The southern Baptist pulpit...

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T NITED STATES OP AMERICA.

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Preface

As it is the province of the butler to serve the viands and not entertain the guests, we will not intrude on the reader a long dissertation on even so fine a dish as we are, by the graciousness of the brethren, able to provide. The intellectual and spiritual repast to which all are invited will proclaim its own excellence.

The Southern Baptist Convention constitutes the largest deliberative body in the world, and though a few excellent volumes of sermons by single individuals have been published, no book representing the pulpit of the Convention has yet appeared. It was thought that such a volume would be a fitting memorial to our fiftieth anniversary as a separate organization.

The book is truly representative though by no means exhaustive of the pulpit talent among us ; and we believe its household value will be greatly increased by the portraits and biographical sketches of the contributors. All will welcome among the preachers, the face and sketch of the preachers' friend, Judge Haralson, the president of the Convention.

I wish here to record my profound thanks to my brethren, who, while averse to publicity, have, in the interests of the enterprise and through personal kindness, furnished the material for the book and made

my cherished plan possible.

J. F. Love.

Suffolk, Va., October, 1895.

Introduction

The meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention at Washington City, on the ioth of May, 1895, was one, in some of its features, of unusual interest and importance. The Convention was organized in the city of Augusta, Ga., on May 8th, 1845. This meeting, therefore, was the semi-centennial of the Convention's existence, and we met for the first time in the capital of the country, to celebrate our jubilee. Nearly all who were present at the original organization, have passed from the scenes of earth. Only one of them, Rev. John Thomas Sankey Park, then of Alabama, now of Mexia, Texas, was present at the recent meeting. Besides him, only two or three others, so far as is remembered, linger on these mortal shores. During the organization of this session, when nominations were being made for vice-presidents, as a fitting tribute to this honored and venerable brother, and as a most appropriate and graceful thing to be done, by a unanimous vote of the delegates he was chosen as one of the vice-presidents.

This semi-centennial occasion was rendered the more enjoyable by the courtesy of the churches in Washington. To the average American no other city in the world compares with it. It bears the name of the most illustrious and honored man in the history of modern times, " First in peace, first in war, and first in the hearts of his countrymen." And it is a matter of ever-increasing pride and pleasure, to witness at the capital, and throughout America, and in every civilized country of the globe, the memorials of the greatness and goodness and virtue of the Father of our

6 - INTRODUCTION

Country. I,et us never lose an opportunity to honor our greatest chieftain, to transmit from age to age the name and fame of a man so unselfish and incorruptible in his patriotism ; so faithful, persistent, and successful in his advocacy and efforts for civil and religious freedom ; so true to all public and private trusts committed to his hands ; so reverent and devout in his Christian character ; and so sublime in his life and death.

It was in this city, with all these objects of public and patriotic interests, and a thousand other attractions, that by the kind and hospitable invitation of the brethren and people of Washington, we were permitted to hold the recent session of our Convention. From every quarter of our extended territory, the representatives from the churches, with several thousand visitors, came. The total number of delegates present as shown by the rolls, was eight hundred and ninety, besides some hundreds of ministers and laymen whose names were not enrolled. The President of the Board of Commissioners of the District of Columbia (answering to the office of mayor of the ordinary city), the Hon. John W. Ross, visited the Convention at its opening, and greeting us with words of hospitable welcome, extended the freedom of the city to the delegates and visitors. The venerable and greatly beloved Dr. C. C. Meador, pastor of one of the Baptist churches of the city, gave us cordial welcome on the part of the Baptists and Christians of the community. The President of the United States tendered a reception, giving us the opportunity of meeting him and shaking his cordial and patriotic hand. The greeting we received, all around, was touchingly kind and cordial, and for it we cherish and express our profound and most grateful acknowledgments. God bless the brethren, people, and city of Washington !

There was not a visitor present who did not return

INTRODUCTION 7

to his home with higher inspirations of religion and dnty, and with a broader and deeper love of country. To their children and friends they will tell the story of what they saw and felt, and the influences for good thus set astir can scarcely be bounded as to place or time.

But it is not alone in the South that these benign influences are to be felt and ripen into fruit. The real dispositions of Southern Christians to the cause of Christ at home and abroad, and the love they bear our common country, were displayed on the border line between the sections. Northern friends and brethren, who honored us with their presence, had opportunity to observe the principles of religion and patriotism by which Southern Christians are animated, and to note that, no more in one section than in the other, is the sentiment dominant for " America for Christ," and for a united and happy country.

