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 i .0 -J-1/ VJ/\L>L> . . 
 ^ THE SOUTH 
 
 VICTOR I. MASTKRS
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES
 
 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH
 
 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 A PRESENTATION OF THE HOME 
 PRINCIPLE IN MISSIONS, ESPECIALLY 
 AS IT APPLIES TO THE SOUTH 
 
 ARRANGED TO MEET THE NEEDS 
 OF MISSION STUDY CLASSES AND 
 ALSO OF THE GENERAL READER 
 
 BY 
 
 VICTOR IRVINE MASTERS. D.D. 
 
 SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLICITY OF THE HOME 
 MISSION BOARD OF THE SOUTHERN BAPTIST CON- 
 VENTION ; AUTHOR OF "BAPTIST MISSIONS IN 
 THE SOUTH," "COUNTRY CHURCH IN THE 
 SOUTH," "BAPTIST HOME MISSIONS," ETC. 
 
 The entire Christianizntion of North America is the greatest single 
 enterprise confronting the churches of the whole world. William T. 
 Ellis, after a world-tour to study missions. 
 
 Now the Spirit speaketh expressly that in the latter times seme 
 shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and 
 doctrines of devils. 2 Tim. 3:1. 
 
 Striving together for the faith of the gospel ; and in nothing terri- 
 fied by your adversaries. Phil. 1:27, 28. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 PUBLICITY DEPARTMENT OF THE 
 HOME MISSION BOARD OF THE 
 SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION 
 ATLANTA, GEORGIA
 
 Copyright. 1918. by 
 
 THE HOME MISSION BOARD OF THE 
 SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION 
 
 Town ley & Kysor 
 Printers and Binders 
 Atlanta, Georgia
 
 \.J t 
 
 "* *7 IX 
 u, ( I D 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The manifest purpose of the author of "The Call of the 
 South" is to make a contribution to the better understand- 
 
 C/J 
 
 j ing of the social and religious conditions of the South, and 
 
 to point the way to a more intelligent dealing with the 
 
 5 same. Dr. Masters is well qualified to speak on these 
 
 matters. He has been a diligent student of Southern con- 
 
 ^ ditions. His love for the South and loyalty to her highest 
 
 ideals are his both by right of inheritance and of devoted 
 
 Sr service. Through the columns of the religious press, for 
 
 JO several years past, and in some well-written books, he 
 
 o has revealed a comprehensive grasp of Southern problems, 
 
 a keen insight as to the trend of things, and a constructive 
 
 purpose in treating complex issues. 
 
 ft The present volume confirms the impressions made by 
 
 * his previous efforts. A discriminating survey is made of 
 
 O the principal characteristics of Southern life. There is 
 
 u no attempt to treat these various phases exhaustively, for 
 
 5 each one would itself require a volume. They are sug- 
 
 3 gestively sketched, and so co-ordinated as to set out the 
 
 real problem of which they are factors. A distinction is 
 
 properly made between those factors that are peculiar to 
 
 the South, e. g., the Highlander, the Negro, etc., and those 
 
 that are common to the nation, such as false faiths, the 
 
 country church, immigration, etc. 
 
 There are in some of these common problems, however, 
 aspects that are entirely Southern. This is true of the 
 country church. The same thing is true in the considera-
 
 6 PREFACE 
 
 tion of the material prosperity of the South. This section 
 has shared in the general prosperity of the country, but, 
 unlike the rest of the country, this is a comparatively new 
 experience for it. The past generation in the South was 
 brought up largely upon the discipline of adversity. By 
 the very necessities of the case, the emphasis given to 
 gospel preaching in that era was upon the comfort and 
 hope it had to offer. New conditions make imperative a 
 different accent in gospel preaching. It will not do merely 
 to proclaim to an age of prosperity the comforts that were 
 sorely needed in a period of depression and adversity. 
 The South does not need and has little hospitality for a 
 new gospel. The demand is insistent, though, that the man 
 of to-day shall know the gospel better, and learn more of 
 the meaning of social justice, self-control, stewardship, and 
 Kingdom claims generally. 
 
 The method of approach in dealing with our home con- 
 ditions is well stated in the chapter on "The Home Principle 
 in Missions." If we cannot bring to our service in behalf 
 of the South, the same worthy motives and unselfish pur- 
 poses that may be found in other spheres of activity, we 
 shall be of little help to our own land, and shall lessen 
 the value of the South to the nation and to the world. 
 
 "The Call of the South" is admirably suited for Mis- 
 sion Study Classes, as well as for the general reader. It 
 is greatly to be desired that it shall have an extensive 
 circulation, and that the churches and the homes of the 
 South may be instructed and inspired by its virile message. 
 
 CHAS. W. DANIEL, 
 Pastor First Baptist Church. 
 
 Atlanta, Georgia.
 
 AUTHOR'S FOREWORD. 
 
 This is an effort to present the appeal of homeland mis- 
 sions from the angle of underlying principles and motives. 
 Only those specific fields of endeavor are considered that 
 seem best to show the magnitude of the home principle 
 in missions. The undertaking is to interpret the missionary 
 needs of the South to itself, rather than to others. Per- 
 haps the story will not therefore be less informing to 
 others. 
 
 The book is intended for Mission Study Classes and 
 the general reader. It is also earnestly hoped that busy 
 pastors will find in it that which shall stimulate their minds 
 afresh, as they seek to arouse their churches to a sense 
 of the moral grandeur and strategic significance of the 
 work of bringing the people of the South both to know 
 and to serve the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 Sometimes as a minor note, sometimes as a major, two 
 thoughts recur frequently throughout these pages: (1) 
 As never before, American Christianity is to-day beset by 
 Antichrist and other false teachings. (2) We positively 
 must bring the lives, as well as the souls, of our people 
 under subjection to Christ, if we are to win and hold this 
 country for him. The weird note of the most awful war 
 in the world's history has also pushed itself into the medley, 
 for the war in Europe has a meaning which now chal- 
 lenges and conditions everything else in the world. 
 
 In Chapters I and II it is sought to demonstrate that 
 building up the Christian life through adequate teaching
 
 8 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 and exercise is as truly a part of the mission program of 
 Christ as is pioneering for souls among the multitudes who 
 have not heard. The future influence and usefulness of 
 Christianity in this country will depend largely upon 
 whether the nurturing principle shall be magnified in our 
 belief and practice as it is in the New Testament teaching. 
 Some teachers and preachers, and a very large number of 
 church members, have not accepted this as a requirement 
 of our Lord. The rank we shall accord homeland missions 
 in our Kingdom plans will depend upon our acceptance 
 or non-acceptance of this principle. If our responsibility 
 is only to witness before the world that Jesus is the Christ, 
 there remains comparatively little mission work to do in 
 America; most of the people here have in some fashion 
 heard about Jesus. But if we are responsible for bringing 
 men to know Jesus and for building them up in Jesus, 
 homeland missions immediately takes rank alongside of 
 work in lands where Christianity is yet in the pioneering 
 stage. 
 
 Some may consider too strong certain utterances herein 
 about religious liberalism and false faiths. The prospect 
 of causing pain is distinctly disagreeable to me. But the 
 two chapters on false faiths and liberalism contain my 
 deepest convictions on the subjects treated. They have 
 been written only after years of better opportunity than 
 most persons enjoy to study present religious tendencies. 
 Some of the best posted and most devout students of 
 religious life in the South have done me the kindness to 
 read and criticise the manuscript of the book, including 
 the chapters on latitudinarianism in doctrine. Not one of 
 these gentlemen has intimated that the treatment should 
 be softened, while some singled out these chapters for
 
 AUTHOR'S FOREWORD 9 
 
 special commendation, and urged that, in addition to their 
 use in this volume, they should in some other form be 
 scattered broadcast among the rank and file of our people. 
 
 Some years ago, I attained an unexpected personal pub- 
 licity in connection with a banner, inscribed with the 
 words: "Fraternal sentiment is good, but loyalty to Christ 
 is better." In the service of the Home Mission Board, I 
 had placed these words on a banner which was hung on 
 the walls at the Southern Baptist Convention, in the belief 
 that they set forth an important and timely truth. It de- 
 veloped that some of our leaders, at that time, sincerely 
 feared that the emblazoned sentiment was an offence 
 against Christian unity. Since then, the rapidly increasing 
 aggressions of religious liberalism have changed all that. 
 Those who deprecated the sentiment of the quoted motto 
 have become among the ablest setters-forth of the dangers 
 of stressing fraternity at the expense of obedience to 
 Christ. The incident is here recalled to show how rapidly 
 religious liberalism has increased in boldness and out- 
 spokenness, and how almost universal among responsible 
 leaders of God's people is the conviction that here lurks 
 a danger to true religion which is as great as it is astute 
 and determined. I am so confident that a supreme danger 
 to true religion lurks in those faiths which minimize sin 
 and the Saviourhood of Christ, while they magnify en- 
 vironmental salvation and an external exhibition of human 
 fraternity, that I would have used more vigorous terms to 
 set forth the danger if I could have found them. 
 
 If these chapters shall aid the reader to get a better 
 grip on the home principle in missions, if they shall 
 strengthen his grasp on the dynamic forces and the tasks 
 enthrone the Christ among men, the utmost hope of the
 
 10 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 author shall be accomplished. In that hope I offer them 
 to faithful men and women, who desire above all things 
 to see Jesus enthroned as Christ and Lord in every heart 
 and life. 
 
 VICTOR I. MASTERS. 
 
 Atlanta, Georgia, February 1, 1917.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Preface 5 
 
 Author's Foreword 7 
 
 I. The Call of the South 13 
 
 II. The Home Principle in Missions 35 
 
 III. Aiding the Southern Negro 52 
 
 IV. Some Neglected Americans 78 
 
 V. A Gospel for a Prosperous Age 105 
 
 VI. The Immigrant 123 
 
 VII. The Revolt Against Doctrine 139 
 
 VIII. False Faiths and Other Foes 165 
 
 IX. Saving What We Have 183 
 
 X. Cruciality of a Saved South 204 
 
 Bibliography 221
 
 It will be vain to send our little bands over the world to 
 preach the gospel of purity and peace, love and power, if in 
 our social, industrial and racial conditions in America we are 
 preaching uncleanness, strife, enmity and failure. Robert E. 
 Speer. 
 
 Only a Christianity powerful enough to dominate over our 
 social, national and international life and relationships will 
 finally commend itself to the peoples to whom we go. John R. 
 Mort. 
 
 Here in the South, where we find the purest standards of 
 political democracy, and the most chivalrous types of homes, 
 are the greatest opportunities for manufacturing a race of 
 great-souled men to govern a greater America of tomorrow. 
 Newell Dwight Hillis.
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH. 
 
 Not the call of largest territory and numbers. There is 
 an appeal in numbers and extent of territory. Our Lord, 
 though he purposed that the gospel should be carried to 
 the whole world, did not use arithmetic to set forth the 
 needs of men. We often do. But the call of the South is 
 not first the call of numbers or needy square miles. True, 
 there are in America, with 100,000,000 population, only 
 about 25,000,000 members of evangelical bodies, leaving 
 a vast mass to be won to Christ. Also it is a country of 
 about 3,000,000 square miles, located in the north tem- 
 perate zone, in which the main development of man- 
 kind has taken place and is still taking place. But 
 America's unsaved millions are inconsiderable as compared 
 with the masses of China and Africa and Japan and other 
 pagan countries. Impressive as is its size, that also is no 
 great thing when matched with the vast land expanses of 
 the world. Still less does the South impress one, if his 
 approach to the subject is measured only by areas and 
 numbers. True, the South has one-third the size and one- 
 third the population of the nation. Better evangelized than 
 any equal population anywhere, there is little in the figures 
 to impress one whose zeal is elicited by numbers only. 
 With 12,000,000 evangelical church members and 2,000,- 
 000 Romanist population, among our population of 36,- 
 000,000, we have in the South only 22,000,000 without 
 formal religious alignment, or a probable 18,000,000 of
 
 14 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 responsible age and condition, who have not made any 
 profession of religion. If we must have the sauce of stu- 
 pendous and untouched numbers to make palatable the 
 dish of our missionary concern, we may well pass by these 
 18,000,000. True, Christ died to save sinners, and these 
 are at our doors and of our own kindred, easier for us 
 to reach than any other people on earth. Also, these 18,- 
 000,000, if saved, would be in better position to project 
 their faith than any other equal group in the world. 
 But from the standpoint of numbers alone, 18,000,000 
 are too inconsiderable to engage the attention of persons 
 who are burdened only by vast masses of unsaved. 
 
 Not the call of pioneer opportunity. It is said of Daniel 
 Boone that when another settler hewed out a home in the 
 Appalachian forests nearer than five or six miles to the 
 Boone cabin, the pioneer moved on to where he would 
 have elbow room and virgin soil. The American is a 
 pioneersman by tradition and temperament. But the virgin 
 lands are disappearing and he is having to adjust himself 
 to a life which intensifies and builds up, and does not for- 
 ever run to some new place whose resources no man has 
 touched. In religion also America has been of the pioneer 
 habit, none more so than Southern Baptists. The wil- 
 derness path invited our fathers. Their sons became great 
 evangelizers, but poor builders. They practiced spiritual 
 soil robbery, using up all the religious fertility which their 
 evangelism produced, but putting back into the converts 
 very little or no teaching and pastoral care for the new 
 life, that it might produce abundantly and conserve its 
 own strength for future productivity. So tied are Southern 
 Baptists to pioneer traditions that, for the most part, their 
 churches are still following them, apathetically wondering
 
 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 15 
 
 why the protracted meeting plantings seem somehow not 
 to produce crops so satisfying as those of the pioneer new 
 lands. There are still some millions of people in the 
 Southwest frontier living in pioneer conditions, and some 
 more millions in the Appalachian and Ozark mountain re- 
 gions. Yet others in the piney-wood, wire-grass sections of 
 the South are not far removed from the pioneer life. In 
 some respects, these are the most needy and backward 
 people in this region. There is in these sections of our 
 population far more pioneering to do than all the Chris- 
 tian bodies of the South are doing. But these fields 
 have usually been cultivated, so to speak, at least till 
 the stumps of the "new-ground" have decayed and the 
 soil washed into gullies. The "ringed-around" trees have 
 fallen, and the hammering and clarion call of the wood- 
 pecker is no more heard. The cream of the novelty has 
 been skimmed from such frontiers as are still to be found. 
 That which remains is mainly hard, unpicturesque work. 
 Mission workers who cannot be satisfied without a world 
 of human beings who have never once heard about Jesus, 
 have an uninteresting outlook in the South. There are 
 still here those who have never heard, but they are rela- 
 tively few. Not ours the pioneersman's joy of discovery 
 and building where never man built. Ours the less spec- 
 tacular task of leading to Christ the ignorant and the 
 untaught and the sinful of a so-called Christian civiliza- 
 tion, and of building where so many others have wrought 
 that our own effort will probably draw no particular at- 
 tention. For such tasks novelty or other adventitious cir- 
 cumstances do not offer inducements. Only the love of 
 Christ and a passion for men in the heart of the worker 
 can make it fascinating.
 
