The American Missionary — Volume 43, No. 09, September, 1889Various
Religion
The American Missionary — Volume 43, No. 09, September, 1889
Various
Congregational churches -- Missions -- Periodicals; Home missions -- Periodicals
We appeal, therefore, to the pastors whose collections for this fiscal
year have not been taken to take their collections and forward them to
our treasury before the close of September.
* * * * *
AS TO "METHODS".
We have been thinking that the methods of Christ were divine as well as
his truth, and that when the Christian world will use Christ's methods
in the propagation of truth there will be a great advance upon some
features of the present. Dr. Parkhurst has some very suggestive
sentences in this line of thought in a sermon on "The Regenerative Force
of the Gospel." His words are: "Christ never patches. The Gospel is not
here to mend people. Regeneration is not a scheme of moral tinkering and
ethical cobbling. In the Gospel, we move into a new world and under a
new scheme. The Gospel does not classify with other schemes of
amelioration."
This accords with our thought of the methods of Christ. The way to meet
that which is wrong, is to meet it as a wrong. We shall not do well to
ameliorate it. If we may not expect those who have been "raised" amid
prejudices and ignorance to be leaders for the absolute rectitude of
things, those who have not lived where this excuse is available should
be the leaders. If some do not lead, none will follow. Where principles
were at stake, Christ never gave way to prejudices. He never yielded to
that which was in itself wrong. If those to whom he ministered could not
come up to his standard, then he waited, but he never compromised. That
which is right should not yield to that which is wrong.
It may take a right hand. It may take an eye. But "If thy right hand
offend thee, cut it off," and "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it
out." He would not "cut it off" by amputating the finger and gradually
disjointing it up to the mark; and plucking out the offending eye is not
to bandage it so that it temporarily does not see the evil to which it
is attracted. No, the Gospel is not a system of repairs. It is not here
to temporize, but to make all things new, and it strikes at the heart of
evil and not at its surface.
It was not Christ's method to ignore an evil which confronted him. He
did not evade or get around issues. He met them. He answered them. He
was an "incarnate conscience" in the land. He knew what was in man. His
followers cannot fail when they walk closely with him in the path which
he has made plain.
* * * * *
FIVE QUESTIONS.
1.--If the Georgia Association had been without any colored members in
it, would the Georgia Conference ever have been formed?
2.--If the Georgia Association had been without any colored members,
would the Georgia Conference have declined to unite with it, on some one
of the terms submitted by the Georgia Association?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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