Had any one ever before entertained doubts as to the policy of the organization of the Southern Baptist Convention, of its very great and triumphant progress, and of the importance and necessity for its continued existence in the indefinite future, if for no other reasons than of convenience, and for the marshaling of greater armies of workers for the betterment of mankind and the redemption of the world, — he is a great disbeliever in facts if those doubts were not greatly shaken or dissolved at our recent session. Our struggles and triumphs, time and space will not here be taken to recount. Concerning these better information than can be given in this introduction may be found in the historical discourse of Dr. W. H. Whitsitt, delivered at the Convention and appearing in this volume.

The general enthusiasm in the interests of the Boards of the Convention and our Theological Seminary, and for an educated ministry, is attested in the fact that the Southern Baptist Convention is now the

8 INTRODUCTION

largest representative assembly of Christian men that anywhere assembles. And still it grows, until the question of its free entertainment, in our largest cities even, has become one of embarrassment. Its ambition and mission are to give the true gospel, as we understand it, to the perishing millions in our own country and other lands ; to promote peace and good will among all men, and intelligence and enlightenment, by the spoken word and the printed page, to all ranks and conditions ; to hasten, as far as may be, the millennial dawn.

Sunday was a memorable day at our recent meeting. The pulpits of most of the Protestant churches were tendered to the Convention, with solicitations for our preachers to occupy them. Accordingly, the usual committee having this matter in charge made assignments for preaching by members of the Convention at these several places of worship.

It was a happy suggestion to the mind of our brother, Rev. J. F. Love, pastor of the First Baptist Church at Suffolk, Va., to get together and publish in a volume some of these discourses, together with others, because contributed by leading ministers from all the States in the Convention. The volume will thus be of double interest, being in some measure memorial of the occasion and containing specimens of sermonic literature representative of the Southern pulpit.

In behalf of brethren and friends, North and South, the writer begs to express his gratification at the appearance of this volume, so unique and valuable, and to solicit for it the considerate attention of the brethren and Christians generally.

Jonathan Haralson

Montgomery, Ala., July 17, 1895.

Contents

I. Civil Government and Religion, . . . . ii

BY GEORGE B. EAGER, D. D., MONTGOMERY, ALA.

II. A Retrospect, 30

II 12 The Southern Baptist Puxpit

tribute unto Caesar or not?" Shall we, as God's people, owing allegiance to him as our King, pay taxes to Caesar ? Are these Herodians right who say that the tax is lawful and ought to be paid, or are we Pharisees right who claim that it is treason against Jehovah ? Ought we, or ought we not, to pay tribute to Caesar?

A PERILOUS ALTERNATIVE.

They must have waited in breathless silence and with gleaming eyes for the answer. He must say " yes " or " no," they thought. He cannot escape the artfully planned and perilous alternative. He will be thrown off his guard and fall into the trap. The Roman supremacy was certainly a usurpation. Jehovah alone was their King. And this Prophet of a new, divine kingdom, surely he will hold his followers free from fealty to this heathen power.

Danger lurked on either hand — death by the mob, or death at the hands of Rome — here the fierce fury of the fanatical crowds that thronged the temple courts, there the cruel craftiness of Herod's bailiffs waiting to arrest him for treason against Caesar.

But " the forked tongue and envenomed fang of the serpent" were not hidden from Jesus. They had come fawning, u Master, thou art true and good and brave "; he flashes upon them the lightning of one scorching word, u Hypocrites ! " u Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites? Show me the tribute money!" And before the breathless crowd they hand him a Roman denarius. Holding it up — -on one side the haughty face of the Emperor Tiberius, and on the other the hated title, " Pontifex Maximus ' ' — he gives, as he was wont to do, an object lesson. " Whose is this image and superscription ? " They say unto him, " Caesar's." u Render, therefore, unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's." You have accepted this coin, and in so doing have answered your own question; for, as your rabbis have taught, to accept the coinage of a king is to acknowledge his sway. But he will not leave the matter there — he adds the weightier and more far-reaching words, u And unto God the things that are God's."

Is it a wonder that they stood before him amazed and silenced ? that the evangelist simply adds, " They marveled, and left him, and went their way n ?

A FAR-REACHING ANSWER.