 16 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 Not the call of unusual destitution. Moral and physical 
 destitution have afforded material for tens of thousands 
 of missionary addresses. Anxious to quicken the interest 
 of indifferent hearers, speakers have used the kind 
 of material which would most quickly stir such people. 
 They have often succeeded so well that they became con- 
 verts to their own diplomacy, in which they put secondary 
 considerations first. There is not an intimation in the 
 Apostolic practice or teaching that the physical destitu- 
 tion or unusual depravity of people were considered special 
 grounds for missionary effort. Our Lord's message to 
 John, "The poor have the gospel preached to them," 
 is to be taken in connection with the shameful neglect 
 of the poor by other religious cults, and not to indicate 
 that his gospel was for the poor alone. Not only is the 
 South far more prosperous than ever before, but the 
 masses of the citizenship are sharing in this prosperity. 
 Relatively few stories of pathetic need remain to be told. 
 True, our cities breed slums, and in these humanity breeds 
 vice and want. There are still stories of need and de- 
 pravity to be found, terrible enough to stimulate even the 
 jaded nerves of congregations which have been long "fed 
 up" on such stories. But among the actual constructive 
 workers of society, almost the only persons left in want 
 or near-want are the preachers, who point men to the 
 highest things, and the teachers, who stand near to them 
 in unselfish and high service. Nor is there unusual spir- 
 itual destitution in the South, if we compare it to most 
 so-called Christian countries. Much less, if we compare 
 it with pagan lands. Almost everybody in the South has 
 had a chance to hear about Christ; a very large majority 
 have heard. True, it has not struck in with millions.
 
 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 17 
 
 And so casual and ineffective has been the effort to teach 
 about Christ that hundreds of thousands of these could say, 
 without departing far from the truth, 'No man careth for 
 my soul.' But from the standpoint of a heraldic proclama- 
 tion of Christ and of freedom from unusual material des- 
 titution, the needs of the South are not to be compared 
 with those of many nations. If destitution and never hav- 
 ing heard the story of salvation are the final standards by 
 which to decide on our missionary effort, we may pass 
 the South by. 
 
 A call to use what God has given. The call of the South 
 in religious service is measured by what God in his provi- 
 dential leadings has given the South. There are at least 
 two outstanding facts in the history of this section which 
 suggest the direction in which lie our missionary duty and 
 opportunity in the nation. These are, the experiences of 
 the South in the Civil War and the presence of the Negro 
 and the consequent scarcity of alien immigration. More 
 than any other part of the country, the South has a sec- 
 tional consciousness. Visitors from other sections some- 
 times chide us for this, as if we were to no avail dreaming 
 of a dead past. But this sense of solidarity is distinctly 
 to the credit and usefulness of the South. It is the com- 
 bined result of war experiences which shook our entire 
 social order to its foundations, and of the preservation of 
 this section from any significant influx of strange people. 
 The immigrant flood has done much to help the North to 
 forget the past and its lessons. The West is still too 
 young to have acquired local experiences so sacred. The 
 South is old. Its experiences have been deep and poig- 
 nant. And the children of those who drank to the dregs 
 her cup of greatest woe make up practically the entire
 
 18 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 population of the South of the present. Even the present 
 generation has shared understandingly in the sufferings of 
 reconstructing a civilization which had been torn up by 
 the roots. The weary years of isolation and suffering which 
 followed the war are not long past. Immigration shunned 
 the South as a pestilence and capital did not find in a 
 torn-to-pieces social order the kind of security it desired. 
 If immigrants had flocked in and outside money had cap- 
 tured our vast resources, when this section reeled amid its 
 calamities, the present South would have less conscious- 
 ness as a distinct section. But it would, therefore, be de- 
 prived of exactly that attitude of spirit which shall make 
 it worth most to the nation. This unique awareness of 
 itself and of its past is one of the richest treasures pos- 
 sessed by this section. Its consciousness of its own pains 
 and sorrows, of the gallantry and chivalry of its sons, of 
 its mistakes and sufferings, of its superiority to the worst 
 calamities which came to it, of its ability to build a civiliza- 
 tion out of ashes, makes the present South worth far more 
 both to the nation and to itself. Having had such experi- 
 ences, it has become not merely a loyal part of the nation, 
 but something more. That something more is the wisdom 
 and the strength and a certain depth of soul which the 
 South has acquired through the bitterness of trials which 
 purged it of dross and have healed without hate. We do 
 well to treasure the lessons of the history of our section. 
 It is to conserve the spiritual dynamic with which God has 
 equipped us for building in our own section a great Chris- 
 tian civilization and aiding to the same end in the other 
 sections of our beloved country. 
 
 To serve the spiritual mission of America. Nobody any 
 longer doubts the entire loyalty of the South to the nation.
 
 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 19 
 
 Its unwavering devotion to America's fight for democracy 
 in the great World War laid the last ghost of doubt that 
 even sectional politicians could summons. This re-estab- 
 lished confidence brings with it an enlarged obligation on 
 the part of the Christian South to take stock of the forces 
 by which we may aid in maintaining a Christian nation. 
 The greatest service we can render is to develop and main- 
 tain in our own section a vital religion, which shall dom- 
 inate our economic, political, and social institutions. The 
 division of the larger denominational bodies into Northern 
 and Southern organizations, places the responsibility for 
 each section directly on the organization serving that sec- 
 tion. For the most part, denominational comity places the 
 field of service of Southern religious bodies in the South. 
 Therefore denominational organization usually corresponds 
 territorily to the underlying spiritual fact that the first and 
 greatest religious service we can render other sections is 
 to see that our own is really permeated by the spirit 
 and power of the gospel. If the South is really Christian, 
 social contact, as well as the inter-relations of business and 
 politics, will enable us to help religiously the people of other 
 sections far more than we could do by sending mission- 
 ary workers to them, especially as they are already served 
 by the various evangelical bodies. If we shall realize 
 our call to serve the spiritual mission of America, it will 
 mightily stimulate our religious efforts among our own 
 people. Southern religious bodies have held on to the 
 supernatural in religion and to the inerrancy of Scripture 
 revelation with a tenacity which is a blessing to other sec- 
 tions, where rationalism and liberalism have done much 
 to rob Christian faith of its vital power. If God shall 
 give us to see the day of our opportunity, so far from
 
 20 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 being infected by the disease of doubt which has laid hold 
 of many, we of the Southern religious bodies shall with 
 increased devotion and determination cling to the faith 
 once delivered to the saints, which alone can avail for 
 humanity's needs. At the same time, we must arouse our- 
 selves from the sinful lethargy which has permitted three- 
 fourths of the church members of the South to depend 
 for spiritual instruction and church life on the near-starva- 
 tion diet of a once-a-month sermon by an absentee pastor. 
 Our duty to the nation, as well as to the South, calls upon 
 us to break away from this practice. It would be presump- 
 tuous to think we can acquit ourselves creditably in serv- 
 ing the nation, with a religious program that does not even 
 provide for the nurturing of the lives of most of our 
 converts. 
 
 The call of our home. The home is the oldest divinely 
 established institution. It is God's unit of service for pro- 
 viding the graces and virtues necessary for mankind. The 
 present world phenomena of the ends of the earth being 
 brought close together by transportation and inter-com- 
 munication, does not change that fact. The bringing of 
 the world into "one neighborhood" immeasurably increases 
 the needs of a spiritual dynamic to strengthen the bulwarks 
 of the home. Pure springs are essential to healthful 
 streams; they can come from no other source. Civilization 
 is in a flux. Commerce, immigration, emigration, the hor- 
 rors of a titanic war, have compelled us to learn to think 
 in cosmopolitan terms. Thinkers are trying to tutor us for 
 the world citizenship toward which inventions and economic 
 forces are impelling us. These forces are in the ascendant 
 and the Christian body that would serve its day must 
 adjust itself to them. Every saving force in ociety will
 
 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 21 
 
 find in this world-pull a challenge as to whether it has 
 home-resources with strength and devotion for such stupen- 
 dous tasks. Have we the faith and strength to enter for 
 Christ these world-doors which are being brought so near 
 to us? There can be no adequate answer which does not 
 include the development and maintenance at home of good- 
 ness, purity, and strength adequate for such unprecedented 
 strains. Our day is almost obliviously enamoured of great 
 things, but its passion is directed to material largeness, 
 rather than to greatness of spirit. Therefore we are 
 in grave danger of despising things which are small as 
 spectacles, but great in their spiritual significance. There 
 is no more sinister threat to the spiritual forces of the 
 present than that which is contained in the tendencies which 
 are undermining the home. No material grandeur, no mar- 
 vels of invention, no mountains of wealth, no wonders of 
 great organization in business or religion, can save that 
 nation from disintegration and ruin whose people have lost 
 their power to idealize and magnify the home and fight for 
 its safety and purity. 
 
 The call of the homeland. Next to the home comes the 
 home-section. To the Southern Christian the call of the 
 South is the call of his home. In this day of the worship 
 of eye-filling largeness, some writers decry any loyalties or 
 devotions or tasks that do not patently profess to grasp the 
 whole world. They challenge one's loyal concern for his 
 toWn or State or section or religious denomination par- 
 ticularly his religious denomination. They set forth that 
 such allegiances somehow convict him of narrowness and 
 provincialism. This worship of mere bigness is one of the 
 most perplexing and subtly dangerous tendencies of the 
 present. This capitulation to the appeal of the big is a
 
 22 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 snare to many. It lends itself to a pose which, without 
 cost or trouble, gains the favor of the thoughtless, while 
 the very bigness of the interests espoused often enables the 
 advocate to hide from himself and from others any sense 
 of his own personal responsibility. In missions, as in citizen- 
 ship, to be interested in the far-away after the manner that 
 allows one to despise the worth of the near, is to betray 
 breadth at the expense of depth sometimes at the expense 
 of sincerity. A man who about his own home finds nothing 
 worth doing to help people, is about the least fit of all to 
 be sent as a missionary to other lands. He cannot be 
 worth anything there until he quits dreaming, makes himself 
 at home, and goes to work to save needy and sinful people. 
 A Christian in the South who thinks it is narrow to give 
 his best thought and effort to save the South, has surely 
 not learned his interest in the world beyond from the Lord 
 Jesus. There is no possible narrowness or selfishness in 
 any effort anywhere to bring the lost to Jesus. The mother 
 who pours out her heart to God for the salvation of her 
 child is as unselfish as she would be praying for the Indian 
 on the plains or the Chinaman in Canton. The Holy Spirit 
 prompts each act, and shall we discredit her agony of soul 
 for her boy's salvation by saying that her natural mother 
 love has somehow made her holy passion relatively selfish? 
 There is no geography or mathematics in Christian love. 
 
 A passion to grapple with sin at close quarters. The call 
 of missions in the South is the call to grapple with sin at 
 close quarters. This passion is not different in quality from 
 that which animates and sustains our brave foreign mis- 
 sionaries on many a distant field. In their evangelistic ap- 
 peals, in the instruction in the churches, in the weary rou- 
 tine of days in school work, it is this passion which sustains
 
 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 23 
 
 their hearts and makes the burden light. Men and women 
 such as these, if they were working at home, would grapple 
 at first hand with sinning humanity's need. For the sake 
 of world-salvation, I plead that we shall have a passion 
 for men because of their need and worth, rather than 
 because of their numbers or geographical location. If we 
 desire to know whether our faith is of the world-conquer- 
 ing kind, let us put it to the test of whether it has virtue 
 to conquer erring men and women in our own community. 
 Joseph E. McAfee, in "Missions Striking Home," defines 
 the heart-wrenching passion which we need in America 
 against sin and for sinners as being a sallying forth in 
 search of the Holy Grail and reining up the steed at the 
 plaint of the beggar crouching at the palace gate. It is the 
 plain putting to one's-self the question, Do I care? Great 
 as are the needs of the lost in many lands, beautiful and 
 stimulating as are the romance and obedience to our Master 
 which impels us to support devoted workers on far-away, 
 lonely posts, for their sake as well as ours, we need to test 
 ourselves by the difficult problems and the forbidding facts 
 of sin at our doors. If we have not love to grapple with 
 the wearisome and offensive problems of our sinning neigh- 
 bor, how have we the love with which our Master would 
 have us save the unknown of many a foreign land? If we 
 cannot love and help the Negro in the South, our profes- 
 sions of concern for the black hordes in African jungles 
 convict us of not understanding our own hearts. The Chi- 
 nese in the laundry is at least as much our responsibility 
 as the Chinese in Shanghai. Our sinning Anglo-Saxon 
 neighbor is as dear to the heart of Christ as he would be if 
 he was of any other race. The man in whom the love of 
 Christ is will not be careful to count noses or separate races
 
 24 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 in bestowing his love. The true heart is not to be pried 
 open by the leverage either of numbers or of nationality 
 or skin-color. 
 
