character. What nobler sen-

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timent will you find in Robert Burns’s poems than this, which
you will find in his preface, “I was bred at the plow and am
independent”? I know that sentiments like this are regarded
as suited to those whom necessity compels to breadwinning.

To many men breadwinning means more than winning
bread. Some of the most affecting wailings that have melted
the heart of man have been uttered by men of letters, the first
geniuses of the world, who were pinched by poverty and bur-
dened with cares and chilled by neglect until they courted
death while prosecuting their lofty tasks, to whom a little rev-
enue from some form of practical industry would have been
the brace of a mountain.

Among God’s ancient people an education was considered
incomplete without a trade, and I hope to see the day in this
country when every man and woman will be in possession of
some form of handicraft with which they can dare the strug-
gle of life with a fair chance of honorable success.

Manual toil need not hinder the higher reaches of intellec-
tual aspiration. It is like Traveler, the little iron-gray horse,
carrying Gen. Robert E. Lee through the battles of Northern
Virginia without interfering with his growth into the first
military man of modern times.

Hold the lower in subordination to the higher. Make the
body the servant of the mind. Harness all forms of daily toil
to the higher purposes of the spiritual life. Hold your farm
if you can, but don’t let your farm hold you. Run your daily
business avocation if it be honorable, but see to it that it
doesn’t run you. It may be that you handle a yardstick and
measuring tape. All creditable and well, unless you allow your
soul a range of thought no longer than the stick and as narrow
as the tape. Raise horses, mules, and cattle, but keep above
their level. Build barns, new ones in the places where you tore
down the old ones if need be, and fill them with corn and
wheat and oats and rye (this latter as it comes from the field
and not from the still) and fodder and peas; but never be
caught out there saying to yourself: “Soul, thou hast much

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goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and
be merry.” It may all be gone before the rising of the next
sun, and you will be left with nothing except your soul, and
precious little of that.

But, after all we may say in favor of the practical side of
life, after the largest concessions to the interests that fill the
realm of everyday, commonplace industry, after dignifying
manual toil for daily bread, raiment, and shelter, after elevat-
ing it to the position of a menial doing the behests of the high-
er nature, we are constrained to admit that these interests are
deficient in grandeur and loftiness. Falling short of the in-
tellectual, they fail to stir or engage the heights and depths of
our being. They do not raise issues and contemplations fitting
our highest powers. Our everyday, practical pursuits, how-
ever useful and beneficent, leave the higher aspirations unsat-
isfied. All our educational schemes fall short of their sublim-
est mission if they fail to bring within reach of the toiling
masses an atmosphere calm and clear and untainted by earthly
grossness. We are fulfilling only a small part of the mission
for which we were intended unless we are fitted for climbing
into the serene heights where contemplation delights to wan-
der, where we are brought face to face with the grand and
sublime, and, from infinite splendors above, return invigorated
and inspired to the darker shadows enveloping the monotonous
treadmill of daily toil. Thus the transfiguring glory of the
mount was transferred to the more practical engagement at
the base of the mountain, and the sublime vision that burst on
Peter's housetop made the journey to the house of Cornelius
a delight. Or, coming to something nearer us, the transition
is as if one on a journey, after having been worn out with
the monotonous level of the unvaned plain, comes suddenly
within the ever-varying lights and shadows of the mighty
mountains.

Refreshing and inspiring beyond the power of words to
describe is the beauty which they spread out to his vision in
their woods and waters, their crags and slopes, their clouds

24
BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

and aérial hues. Quieting and soothing to his nerves is the
tinkle of their gushing rills, and enrapturing is the joyous
laugh of their cataracts; and as all this sublimity is poured
into his soul from their majestic aspects, as the poetry that
breathes from their streams and dells and airy heights and
trembling and blushing flowers suffuses his spirit, he forgets
the wearying tediousness of the common and regularly trod-
den way.

Why this boundless profusion of beauty scattered over this
earth of ours? It is not an idle or untimely question. It is
certainly not accidental. We can connect but a small part,
comparatively, of what God has created with our absolute
necessities. After all the inventiveness developed by man in
all ages, by far the greater part of what God has created has
defied all efforts of human ingenuity to turn it into food, rai-
ment, or shelter. He has built great mountain ranges that
cannot be blown or washed down by our machinery. He has
planted great forests where transportation must forever be
impossible. Niagara cannot be wholly utilized for manufac-
ture; neither can the wild shouts of our own Tallulah be com-
pletely hushed; nor can her leaping waters be entirely har-
nessed for grist; nor can the vast regions of her enchantment
be turned into fields of wheat and corn. And as to our beau-
tiful Toccoa, the cascade maiden would blush from insult if
any more profitable mission were suggested to her than that
of playing with the sunbeams and weaving her spray into rain-
bows. Who will deny that the all-wise and all-powerful Cre-
ator could, if he thought best, perfect the processes of fructi-
fication without attending them by the glory with which the
flower is crowned?

As it is, we find beauty and fragrance poured abroad over
the earth in blossoms of endless varieties, even where our kind
Father is contriving to supply our most pressing bodily wants.
He delights in the exuberance of beauty solely to gladden our
hearts, to impart a living inspiration of grace to our spirits,
and for our perpetual admiration.

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The spirit of beauty unfurls her light

And wheels her course in a joyous flight.

I know her track through the balmy air

By the blossoms that whiten and cluster there,
She leaves the tops of the mountains green
And gems the valley with crystal sheen.

At morn I know where she rested at night,
For the roses are gushing with dewy delight;
Then she mounts again and around her flings
A shower of light from her purple wings,
Till the spirit is drunk with the music on high
That silently fills it with ecstasy.

At noon she hies to a cool retreat,

Where bowering clms over waters meet;

She dimples the waves where the green leaves dip,
And smiles as it curls like a maiden’s lip,

When her tremulous bosom would hide in vain
From her lover the hope that she loves again.

At eve she hangs o'er the western sky

Dark clouds for a glorious canopy;

And round the skirts of each sweeping fold
She paints a border of crimson and gold,
Where the lingering sunbeams love to stay
When their god in his glory has passed away.

She hovers around us at twilight hour,

Where her presence is felt with the deepest power:

She mellows the landscape and crowds the stream

With shadows that flit like a fairy dream:

Still wheeling her flight through the gladsome air,

The spirit of beauty is everywhere. —Dowes.

It should be borne in mind that the conflict between capital
and labor now shaking the continents to their foundations is
many-sided. On the side where the anarchists and commu-
nists have massed their forces the struggle is simply diabolical,
and it justly deserves the condemnation of all good citizens
and all good men. But there are thousands added to thou-
sands of the laboring classes who are hungering and thirsting
for more opportunity for the cultivation of the tastes and
aspirations of their higher natures. They are not complaining
of the hard work, nor even of the drudgery, that belongs to

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their avocations, but of the fact that nothing but hard work
and drudgery falls to their lot. They are not complaining that
they have to wear a yoke, but that there is nothing for them
but the yoke. Instead of clamoring for money for money’s
sake, they are ready to reply in the immortal language of the
noble Agassiz, when offered a large sum of money for his
services as a mining geologist: “I have no time to make mon-
ey.” They have discovered a glory in man, even in his ruins.