The answer left nothing to be added. It met these treacherous questioners with a counter force of wisdom which crushed their conspiracy at once. It did more. The question which they asked that day was not simply a question of the hour, but a question of the ages — a great question that then, for the first time, had struggled to the surface and begun to clamor for solution. And more and more the world has come to see that the answer given so instantly and with such military brevity, affords the final solution of that question. It came, not only to give relief to Jewish minds, then perplexed with the problem of the relation of their civil government to heathen rule ; but it came, as students of history and government everywhere are coming more and more to acknowledge, to settle forever the "great problem of the relation of Church and State — the great generic question that lies back of so many of the grave, specific problems of our day — the question of the true relation of civil government to religion. To the consideration, or rather the reconsideration, of that question, according to the demands of our times, I venture to invite you to-day. If any apology be needed for so doing, I would have you recognize it in the fact that as Baptists we are committed by our principles and our history to be content with nothing less than a right solution of this great question ; that we are reminded by this semi-centennial session of our Con-

B vention, of what our forefathers did and suffered for the principle involved, and that we hold this session in the nation's capital where so often the representatives of a free people have been called to face the problem in the halls of legislation.

A REVOLUTIONARY DOCTRINE.

Detaching this saying of Jesus, then, from its immediate historical connections, and viewing it as an aphorism of infinite wisdom given for the guidance of men in all ages, let us inquire afresh into its teaching.

Here is the clear recognition of man's twofold relation to government — human and divine. Here is an equally clear distinction between duties growing out of this twofold relation. Here is the implicit assertion of the separateness or independence of the two governments to which man stands related. And here, above all, is the unequivocal declaration of the duty and feasibility of absolute and uncompromising loyalty alike to Caesar and to God, to human government and divine. In such teaching, the Master went beyond all precedent. He defied the wisdom of the ages. It was as radically at variance with the teaching of Moses as with that of the philosophers. Hebraism taught the 'doctrine of a perfect identification of the two governments and presented the sole instance known to history of a pure theocracy. Paganism demanded at least an alliance between the two ; Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans considering the one as a sort of necessary adjunct to the other. In imperial Rome the emperor was also chief priest ; and in republican Athens it was as the guardian of religion that the State decreed the death of Socrates. But here was one preaching a doctrine as far removed from Hebraism as Hebraism was from paganism in its highest form. As every form of this alliance in paganism had fallen into utter degeneracy, so now even the Jewish theocracy had grown corrupt, and was to be superseded. In the development of humanity the time had come when such union or identification of human and divine rule could no longer serve the highest interest of God's kingdom, or the true progress of the race. The old order was doomed, and the new order must rise out of its ruins. Henceforth human conduct was to be divided into two kinds : the conduct of the mind and the conduct of the body. Over the conduct of the body the State had rightful jurisdiction, but into the sacred domain of mind and conscience no State or legislature or officer of the law could ever rightfully penetrate, for in that realm God only could rule. These words of Jesus, then, cut into the very heart of things. Leopold von Ranke was not far wrong when he said it was the Master's most revolutionary utterance. It was right in the teeth of the most revered customs and institutions of the day, and utterly subversive of the great molding ideas and immemorial tendencies of antiquity. It was destined, as Richter says, to " Lift empires off their hinges and to turn the current of the ages out of its channel." It was the first streak of a new dawn ; the sunrise gun of a great new day ; the opening of the world's grandest era.

THE PRINCIPLE INVOLVED VIOLATED.

You need hardly to be reminded that not in the slightest degree, by either teaching or conduct did our Lord or his apostles contravene or compromise the great principle he that day enunciated. For three centuries, indeed, or down to the time of Constantine, all of his followers, individuals and churches, Jewish and Gentile, were true to it. The Roman State, of course, ignored and violated it. You know the vicissitudes through which the truth it stood for then passed, and how frequently and variously it has been violated since. The periods that witnessed the most signal of these violations have been pithily summed up by one of our own honored leaders in four apt descriptive words : persecution, protection, power, and policy. The one word that designates the first period is persecution. Christianity, in the eyes of the Roman empire, was an illicit religion. But the pruning knife only gave vigor to its growth. Ten converts arose for every martyr. At last the heathen world stood awestricken before the spectacle of such constancy and yielded, at least outwardly, to the claims of Christ.

Then began the second period, from 325 to 1050, for which the word patronage is the fit designation. Cons tan tine established a royal protectorate over the church. As his imperial predecessors had persecuted Christians, so now he will persecute the heathen. It became, therefore, of worldly advantage to profess Christianity; and the civil power combined with a lax morality and the unscriptural innovation of infant baptism to sweep whole populations into the church. The kingdom of God came to be identified with the church, and the church with a colossal hierarchy. Ecclesiastical arrogance knew no bounds, and the Church, nourished in the bosom of the State, stung to death its would-be protector.

A third period followed, from 1050 to 1250, in which the Church usurped the function of the State, and brought the world to her feet. The papacy arose to lord it over the bodies as well as the souls of men. Quietly appropriating to itself the prerogatives and traditions of pagan Rome, it wielded over the world an equally absolute and despotic power.