 To Christianize, as well as evangelize. If by the evan- 
 gelization we mean the coming of people into the churches 
 on a profession of faith, the South is unusually well evan- 
 gelized. If we put into the word a fuller meaning, we shall 
 at once lose our leadership. The word salvation includes 
 more than evangelization. Jesus came to save both the 
 soul and the life. The leadership of Southern churches in 
 bringing souls to Christ has been coupled with an almost 
 unsurpassed backwardness in nurturing lives for Christ. We 
 have saved souls, and the infant disciples have for the most 
 part been turned loose in their babyhood to look out for 
 themselves. The results have been various. Not a few 
 have both survived and grown to the stature of mature 
 Christian manhood and womanhood. An almost unbeliev- 
 ably large number have been lost to the world and to false 
 faiths. A still larger number have lived at a poor dying 
 rate, dwarfed into permanent spiritual infancy because they 
 were not nourished on the strong meat and often not even 
 on the milk of the gospel. We need a more comprehensive 
 definition of salvation. How shall Southern Baptists escape 
 responsibility for their prodigal waste, their almost incred- 
 ible disregard of our Lord's command to feed the sheep 
 and shepherd the flock? We cannot do it. The pastors 
 cannot do it. Still less, I think, can the Christian bodies 
 do so, whose leadership and scholarship have been trusted 
 by the rank and file to find the truth and to point them to 
 suitable ideals and tasks, looking toward its realization. 
 Would God this Southern Baptist people in its heart could 
 come to define salvation to mean a saved soul, nurtured
 
 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 25 
 
 through the appointed teaching into a saved and serving 
 life! If our people would accept this definition and would 
 go to work in a brave and comprehensive way for its reali- 
 zation. Baptists in the South would immediately find among 
 their own people the largest and most blessed work of love 
 possible for any American Christian body to have. If they 
 will not accept it, there is still a large work of evangelism 
 to do larger far than is being done but it is an incon- 
 siderable thing compared with the lost millions beyond the 
 seas. Alas! If we will not Christianize as well as evan- 
 gelize our own, it is too much to expect our fondest dreams 
 of gospel conquest in foreign lands to embrace more than 
 half the program of Christ, who came to save the life as 
 well as the soul, and who in the Great Commission puts 
 "teaching them to observe all things" by the side of dis- 
 cipling and baptizing. 
 
 A call to wed doctrine and service. There has never 
 been an age so intolerant of Christian doctrine as the 
 present. Doctrine means teaching, and the doctrines of 
 the New Testament are but the inspired teachings of our 
 Lord and his disciples. But the antipathy of some in our 
 day to doctrinal teaching is of such a waspish nature that 
 it would be ludicrous were it not serious. Two main ob- 
 jections of the age to doctrine is that it is narrow and 
 intolerant, but it would be hard to find even among the 
 most straight-laced Christian sect an intolerance whose 
 bigotry and irascible railing and narrowness equal that of 
 these same enemies of doctrine. The religious shibboleth of 
 the age is utility. Many of those who follow this cult of 
 humanitarian service either deny the deity of Christ or are 
 uncertain about it. Those clear teachings of Scripture 
 about his deity have the misfortune to be doctrines, and
 
 26 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 these devotees of spineless religion, by their own confes- 
 sion, hate doctrines, which they affect to believe moss-back 
 and discredited. The irresponsible popular theological 
 twaddle in Sunday supplements, popular magazines, and 
 the books of rationalistic professors of learning in great 
 educational institutions, have not yet made the Christian 
 bodies of the South turn away from the doctrines of the 
 Bible for the modern gospel of salvation through bettering 
 the environment. I wish I could say that Southern preach- 
 ers and churches have not been at all affected in their 
 allegiance to Scripture doctrines by all this clamor. But 
 I cannot. Southern Christianity, however, has not yet 
 been seriously weakened by the new world-gospel of hu- 
 manitarian service, aside from the Bible and its Christ. 
 Southern Christianity has an unmatched opportunity to 
 serve the nation and the world by standing firm in these 
 parlous days for the doctrines of the Bible and for salva- 
 tion through the precious blood of the crucified Christ, a 
 stumbling-block to the learned and foolishness to the 
 dilettante and pleasure-seeker. If we shall stand firm in 
 the faith, and add to our faith knowledge, a knowledge and 
 purpose which shall eventuate in the kind of service which 
 Christ taught, we shall, under God, be a saving force both 
 for the nation and the world. By nurturing Christian lives 
 so that they shall count in Christly service, we shall gain- 
 say the empty evolution-doctrine that salvation is by way 
 of learning to kill the typhoid germs, and, generally, keep- 
 ing the outside of the platter clean. Are we big enough 
 spiritually to confront with confidence this opportunity, this 
 challenge? If we fail here, these false prophets will ensnare 
 many by their caricatures of our weakness. The mission 
 call of the South is that we shall both be big enough, and 
 perform the doing of it.
 
 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 27 
 
 A call to save society. The religion of Christ, by saving 
 men one by one, has always been the most potent influence 
 for social betterment. He who does not find this on many 
 a page of history, certainly is not acute enough to be fit 
 to sponsor something else as a catholicon, with the ex- 
 pectation of sensible people following. Not long ago, one 
 of the most prominent ministers in the South preached a 
 sermon on: "The World's Amazing Effort to get away 
 from Christ." A more impressive illustration of that effort 
 could not be found than the almost incredible popularity 
 which salvation by environment has attained as a religious 
 ideal. With history abundantly verifying the power of the 
 gospel of individual salvation through Christ, to lift up 
 society, with the clear and unmistakable teachings of Christ 
 and his Apostles that his Kingdom was to be founded on 
 personal faith in him, with the record of his own teachings 
 that he went after the heart and not the outward man, and 
 that he set up his Kingdom in the midst of far worse social 
 evils than we now know, without instituting a campaign 
 against them, yet the modern partisan of salvation by so- 
 cial improvement boldly seeks to discredit the churches of 
 Christ, borrows such of the teachings of Jesus as he can 
 use for his purposes, and without the quiver of an eye- 
 lash ignores the appeal of the crucified Christ for his heart 
 and life. For the last fifteen years, America has endured 
 at the hands of the social Salvationists a vast nation-wide 
 mania for uplift which has left the masses of the people 
 weary and more or less disgusted. The single outstanding 
 reform of prohibition is not the fruit of the efforts of muck- 
 rakers and bureaus and foundations for investigation and 
 surveys. It is creditable chiefly to the faithful work of 
 preachers of the gospel of Christ and of men of faith and
 
 28 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 motives similar to theirs. Perhaps it is true that many are 
 awakening to understand that to change a man's clothes 
 and even to fill his stomach, without changing his mind 
 and the innermost ideals of his nature, is no more than 
 "poking fire from the top." It is written so plainly that all 
 may read that the titanic struggle, foisted on the world by 
 Germany, was a confession that a nation may lead in 
 science, sanitation, co-operative industry, and human 
 learning, and yet the inner sources of its power may be 
 brutal, godless, and unspeakably corrupt. Who can fail to 
 see here that God is writing in letters of fire before the 
 eyes of the civilized world the unspeakable folly and de- 
 spair of trusting in science, evolution, second-command- 
 before-the-first Samaritanism, or anything else but Christ 
 only, for salvation, both for an individual and for a nation! 
 The fact that Southern Christianity has been singularly 
 safeguarded from this false doctrine of salvation by en- 
 vironment, is a clarion challenge to it to stand firm in the 
 faith of the Lord of Glory, both for the South 's sake and 
 the nation's sake, both for the sake of the souls of people 
 and for the sake of society, which approximates a salvation 
 exactly in proportion as it is made up of men and women 
 who knew Christ and live for him. 
 
 To consecrate industry and wealth. America's wealth 
 is more than that of any other four nations in the 
 world. In recent years the rate of increase has been mar- 
 velously accelerated. There has not been a more spectac- 
 ular element in this development than the forging forward 
 of the South. In 1912, the wealth of the South was $42,- 
 000,000,000, nearly one-fourth that of the nation. Mr. 
 Richard H. Edmonds, who is the leading authority on 
 Southern economic conditions, estimated, in 1917, that the
 
 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 29 
 
 wealth of the South totalled about $60,000,000,000, which 
 is equal to that of the whole nation in 1 888. In 1917, our 
 farm crops were valued at nearly $6,000,000,000, more 
 than the value of those of the nation in 1912, and yet this 
 section has not reached more than one-half of its agricul- 
 tural capacity. The growth of manufacturing has been 
 equally impressive. After {he war, some superficial persons 
 in other sections patronizingly called us indolent and leth- 
 argic. It is amusing to observe how these prophets are 
 now seeking to retreat without confusion from their be- 
 littling prognostications. For, behold the South, freed from 
 its fetters, giant-like, forging ahead in those very material 
 advantages about which the North had developed much 
 complacency! The South of the twentieth century is not 
 inherently more energetic and resourceful than it was in 
 the nineteenth. It is merely directing its energies through 
 the speeded-up inventions of a machine age. By the build- 
 ing of cities, it has brought samples of its energy and 
 resources into those restricted areas, where the casual 
 passers-by, who do most of the writing and talking for the 
 public, may be impressed with its spectacular features. But 
 Southern energy, plus present-day machinery, has given a 
 result of intense pre-occupation on the part of our people 
 which is a challenge to the strength of the saving forces 
 of our religion. Our money-gathering men are neither 
 better nor worse than those who went before. They are 
 making more money, but their intense absorption in the 
 game is to be explained by the large part machinery now 
 plays in the business game, rather than by assuming that 
 they love money more than their forebears. We have made 
 machinery and put it to work to save our time, and, be- 
 hold, it has turned on us and exacted more of our time than
 
 30 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 we ever gave before. The telephone on the desk enables 
 a business man to confer with thirty others in a day, where 
 he was formerly able to see only five. Immediately the 
 whole scheme of his life is geared up six times tighter 
 to make full use of this talking machine. So with the 
 automobile and all the rest of our "time-saving" machinery. 
 Like the rest of the nation, the South is being chained to 
 the machine. Can we escape the chain? Must our souls 
 be geared to pulleys and cogs and belts and wires? Have 
 we a religious faith and idealism real and strong enough 
 to use these inventions and conveniences without becoming 
 their slaves? They help us to win wealth. Have we 
 Christianity enough to use that wealth and not let it crush 
 our souls? The South has a better chance than other 
 section to win the victory over dollar-lust and the machine. 
 There is a peculiar responsibility on the South, in the first 
 blush of our material wealth, to show the nation that we 
 learned in the school of adversity not to become fat-hearted 
 so soon as our stomachs and barns and banks were full. 
 If, indeed, we have learned this lesson, we shall be able to 
 bless the nation, for our example shall woo others. Only 
 thus shall we justify our claim to that purity of soul and 
 clearness of vision which we assert made the South superior 
 to the misfortunes of war and reconstruction. 
 
 The solution of a race problem. By far the larger part 
 of the actual burden of the Negro race problem falls on 
 the South. It is one of the greatest human problems any 
 people were ever destined to grapple with. It is inex- 
 tricably mixed with the business life and daily contacts of 
 this section. In the proper place, there is something to be 
 said about how politics and education and the economic 
 life of the South may react on the Negro to his good or
 
 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 31 
 
 injury. It has been generally accepted by the Negro's 
 best informed friends and by his own worthiest leaders 
 that the only basis on which we may hope really to solve 
 the problem of the blacks in the South is the Christian 
 religion. As well believe that the learning and scientific 
 victories of Germany will save her from bestiality and 
 fiendish cruelty in war, as to expect a stronger race to do 
 right by a weaker, or a weaker to respond to right treat- 
 ment by the stronger, on any less sanctions and motives 
 than those of the religion of Christ. The solution of the 
 Negro question in the South is the final test of the effec- 
 tiveness of our Southern faith to help other races than our 
 own. Others may help, as they have done. But in the 
 last analysis the Negro's need is a call to the South, a 
 call which only the South can answer. By our success 
 or failure in answering this challenge, the world will rightly 
 judge the quality and value of our religion. 
 
 To show what evangelical faith is worth. Romanist 
 leaders in America are boldly announcing that evangelical 
 Christianity is a failure. It is evident that their more 
 astute leaders do not believe the utterance of their own 
 prophets. But the aggressive boldness of Romanism in 
 this country indicates their confidence that they are attain- 
 ing power to thwart religious liberty and the separation 
 of Church and State. Through large immigrant streams, 
 of which about two-thirds are Romanists, through the con- 
 gestion of these aliens in cities, and through their segre- 
 gation in separate communities and parochial schools, the 
 priests are making some headway in keeping them from 
 learning and adopting the American spirit. Being the most 
 astute politicians in the world, with scruples hardly more 
 squeamish than those of a German junker, Romanists have
 
 32 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 had considerable success in meddling, to their own ad- 
 vantage and the disadvantage of others, with our gov- 
 ernmental forces. In the South evangelical religion still 
 dominates. In this section, if the count were made fairly, 
 and not by the whole population of Romanists versus the 
 actual adult church membership of evangelicals, there is 
 only about one Romanist to eighteen evangelicals. In 
 other sections there is actually about one Romanist to 
 three evangelicals, or, by the Catholic count, one adherent 
 of the papacy to one evangelical. One of the gravest 
 threats to American principles and liberties in the sinister 
 and unscrupulous hand of priestcraft, forever meddling in 
 the affairs of national, State, and municipal government. 
 Even in the South, there are some notorious examples of 
 this in our cities. But, thanks largely to the Negro and 
 to our post-bellum poverty, evangelical faith is still domi- 
 nant in every section of the South. These two forces have 
 effectually discouraged the coming of Romanist immigrant 
 throngs. Was not the hand of God in this, protecting us 
 from this destroyer of religious freedom and true democ- 
 racy, so that in the days to come of added strength South- 
 ern Christianity might be able, by example, intelligent sym- 
 pathy, and timely assistance, to come to the aid of those 
 sections which are harassed and afflicted with this religio- 
 political octopus, this scarlet woman of prophecy? I thank 
 God that he has kept the Romanized aliens from flooding 
 our section when we were too weak perhaps to put to 
 naught the cunning chicanery of a priesthood which domi- 
 nates the consciences of its followers, while it betrays 
 and prostitutes the liberties and rights of a free people. 
 There is a tremendous obligation on the South to keep the 
 fires of religious liberty and Christian service burning here
 
 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 33 
 
 so brightly that it shall be a bulwark to aid other threat- 
 ened sections, and preserve the value of the Republic's 
 testimony before the down-trodden of earth. 
 