Here and there amid the desolation they have found a
flower with enough fragrance lingering about it to tell what
the garden has been, and they want to restore it to its loveli-
ness. Stirring the rubbish of the wreck, they have stumbled
upon the fragments of a pinnacle that suggest, though faintly,
the stateliness of the original temple, and they want to re-
build it.

I found two young women in Middle Georgia who, when
not at work in the field, devoted, for the most part, their time
to gathering the wild flowers of the woods and extracting
their juices (the nearest they could come to paint), that they
might have wherewith to give something like permanency to
the creation of their genius. This class must have our sympa-
thy and our commendation and our help; and I thank God
that, after all the efforts of avarice to hold our land in the
grip of a polar freeze, there remain noble spirits, even among
our capitalists, whose hearts and pockets are moved with sym-
pathy with these efforts of humanity to get up and be some-
thing worthy of God’s purpose in their creation and redemp-
tion.

This spirit is irrepressible. Look to the east some morning
and bid the sun to put the brakes on his burning chariot wheels
and keep out of the heavens for a day; and when he obeys you,
then try to suppress this spirit. Stand on the ocean’s beach
and say to his proud waves, “Thus far shalt thou go and no
farther”; and when they crouch at your feet, then try to stay
this impulse in man when God says to him: “Awake, thou
that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give

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thee life.” Imbed this spirit in the heart of yon massive
mountain, and it will rend its granite-ribbed prison and come
out!

I am reminded that, beyond most men whom I have known,
Judge Young L. G. Harris, the founder of this institution of
learning, developed this excellency of character which re-
quires that all the principles and affections of our nature and
the pursuits of life be kept in due subordinate proportion to
each other. The triumph of his beautiful life, after all that has
been said or may be said about him, consists in his having
subdued to perfect harmony all the clamoring voices from his
higher and lower natures, from the body and mind, from the
wearing routine of business life and the high and broad table-
land of spiritual contemplation. He was a hard worker from
his youth to his death; but he took time from the exacting
schedule of details that marked out his daily business to make
excursions into higher regions where his mind could feast on
the best that man could furnish and where his soul could for
the time put on the garniture of heaven itself.

This institution of learning was founded that the boys and
the girls, the young men and the young women gathered here
from year to year may be permitted, while not lowering the
estimate placed upon all honorable manual toil, to lay hold on

“Riches above what carth can grant,
And lasting as the mind.”

And now, if God should ever fire another acacia near these
consecrated grounds, turn aside and look at the burning bush;
and if he should invite you into one of your mountains to re-
ceive from him revelations of his will concerning you, go up
and talk with him and consider neither above the purpose of
your noble benefactor in his generous gift.

218
CHAPTER II

DEATH BEFORE LIFE*

Text: “And when he had called the people unto him with his disciples
also, he said unto them, Whosoever will come after me, let him deny him-
self, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his
life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the
gospel’s, the same shall save it. For what shall it profit a man, if he shall
gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give
in exchange for his soul? Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me
and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall
the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father
with the holy angels.” (Mark viii. 34-38.)

WE are now kneeling down to drink at the springhead of

the stream of life. Jesus said: “If any man thirst, let
him come unto me and drink.” The text is close to the spring,
where the draughts are always the sweetest and most refresh-
ing. These words flow directly from the mouth of him who
“spake as never man spake.”’ The term “life” is so prominent
that we cannot be at a loss as to the subject that occupied the
mind and moved the heart of our Lord at the time this para-
graph was uttered.

Did Jesus allow any other subject to engage his attention?
In John (first chapter and fourth verse) we have an analysis
of this wonderful character which reduces it to one word: “In
him was life.” Thus St. Paul interprets him: “Howbeit for
this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might
show forth all long-suffering, for a pattern to them which
should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting.” (1 Tim.
i. 16.)

John speaks for himself when he says: “For God so loved
the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoso-
ever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting

 

*A semicentennial sermon delivered before the North Georgia Annual
Conference, by request of the Conference, Sunday evening, November 20,
1907, the session being held in Cartersville, Bishop Seth Ward presiding.

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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

life.” Life is the key word of this paragraph, as it was the
purpose of Christ’s mission to men. These ponderous verses
are like so many links of a chain which, when welded together
and dropped into nature’s dismal pit, enables the soul to climb
out into the sunlight of divine favor and live.

Heaven is joined to earth here, eternity to time. There is
enough here to save the soul. There is fully enough here, if
not believed, to condemn it. The words, ‘‘“Whosoever will
come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and
follow me,” certainly contain the condition of life, because
the words immediately following are: ‘‘For whosoever will
save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for
my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.’ These
words refer to soul life, spiritual life, as the words following
clearly indicate: “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall
gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a
man give in exchange for his soul?”

Our Lord clearly makes the salvation of the soul depend
upon his teachings as they are recorded in the first verse of
this text. A subject thus involving the soul’s destiny, thus
vitally related to the day when the “Son of man cometh in
the glory of his Father with the holy angels,’’ demands the
most thoughtful attention.

Are there three conditions of salvation or but one set forth
in the words, “Whosoever will come after me, let him deny
himself, and take up his cross, and follow me”? We can see
but one, presented in different aspects. Self must die. The
death is to be complete, and so complete that only the cross,
crucifixion, can symbolize it; and Christ's life is a pattern to
which the experience thus attained shall be made to conform.
Thus self is denied, the cross is taken up, and Christ is fol-
lowed.

We must keep before the mind the occasion on which these
weighty words were uttered. The Master had been giving
his disciples some new light as to his mission to men. He had
just uttered this startling revelation: “The Son of man must

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suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the
chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days
rise again.”

Peter was not listening for that information. He had been
interpreting the Master on quite a different line. As he
walked, with body bent and visage knit, his mind was upon
another destiny for his Lord. He could at times feel the
earth tremble under the tread of a mighty conqueror, hear
the shouts of his emancipated countrymen, and imagine him-
self associated with royalty about the throne. What a terrible
interruption of a rapturous vision! Suffering, rejection, and
death! The climax was calculated to produce a shock, and we
must be patient with Peter. We must not feel too sure that,
under all the circumstances, we ourselves would have been less
surprised.

“*And Peter took him and began to rebuke him’—perhaps
took him aside from the other apostles for expostulation. Of-
ficiously affectionate, he would set our Lord right and banish
this dismal conception of death instead of royalty.” (Whee-
don.) The language of the rebuke is recorded by Matthew
(xvi. 22): “Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto
thee.” Surely you have forgotten! A little while ago we
were talking of a kingdom, and you are now talking of a
cross! Peter had not discovered how large a kingdom lurked
within that cross. He did not see what his Lord, the “Son
of man,” then saw—what he himself would one day see and
what the world now sees. Peter was getting ready to receive
from the world; his Master was getting ready to give to the
world. Peter was concerned for himself, his Master for
others.

This same Peter will be found before long in an upper
chamber in Jerusalem looking, in his old, strange way, upon a
kneeling figure, girded with a towel, and a familiar face fas-
tened upon a fisherman’s wayworn feet that have just slipped
from their dusty sandals; and as he studies that picture the
words, “The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but

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to minister,” will glow with a meaning unknown to him at
present.