Then followed the period of power. In Hildebrand's claim to jurisdiction over all civil governments, in Henry the IV. purchasing his crown by penitential prayers as he waited barefoot in the snow at Canossa, and especially in the wresting from the emperor of the right of the election of the popes, and

CIVII, GOVERNMENT AND RELIGION 1 7

the giving of it to the cardinals as the princes of the church, we may trace, as the historian already quoted shows, the successive steps of hierarchy toward absolute dominion, temporal as well as spiritual.

Then followed a fourth period. As the first was the period of persecution, the second the period of patronage, the third the period of power, so the fourth has been as fitly called the period of policy. Papal assumption overleaped itself and provoked revolt. The sceptre departed from the church and she was forced to secure her ends by diplomacy. So from the year 1250 to 151 7 she became the slave of the temporal powers, and by most unworthy concessions in spiritual things purchased their help in the extermination of her foes.

" Thus had the church run through its four stages of persecution, patronage, power, and policy. It had apostatized from Christ, sold itself for worldly gain, become a false church instead of a true church." Where then in that dark time, it may be asked, were the true people of God ? And the answer comes, " Hiding in dens and caves of the earth, excommunicated, stretched upon the rack, burned at the stake. The Albigenses had been well-nigh exterminated ; John Huss and Jerome of Prague had suffered martyrdom ; and Savonarola's fiery appeals were preparing his doom."

A NEW ERA DAWNS.

But God fulfills himself in many ways. " The old order changeth, yielding place to the new." The year 1492 stands not only for the culmination of the old, but the rise of the new order of things. The practical demonstration had been complete that the alliance of Church and State was iniquitous and disastrous. "The turning point, the beginning of modern history," it has been well said, u is the discovery of America."

As the Renaissance was " the new birth of the human intellect," and the Reformation " the new birth of the human conscience," so what is known as the Revolution in England, France, and America was u the new birth of the human will" — the providential unfettering of human life for its highest activities. In spite of all the darkness, the morning hour had come of that glad day which we now enjoy, and which, however it may be overcast, can never, we may be sure, set in human bondage and gloom.

THE PRINCIPLE RECOGNIZED BY THE FOUNDERS OF

OUR REPUBLIC.

In the providence of God it was reserved for the United States of America to abolish forever, as far as the general government could do it, this unnatural alliance of Church and State, and to secure the most sacred of all rights and liberties to all her citizens — the liberty of religion and the free exercise thereof. Thus there was given to the world the first example in history of a great civil government deliberately adopting this principle of separation, and depriving itself forever of all legislative control over religion.

The embodiment of that principle in the American Constitution and the actualizing of it in the administration of our government, forms, therefore, one of the great landmarks in human history.

THE AMERICAN IDEA.

The true American idea of the relation of civil government to religion, is not to be sought, of course, in old English legislation, or in colonial conceptions and institutions ; or even in certain questionable Supreme Court decisions ; but in that great instrument which is the organic law of the republic, the Magna Charta of our liberties, and the one authoritative exponent of the genius of our government. That instrument avowedly recognizes u the free exercise and enjoyment of religion as an inherent, inviolable, and inalienable right of man," and secures full liberty of religious thought, speech, and action, " within the limits of the public peace and order." It exacts that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. " It makes as clear as human language can make it that the government does not adopt or establish Christianity, or constitute itself in any formal sense a " Christian nation." The fathers of the republic were God-fearing men. The foundations of the republic were laid in faith and prayer ; but the Constitution is avowedly and skillfully framed so as not to give the Christian religion any more than* any other the shadow of precedence or special privilege.

CIVII, GOVERNMENT HAS NO RELIGIOUS FUNCTION.

The American idea, then, as thus reflected in our organic law, is that civil government has no religious function. Not even Cavour's much-lauded doctrine of a free Church in a free State finds recognition or support in the American Constitution.

It does not undertake to define a "church," in its idea, essence, or marks. It gives no slightest sign of a recognition of the existence or non-existence of churches or of a church. As far as the government is concerned, the citizen may associate with his fellows in worship or worship individually and privately ; yea, so far as the State knows or claims to have any right to know, he may be an atheist and absolutely hostile to religion ; but if he is obedient to civil laws, he is persona grata before the law.