 To help the world by example. Of all men, the foreign 
 missionaries most keenly realize the handicap of a life in 
 America the samples of which do not at all come up to the 
 gospel they are preaching to the heathen. It is not en- 
 tirely fair for the heathen to judge our religion by some 
 of our people and practices, just as it is not entirely just 
 for a community to judge the religion of Christ by some 
 of the members of local churches. But in each case they 
 do so, and our Lord himself has said: "By their fruits 
 ye shall know them." In order to strengthen the hands 
 of our missionaries on every foreign field, there is nothing 
 so much needed as the demonstration here in the home- 
 land, where Christianity has its best chance and whence 
 our evangels go, that it is really able to save the people, 
 so that they shall in all their relations eschew evil and do 
 the right. The leaven of democracy is surging among the 
 masses of the whole world, largely through the influence 
 of American ideals and example. Our American inven- 
 tions and manufactures have penetrated even into Africa 
 and the isles of the sea. The late Emperor of Japan stated 
 to American tourists that all the cities and islands of his 
 empire were being Americanized, largely through Japanese 
 who had returned from America. Our colleges are 
 thronged with foreign students and the world with Amer- 
 ican travelers and business men. In recent press reports 
 were the following words from Hsuch Tehyi, the head of 
 the special Chinese political mission to our government at 
 Washington: "The United States is our pattern. America 
 does not know China and we are, therefore, striving to
 
 34 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 open your eyes. We are sending our students by the 
 thousands to your centers of education to get American 
 ideas and American methods for the benefit of our people. 
 They are yearning for Americanism." The whole world is 
 open to the gospel of America, and America's message is 
 being preached by many a non-commissioned evangel. 
 Never in history did a nation have such an opportunity 
 to Christianize other nations through being really Christian 
 itself. Our foreign missionaries are regularly the most out- 
 spoken advocates of a thorough-going Home Mission pro- 
 gram in America. No section of our country has a better 
 opportunity than the South to make of itself an example 
 to the groping hearts of hungry humanity in the nations 
 of earth, showing that Christianity really does Christianize 
 a people, and that it can lift business, community and in- 
 dustrial life, politics and national purpose, out of the 
 gutter of greed and selfishness on to the high plane of the 
 Golden Rule. 
 
 TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY IN CHAPTER I. 
 
 (It is intended that the questions following the chapters in 
 this book shall bring out the leading thoughts of the text, rather 
 than cover the lesson in detail. They are suggestive rather 
 than exhaustive, and will afford a point of departure for self- 
 tests by the student and class drill by the leaders.) 
 
 1. Show that the mission call of the South is not primarily the 
 call of numbers, pioneer opportunity, or great spiritual 
 destitution. 
 
 2. Show by the South as an example, how devotion to the home 
 carries with it blessings for all which lies beyond. 
 
 3. Define the call of the South in terms of grappling with sin 
 at close quarters; of saving the life as well as the soul; of 
 wedding doctrine and service; of saving society; of con- 
 secrating wealth; of the worth of evangelical religion; of 
 helping the world by example.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 THE HOME PRINCIPLE IN MISSIONS. 
 
 Needs to be understood and accepted. The average 
 young preacher, completing his preparation for his life's 
 work, if he considers the appeal for service in foreign lands, 
 will do so on the basis of the needs and the worth of the 
 service. Difficulties or disadvantages will not deter him. 
 But when one of these is asked to consider taking hold in a 
 difficult and neglected field in the homeland, he often 
 refuses to consider it. For his guiding principle is now 
 different. He demands that the field shall afford an op- 
 portunity for fellowship with his brethren, and educational 
 and social advantages for his family. It must be a location 
 which will likely afford an early opportunity for advance- 
 ment to a larger and more prominent place. Why should 
 lack of advancement and of opportunities for fellowship 
 and comfort be inapplicable in the one case, while in the 
 other they often appear to be actually determinative? These 
 men do not seem to recognize that the principle of mis- 
 sionary service should be dominant in the homeland in 
 choosing a field of labor. They do not surrender to the 
 appeal of destitution and spiritual opportunity, when the 
 field of service is what they regard commonplace. For 
 this reason and for others which are similar this chapter 
 seeks to set forth some home principles in Missions. 
 
 One principle, several agencies. One principle impels to 
 the support of all Christian missions. It is all the work of 
 our Lord. We may expect him to be pleased with the zeal
 
 36 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 of a worker for his own department of the world-field, but 
 not with a partisan zeal. A speaker or writer for missions 
 ought to have passion and enthusiasm. He will thus more 
 vividly present his cause. But he must not give just ground 
 for the suspicion of partisanship. He must not in magnify- 
 ing one field of service allow himself to seem to disparage 
 the importance of others. At the same time, audiences 
 should be slow to criticise a speaker for an apparent lack 
 at this point. Dr. John A. Broadus used to tell his classes 
 at the theological seminary that a speaker who was not 
 capable of becoming so wrought up that he would some- 
 times overstate his contention, would not be able to make 
 much impression with all that he might say that was not 
 overstated. In setting forth the home principle in missions 
 in these pages, I earnestly hope that I shall be able to give 
 it something of its real force. I believe an adequate state- 
 ment of the home principle of missions is needed, that a 
 large proportion of our people have never yielded them- 
 selves to the grip of American mission needs, nor understood 
 their full significance. But I think I am equally solicitous 
 that I may be saved from setting down any expression which 
 might detract from the importance and greatness of mis- 
 sion principles and activities in other fields. To accom- 
 plish both of these things is perhaps the most difficult un- 
 dertaking in these chapters. 
 
 Advantages of departments in missionary work. The 
 advantages of putting different kinds of missionary en- 
 deavor under the direction of separate agencies have to do 
 mainly with administration and definiteness. As to the 
 work in the several States, the Baptist democratic principle 
 commits them to having it under the direction of an 
 agency which is promptly, easily and completely respon-
 
 THE HOME PRINCIPLE IN MISSIONS 37 
 
 sible to the local body. As between Home and Foreign 
 Missions, through which our whole Baptist body as a unit 
 addresses itself respectively to supplying the needs at home 
 and abroad, the prevailing idea among Baptists has been 
 that the administrative problems in the two fields are so 
 different that they will be best conserved by committing 
 each activity to an equal but separate agency, which shall 
 be responsible to the whole body through the Southern 
 Baptist Convention. I have spoken of the danger that the 
 zeal of speakers for one of two or more causes which must 
 appeal to the same people usually at the same time, shall 
 give the impression of partisanship. On the other hand, 
 this is an incident and can be remedied, while the loss of 
 definiteness and distinctness of appeal would be a serious 
 loss, very difficult to remedy. Among our ministers, there 
 have only rarely been authenticated instances of such 
 partisanship in speaking, and still fewer among the repre- 
 sentatives of the Boards. The majority of our people 
 seldom, and many of them never, hear a direct and sus- 
 tained appeal for any field of missionary endeavor. There 
 would be a distinct loss if what they and their leaders 
 do hear should have to gain its cosmopolitan note at 
 the expense of a clear cut definiteness of appeal. The 
 merging of home and foreign mission activities under a 
 single agency does not prevent the danger above con- 
 sidered of what the sensitive may consider partisan appeal. 
 Before me is the report of a great Board of Home and 
 Foreign Missions of another Christian body, in which the 
 appeal of the responsible head of the Home Mission De- 
 partment is more capable of being designated as partisan 
 than anything Southern Baptists have heard from a rep- 
 resentative of their Home Mission Board.
 
 38 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 Dr. Hatcher's counsel. Rev. William E. Hatcher, D. D., 
 writing in The Home Mission Task," in 1912, said: "It 
 seems better in many respects that the work should be 
 divided and carried on as it now is, but we need men who 
 are capable of the utmost justice, righteousness and courtesy 
 in carrying forward the several departments entrusted to 
 them. There can be no place for jealousies or overriding 
 ambitions among our leaders. From Christ Jesus our Lord 
 every department must take its orders." This principle 
 allows to a worker the utmost zeal for the particular cause 
 he represents, but it requires of him that he shall also 
 understand and respect the needs of other great missionary 
 activities, and be careful not to seem to desire to crowd 
 another cause off of the platform by making his fill it so 
 full that others shall find it difficult to get a foothold. But 
 this danger has to do rather with proposing plans for Con- 
 vention action than with speeches intended to thrill the 
 hearers for a great cause. We cannot well have too many 
 compelling speeches for missions of any kind. 
 
 Home and Foreign Missions complementary. Whenever 
 Christianity has failed to project itself into other lands, it 
 has tended to lose its grip on its own country. When- 
 ever it has neglected the needs of people at its doors, 
 whose nearness and faults make it difficult to idealize them, 
 or has passed on to paid missionaries all the sacrificial prob- 
 lems of reaching their needy souls, God has not allowed it 
 to abide in strength. Such groups have tended to become 
 select, but by despising the needs of their own environment, 
 they have always lost power to dominate it for Christ. 
 In the introduction of his book, "Missions Striking Home," 
 Joseph E. McAfee says: "The day has happily passed 
 when a church can save its missionary face before a needy
 
 THE HOME PRINCIPLE IN MISSIONS 39 
 
 world by an ado over the discovery of 'so much to do at 
 home.' There will be a day, please God, when no church 
 can derive its missionary satisfaction from the glamours of 
 a distant horizon. The Kingdom will come some day the 
 world 'round, and the triumphant homeliness of the enter- 
 prise will be the church's chief glory." 
 
 Missions in the homeland an unselfish undertaking. The 
 man who seeks to evade the Foreign Mission appeal by say- 
 ing "there is so much to do at home" is no friend to Home 
 Missions. Sometimes he is a truly good man untaught; in 
 the vast majority of cases he is selfishly seeking to dodge 
 the appeal of missions. Such persons almost never sup- 
 port mission work at home or engage themselves in per- 
 sonal effort to win lost people, which is at the very heart of 
 missions. People who talk about neglecting other lands 
 because there is so much to do at home, are really as bad 
 enemies of missions at home, as the visionary who can see 
 nothing this side of the Orient which is really a "man's 
 job" in missions. Whatever the home principle is in mis- 
 sions, it is as unselfish and free from narrowness as are 
 the love and purposes of Jesus Christ, the author and sub- 
 stance of all missionary effort. Missions is not narrow be- 
 cause it may find its task at our own doors. Here is a 
 church in a thriving city. As churches go, it is devoted 
 to missions. The pulpit sounds forth the world appeal and 
 the woman's mission society is especially interested in the 
 work in Persia, let us say. It has a denominational repu- 
 tation for its world-vision. A visitor to this church, con- 
 versing with the president of the mission society, com- 
 mented on the rapid growth of her town. "Oh, yes," 
 responded the good woman, "large numbers of people are 
 moving into the town, but, you know, they are not the
 
 40 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 sort who take to the church." Now the home principle in 
 missions does not ask less devotion to Persia, or to China 
 or Japan or India. It believes more of this interest is 
 needed. The home principle in mission asks, begs, pleads 
 that we shall apply the same spiritual gauge to the needy 
 people who come to our community as we do to those on 
 foreign shores, has because the heathen does not take to 
 the church of Christ that we send missionaries to teach and 
 change him. How can we consistently turn this around at 
 home so completely that we make the indifference of people 
 the ground for neglecting them? Their coming to America 
 puts us under new obligations to them. In North Carolina 
 there was a woman from Pennsylvania who was going over 
 the country singing, "Oh Where is my Wandering Boy To- 
 night." A brother who chanced to know that she had left 
 a family of ten children behind, said that it would be more 
 appropriate for those children to sing, "Where is my Wan- 
 dering Mother To-night." We are not fit for the far off 
 duty until we do that which is near. 
 
 Saving the local community. I am not now making an 
 argument between technical Home Missions and technical 
 Foreign Missions. The home principle in missions em- 
 braces the work of our organized agencies for missions in 
 our own land, but it includes more. There are conditions 
 under which the most pressing missionary obligation of 
 -a church will be the establishment and maintenance of one 
 or more missions in its own community, or in just winning 
 and holding its community, without any separate organiza- 
 tion. It may be true that this work will not be known or 
 credited by any agency as a missionary contribution. That 
 makes no essential difference, desirable as it is for a church 
 to co-operate with all the agencies of the denomination.
 
 THE HOME PRINCIPLE IN MISSIONS 41 
 
 The home principle demands that we shall have a zeal for 
 the lost that will not balk at the unromantic, unaesthetic 
 and often annoying mission job which lies ready to hand, 
 nor wait to consider whether it gets credit for its service. 
 I am connected with an agency which expends about $500,- 
 000 yearly in Home Missions. To conduct its work re- 
 quires more than $40,000 every month. There is not a 
 month in which every official worker of the Home Mission 
 Board is not burdened with trying to get money to conduct 
 such large operations. But I am perfectly willing to trust 
 the support of our organized work, in the States, in the 
 South and in foreign lands, with churches in which the 
 principle of missions strikes in with such sincerity of pur- 
 pose, such genuineness of love, that it shall yearn with holy 
 passion and brotherly care for the needy in their own com- 
 munities. In fact, can we with confidence trust it with 
 churches which have not this vision of the value of the 
 near-at-hand? This passion in a city church will not allow 
 it to forget the foreigner within three blocks, or the blacks 
 in the Negro quarter, or the slums in the back streets, or 
 the new residence district in the suburbs, or the nearly dead 
 country churches in the surrounding country. In a country 
 church, it will not allow that body to vegetate in an almost 
 paralytic inertia for eleven months and three weeks, till the 
 protracted meeting work comes, to suggest that it really 
 cares for the folk in its own community. How we need 
 an awakening to the worth of the at-our-doors in missions! 
 When we show our confidence in the value of the gospel 
 to save our own community, and not until then, will we be 
 in position to demonstrate our full sincerity in offering it to 
 others. To be indifferent to the needy people in our town, 
 while we offer our gospel to people far away, is to suggest
 
 42 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 a certain lack of confidence in the very thing we propose 
 to send to others. It is as if we would say, This is good 
 enough for you, but we nave to confess it did not more 
 than snatch a few from the general ruck of ungodliness and 
 pleasure-seeking and misery which oppresses our own com- 
 munity. 
 