Peter had a noble nature. There was a loftiness about him
that commands our admiration. There was nothing small in
his composition. His people were suffering, and he longed
for their deliverance. His Master had satisfied him of his
capacity for leadership; and he was ready to march with him
through blood more than sandal-deep, if need be, to see him
enthroned in place of the Roman.

What had Jesus ever done to justify such treatment as he
was about to receive? Whom had he ever harmed? Shall
this combination of excellences such as the world never saw
before be trampled in the dust and our hopes as a nation be
quenched forever?

All this was patriotic in Peter as it was related to his coun-
trymen. It was devotion of a remarkably high order as it
related to his Master. But it was, in all its nobility, “of the
earth, earthy.”” It could not lift Peter above men. It could
not lift him above a sinful and an adulterous generation. Ris-
ing no higher than that, Peter is unsafe, his soul is doomed.
Human enthusiasm, intensified to the highest point, sublimated
until the process is exhausted, ‘‘savors of men.” It can savor
of nothing higher. ‘That which is born of the flesh is flesh,”
whatever else it may be, and there is no exemption. This it
must ever remain until the earthly touches the divine. until
Peter is lost in Christ.

It was to Peter, standing on a level with this world, imbib-
ing its spirit, ruled by its maxims, and looking to its honors,
that Christ said: “Get thee behind me, Satan: . . . for thou
savorest not the things that be of God, but those that be of
men.”” Worldliness must go to the rear. It hinders where
Christ works and imperils the purpose that brought him from
heaven.

In the Greek the Saviour’s address to Satan in person in
the temptation is the same as his address to Peter on this oc-
casion. In the sense of adversary, our Lord would have us

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understand that Satan and Peter were on the same plane.
“Get thee behind me, Satan,” is the command of Christ to
every man whose nature (and that is the “himself” of the
text) has not been renewed by divine power, whose maxims,
aspirations, and purposes have not been lifted so high above
this world and so saturated by the atmosphere of heaven that
they can no longer be said to “savor of men.”

The spirit of this world at its best can be profitably studied
in the light of this fearful rebuke. Matthew adds: “Thou
art an offense unto me.” “The word ‘offense’ is derived
from a Greek term which originally signified the trapstick to
which the bait was fixed, by touching which the animal sprung
the trap and so was caught. Hence it signifies any moral en-
ticement by which a person is entrapped into error, sin, or
apostasy. Snare or entrapment is the true moral idea.”
(Wheedon. )

Peter had a noble nature, but there was a nobler. There
was loftiness in the attitude he assumed toward the political
degradation of his people, but there was a degradation deeper
and darker than that. To be instrumental in putting them
upon their old political footing would be glory enough for
man, but to put them upon a safe footing involved the glory
of God. Peter may “gain the whole world,” and that, too,
under the high impulse of patriotism, through statesmanship
of the highest order, and by the putting forth of power against
which nothing severer can be said than that it is the power of
men; but Christ’s purposes and spirit may be absent. If so,
Peter’s soul will be lost. By thus saving the life, by merg-
ing the worldly interpretation of life and all the philosophy
that has sprung from men into Christ, one saves his life. The
self in Peter must die, that Peter through Christ may live.
Christ cannot live in us while we are alive in the sense of these
wonderful words. Self-denial is self-death. There cannot be
two masteries in the same man.

We cannot afford to have the chasm by which Christ sepa-
rates himself and his words from “this adulterous and sinful

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generation” bridged by any of the sickly sentimentalities of
modern skepticism. “Such a powerfully influential fact has
Christianity become that we need not be surprised to see other
systems, bent on the regeneration of mankind, courting her
sanction. Before this can be attained, Christianity must be
misrepresented and falsified, and this is one of the adroit
movements of the enemy in our midst to-day. In the first
great French revolution there was no compromise. It was a
war of open extermination against everything that bore the
Christian name. The infidel leaders proclaimed the Christian
system and the institutions connected with it the great hin-
drances in the progress of humanity, and they avowed their
purpose to crush and extirpate the whole. But infidels of a
certain school nowadays are covetous of the Christian name,
and each one would have his respective system accounted the
gospel which is to regenerate mankind.”” (Pearson's prize es-
say on “Infidelity.”’)

We must guard against these hybrid systems. Some of
the most dangerous enemies to Christianity to-day are those
that are crouching so close to its standard in the battle that
its supporters have hardly the heart or room to strike them.
O these enemies inside the citadel, with firebrands concealed,

“With smooth dissimulation skilled to grace,
A devil's purpose with an angel’s face"!

Christianity has not an inch to yield in this struggle. It is
Christ or death, and death to self before Christ. In compari-
son with him the highest encomium upon men, and what savors
of men, allowable is, “This adulterous and sinful generation.”
“If we be dead with him, we shall also live with him.”

Saul of Tarsus was a noble representative of men, of “this
adulterous and sinful generation”; but hear him after Saul had
died by self-crucifixion: “If any other man thinketh that he
hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more: . . . Yea
doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of
the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have

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suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung,
that I may win Christ, and be found in him, not having mine
own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is
through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God
by faith.” (Phil. iii. 4-9.)

The apostle’s self-denial was not allowed to stop short of
being made conformable unto Christ’s death. It was of self-
denial that the same apostle wrote to the Galatians: “I am cru-
cified with Christ.” In describing Christians in the same epis-
tle he says: “And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh
with the affections [passions] and lusts.” Paul preached the
same self-denial to the Galatians that Christ taught to Peter.
The self-denial in the last instance and the flesh crucifixion in
the first are the same.

Our investigation thus far compels the conviction that there
are depths about this subject of. self-denial, cross-bearing, and
Christ-following that the popular interpretation does not reach.
Self-denial means more than the curtailing of the butcher’s or
tailor’s or grocer’s bills. It extends beyond the abandonment
of the cup, the smoke, and the quid. Self may be pampered
all along in this line. One passion may be curbed, that more
blood may be thrown into another. Extravagance may be
checked, that covetousness may tighten its grip. The monk
may draw on his hair shirt and retire from the haunts of men
to walk the lonely rounds marked out by his iron-bound ascet-
icism in order that he may the more successfully plan the ex-
termination of heretics.

What baits have been thrown to conscience, God’s sentry in
the soul, to divert its attention, while pride, covetousness, li-
centiousness, and other passions and lusts hold high and un-
disturbed carnival! Countless and almost endlessly diversified
are the counterfeits of self-denial. When is it genuine sav-
ing? When the lower nature gives place to the highest nature
more than the higher nature, when the earthly surrenders to
the divine, when Peter sinks out of sight and Jesus Christ is
allowed to take his place, when Peter’s ways and thoughts

a Bes:
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surrender to Christ’s ways and thoughts. A man against
whom nothing darker can be recorded than that he has his
own way is simply getting ready to be damned. We cannot
put it more softly without turning the point of our Saviour’s
words.

Who can expound aright the last verse of the Epistle of
James without striking into the current of thought that has
borne us along in this discussion? Hear him: “Brethren, if
any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him, let
him know that he which converteth the sinner from the error
of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multi-
tude of sins.” “‘Ilis way’’ is the key to that text, and there
can be no certainty of eternal life until that way is abandoned.
“Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his
thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord.” (Isa. Iv. 7.)
The fact that the ‘way’ is not the Lord’s, and that the
thoughts are not his, entails a degree of offensiveness that
makes them repulsive t God and ruinous to the soul.