According to this idea, not only every Christian has rights, whether he be Roman Catholic or Protestant, Episcopalian or Baptist, Swedenborgian, Unitarian, or Seventh-Day Adventist ; but the Jew also has rights, rights and immunities equal to and the same as those of the Christian. Yea, more, Jew and

Mohammedan ; Buddhist, Theosophist, and Confucianist; Huxley, the agnostic; Frederic Harrison, the positivist; Felix Adler, the ethical culturist; Col. Ingersoll, the agitating skeptic ; Emerson, the transcendentalist, if they are citizens, stand upon exactly the same plane of right and privilege. Only let them be law-abiding men, and they may be this or that religiously, or utterly nondescript otherwise ; they are guaranteed freedom to enjoy their religion, or their non-religion, with "none to molest or to make them afraid." In other words, according to the American idea, the civil code is negative, not positive. The power of the State is power of police. Its function is justi'ce, not love. Its demand of men is duty to man, not duty to God, and even this duty is limited so as to be not the positive doing of good, but simply the abstaining from doing wrong unto our fellows. As regards religion, it has nothing to do but to secure liberty to the individual and protection to the organized religious society or worshiping assembly.

SOME SIGNIFICANT SIDELIGHTS.

That this is the idea and spirit of the Constitution may be further shown in the history of the formation of that instrument ; in the known opinions and public utterances of the founders and first president of the republic ; and in the interpretation of the constitutional amendments and provisions touching religion by the most competent and incorruptible of American jurists and statesmen. It is a matter of record that in March, 1788, a meeting of Baptists was held in Virginia, at which were present representatives from New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and other States, in which the question was taken up, whether the Constitution made sufficient provision for religious liberty. Upon consultation with Mr. Madison, they determined to address General Washington, and in August, 1789, they did so in these words :

4 1 When the Constitution first made its appearance in Virginia, we had unusual strugglings of mind, fearing that the liberty of conscience (dearer to us than property and life) was not sufficiently secured. Perhaps our jealousies were heightened on account of the usage we received in Virginia under the British Government, when mobs, bonds, fines, and prisons were our frequent repast."

The great first president of the republic, though trained in an Established church, and at a time too, when men had not ceased to think that they who administered flogging, imprisonment, and even direr persecutions for religion's sake, were verily doing God's service, responded, setting forth the spirit of the Constitution in words which, like those of the Constitution itself, have been the wonder and the admiration of statesmen, historians, and lovers of liberty the world over :

"If I could have entertained the slightest apprehension that the Constitution framed in the convention where I had the honor to preside might possibly endanger the religious rights of any ecclesiastical society, certainly I would never have placed my signature to it ; and if I could now conceive that the general government might ever be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure, I beg you will be persuaded that no one would be more jealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny and every species of religious persecution. As you doubtless remember, I have often expressed my sentiments, that every man, conducting himself as a good citizen and being accountable to God alone for his religious opinions, ought to be protected in worshiping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience."

Other dissenting bodies were also active in demanding explicit guarantees against any semblance or possibility of the establishment of a religion in the young republic ; and it was in consequence of such demands that the first Congress, under the leadership of James Madison, proposed to the States the immortal First Amendment, which so explicitly and unmistakably provides that " Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

But let us note the idea, strictly speaking, is not American. It was no invention of our people or our times. Traced to its source it is found to be neither English nor French nor American nor even modern, but Christian. Its author is none other than He who spake these words, " Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's, " and who taught that great, new doctrine of the kingdom of God, " My kingdom is not of this world."

THE LEAVEN AT WORK IN OTHER LANDS.

The influence exerted by the United States in this respect upon other countries where the old order survives, has been incalculable. The forces and ideas that have been dominant here have been powerfully operative elswhere, especially in European lands. A new day has dawned in the British empire. The Protestant church of Ireland has been set free from the control of the legislature. Scotland is asking for the application of the same principle of religious equality. Thirty-one out of thirty-four representatives of the Welsh people are charged to seek the termination of the connection that binds the Episcopal Church in Wales to the British Parliament, and with this problem the House of Commons is now wrestling. Then the separation of Church and State is already accomplished in the habitual thought of the English people. Men are behaving on every hand " as though the formal deed of separation were

CIVII. GOVERNMENT AND REUGION 23

already drawn and were only waiting for the signatures of the respective parties therto. M " In theory," says Dean Stubbs, " Church and State were intended to grow together, but in practice the State has outgrown the Church, and left it, as it were, centuries behind." "Not by any law, expressed or implied, but by the assumption of the clerical party," says Canon Barnett, " the nation has become separate from the church." Episcopalians have come themselves to recognize the gradual detachment of the Anglican Church from the life of the people, and an elect few, among whom the new Bishop of Hereford takes primary rank, "are prepared, if not to welcome, yet unfearingly to allow, the total severance of the bond which has bound together for so many centuries the Anglican Church and the Crown." "Every year," says Dr. John Clifford, "adds to the number of Churchmen in England, as well as in Wales, who would rejoice in the Act of Separation, if only the resources of which the church is at present possessed were not in any way diminished."