 It calls for thoroughness. The home principle in mis- 
 sions calls for thoroughness. To their cost Southern Bap- 
 tists have learned this in some of their foreign mission fields. 
 For a long time our missionaries were instructed to center 
 all their efforts on evangelistic proclamation. God blessed 
 their efforts. The reports of conversion were large and 
 refreshing. Some other missionaries in the same territory 
 gave much attention to thoroughness. They taught the 
 evangelized. At considerable cost they established and con- 
 ducted Christian schools. The influence and stability of 
 their work increased. Nurturing is slow and does not make 
 a report look big, but the time came when our missionaries 
 found it difficult to hold what they had evangelized. They 
 had not had adequate opportunity to teach the people and 
 their leaders. Our Foreign Mission Board saw the mistake, 
 and is correcting it in the great Judson Memorial Fund. It 
 was a natural mistake for Southern Baptists, who have 
 always been great at pioneering, but have not been so active 
 as the teachings of the Bible and the demands of the field 
 indicate in establishing a program which would conserve 
 as well as project. In the home field we have been slow 
 to take into our mission program the work of watering as 
 well as planting. Alas, we have often planted, as some 
 farmers are learning to do in the cut-over pine forests in 
 certain sections of the South. They dig the seeds in and 
 leave them. In the fall they come back and gather a har-
 
 THE HOME PRINCIPLE IN MISSIONS 43 
 
 vest from such of the crop plants as may have been able 
 unaided to fight a winning battle with grass and weeds 
 and roots and brush and briars. A full acceptance of the 
 home principle in missions will not only seek to plant all 
 the territory, but to cultivate every bit of it, looking to the 
 abundant harvest that shall be the fruit of nurtured lives, 
 and not alone to the meagre returns that we may expect 
 from saved souls left to live as best they may amid the 
 forces of ignorance and ungodlness. 
 
 Calls for staying on the task. The home principle in mis- 
 sions requires that we shall stick to the job and adjust our 
 efforts to the needs. The ministries of the home are the 
 ministries of love. They never tire. If the child is ill no 
 amount of weakness or fretfulness changes the mother's 
 patience or her devoted care. The principle of missions 
 is the principle of love. If we love, we will not become dis- 
 couraged when our infrequent homilies to the ignorant and 
 depraved and pleasure-seeking seem to fall on deaf ears. 
 We will stick by the job. How often do we hear some one 
 ask, "When will you ever get through with your missions 
 here in the State? or in the South? Must we expect the 
 appeal to keep up forever?" Yes, it will keep up so long 
 as society lasts and so long as there are those who know 
 Christ and care for the sinful, fallen state of their brothers. 
 The job of State and Home Missions has to be done over 
 in every generation. Each generation has to be converted 
 and trained for service. In addition, the changes in popu- 
 lation, which were never so many as now, demand in each 
 case a new missionary effort. A city builds a new suburb. 
 People move out to it, depleting the older churches. Behold 
 two mission problems, that of establishing a new church in 
 the suburb and that of aiding the old ones in any needed
 
 44 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 readjustments. A cotton mill is erected People are brought 
 in as operatives, from the rural districts and from other 
 States. The establishment of a church at the mill is a mis' 
 sion problem, and so is the care of the rural churches de- 
 pleted by the going of these and others to urban tasks. 
 Civilization speeds up its material elements. Lagging 
 churches, especially in the country, stand still. The time 
 comes when the poor church is dazed and helpless to com- 
 mand and spiritualize the surrounding life. Helping it to 
 diagnose its case and to master its God-appointed task, and 
 keeping yet other churches from losing their grip, is essen- 
 tially a missionary task. An old population moves out, an 
 immigrant crowd comes in. Behold two mission problems; 
 one among Americans, the other among foreigners. The 
 successful completion of one task opens up another. A 
 mission church subdues a bad community; land values in- 
 crease; people move in. Their coming brings another mis- 
 sion problem. If we evangelized nobody, we would not 
 need to nurture anybody. The home principle in missions 
 requires that we shall stay on the task. 
 
 Calls for courage and faith. When Spurgeon considered 
 the inertia and discouragements which surround a lot of 
 small churches he declared that he did not have faith 
 enough to undertake so difficult a job, and thanked God for 
 others who had. It requires less courage and ability to move 
 from place to place, hunting out the opportunities sus- 
 ceptible of quick cultivation, and then jumping to another, 
 than it does to stay by a difficult task, year after year, wit- 
 nessing for Christ, and turning the stagnation of long stand- 
 ing into pure currents of love and helpfulness. Speaking of 
 devils to be driven from communities, I commend the devil 
 of stagnation to doughty champions, who really wish to be
 
 THE HOME PRINCIPLE IN MISSIONS 45 
 
 pitted against a man's job in devil-driving. Joseph E. 
 McAfee tells of a letter he received from a young preacher 
 who had taken charge of a sleepy church in a community, 
 generations ago congealed into forms of expression not 
 since changed. After a few months of facing a static church 
 in this "finished" community, the young preacher wrote: 
 "I cannot stand this; the devil is so little active here that 
 my ministry is not even entertaining." Soon the young 
 man moved out to a raw pioneer community, where the 
 devil is supposed to keep things on the jump daily. Was 
 that really the most heroic thing to do? Perhaps that young 
 preacher was so little acquainted with the wiles of the devil 
 that he could only recognize him in his more spectacular 
 and picturesque manifestations. In respectable circles the 
 devil does not paint himself in red colors. In sober old 
 communities he puts on no gaudy garb that will shock the 
 sensibilities of the fastidious. But one of the most damag- 
 ing devils in many an old community is the devil of stag- 
 nation, of asleep-in-Zion contentment, complacent respect- 
 ability, a lack of courage and faith to take hold of a wan- 
 ing church life and lead it into a new vitality. 
 
 To rebuild as well as build. The average length of 
 tenure of a Baptist pastor in the rural South is less than 
 three years. Leaving out of consideration for a moment 
 the responsibility of the churches for this short-term tenant 
 system of pastoral care, consider what it means in a rest- 
 less discontent on the part of the preachers with run-down- 
 at-the-heels conditions which so often obtain in rural fields, 
 and indeed elsewhere. If these men had learned in their 
 college and theological training and from the ideals held 
 up at denominational conventions and preachers* meetings, 
 that he who rebuilds is as great as he who first clears off
 
 46 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 the brush, how much it would mean for our Baptist useful- 
 ness. It requires more faith, courage, and character to 
 tackle the job of reconstructing and vitalizing the life of a 
 community or church, the pioneer possibilities of which 
 have been hastily exploited and the deeper potentialities 
 of which have scarcely been touched, than it does to clear 
 the new ground and get a few crops from the virgin spir- 
 itual resources before soil-depletion follows soil-robbery and 
 the devil of stagnation supercedes the rough imps of the 
 unsubdued wildwoods. 
 
 Saving as well as proclaiming. There is an interpreta- 
 tion of the work of missions which belittles the content of 
 the message. There are those who explain Christ's com- 
 mand to witness for him in all places, from the home to the 
 uttermost parts, to mean that we must merely bear the 
 message as heralds. As John the Baptist was a voice cry- 
 ing in the wilderness, announcing the coming of Christ, 
 according to these interpreters, we are to announce to the 
 sin-blinded world that Christ has come, after which our 
 responsibility ceases. Congregations are told of the English 
 officer's assurance that the queen's forces could announce 
 a proclamation from the English throne to every creature 
 in the world, in two or three years, and a contrast is drawn 
 with the tardy performance of Christians in spreading the 
 proclamation of their King. "The evangelization of the 
 world in the present generation," is a slogan which has 
 been recently much used to challenge missionary enthusi- 
 asm. As an extensive program this slogan is impressive 
 enough to grip any human being who can be mastered by 
 the appeal of the great. There is this, however: If 
 this program has for its content only the heraldic idea, 
 it is fatally deficient in its intensive purpose. "Such
 
 THE HOME PRINCIPLE IN MISSIONS 47 
 
 persons," declares Rev. William E. Hatcher, D. D., in 
 "The Home Mission Task," "seem to have a cheap and 
 belittling idea of what the evangelization of the world 
 really means. Everybody, according to them, must have 
 a chance. All must hear the joyful sound and get a full 
 and solemn warning, and if they do not fall in at once 
 with the gospel offer, the day of grace will be cut short 
 and those who gave the warning will be witnesses for the 
 condemnation of the rejecters. Surely our Lord never came 
 into the world on such a scant errand as that. He came 
 to save and not to create a flimsy pretext for condemning 
 men. So far as we know, the work is a work for the cen- 
 turies. They who tell us how long it will take to get the 
 gospel to the whole world know not what they are talking 
 about. Our part is to hear the Commission and go out 
 under the order and stay until the bells of heaven ring to 
 call us off." Nothing less than that will comport with the 
 spirit of love and service which is at the heart of the gospel. 
 Not one of us was ever won to Christ by the impatient 
 scheme of the heraldic proclamationists. It took love and 
 patience and more love and patience, line upon line, pre- 
 cept upon precept. And, after we were saved, it took more 
 still of these to nurture us in the requirements of the life 
 of service. New Testament practice is regularly against 
 the heraldic idea. But, if there were no examples to the 
 contrary and no specific teaching, the spirit of faithfulness 
 and unwaning love, which is at the heart of Christianity 
 would bid us beware of a scheme of evangelization so 
 heartless and cheap as the heraldic plan proposes. 
 
 The base of supplies. That evangelizing and Christian- 
 izing the homeland is essential to the maintenance of a 
 successful foreign mission work, we have often been re-
 
 48 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 minded. None has more keenly felt this or expressed it 
 with more trenchant force than the foreign missionaries. 
 For money and additional missionaries, for the cheer and 
 reinforcement of sustaining prayers and sympathy, the mis- 
 sionary at the far-flung front is dependent upon the home- 
 land. As these words are being written, this country has 
 hundreds of thousands of its young men in the army camps, 
 training for prospective service on the European battle 
 front. Some of their comrades are already at the front. 
 Others will go. But, however many may go, their safety 
 and efficiency at the front will depend upon maintaining an 
 adequate base of supplies at home. Germany, impelled by 
 a fateful greed of godless conquest, has turned its whole 
 territory into a great machine for manufacturing war sup- 
 plies. America, which hates war and loves peace, in order 
 to make the world safe for democracy, is mobilizing the 
 resources of the entire country. If America must strike, 
 she will not only look after the hammer, but provide an 
 arm that shall be able to use it with untiring strength. She 
 will at home provide the dynamo with current adequate to 
 drive the motor at its full capacity in France. If the Chris- 
 tian people of America would mobilize for Christ the un- 
 enlisted and the enlisted but untaught human forces of this 
 country with one-fifth the determination our people are 
 exhibiting in getting ready for the war, a great and blessed 
 increment of power would come to our Foreign Mission 
 effort. 
 
 Idealizing the daily task. The call of a great task chal- 
 lenges men and the appeal of romance draws them. This 
 appeal is often used to woo Christians to the immense tasks 
 of Foreign Missions. The exponent of the need of a vital 
 mission program at home may not use these appeals with
 
 THE HOME PRINCIPLE IN MISSIONS 49 
 
 similar effectiveness, though our task is both urgent and 
 immense. But he may insist that our work at home tre- 
 mendously needs that we shall learn how to idealize the 
 commonplace, and that the welfare of our foreign propa- 
 ganda also demands this. I would not take from the urge 
 of the great or of the novel any of its power, but I would 
 that we might add to the content and character of the 
 message wherewith we propose to permeate the masses of 
 unsaved, both at home and abroad. Our Saviour said, 
 "Well, thou good servant, because thou hast been faithful 
 in very little, have thou authority over ten cities." "He 
 that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in 
 much." Never has the world had another teacher who 
 showed men how to glorify and idealize the commonplace 
 and despised things of daily life, like Jesus did. A great 
 teacher has said that "the drearier and more commonplace 
 the occupation, the higher must be the ideal of the man or 
 woman whose lot it is." Thank God for that spirit which 
 can make a woman washing dishes or a man digging a ditch 
 clothe the task with such dreams and satisfactions as to 
 enable them through the task to see God and to serve and 
 love their fellows. No preachment of the challenge of 
 the great task which does not make room for the magni- 
 fication of even the cup of cold water in His name, is of 
 the kind that our missionary effort needs. The spirit of 
 such preachment lacks a world of being sufficient to sus- 
 tain in the tedious tasks of weary days and years the men 
 and women who actually execute this mission service. We 
 can objectify and idealize their task as a regal invasion. 
 But they cannot objectify it; they can only show forth, in 
 thousands of little efforts, a heart of love which can labor 
 and wait. The foreign missionary idealizes the common-
 
 50 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 place. So does the homeland missionary. So must we en- 
 deavor to teach our church members to do. For it is not 
 by the might of our statesmanship and strategy, nor by the 
 power of mere mathematical immensity to subdue the mind, 
 but by the Spirit of God, who begets in us that faith which, 
 day by day and in that which is least, worketh by love, 
 that the Kingdom of Christ shall come. 
 
 Making democracy safe for the world. In a great ad- 
 dress Dr. John E. White, pastor of the First Baptist Church 
 of Anderson, South Carolina, recently sounded a chal- 
 lenge which has the flavor of prophecy. After pleading 
 that we might through the terrible World War make the 
 world safe for democracy, he declared that when by the 
 blessing of God a righteous peace shall come, bringing 
 safety for democracy, we shall still have the democrats 
 on our hands. Safe from international strife, we shall 
 still have the internal strife of classes strikes, greedy ag- 
 gressions, self-indulgence, class-wars. When Patrick Henry 
 said, "Give me liberty or give me death," he held up the 
 ideal of personal liberty. When Lincoln said, "A govern- 
 ment of the people, by the people, for the people," he set 
 forth the platform of national democracy. When Woodrow 
 Wilson said, "We must make the world safe for democracy," 
 he raised before mankind the banner of international de- 
 mocracy. When the suffering and war are over which 
 afflict the world, what of the democrats we shall have on 
 our hands? The answer is a question of whether we shall 
 bring American men and all zones of American life into 
 subjection to our Lord Jesus Christ. Only thus can we 
 make democracy safe for the world. It is a work of mis- 
 sions in our own homes and in our own land. It challenges 
 all manhood, and demands all the devotion of the heart.
 
 TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY IN CHAPTER II. 
 
 1. Unity of principle in all classes of mission work, in connec- 
 tion with divisions for administrative efficiency. 
 
 2. The impossibility of selfishness in any real missionary effort. 
 
 3. The suitability of homeland missions to test one's (1) thor- 
 oughness, (2) willingness to stay on the task, (3) courage 
 and faith. 
 
 4. Show how homeland missions requires us (1) to rebuild as 
 well as build, (2) to save as well as proclaim, (3) to con- 
 serve the base of supplies, (4) to idealize the daily task.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 AID FOR THE SOUTHERN NEGRO. 
 