Our exposition relieves us of many crude notions of cross-
bearing. What did our Saviour mean when he enjoined tak-
ing up the cross? That question is answered in many forms.
Here is one answer which is appropriated for present use be-
cause it is the last that passed under my eye and because
it fairly represents the general conception of cross-bearing:
“Take up the cross."". How? (1) If you are a father or an
elder son, by holding prayer in the family. (2) If you are a
lay member of the Church, by participating in the exercises
of its social meetings.

But I forbear. Is this cross-hearing as our Saviour taught
it? How can that which supports my very life be a cross to
me? Are reading the Scriptures and having prayer in the
family or elsewhere a cross? As well may I call the air that
keeps me alive hy filling my lungs a cross. Are the rays from
the sun that light my pathway to be termed a cross? If so,
then the commissary of the army that feeds it along the march
and strengthens it for the battle is a cross; then is the strong

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right arm that fights poverty and its attendant evils from my
door a cross. Are the “exercises of the social meetings of
the Church” crosses to be taken up? Then let the eagle com-
plain of the pinion that beats the wind and bears him up above
the storm. No! Our Saviour does not authorize such an
interpretation of his words. Any exposition of the Scriptures
that represents religious exercises as so many tasks to be per-
formed or so many burdens to be borne or sufferings to be
endured has not learned the truth as it is “in Jesus.” Sucha
one needs the prayer of one of our opening hymns:

“O may not duty seem a load,
Nor worship prove a task!”

The cross must be kept in its proper relationships. How
persistently and vigorously the leaven of the old economy
struggles to assert itself in the new! We object to associating
an instrument of death with the means of grace, which are
the means of life, in any unpleasant sense. How could Christ
have associated in the minds of his disciples irksomeness
and drudgery with a service which he called his “meat and
drink”?

“The old man with his deeds” calls for the cross; the new
“creature in Christ Jesus” suggests the “meat and drink.”
According to Solomon, the ways of religion are “ways of
pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life
to them that lay hold upon her: and happy is every one that
retaineth her.” Hear our Saviour represent his service:
“Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I
will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me,
that I am meek and lowly of heart: and ye shall find rest unto
your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Rather let us consider the cross the measurement of the death
of the “old man,” the symbol of self-denial.

Our exposition will save us from a dangerous misconstruc-
tion of our Saviour’s meaning when he added “and follow
me.” Even Christ may be known “after the flesh,” and he

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may be followed according to the flesh. One of the tendencies
of the times is to lose the substance in the shadow, the spirit
in the letter. The outreachings of the soul after life must
find something that will sustain the clasp of its tendrils. All
that belongs to the departments of the ceremonials in the
gospel is to be held in abeyance by him who would follow
Christ.

He is above his ordinances and sacraments, and the soul
must mount far above these in order to follow him. He left
us an example that we “should follow in his steps’; but see
how far those steps are from what is merely circumstantial
or ceremonial: “Who did no sin, neither was guile found in
his mouth: who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when
he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him
that judgeth righteously: who his own self bear our sins in
his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should
live unto righteousness.’’ This fixes the spirituality by which
the observance of this command is to be characterized.

The philosophy of formalism is worthy of our study. Here
it is formulated by one of the masters:

Formalism is the result of two opposing forces. The one of which
will not let man live without a religion and, if undisturbed by hostile
influences, would lead him spiritually to worship God, who is a Spirit
The other is “of the earth, earthy,” and by its greater potency prevents
the former in the natural man from rising above its rites and ceremonies,
above the symbol and the lettered creed. An adjustment or compromise
of the claims of the two rival parties takes place. The one pointing the
thoughts and affections upward to God, and the other seeking to draw
them away from him. Both are persuaded to mect and shake hands over
a religious form, and thus the former is hoodwinked, while the latter
triumphs.

Whose Church in this broad land is entirely free from the
track of this loathsome reptile? Its sinuous form glistens
along the logs of the mountain chapel, and it displays itself in
the niches of the imposing cathedral. Straight-breasted Meth-
odism may not be farther from it than surpliced Romanism.
“Follow me.’ Christ's spirit must be the pattern after which

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excellency of character in his disciples and efficiency for the
conquest of the world must be developed. This is the extent
to which self is to be denied, and this is the test of the attain-
ment.
“Laid on thine altar, O my Lord divine,
Accept this gift to-day for Jesus’ sake;
I have no jewels to adorn thy shrine,
Nor any world-famed sacrifice to make;
But here I bring within my trembling hand
This will of mine, a thing that seemeth small;
And thou alone, O Lord, canst understand
How, when I yield thee this, I yield mine all.

Hidden therein thy searching gaze canst see
Struggles of passion, Visions of delight,

All that I have or am or fain would be—
Deep loves, fond hopes, and longings infinite.

It hath been wet with tears and dimmed with sighs,
Clenched in my grasp till beauty hath it none;

Now from thy footstool where it vanquished lies
The prayer ascendeth: ‘May thy will be done!’

Take it, O Father, ere my courage fails,

And merge it so in thine own will that, e’en
If in some desperate hour my cries prevail

And thou give back my gift, it may have been
So changed, so purified, so fair have grown,

So one with thee, so filled with peace divine
I may not know or feel it as my own,

But, gaining back my will, may find it thine.”

Once more, it must not be overlooked that this condition
of life is of universal obligation. What Christ detected in
Peter belongs to every nature. This was not a rigid religion
enjoined upon the apostolate alone. To the race belongs a
common malady, and there is but one remedy: death to the
“old man,” the unregenerate self, and life in Christ Jesus, or
Christ Jesus living in us and reigning over us. If these words
had been addressed to Peter only, or as the representative of
the apostles, then this condition of life might have been re-
stricted to the apostolate; but “He called the people unto him,
with his disciples also.” What he said to one on this occasion

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he said to all: “He said unto them, Whosvever will come after
me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and fol-
low me.” All must wear the same badge in this army. The
highest must have the religion of the lowest, and the lowest
may have the religion of the highest. In this particular the
officers must be on a footing with the rank and file.

The Duke of Wellington was communing in a small chapel
in England on a certain occasion when one of the peasantry
knelt by his side. The poor man was asked by an official of
the Church to move. The great man touched him and told
him to remain, adding very softly and humbly: “We are equals
here.”

Christianity has no individual immunities. There is no
particular way of obtaining salvation by a prince or a philos-
opher. Rank cannot plead its distinctions; genius cannot plead
its privileges. This characteristic attaches to no other religion
that the world has known, and this may be one reason why so
many of the wise men after this world have rejected it. Like
the sun, it fires the loftiest mountain summit and is reflected
by the humblest shrub in the valley. What a calamity that it
was ever interpreted otherwise!