 The Negro is our heritage. No race ever had more pas- 
 sion for liberty than the Anglo-Saxon. In America the love 
 for freedom of this race found its fullest expression, and in 
 the South their blood has remained freest from mixture with 
 other strains. Here the Anglo-Saxon's devotion to evan- 
 gelical religion has been less interfered with than in other 
 sections. This faith has sensed the worth of the individual 
 and the rights of personality more than all others and has 
 thus added to the spirit of democracy. It was a paradox 
 and a tragedy that such a people should find themselves 
 possessed with a social order which had gradually built 
 human bondage into its fabric. Nowhere else had slavery 
 ever existed under such humane conditions. Many slave 
 owners looked after the welfare of their servants with sin- 
 cere desire for their well being and happiness. Some ar- 
 ranged plans for giving freedom to their servants. Thou- 
 sands porvided for the religious instruction of the blacks, 
 who often sat in the same churches with the white owners. 
 The genuine affection which often existed between master 
 and man was creditable alike to both. But slavery was 
 doomed in America, as the spread of democracy and right- 
 eousness will doom it anywhere. The spirit of our religion 
 and of the age was against it. A halo of romance en- 
 velops the story of the feudal life of the Old South, and 
 there was a unique beauty about that life. But the 
 beauty was in generous hearts; in the institution itself
 
 AID FOR THE SOUTHERN NEGRO 53 
 
 there was only ugliness. "Uncle Tom's Cabin," written by 
 a gifted Northern woman as an anti-slavery document, 
 gave an ex parte portrayal which did not fairly set forth 
 the truth about the condition of the slaves, and the South 
 resented it. But, aside from the badness of slavery as an 
 institution, even under the best conditions, not all slave 
 owners were humane or kind, nor can we of the twentieth 
 century without regret consider the fact that our fathers 
 had laws in most of the Southern States against teaching 
 slaves to read and write. Surely the South was consciously 
 enmeshed in a bad system, when in order to safeguard it, 
 it felt the necessity of keeping the slaves ignorant to keep 
 them docile. For his own welfare, quite as much as for 
 that of the blacks, the Southern white man of to-day thanks 
 God that the nightmare of human slavery was removed. 
 A portentious but hopeful problem. The War between 
 the States did not settle the race problem. It merely brought 
 it into a new phase. The problem is a permanent posses- 
 sion of the South, and is the most difficult internal question 
 which affects the life of this section. It is a question of 
 two separate races, one advanced and the other not long 
 from barbarism and only recently from slavery, living per- 
 manently in the same environment under conditions that 
 shall provide for the welfare and progress of both races. 
 It is a question of the strong considering the needs of the 
 weak, and the weak advancing to strength without seeking 
 to use his increasing advantages to the injury of those who 
 made it possible for him to rise. Fundamentally it is a 
 question of Christian faith and of doing right because it 
 is right. Dark as the problem is from the standpoint of 
 politics, social fact, and human nature, it becomes bright 
 when approached in the spirit of Jesus Christ. The Negro
 
 64 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 is religious and he heartily and sincerely welcomes the 
 counsel and friendship of the white man on the plane of 
 a common faith in God. It is a fact, and we shall do well 
 to impress ourselves with it, that the Negro is the supreme 
 test of the Southern white man's Christianity. And it is 
 not difficult for a really Christian white man to show the 
 spirit of fair-dealing with Negroes. Thousands of whites 
 affect to reprobate the blacks as a race, who are sincerely 
 attached to individual Negroes. Many speak more crit- 
 ically of Negroes than they feel. The recent exodus of 
 Negroes to the North has convinced many a Southern white 
 man that he was unconsciously posing when he said he 
 wanted the Negroes to leave. Most of us really want the 
 Negro to stay in the South. He understands us and we 
 understand him. We would not know how to get along 
 without him. 
 
 The football of circumstances. There are good reasons 
 for the whites to feel kindly toward the Negroes. The race 
 has certain weaknesses. They are the weaknesses of a child- 
 race, such as lack of restraint, lack of honesty, a love of 
 show and parade, and lack of initiative. But this race has 
 certain qualities which have won their way to the heart 
 of the white man. Among them are fidelity, gratitude for 
 favors, generosity, lack of brooding, unresentfulness, a 
 patient good humor, and a soul which responds to the ap- 
 peal of religion and interprets itself winsomely in plaintive 
 music. If space permitted, the evidence of these virtues 
 claimed for the Negro could be given. For the most part, 
 the Southern white man will not ask for evidence. He has 
 throughout his life observed for himself the characteristics 
 of the blacks in the Negroes about him. But we have 
 usually been readier to speak of the Negro's faults than
 
 AID FOR THE SOUTHERN NEGRO 55 
 
 his virtues. It is almost to weep to consider how often the 
 Negro has been the foot-ball of frowning circumstances 
 for which he was in no way responsible. He was not re- 
 sponsible for being in America. He was not responsible 
 for the war. He was not responsible for the unwisdom of 
 putting the ballot into his hands before he knew what to 
 do with it. The cupidity, the quarrels and conflicts of the 
 stronger whites, raged about him and he stumbled and suf- 
 fered, not knowing clearly what it was all about. But, 
 feeling that somehow there was not much to be had by 
 the Negro in this strange white man's world, he smiled and 
 unburdened his soul in a song: 
 
 "Aught's a' aught and five's a figur', 
 All for de white man and none for de nigger." 
 
 Set down into the civilization of a superior race, it has 
 not been a fault of the Negro that he should long to secure 
 for himself some of the advantages of that higher civiliza- 
 tion. It is the only civilization he knows. If he was im- 
 pervious to its appeal, he would be either more or less than 
 human. It is to his credit that he does struggle toward 
 improving his condition in the line of the higher standards 
 which are ever before him. 
 
 His virtues have saved him. The Indian as a race did 
 not fit into the white man's civilization as a free man, and 
 could not have done so as a slave. The Negro thrived in 
 bondage, and was loyal to the trust of helpless white women 
 when his master was fighting to keep him a slave. Set free, 
 at first he was happy but dazed. When he had rubbed 
 his eyes, he began to see that freedom meant work and self- 
 direction, and he successfully fitted himself into a place in 
 the white man's civilization under the new conditions. Had
 
 66 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 he been bitter and morose, like the Indian, he would have 
 caused endless trouble, and brought on himself his own 
 destruction. But hate was not in his heart. Given the 
 ballot, he did not know what to do with it, so he played 
 with it as a child would do, while the carpet-bagger fat- 
 tened and the white man successfully set about bringing an 
 end to this political orgie. The Negro has suffered much 
 for that premature frolic with the ballot, but he was a 
 victim rather than an aggressor and the Southern whites 
 understood the case and did not hold against the Negro 
 his Falstaman venture into politics. The yearning of this 
 childlike race for the white man's learning would have 
 been amusing, it it had not been pathetic. Debarred from 
 books in slavery, the Negro felt that in book-learning some- 
 how lay the secret of the white man's power. So there was 
 a struggle to learn out of books, any kind of book, but 
 especially that wonder-working Latin and Greek that the 
 master's son had been learning at the big university. Still, 
 the poor untaught black was not entirely without ability 
 to discriminate, as we shall see. 
 
 Religious efforts of the whites. No study of the race 
 question in the South can proceed well without taking note 
 of the fact that the Christian white people have always 
 felt an obligation to evangelize the Negroes. This was true 
 under the slave regime and it is true now. The significance 
 of this fact is that the white man never hardened his heart 
 against his bond servant, and that the slave's heart was 
 open to sympathetic approach of the white man. Similarly 
 the post-bellum efforts to lead the Negroes to become Chris- 
 tians, which have been general among Southern Christian 
 bodies, and far more general among individual white men 
 and women, are the best possible proof that there is no
 
 AID FOR THE SOUTHERN NEGRO 57 
 
 gulf of race prejudice across which kindly human sympathy 
 cannot and does not pass daily. Each of the Christian 
 bodies conducted missionary effort for the slaves. White 
 missionaries went to them; white churches received them 
 as members; in a number of instances capable Negro 
 preachers were given their liberty, so that they might give 
 their lives to the ministry. After the war, the work for the 
 blacks was resumed, though the white churches were pov- 
 erty stricken. The blacks went to separate churches on 
 their own motion and the whites gave the land and con- 
 tributed freely toward erecting the houses of worship. 
 Southern Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians until to- 
 day are engaged in missionary endeavor for the blacks. 
 The Episcopalians, who did not separate into Northern 
 and Southern denominational wings, are also doing some- 
 thing for them. Most of the rural religious membership in 
 the South is Methodist and Baptist. Partly for this reason, 
 nearly all the Negroes belong to one of these two denomina- 
 tions, the Baptists having more than three-fifths of the 
 entire religious membership of the Negroes in America. 
 
 Near the heart of the problem. In his book, "Up From 
 Slavery," Booker T. Washington says that he was con- 
 scious, when he stood before that distinguished gathering 
 at the Atlanta Exposition, in 1885, in which he made his 
 national reputation, that he could through one foolish sen- 
 tence set back for many years the coming of a kinder and 
 more helpful understanding between the whites and blacks. 
 Seeking as I am in this chapter to approach the heart of 
 our race problem, I feel a solicitude somewhat akin to the 
 oppression which bore down on that black man's anxious 
 soul, as he sought to say a hopeful interpretative word 
 on the race problem that both races would receive. If
 
 58 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 one dares go to the heart of this question, he is aware 
 that he will have to do with the political status of the 
 black, his economic position, his education, his religious 
 welfare, and fair dealing with him as an individual. The 
 responsible white South accepts its religious obligation to 
 the Negro, and has done much to help him, though not all 
 it ought, by far. It accepts the principle of fair and honest 
 business dealings with the black man, but is painfully aware 
 that there are not a few whites who are not living up to a 
 high standard of honesty in their dealings with Negroes. 
 Its attitude toward the Negro's economic independence is 
 that of encouragement, and is one of the most cheering 
 phases of this problem. By giving about $10,000,000 
 yearly to Negro education in the public schools and by 
 refusing to adopt laws proposed for the purpose of cutting 
 the Negro out of this aid, the South has demonstrated that 
 it feels a sense of responsibility to increase the Negro's in- 
 telligence. Yet it is some phases of the educational ques- 
 tion, and his political status, which it is most difficult to 
 discuss in a hopeful and satisfactory way. 
 
 As to "social equality." As to "social equality," though 
 it is a theme about which it is easy to generate much heat, 
 it has never seemed to me to merit serious attention. Gov- 
 ernor W. J. Northen, of Georgia, was right when he said 
 that "Social equality is a delusion set up by the dema- 
 gogue." There is no question of social intermingling of 
 races in the South. Assuredly there is none which need 
 disturb us in any program which we may adopt for the 
 uplift of the Negro. The only danger point is between the 
 baser sort of whites and the baser sort of Negroes. Constant 
 efforts to improve the Negro and to bring the whites to a 
 fuller, better life are exactly those the fruition of which
 
 AID FOR THE SOUTHERN NEGRO 59 
 
 will destroy even any semblance of social intermingling. 
 This is a paradox, but it is the truth. The Negro has a 
 disconcerting way of developing under given conditions 
 into attitudes exactly opposite to those we predicted. We 
 said if he came to own his farm he would get independent 
 of his white neighbors and be troublesome. But when he 
 came to own his farm, he became a good citizen and allied 
 himself with his white neighbors to help control the dis- 
 orderly elements of his own race. Some of us have been 
 saying if we educated the Negro and aided him to a larger 
 comprehension of life, he would seek to thrust himself in 
 an obnoxious way on whites. Well, we have educated some 
 of them. With what results ? The educated Negro, through 
 learning self-respect, has usually become painfully and 
 supersensitively careful not to impose himself on whites in 
 a way that might suggest social aspirations or invite rebuff. 
 As a Negro preacher in Texas has said, the baser elements 
 of the two races are as the junction point of two sides of 
 a triangle, while the better elements of the Negroes to-day 
 are so far from contact with the whites that the responsible 
 groups of the two races may be considered as the other 
 ends of the two lines forming the triangle. They are not 
 only more separated, but too much separated from the 
 responsible whites. When in his famous Atlanta speech 
 Booker Washington said: "In all things purely social we 
 can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in 
 all things essential to mutual progress," the whole great 
 audience of distinguished Southern whites and some Ne- 
 groes rose to its feet and indulged in a delirium of applause. 
 Mr. Clark Howell, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, in 
 the audience, turned and remarked to Mr. James Creelman, 
 then staff correspondent of the New York World: "That
 
 60 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 man's speech is the beginning of a moral revolution." In 
 "The Constitution," Mr. Howell said: "The whole speech 
 is a platform on which blacks and whites can stand with 
 full justice to each other." If there is any real danger in 
 social intermixing of the races, it is among the ignorant 
 and the low. The way to cure it is by driving out ignor- 
 ance and sin, not by negations and silly fears, which do 
 small credit to our conscious Anglo-Saxon strength. Our 
 faith in God and in our own strength, and the chivalry 
 which leads a true man to encourage the weak and needy, 
 demand that we shall lay the ghost of such fears concern- 
 ing the social safety of the white race. 
 
 Three leading difficulties. Before tracing further some 
 of the stumbling blocks which beset the way of help and 
 confidence between the races, I wish to mention three lead- 
 ing difficulties in the way of a dispassionate and construc- 
 tive approach to this matter of black and white in the South. 
 They are the prejudiced Southern white man, the Northern 
 Negrophile, and the radical Negro leader, who is usually 
 a New England product. Dr. W. D. Weatherford, in 
 "Negro Life in the South," tells of a white physician he 
 met who in one breath declared hell was too good for the 
 Negro criminal, and in the next breath claimed that the 
 Negro had no soul. When Dr. Weatherford asked him if 
 he thought his horse would go to hell because in a fit of 
 temper he kicked his master, the physician did not seem to 
 see the point. The political demagogue who raves about 
 "white supremacy" and "social equality," does it in the 
 thought that the white voter whose suffrage he seeks, is 
 ignorant and prejudiced enough to be caught by such 
 furious speech. If the voters would only think, such a 
 demagogue is in effect telling them that they are narrow
 
 AID FOR THE SOUTHERN NEGRO 61 
 
 and ignorant and that therefore he has decided to ensnare 
 their votes by shouting, "The goblins will get you!" Few 
 more mortifying spectacles have disgraced the political his- 
 tory of the South than the Negro-baiting of these agitators. 
 It is gratifying to note that there are fewer of them than 
 formerly, and that very few of their rash proposals have 
 been adopted. 
 
 The Northern Negrophile and the radical Negro. These 
 two hinderers of the improvement of race relations in the 
 South belong in the same pigeon hole. The radical Negro 
 leader is almost without exception a New England product. 
 Boston has done many good things in America and has not 
 suffered for lack of an adequate book-making ability where- 
 with to set it forth before the world on the printed page. 
 But Boston's intolerant and contemptuous attitude toward 
 the Southern whites in relation to the great human prob- 
 lem which has fallen to the South to settle, has been a 
 source of almost continual exasperation in this section, and 
 has undoubtedly retarded the approach of the two races in 
 a better understanding. If the South has to confess to race 
 prejudice, it can at least show a great occasion for it, one 
 concerning the solution of which the world afforded no 
 precedent. But those complacent uplifters of Boston had 
 no similar excuse for their arrogant attitude of condemna- 
 tion toward a whole section of the country. This section 
 realizes that the Negro question is national, just as the 
 foreigner question is, which is now pinching Boston and 
 New England so severely. But in a peculiar sense the 
 Negro question is Southern and must be wrought out in 
 the South. This section has felt that it deserved at least 
 the patient sympathy of other sections. More and more 
 that sympathy and patience are coming to be given, and we
 
 62 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 shall welcome even Boston uplifters to a more pacific and 
 tolerant frame of mind. But, in the meantime, they have 
 nurtured the radical Negro leader, who from his New Eng- 
 land aerie pronounces great swelling words about the rights 
 of his race in the South, not one of whose actual burdens 
 this impertinent ranter has usually ever sought to relieve by 
 the weight of his little finger. I have just read "The Souls 
 of Black Folk," by Prof. W. E. B. DuBois, a teacher in a 
 Negro institution at Atlanta, but a New England product 
 He is a gifted man, but shows bitterness of spirit. In his 
 writings he does not seem to be concerned to help the 
 Negroes to be worthy of position, but rather to stir them 
 to demand for themselves their so-called rights, by which 
 he means all that is desirable in the white man's civiliza- 
 tion. To quote some of the utterances of this Negro man 
 and others of his kind would only be to stir up the op- 
 position of Southern whites who are really friendly to 
 Negro progress. Those Boston Negroes tried to discredit 
 Professor Booker Washington because his plan was to take 
 the Negro as he is and to make him a more useful man by 
 teaching him first to be a better farmer and artisan. This 
 program of doing first things first, which is essentially that 
 which every race has had to follow, was not full enough 
 of bombast and windy camouflage to suit those Negroes 
 of Boston. 
 
 Negro's political situation. Harm was done the interests 
 of the Negro by giving him the ballot after the Civil War. 
 Nothing less than the blindness of prejudice can account 
 for the putting of the political and civil control of the South 
 in the hands of ignorant ex-slaves and of taking the fran- 
 chise away from many of the whites, who, any common 
 sense consideration would have shown, must lead in bring-
 
 AID FOR THE SOUTHERN NEGRO 63 
 
 ing order out of chaos, if it was ever to be done. That blun- 
 der and the abnormal methods which the Southern States 
 had to use to overthrow it left the South in no mood to con- 
 sider the political rights of the Negro. But some of the 
 most conscientious and thoughtful leaders of this section 
 are now raising the question of the terms on which the bal- 
 lot shall be accorded. Undoubtedly there should be restric- 
 tions about the right to vote, but is it ethical or safe to 
 make different restrictions for the different races? A 
 literacy test is perhaps the best practicable safeguard against 
 ignorance in the votes. A property requirement might not 
 be bad. But can the dominant whites afford not to apply 
 these tests with fairness to both races? Booker T. Wash- 
 ington says on this point: "I believe it is the duty of the 
 Negro to deport himself modestly in regard to political 
 claims, depending upon the slow but sure influences that 
 proceed from the possession of property, intelligence, and 
 high character for the full recognition of his political rights. 
 I think that the according of the full exercise of political 
 rights is going to be a matter of natural, slow growth, not 
 an over-night, gourd-vine affair. * * * As a rule, I be- 
 lieve in universal, free suffrage, but I believe that in the 
 South we are confronted with peculiar conditions that 
 justify the protection of the ballot in many States, for a 
 while at least, by an educational test, a property test, or 
 by both combined; but whatever tests are required, they 
 should be made to apply with equal and exact justice to 
 both races." If the bars are put up higher between the 
 Negro and the franchise than between the white and the 
 franchise, it will stimulate the Negro to develop strength to 
 climb the higher over the restrictions, while it will lull the 
 whites into an unwholesome and weakening complacency.
 
 64 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 This appears to be poor statesmanship, as well as bad 
 ethics. It is not calculated to confirm our confidence in 
 Anglo-Saxon superiority. 
 
 Economic progress. The freed Negro dreamed happily 
 of a life without work. After fifty years, there is a definite 
 and conscious reversal of ideals among the best thought of 
 the race. It is even claimed by some observers that the 
 ideal of economic independence is mastering that of educa- 
 tion among many Negroes as a directing force in their lives. 
 At any rate, the economic progress is marked which is now 
 being made by the Negroes in the South. And it is es- 
 pecially gratifying that here is an upward movement among 
 the Negroes concerning which there is general good will, 
 and often assistance on the part of their white neighbors. 
 A questionaire, sent out by Dr. W. D. Weatherford among 
 200 farm demonstrators in the South, brought replies nearly 
 all of which declared that the whites are friendly to Negro 
 farm ownership. This is also confirmed by general obser- 
 vation. There is no economic discrimination against the 
 Negro in the South. Here white men not only give him a 
 chance to work and encourage him to work, but when oc- 
 casion arises, they work at his side. This affords a hope- 
 ful outlook. The value of Negro farm property in the 
 South increased from $177,000,000 to $493,000,000, or 
 177 per cent.between 1900 and 1916. About thirty per- 
 cent of all the Negro farmers in the South now own their 
 farms, and the number of owners is definitely increasing. 
 There are in the United States forty-eight Negro banks, 
 which do an annual business of more than $26,000,000. 
 The Negro Year Book estimates the Negro wealth in the 
 United States at $1,000,000,000. They have 42,000 
 churches with property valued at $76,000,000. A total of
 
 AID FOR THE SOUTHERN NEGRO 65 
 
 $21,500,000 is invested in property for the higher educa- 
 tion of the race. Instead of the Negro ownership of prop- 
 erty making race friction worse, the habits of industry and 
 reliability which the race develops in its economic efforts 
 commend the black man to his white neighbors. 
 
 Educational ideals. As the years go by, Southern whites 
 will more and more come to understand what they owe to 
 Booker T. Washington for holding up the ideal of industrial 
 efficiency as the great mudsill of any wise program in Negro 
 education. His book, "Up From Slavery," is one of the 
 most fascinating biographies I have read, and should be 
 better known by white readers. The author credits General 
 Samuel C. Armstrong, then the head of Hampton Institute, 
 Virginia, with being the author of the idea of educating 
 the Negro through teaching him to do well the work which 
 he would find in life, and to adopt better standards of 
 living. But one cannot trace the instructive story of this 
 man, beginning at the time when he was a little Negro 
 urchin, clad in a single cotton garment, in the log kitchen, 
 in the backyard of the big house on a Virginia farm, with- 
 out seeing that Dr. Armstrong found in the penniless black 
 boy, begging a chance to try, a subject wonderfully pre- 
 pared to profit by his doctrine of work. Booker Washing- 
 ton had little patience with the faith which so many blacks 
 have seemed to place in Latin and Greek as educational 
 saviours. He declared that one of the saddest things he 
 saw during a whole month of travel among the rural Negro 
 homes in Alabama, was a young Negro, who had attended 
 some high school, sitting down in a one-room cabin, with 
 grease on his clothing, filth around him, and weeds in the 
 yard and garden, engaged in studying a French grammar. 
 It was this position of Washington's which seems to have
 
 66 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 excited the ire and open hostility of the Bostonese blacks. 
 In their foolish vanity, they charged that Washington was 
 trimming his sails to curry favor with Southern whites, 
 who, some of the learned whites of Boston had encouraged 
 these emigrant blacks to believe, were inhumanly set on 
 debasing the black man and keeping him from his "rights." 
 Against the long sustained pressure of the Negroes them- 
 selves, Washington held to his gospel of education by work 
 and of education in order to know how to work. Gradually 
 the opposition has waned, and now other large Negro 
 schools and dozens of lesser ones are fashioned after the 
 ideals of Tuskeegee Institute. In his unfaltering devotion 
 to an educational program for the Negroes which has 
 already added tremendously to their industrial competency 
 and to their self-respect, while at the same time it has 
 commanded the approval and good will of the most thought- 
 ful whites both of the North and the South, entitles the 
 name of Booker Washington to be recognized among those 
 of America's great men. In a real sense he was the Moses 
 for a race of 10,000,000 souls. 
 
 Schools for the Negroes. Booker Washington demon- 
 strated that there is a system of Negro education of col- 
 legiate grade to which Southern whites will give their good 
 will. Very few persons who understand the work done at 
 Tuskeegee, fail to give it their endorsement. Turning to 
 the larger question of the common schools and other edu- 
 cational efforts for the Negroes, the South is giving more 
 than $10,000,000 annually to support the Negro schools. 
 It is true that this is not so much as is needed, nor so much 
 in proportion as the white schools receive, which also need 
 improvement. But it is gratifying that the South has ac- 
 cepted the principle of Negro education and that it is im-
 
 AID FOR THE SOUTHERN NEGRO 67 
 
 proving the Negro schools, as the years go by. Every effort 
 in Southern legislatures to make Negro public schools de- 
 pend solely on the taxes paid by Negroes has failed, as it 
 abundantly deserved to fail. As a matter of fact, Negroes 
 help create much of the wealth on which whites pay taxes. 
 Ethically they should be considered in the expenditure of 
 such taxes. A fundamental consideration in taxation for 
 public schools is that property shall help educate the 
 people who make possible and safeguard wealth, regard- 
 less of their own economic standing. Negro illiteracy de- 
 creased between 1890 and 1910 from fifty-seven percent to 
 thirty percent, which is creditable and encouraging prog- 
 ress. Besides the expenditures on public schools, more than 
 $4,000,000 annually from all other sources is being spent 
 in Negro education. 
 
 Ignorance is not an asset. Ignorance is as poor an asset 
 for the Negro as for any other race. It matters not that 
 he has less native endowments as a race than the whites 
 have. According to his own needs and abilities, education 
 will benefit him as much as it will others. It is not sur- 
 prising that there was after the war much opposition to 
 educating Negroes in the South. It is not necessary to 
 catalog all the conspiring forces that gave strength to this 
 opposition. One of the main objections grew out of the 
 mistakes of some of those who first sought to educate the 
 freedman, and out of the Negro's love of parade and dis- 
 play. I shall never forget how some of these schooled 
 blacks would come home and walk about among the Ne- 
 groes in the fields on my father's farm, when I was a boy. 
 Kid gloves they wore, an umbrella protected the cimmerian 
 skin from the direct rays of the sun, and the student-visitor 
 indulged in that ludicrous swagger in which the smaller-
 
 68 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 educated Negro surpasses. Such exhibitions confirmed a 
 general disbelief in education for the Negro. It was a pity. 
 The poor Negro was again the victim of his own weakness 
 and of the white man's snap judgment. Giving all due 
 credit to a number of faithful white and Negro leaders who 
 have labored to bring a better understanding of the value 
 of training for the blacks, Booker Washington will stand 
 out in history as the commanding figure who brought South- 
 ern whites to a kindlier and more discerning attitude toward 
 the value of Negro schools. If this race was not benefited 
 by proper training, it would be an exception to a law which 
 applies not only to all other races of mankind, but also to 
 animals and plants. We improve the breed and usefulness 
 of animals by giving proper attention to their needs, and 
 from farm crops to flowers we cultivate the plants so that 
 they may have their best chance to produce fruit and 
 beauty. The Southern Negro is no exception to this law. 
 It is no mean testimony to the value of education for him, 
 that an investigation has shown that no graduate of any 
 well known Negro school in the South has been imprisoned 
 for breaking the laws of the land. 
 
 Training leaders. Aside from educating the masses, there 
 is peculiar need that proper provision shall be made for 
 educating leaders for the Negroes, and Southern whites 
 should participate in this more than they have done. The 
 social separation of the races forces the Negroes to look 
 within their own race for leadership. The white South 
 has an immense concern in the ability and character of 
 that leadership. The preacher has been the outstanding 
 leader of the blacks, and far too often he has been with- 
 out moral or intellectual qualifications to meet the needs. 
 There is improvement now, and the white South would be
 
 AID FOR THE SOUTHERN NEGRO 69 
 
 surprised and pleased to know the fine capacity, the sanity 
 and eloquence of not a few of the Negro preachers. But 
 much needs to be done to educate the rank and file of the 
 preachers. More and more the race is having to depend 
 upon its own physicians and dentists, and there is an in- 
 creasing demand for capable Negro teachers and business 
 men. If this leadership is to be provided, it must be done 
 through institutions adequate to training them and doing it 
 well. In that training the Southern white man ought to 
 have an active part. Southern Baptists have done much 
 to help the Negroes, but we have given almost no white 
 workers to go among the black people for the purpose of 
 teaching and helping them. Both the Methodists and 
 Presbyterians of the South can show a larger service of 
 this kind than we, though the Negroes are mostly of our 
 Baptist faith. 
 