As early as the second century of the Christian era Ammonius Saccus,
who taught in the school of Alexandria, propagated the opinion that the
whole duties of religion were not cqually incumbent upon all, but that a
sublimer degree of virtue was to be pursued and attained by those who,
in solitude and contemplation, aspired to an intimate communion with the
Supreme Being, while inferior attainments were sufficient for men who
were engaged in the active employments of life. In consequence of this
absurd opinion the moral doctrines of Christianity were divided into pre-
cepts and counsels, the former of which distinguishes those laws which
were of universal obligation, and the latter those which relate to the
conduct of Christians of superior merit and sanctity.*

It is a matter for lamentation that the Church has not freed
itself entirely from this baptized paganism. This terrible vi-

*Ruter’s “Church History.”
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rus has eaten into Romanism until it has taken the form of
gangrene, and Protestantism is deeply tainted with it.

Simply because a man officiates at venerated altars or
blanches in a hermit’s cell in quest of high and heavenly com-
munings is no reason why this condition of life should be any
more binding upon him than upon the mechanic who pushes
the jack plane or the farmer who breaks the glebe. Christ’s
purpose, unless we misinterpret his words on this occasion, is
that “love for the world shall burn in every heart, bounty for
the world be dispensed by every hand, the glad news of salva-
tion be poured from every tongue, self dethroned in every
disciple ; that every soldier in the army shall catch the Captain’s
eye and be thrilled to enthusiasm with his desire; that the sal-
vation of a ruined race shall no longer linger. He intends
that this spirit shall enwrap the Church “as the atmosphere
bathes the earth in every zone.”

In all this losing of life for Christ and his gospel there is a
saving of life—life divine and “unmeasured by the flight of
years.” Christ’s commandments are “not grievous.” If they
kill, it is that they may prepare the way for life, and that
“more abundantly.” There is a glory about man even in his
ruins. Here and there amid the desolation is to be found a
flower with just fragrance enough lingering about it to indi-
cate what the garden has been. Stirring the rubbish of the
wreck, we not infrequently stumble upon the fragments of a
pinnacle that suggests, though faintly, the stateliness of the
original temple.

The ambition of Peter and his fellow disciples that soared
to seats about an earthly throne was but the prostitution of a
purer impulse originally designed to make them “partakers of
the divine nature.”

The gospel recognizes the distinction between our nature
itself and our moral condition. In the latter its purpose is to
lay us in the dust by bringing down every high imagination ;

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but the former it never abases. The sacred record testifies to
man’s headship in the system to which he belongs and to his
having been created in ‘‘the image of God.” Christ humbles
man that he may exalt him, that he may give him his true
place. He would have self denied only that he may reach the
divine, “I'or my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are
your ways my ways, saith the Lord.” “For as the heavens
are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your
ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

The condition of life under discussion is not an arbitrary
enactment. In the very nature of things it could not be other-
wise. It is free from all unkindness and error. It is “holy,
just, and good.” There is nothing better for men conceivable.
O that men would see it! May the world yet see that the gos-
pel of the Son of man in its most rigid enactment is the very
best friend to which our fallen race can look!

How unreasonable are man’s complaints against the plan
for his recovery laid down in the gospel! When the released
prisoner sighs for the loathsomeness of the dungeon he has
left and the rough manacles that have eaten into his flesh, then
may man learn to measure the loss sustained in the surrender
of himself to Christ.

After the occasion on which these words were uttered by
our Lord, the conduct of Peter was not uniformly commend-
able, but he kept on “finding his life.” He slept on the Mount
of Transfiguration; but he was enveloped in the halo of a
heavenly vision when he awoke, and he told a glorious expe-
rience when he said: ‘‘Jesus, Master, it is good for us to be
here.” His courage failed him at the trial of his Master, but
he was found running to the sepulcher on the morning of the
resurrection. He took on fresh supplies of life at Pentecost
and dispensed them to thousands who heard him preach. He
hesitated at the vision of the sheet let down from heaven; but
the divine exposition stimulated his soul to a broader growth,
and he was willing to help the Gentiles to become partakers of
life. Hark! Whence cometh this burst of rapture? ‘Blessed

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be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which accord-
ing to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively
hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to
an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth
not away, reserved in heaven for you.” (1 Pet. i. 3, 4, mar-
gin. )

The glimmering starlight from the firmament of Peter’s
moral night has faded into the ravishing effulgence of the Sun
of Righteousness that has risen upon him with “healing in his
wings.” “If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy
are ye; for the spirit of glory and of God rested upon you.”
(1 Pet. iv. 14.)

What a leap into life from the dismal pit where the fore-
shadowing of his Master’s treatment at Jerusalem found him
and whence emanated the rebuke, “Be it far from thee, Lord”!

Once more: “Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence
to make your calling and election sure: . . . for so an en-
trance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the ever-
lasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” (2
Pet. i. 10, II.)

Given a cross to find a kingdom was the perplexing problem
presented to Peter as “Jesus went out, and his disciples, into
the towns of Czsarea Philippi.” That problem has been
solved to the joy of the apostle’s soul. He has demonstrated
in his experience how a kingdom can be the outgrowth of a
cross—yea, how it must be.

Behold! ‘The Son of man cometh in the glory of his Fa-
ther, with the holy angels.” A description so brief of an oc-
casion so grand suggests familiarity with scenes sublime be-
yond the experience of a mere man. The outlines are radiant
with heavenly glory. An angel’s paraphrase would not im-
prove it. Let not uninspired man attempt to adorn it. “I
saw,” said Daniel, “in the night visions, and behold, one like
the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven.” Now shall
be realized in all the glory of its fulfillment the promise re-
corded in Malachi: “And they shall be mine, saith the Lord

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of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels.” It is the
occasion foretold in the evangelists and epistles, Jude remind-
ing us that ‘Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied,
saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his
saints.” “Who shall be able to stand?”

If, as the dust from the sepulcher is brushed from our glo-
rified bodies, our souls can appear in the likeness of Christ, our
meetness to become “‘partakers of the inheritance of the saints
in light” will be complete. This is the court dress for the royal
occasion, and no substitute will be accepted. Character that
has been made to conform to the mind which was in Christ
Jesus, and this only, will endure the fires of that day. W/ith-
out it the king from his throne will be rejected; with it the
humblest peasant from his sweat-stained furrows will be ac-
cepted. It will be a time when all earthly tinsel will appear in
its true light and be counted at its true value; a time when all
finish that savors of men shall fade away; a time, in short,
for discerning between the righteous and the wicked.

“That awful day will surely come,
The appointed hour makes haste.”

Let none stagger at this fact. The first coming of Christ
was not more distinctly foretold than the second, and the
prophecies relating to the first have not been more faithfully
fulfilled than those relating to the second will be. Both spring
from divine inspiration, the Lord Jesus Christ numbering
himself with those who have foretold the second coming. We
cannot believe that he has come without believing that he will
come again.

Passing by the ranks of unfallen spirits; partaking of the
rapture of deliverance with those who have soared beyond the
“fiery darts of the wicked”; basking in the effulgence of a
morn that shall know no night or noon; every heart a pellucid
fountain without any sediment to adulterate its purity; every
mind brought into sweet, complete, and abiding captivity to
Christ; all in blessed union with his will; love to Christ the

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absorbing passion; his whole being open to the eternal unfold-
ing of the character and purpose of his Lord; the wearing
strain of the stadium from the cross to the throne well run and
lost in the glories of the goal; “Inherit the kingdom prepared
for you” wafted from all the choirs of heaven—Peter has
found his life!

235
CHAPTER III

First Har or Our First CENTuRY*

R. PRESIDENT AND BRETHREN: When our Con-
ference, eight years ago, took off the bridle, reins, collar,
and traces, and turned me loose, I thought I was getting ready
to have a good time, with nothing to do but to roll in the cool
sand bottoms when warm and weary, and heal the scars that
the gears had made, and slake my thirst at the streams in the
way, and graze the tender herbage by the roadside, and move
along in my own gait in sight of the team. But I found that
I was mistaken in this plan that lay out so invitingly before
me.

Out of your kindness there has come one call after another,
reminding me of the happy times when I was harnessed to the
regular activities of our beloved itinerancy.

I assure you that I rate it as no small honor to have a place
on this program that initiates the organization of the Histon-
cal Society of the North Georgia Annual Conference of the
Methodist Episcopal Church, South.

The date of such an organization would not have been set
too soon if it had started with our new name fifty vears
ago. Since then we have traveled with our planet fifty times
around the sun, so that by this time observant chroniclers
would have collected a half-century story of fascinating and
thrilling interest

I may not be with you to take part in the celebration of
vour first centennial, unless that high privilege be found with-
in the limitations of Him who carries in His girdle the keys
of death and the unseen world; but as you have already en-
tered and will pass through the most sacred and awakening

 

*A semicentennial address delivered by invitation of the Historical
Society of the North Georgia Annual Conference of the Methodist Epis-
copal Church, South, at Griffin, Georgia, November 21, 1916,

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stages of this world’s history, you will allow me while yet
with you to insist most earnestly on your pitching the purpose
contemplated in your organization on a high and comprehen-
sive plane. Catch the inspiration of Oliver Wendell Holmes’s
clarion song, which is but an echo of heaven’s many calls to
the people to go forward:

“Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,

As the swift seasons roll!

Leave thy low-vaulted past!

Let each new temple, nobler than the last,

Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,

‘ Till thou at length art free,

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!”

Up to 1866 our Conferences had been seasons of unbroken
harmony, refreshing fellowship, and spiritual elevation. They
mended any limping gait, brightened any flickering hope, in-
creased any wavering faith, and cemented us in bonds of apos-
tolic love. Who of the few survivors can forget those annual
assemblages? Autumn spreading over our hearts a mellow
and ecstatic joy as we journeyed on horseback, in buggies, on
railroads to our meeting place, talking over our great revivals
and the happy times with our people during the year, and our
full consent and burning desire to try it another year, never
tiring of

“The way the holy prophets went,
The road that leads from banishment”!

But a savage black hand struck us across our fair face a
little short of meridian, and our place in the heavenly constel-
lation had gone into eclipse, and we were feeling the chilling
twilight that preceded the darkness of night. Every telescope
in our nation and in the civilized world was leveled on us to
catch the last inspiring ray of light or to discover the faintest
possibility of our restoration to our former place of splendor
in the heavens.

That was an agony of glory. “Every sacrifice shall be salt-
ed with fire.” This is heaven’s order, and it awards the
brightest crowns to the greatest sufferers. The Refiner and

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Purifier of silver never withdrew for a moment his watchful
eye from the furnace through which we were passing, wisely
and lovingly taming the fury of the flame, so that the precious
metal should lose nothing but the dross that hindered the re-
flection of his own image.

Those were days of unprecedented anguish in the history
of Methodism, no description of which can draw such a pic-
ture for those of this semicentennial as saddened the hearts of
those on the ground, a few of whom are with us this evening.

The thirty-six years of comradeship under the endeared
name of Georgia Conference had carved on the faces of those
noble men scars which spoke of struggle, contest, and grief,
and which served now as channels for carrying off their tears
as they faced the separation—the saddest fact that confronted
them at this last session of their dear old Conference—a step
that could not have been contemplated without serious doubts
earnestly, honestly, and warmly expressed as to the wisdom of
this action.

Everything seemed to contain a clear, strong, and convinc-
ing reason for remaining an unbroken bulwark against dan-
gers increasingly threatening, but those men were strangers to
fear. The Lord of hosts was with them, and the God of Ja-
cob was their refuge; and they would not fear, though the
earth be removed and the mountains be cast into the midst of
the sea, though the waves thereof roar and be troubled.

The discussion of the division into two Conferences re-
sulted in the birth of the twin sisters, the North and South
Georgia.

The religion of that eventful period of our history was per-
vaded by an exultant sense of energy, the people everywhere
being moved by an unearthly power to undertake the harness-
ing of impossibility itself to their purpose of rebuilding the
waste places of Zion.

Our soldiers returning from the fields of war, with their re-
ligion sublimated by their suffering, taught by enduring hard-
ness as good soldiers how to accept poverty and toil and af-

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flictions amid the desolations of home, reported for duty with
a resignation and a consecration and unconquered will that put
heart into our preachers as they would meet at their appoint-
ments and cheerfully and manfully assume any tasks assigned.
How the faithful work of those scarred and maimed, crippled
accessions to the ranks of the toilers in our vineyard, should
be forever embalmed in our memories! What singing when
the congregations would strike their old camp fire songs!
What talks of love feasts! O how those boys could pray,
work in the revivals, and in every way fan the heavenly flame!

Grandfather and grandmother, father and mother, brothers
and sisters went to the field, the baby on his pallet in the shade
of a bush, to wring a scant support from the soil stained with
the blood of their dead.

Col. George N. Lester, who left an arm at the battle of
Perryville, Kentucky, returned to a little home near Marietta
to put the other arm at the service of his family on the little
farm. At a fourth Quarterly Conference of his Church in
Marietta the presiding elder was reported fifteen dollars be-
hind on his salary at that Church. Taking three five-dollar
bills to the front, Lester passed them to the secretary and asked
him to mark that deficit paid. All over Georgia men, one-
armed men like George N. Lester, were standing by the
Church.

Employing still another figure, our part of the tabernacle of
David that had fallen down called forth the lamentation of
Jeremiah: “My tabernacle is spoiled, and all my cords are
broken: my children are gone forth of me, and they are not:
there is none to stretch forth my tent any more, and to set up
my curtains.” (Jer. x. 20.) Our ark appeared to have fallen
into alien hands. An army gloated with conquest had poured
its fiery, withering lava of lead and iron over our homes, fields,
and valleys; and, as if this were not enough to complete the
savage luxury, another vulture-eyed invasion followed to pick
the bones that had been left. The symbolic raven was every-
where seen finding rest for the soles of its feet on carcasses of

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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

the slain that the dove disdained to touch, reviving in our
memories most vividly a strain of Longfellow’s “Song of
Hiawatha”:

“Never stoops the searing vulture

On his quarry in the desert,

On the sick or wounded bison,

But another vulture, watching

From his high acrial lookout,

Secs the downward plunge, and follows,
And a third pursues the second,

Coming from the invisible ether,

First a speck, and then a vulture,

Till the air is dark with pinions.

So disasters come not singly,

But, as if they watched and waited,
Scanning one another's motions,
When the first descends, the others
Follow, follow, gathering flock-wise
Round their victim sick and wounded,
First a shadow, then a sorrow,

Till the air is dark with anguish"

A writer of celebrity has quoted Emerson as saying: “An
institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.”’ In the
unprecedented struggles of Methodism in (Georgia in the six-
ties Bishop George F, Pierce was such a man. He was most
happily and opulently endowed for strengthening the things
that remained that were ready to die and seemed to have been
divinely appointed for the exigencies upon which we had
fallen. This was true of him throughout our connection;
but, residing in Georgia, we reaped the richest fruits of his
labors.

He saw nothing in the changes wrought by the war to
change our religion. fe rallied our people around personal
religion and family religion. Secret prayer and family prayer
were great topics with him. Some of the most powerful
preaching he ever did was upon those subjects. I could now
repeat his texts on those subjects and much that he said. The
closet was the spring that revived every Christian grace; and
the family was the divinely appointed institute for the reli-

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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

gious education of the children, finding nothing in the curricu-
la of wise men after the flesh to take its place. He was at his
best in pleading with sinners to turn and live. Here, again, his
texts are sounding in our ears; and the wonderful moves fol-
lowing the appeals are before our eyes, filling the aisles, from
the entrance doors of the church to the pulpit, with sinners
pleading for pardon. His whole being seemed to be wrapped
up in seeing our Zion put on her beautiful garments again.
On this he spent his dying breath in pleadings with those who
were to come after him. What an example of self-sacrifice!
He would take a mule from the plow and sell him to get his
fare on the trips to his Conferences, and he would have sold
the house from over his head to meet those engagements if it
had been necessary.

Great as he had been from his youth up, commanding in
person, overpowering in his oratory, wearing the imperial
graces of the Spirit in full fruition as his crown jewels, hon-
ored by his colleagues in the College of Bishops, he was never
more needed by his Church and never responded more might-
ily to her needs than when she trembled on the brink of such
perils as confronted him at this period of his history. Like
one of old, he trembled for the ark; and when in the pulpit the
time came for him to catch the ledge of gold on the moun-
tains and to portray in seraphic strains how the valley would
soon be overflowing with their former joy and gladness, some
of us remember how the preachers would leave their seats in
the congregation and rush to the pulpit and embrace him from
his feet to his head, shouting and praising God for the hope
of their coming deliverance from bondage, the congregation
meanwhile repeating the sounding joy.

Next to Bishop George F. Pierce stood the stalwart Hol-
land N. McTyeire in the vigor of his noble manhood, stretch-
ing out like a promontory in the midst of the encroaching wa-
ters, curbing their fury with an indomitable purpose to yield
no ground, and feeding the strength of every saint to imitate
his unflinching example. Writing of those times as he only

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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

could write, he says on page 666 in his “History of Method-

ism. :

Homes had been laid waste, cattle and mills and implements of industry
destroyed; streams were without bridges and fields without fences. Large
districts were on the verge of famine for two or three years after armies
had been disbanded. But the most discouraging feature of all was the
methods employed in reorganizing the civil governments under cormorant
exactors and demagogues and in the presence of four millions of eman-
cipated slaves with the ballot in their hands, Under these circumstances,
with these surroundings, Southern Methodism began its rehabilitation;
perplexed, but not in despair; cast down, but not destroyed.

In the summer of 1865 the bishops met in Columbus, Georgia, and,
consulting on the situation, issued an address. It was like the blast of a
trumpet and gave no uncertain sound. The Methodist Episcopal Church,
South, yet lived and in all its polity and principles was unchanged. Nei-
ther disintegration nor absorption was for a moment to be thought of, all
rumors to the contrary notwithstanding. Whatever banner had fallen or
been folded up, that of Southern Methodism was still unfurled. Wohat-
ever cause had been lost, that of Southern Methodism survived. And the
delegates to the General Conference were summoned to meet in New
Orleans in April, 1866, according to adjournment eight years before. The
peeled and scattered hosts, discouraged and confused by adversities and
adverse rumors, rallied; the Annual Conferences were well attended; and
never did delegates meet in General Conference from center and remotest
posts more enthusiastically. Of one hundred and fifty-three elect, one hun-
dred and forty-nine were present.

Surely this was grace to help in time of need. The weeping,
shouting, electrifying evangelist, with nothing on his heart but
the spiritual restoration of his people and the cool, clear, well-
poised, well-equipped, and wide-awake mind to guide, although
in the grip of two invasions of what was dearer to him than
life, felt no fear.

Other massive men—the venerable Bishop James O. An-
drew, Bishop Robert Paine, Bishop Joshua Soule, Judge A. B.
Longstreet, Dr. A. L. P. Green, Dr. John B. McFerrin, Dr.
John ©. Keener, and from Georgia Dr. Lovick Pierce, Dr.
Alexander Means, John W. Glenn, William J. Parks, Atticus
G. Haygood, James EF. Evans, Edward H. Myers, Joseph S.
Key, J. O. A. Clark, J. B. McGehee, J. W. Hinton, with a
mighty host throughout the land not confined to the ministry—

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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

“Stood for our Zion’s glory fast,
And nailed her colors to the mast.”

The great revival of religion of 1858 sweeping over the
country had led men capable of making such observations to
prophesy a great catastrophe in the near future and that God
intended this wonderful season of refreshing from his pres-
ence to prepare our people for it. Many were converted in
that revival, carried their religion with them into the war, and
were loyal to it all the more by having it tested by the comfort
and support it afforded. And those who survived were well
girded and braced for encouraging and helping the home peo-
ple to hold fast to the faith once delivered to the saints.

Maj. Gen. Clement A. Evans took the Manassas Circuit,
in Bartow County, which lay in the path of totality of the
eclipse, on the horse he rode in the war. Col. Robert Jones,
of the same county, working in a shop for a living and taking
another circuit, was his true yokefellow. Marion H. Eakes,
with a furrow plowed under his left eye by a Minie ball, took
work in the mountains. Merritt J. Cofer, with his left wrist
shattered by another Minie ball, gave his life in many ways
to his Conference. George G. Smith, also paralyzed for life
by a Minie ball, clung to the pastorate, writing catechisms
for the instruction of children and holding revivals for them,
writing the biographies of Bishops Asbury, Andrew, and
Pierce, and the histories of the Georgia people and of Meth-
odism in Georgia and Florida, and other books. R. R. John-
son, with one hand, rode his circuit on his faithful horse,
Andy. James T. Lowe made his impress on a long list of
pastoral charges. Thomas Holmes Timmons took the ap-
pointments of our bishops gladly, counting not his life dear
unto him even in age and feebleness. Of Britton Sanders, a
heroic spirit of granite mold, Gen. Goode Bryan said to me
at my camp fire in Virginia: “If I were to give Britton San-
ders an order to build a fence, he would believe it to be his
duty to God to build the best fence he could.”

Our local preachers were a strong arm of our service in

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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

holding our scattered and disheartened flocks together. In
cooperative sympathy with the itinerancy, guided by the same
spirit, serving the same Saviour, loving the same people, obe-
dient to the appointment of those in authority, they held to-
gether districts of our Conference that without them would
have been compelled to do without the gospel, unable, as they
were, to support the regular ministry.

But our women were our nobility. They were behind all
about which I have been speaking. They were to be found at
work on the farms behind the hoe and the plow; in the cook
room; bending over the tailoring boards for their husbands
and children and themselves and our soldiers; in the laundry;
with the spindle and the loom; finding time in the midst of all
these demands upon them to go to preaching, to the prayer
meeting, and to the Sunday school as teachers and superintend-
ents when men could not be found; helping to collect the sup-
port of the preachers and of the benevolences of the Confer-
ence and to bury the dead.

Hospitality in these days is so common and abounding that
it is commonplace to eulogize it; but in those days it amounted
to something, except in rare instances of the more highly
favored, to entertain. Those noble women always made room
for the weary Methodist itinerant preachers, however crowded
they might be, and shared with them the contents of the
pantry.

One Sunday afternoon one of them, hungry and tired, drove
up to the home of Samuel Charles Candler and Martha Beall
Candler (his wife), in Carroll County. Two bright, small
boy brothers met him at the gate and invited him to alight and
come in and turn the horses and buggy over to them. (It
required a pair of strong horses then and a strong buggy to
travel the Marietta District.) The boys galloped the horses
to water and back, put them up and fed them, and we were all
soon getting acquainted.

Those boys were living in hearing distance of the battle
thunder of Maj. Gen. Pat Cleburne’s division holding the

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BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

road to Atlanta at New Hope Church. God laid his hands
on the lads and put them in training for future needs. The
younger brother was received on trial in the North Georgia
Annual Conference held in Griffin in 1875 and will preside
over this Conference, much to our joy. The elder brother is
presiding over many things, but he finds his most sacred and
important work as an associate of this brother in guiding the
destiny of Emory University. Obed-edom is not the only man
in history who received a blessing from the Lord for enter-
taining the ark.

And what more shall I say? For the time would fail me
to tell of those who “wrought righteousness, obtained prom-
ises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of
fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were
made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the ar-
mies of the aliens.”

The present times are prolific of suggestions, one of which
is (and it is quite persistent) to bury the past. When the
mountains sink into the dark chasm of nothingness and the
oceans go dry and the flaming constellations of the heavens
burn out, it will be soon enough to talk about such an elaborate
and imposing funeral. Our God is not a God of the dead, but
of the living. “The world passeth away, and the lust thereof:
but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.”

On December 5, 1866, at Americus, Georgia, Bishop Mc-
Tyeire read two lists of appointments to the Georgia preachers,
seven districts to the South Georgia and nine to the North
Georgia—the Savannah, Macon, Columbus, Lumpkins, Amer-
icus, Bainbridge, and Brunswick Districts to compose the
South Georgia Conference, and the Augusta, Athens, Elber-
ton, Dahlonega, Rome, LaGrange, Atlanta, Griffin, and Mil-
ledgeville Districts to compose the North Georgia Conference.
The Bainbridge and Brunswick Districts were transferred
from the Florida Conference to the South Georgia Confer-
ence by a provision of the General Conference.

In 1886 there were 36,055 white and 8,842 colored mem-

245
BOYHOO! AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

bers, making a total of 44,897 members, and 373 local preach-
ers in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in Georgia. In
1915 there were 122,532 members and 284 local preachers.
This made an increase of 77,262 members, while there was a
decrease of 8g in local preachers. ‘The smallest district in
1916 is nearly a third larger than the largest district in 1366.
Our largest district in 1916 has more than one-half as many
members as the entire Conference had in white membership
in 1866. Our colored membership, in a Conference of their
own, have made proportionate gains.

The picture of that Conference fifty years ago, the last ses-
sion they would hold together, was a touching and melting
one, worthy of the highest and most delicate touches of the
artist's brush: Dr. Lovick Pierce, a contemporary of Bishop
Asbury, sitting by the side of Bishop Holland N. McTyeire.
an imposing representative of the incoming dispensation, sol-
dierlike in his bearing, but as tender and courteous as a wom-
an; the brotherly, soft-hearted J. Blakely Smith, the loving
John of the Conference, for many years its Secretary, his face
moistened with tears; Allen Turner's place made vacant by
death after a service running back to 1812; John W. Glenn
and William J. Parks, the jurists of the body, and Samuel
Anthony passing to the superannuate list. Then there were
the younger men, their faces carrying the inquiry: ““How are
we to get along without these dear old leaders upon whose
guidance we have depended so long?”

Then our memory recalls the young, timid applicants for
admission, listening to every word and scanning every motion,
taking on impressions never to be effaced.

The Bishop softly and affectionately told us to go to the
places assigned to us and make our permanent election of the
Georgia Conference at the close of the vear, which we did as
obedient sons of the gospel. We must meet in heaven before
we will ever be together again. The members of the South
Georgia Conference of 1866 now living (1916) are as fol-
lows: Bishop J. S. Key, J. Bo McGehee, E. A. H. McGehee,

246
BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

J. O. A. Cook, and George T. Embry. Members of the North
Georgia Conference of 1866 now living (1916): W. J. Cotter,
J. V. M. Morris, Britton Sanders, Sanford Leake, J. T. Lowe,
J. A. Reynolds, E. K. Aiken, W. T. Caldwell, A. W. Williams,
and G. W. Yarbrough.

The venerable Bishop James O. Andrew was with us, mel-
lowed with age, laden with honors, his memory recalling an
eventful life as a Methodist traveling preacher since 1813. He
was monumental in Methodism, a reminder of the past and a
guide for the future. Lay delegation was not meeting unani-
mous favor at first; but his importune advocacy of it, ground-
ed upon a conviction, deeply anchored, that it would make more
secure the perpetuity of our autonomy as a Church, gained the
passage of the measure.

I must here recommend to your society “The Life and Pa-
pers of Dr. A. L. P. Green” (Methodist Publishing House,
Nashville, Tennessee). You will find in that book information
that you ought to have and that you will get nowhere else. _

You are becoming more and more the heirs of a priceless
heritage. Your traditions are interwoven with the rich bro-
cade of American history. You will seek in vain on the pages
of fictitious romance a more entrancing, elevating story. Phe-
nomenal in your growth, nothing needed but more religion in
your principles of doctrine or polity, out on a wisely charted
sea, your colors unfurled, your portholes all open, and your
bands playing, you will have wonders yet to record. It is
recorded in the most ancient story, “God hath made his won-
derful works to be remembered,” and he requires that they
“be sought of all them that have pleasure therein.” He visited
upon his ancient people fearful punishment because they “for-
got his works and his wonders that he had showed them.” It
is more than a mere oversight or a simple act of forgetfulness
that we keep no records of God’s wonderful dealings with us;
it is a provoking sin against him. We should tremble as we
read the history of his dealings with his people, how “he was
wroth, and kindled a fire against Jacob, and made his anger

247
BOYHOOD AND OTHER DAYS IN GEORGIA

 

come against Israel, because they forgot his works and his
wonders that he had showed them.”

“Friends of the great, the high, the perilous years,

Still upon the brink of mighty things we stand.”

“Hold fast that which thou hast, that no man take thy
crown.” It may become imperiled by disasters surpassing in
fury those which we have passed and which have been under
hasty review this semicentennial evening; but remember, the
Hand that wove the tapestry of the clouds, that drowned the
earth, that caused the rainbow to span the empire of destruc-
tion, has not lost its power to make “the wrath of man to
praise him, and the remainder of wrath to restrain.”

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