 Religious aid. There is evidence of a growing conviction 
 among Southern Baptists that we are not doing enough 
 through aid to the Negro Baptists, to help this race by our 
 side here in the South. Our missionary effort at present 
 does not annually call for more than $20,000 to aid the 
 Negroes. Are Southern Baptists content to let their mis- 
 sionary concern for 10,000,000 Negroes be measured by 
 the gift of less than a one-cent postage stamp per member 
 per year? I am confident they are not. But that is the 
 extent of our present support of Negro mission and educa- 
 tional effort. In fact, our religious body has found it dif- 
 ficult wisely to expend all that it desired to expend to help 
 the Negro brethren, but we can find a way. At present 
 three theological instructors, about forty general mission- 
 aries and three evangelists are the Negro missionary per- 
 sonnel employed by our Home Mission Board. The South-
 
 70 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 ern Baptist Convention has committed itself to plans to 
 start a theological seminary for the Negroes, but, a few 
 years since, the Negro National Baptist Convention split in 
 twain, and white Baptists have waited in the hope the 
 Negro brethren would compose their difficulties. Surely we 
 should find ways to do more to help the Negroes religiously, 
 and to encourage them to develop an able leadership of 
 their own. We are under a deep religious debt to them. 
 We owe them more than we realize for a certain unques- 
 tioning quality of our evangelical faith. Many of us got 
 it in our early impressions from a black "mammy," who 
 nursed us, or from the cook. The Negro has saved the 
 South from an inundation of immigration of foreign Roman 
 Catholics, and for that the South is under deep obligation 
 to him. The foreigner enters America at the bottom, but, 
 when he looks southward, he sees the Negro, and wisely 
 passes on by. He cannot underlive the Negro or run him 
 out. Dr. J. B. Gambrell likens the Negro to a sand-bank, 
 which resists cannonading better than walls of masonry, 
 "soft but always there." Deep as our problem of race is, 
 we can solve it, if we will follow where Jesus leads. It is 
 more hopeful than that which confronts the North of as- 
 similating hordes of aliens, who are often ready, under the 
 incitement of the hierarchy of Rome, to set their alien faces 
 mutinously against our fundamental law of separation of 
 Church and State. To aid this race which has helped us, 
 Southern Christian bodies have not done so much as they 
 ought. Of their efforts, W. D. Weatherford, a Southern 
 Methodist, whose two books, "Present Forces in Negro 
 Progress," and "Negro Life in the South," are of excep- 
 tional value, says: "No Southern man of any pride can 
 read the scant reports of our Southern churches in their
 
 AID FOR THE SOUTHERN NEGRO 71 
 
 efforts to uplift the Negro without hanging his head in 
 shame. Of course, we have been poor. Of course, we do 
 not forget the sickening scenes of reconstruction days. Of 
 course, we have been misunderstood. But if we are men 
 we will forget the past in a mighty effort to redeem the 
 present. * * * God pity the Southern Christians, the 
 Southern churches and the Southern States, if we do not 
 awake to our responsibility in this hour of opportunity." 
 To which may we all add an earnest, Amen! 
 
 Encouraging Negro leaders. A single chapter on so large 
 a theme forbids an effort to deal in detailed suggestions, but 
 I must call attention to the desirability of Southern whites 
 making more effort to keep in touch with the leadership of 
 the Negroes. Shocked into awareness by a race riot, this 
 is what Atlanta almost instinctly did, and through this ap- 
 proach order and understanding was restored. If there was 
 more of this approachment in times of quiet, race disorders 
 would be greatly reduced. Particularly should the white 
 preachers and laymen approach the Negro leaders in the 
 churches and counsel with them on matters of race welfare. 
 More often the whites should initiate these conferences, in- 
 stead of waiting to be approached by the Negroes, as our 
 preachers and laymen usually do. It can hardly be said 
 that the white pulpit of the South has been the leading 
 voice toward forming a conscience looking to aiding the 
 Negroes. So far the most significant meeting of Southern 
 whites for the consideration of Negro welfare has been that 
 of the Southern Sociological Conference, an extra-eccles- 
 iastical organization. Not often do our Southern preachers 
 advise and instruct their people about treating the Negro 
 well. Yet the pulpit ought to be able to claim the leader- 
 ship in so great a challenge to the public conscience.
 
 72 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 What our ministers can do. It is distinctly a moral prob- 
 lem, and the enlightened conscience of the South would 
 respond to the challenge of the churches of Christ, if they 
 would speak with conviction on this subject. There have 
 been preachers who were faithful. Mrs. L. H. Hammond, 
 of Augusta, Georgia, in her book, "In Bb.ck and White," 
 tells that, after an outburst of race antagonism in her sec- 
 tion, she asked a Negro from a South Carolina town if 
 such feeling existed in his section. "No, ma'am, it don't," 
 he answered; "not for a long time." "Then it used to 
 exist?" "Oh, yes'm. We ain't had a thing but trouble till 
 these last few years." "What stopped it?" "A white 
 preacher stopped it. He got all the white preachers in 
 town to preach about Christ's way of treating colored folks, 
 all on the same day. They did it several times later also; 
 and there ain't any more trouble since. Some white folks 
 got mad; but the preachers stuck it out, and now the white 
 folks treat us right, and we all are behaving better." There 
 are hundreds of towns and thousands of pulpits in which 
 such preaching should be done. There is a manifest in- 
 sincerity in studying to understand the peculiarities and 
 foibles and weaknesses of the Chinese in Shanghai and 
 the blacks in Central Africa, while we side-step the trouble- 
 some Negro question at our doors, because forsooth, some- 
 body may "get mad." Southern preachers cannot main- 
 tain the prestige and influence of their God-given spiritual 
 leadership without devoting to this question some of the at- 
 tention it abundantly merits. White preachers and laymen 
 should seek opportunities to speak to Negro congregations, 
 and use their influence to get a hearing by the whites of 
 Negro leaders who have a message from their race. In 
 South Carolina, Rev. Richard Carroll, a Baptist Negro
 
 AID FOR THE SOUTHERN NEGRO 73 
 
 leader of ability and irreproachable character, has done un- 
 told good by speaking to white audiences throughout that 
 State. It is a matter of remark that wherever Brother 
 Carroll speaks better local race relations ensue. 
 
 A social conscience needed. To Mrs. Hammond belongs 
 the credit of pointing out that the South has a personal 
 conscience for the Negro, but no social conscience. The 
 North has had a social conscience for him, but no personal 
 conscience. This Northern social conscience, declares this 
 gifted writer, which was embryonic concerning slum and 
 immigrant conditions at home, operated like a clock with- 
 out a pendulum, working overtime, concerning the Southern 
 race problem, and was bent on growth by cataclysm, in- 
 stead of by normal readjustments. But Mrs. Hammond 
 does not spare the South a faithful measure of admoni- 
 tion concerning the evils which have come upon us because 
 we have so little social conscience for the Negro. She rightly 
 traces to this fact the possibility of most of the shameful 
 lynchings which disgrace our civilization. An overwhelm- 
 ing majority of white citizens are opposed to lynchings and 
 deplore them, but the absence of a recognized community 
 spirit which will call to strict account the few depraved and 
 brutal men who lead in the lynchings, makes it possible for 
 these base enemies of society to glut their appetite for 
 cruelty against the helpless and weak blacks, without fear 
 that they shall suffer the just penalty of their crime. Not 
 a few Southern legal practitioners, including criminal court 
 judges, do not hesitate to say that the blacks for the same 
 offences ordinarily get more punishment in our courts than 
 the whites, and have less than an equal showing before 
 our courts of law. Christian men and women of the South 
 cannot quietly acquiesce in such a situation as this. They
 
 74 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 are morally bound to work for even justice for all. The 
 South has much of which it may be proud. But it can 
 only feel shame, if it has allowed to get a foothold in our 
 social order a system which measures out justice for the 
 strong white and helpless black by different yardsticks. 
 Thousands of noble white men defend their own black 
 people against oppression and take pride and satisfaction 
 in doing so. But that nobility of spirit which thus pro- 
 tects a Negro acquaintance or a laborer in our fields or 
 kitchen, must be made available by the white social con- 
 science for even the weakest and most worthless Negro, 
 who has no "white folks" to whom he can fly in the hour 
 of trouble and danger. 
 
 The supreme test of our religion. As these lines are being 
 written, we are at war with Germany. The world has be- 
 come almost a strange place in which to live. Pressure is 
 coming upon every one of us from many sides and in many 
 unprecedented ways. Almost one loses his power to be 
 surprised at anything that happens. "Oh, thou God of Na- 
 tions, God of our fathers, bring peace soon, a righteous 
 peace; and scourge from the hearts of rulers and people 
 worldly ambition, greed and sin," is the prayer of many a 
 burdened heart. Alongside of our sons, who are going 
 to fight to make the world a safe place to live in, will fight 
 the sons of the slaves of our fathers. In another war, fifty 
 years ago, those slaves were true to trust in thousands of 
 unprotected Southern homes and to friendship and love, 
 as servants to the fighting masters, on many a bloody battle 
 field. The black American soldier's record has not yet 
 been made in this war, but the readiness of their response 
 to the country's call has touched every generous heart. 
 In the providence of God, the Negro's home is the South,
 
 AID FOR THE SOUTHERN NEGRO 75 
 
 just as truly as our homes are here. If we kick him into 
 the ditch, we can only keep him there by staying with him. 
 If we impose on him, he may have the purification of those 
 who suffer unjustly and upon whose suffering God looks; 
 but there can be only a hardening of heart on the part of 
 him who unjustly raises his hand against his weak brother. 
 Strength through helping the lowly. Will we in hu- 
 mility accept our burden and our task? If we do, it 
 shall prove to be both our opportunity and the means of 
 added strength. If we refuse, it cannot but react on us 
 in the dwarfing of the quality of the South's spiritual life. 
 Our Lord Jesus has taught the world by his own example 
 how to help the lowly and the despised without being in- 
 jured or lowered by the contact. So long as we touch those 
 who are lower or less fortunate than we, for the purpose 
 of doing them good, instead of losing virtue or character 
 by the contact, we strengthen our own characters, while 
 we lift up our human brother. The one perfect man as- 
 sociated with publicans and sinners, and every regenerate 
 heart blesses His name, because no human being was too 
 low to be sought and saved by the Son of God. There is 
 no way to greatness in the Christian vocation, except by 
 the service of a love which is willing to stoop that it may 
 lift the needy. The Negro at our doors is no exception. 
 It is a pitiful thing to see Christian men and women mani- 
 festing tokens of great concern for masses of people, 
 black and white and yellow, far removed in other countries, 
 while they cannot see this great problem which mutely 
 stares them in the face every day. The far-away does 
 not nag and worry, it does not arouse passion, or ex- 
 cite cupidity, it does not aggravate us every time we turn 
 around. The near often does, as in the case of the Negro.
 
 76 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 But the near is therefore only the surer test of the 
 strength and worth of our faith in Jesus Christ, whose love 
 was great enough to encompass those who were about him, 
 though many of them hated him. 
 
 A prayer. Lord Jesus, in thy providence the black man 
 is in the South, 10,000,000 of them. They are different 
 from the whites in many ways. They have come up from 
 barbarism and through the lowly estate of slavery. Our 
 own ancestors were their masters. Thou knowest, Oh God, 
 the war and the blood and the passion and the prejudice 
 between races and sections which have attended the pres- 
 ence of this race in the South. Thou knowest how our phil- 
 osophy does not suffice and how our statesmanship becomes 
 halt and lame, when they confront this question. But thou 
 has not left us without light. Thou, who did give thy 
 blood for the lowliest black, as well as for the strongest 
 white, hast shown us how the lowly and the high may walk 
 together in peace and in the mutual helpfulness of each 
 to the other. Make us willing, Oh Christ, to walk in the 
 way which thou hast clearly pointed out to us, of service, 
 of helpfulness and forbearance. Thou hast promised that 
 those who are willing to do thy will shall know the truth. 
 We believe thee, our Master, and, though we cannot under- 
 stand the future of this great question of race in the South, 
 we are serenely confident that it shall become better and 
 better for both races just in proportion as we live up to 
 thy teachings which we do understand. Make us willing! 
 Arouse our consciences afresh concerning our duty to the 
 Negroes in the South, and show us and them the way to 
 better and brighter things, through thine own blessed spirit 
 and wisdom. Amen.
 
 TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY IN CHAPTER III. 
 
 1. Give indications that the Negro problem is in a hopeful way. 
 
 2. Describe his virtues and short-comings and tell of past re- 
 ligious efforts to aid him. 
 
 3. Name and discuss some of the leading difficulties in the 
 problem. 
 
 4. What of the economic progress of the blacks? 
 
 5. Discuss educational ideals and progress of the Negroes. 
 
 6. Discuss the need of trained Negro leaders and of religious 
 aid to this end. 
 
 7. Tell of the need of a social conscience for the Negro, and 
 how it may be developed.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SOME NEGLECTED AMERICANS. 
 
 Not all in the mountains. Most of this chapter is to be 
 about the mountain people. But they are not all, perhaps 
 not even the majority, of the belated people in the South. 
 If we add to the 4,000,000 Southern highlanders, 1 ,500,000 
 more who reside in the Ozarks of Arkansas, Missouri, and 
 Oklahoma, the more than 5,000,000 white highlanders of 
 the South, will not outnumber the belated people who in 
 this section are still living in various other quiet pockets 
 of our twentieth century civilization. In valleys of the 
 Appalachians reside people who are often as intelligent 
 and progressive as the more advanced outlanders, but 
 these valleys make up only a small proportion of the 
 mountain country. The United States topographers report 
 that in Appalachia, as a whole, the mountain slopes oc- 
 cupy ninety percent of the total area, and that eighty- 
 five percent of the land has a steeper slope than one foot 
 in five. The characteristic condition of the mountain peo- 
 ple is that of pioneer backwardness. Nearly three-fourths 
 of them are still living largely as did our ancestors of the 
 eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. From the cur- 
 rents of progress and change these have been shut in be- 
 hind the great ramparts of their mountains. This isolation 
 for long shut them off from understanding observation. 
 But the very largeness of the mountain country and the 
 similarity of conditions throughout its reach have made 
 it comparatively easy to objectify it in effective appeal. 
 Therefore appropriate activities have been inaugurated by
 
 SOME NEGLECTED AMERICANS 79 
 
 a number of Christian bodies in this field, while the needs 
 are not yet surveyed among some other sections of our 
 retarded population. 
 
 The Southwestern frontier. The Southwestern frontiers- 
 man is not a belated American, nor in any absolute sense 
 even a neglected American. Earnest missionary effort is 
 being put forth to help the men and women of the frontier 
 to establish religion and social order to-day, in communities 
 which were only yesterday claimed from the wildness of 
 unsubdued nature. Blessed fruits are being gathered from 
 the effort. At the same time, a voiceless tragedy is being 
 enacted in many a frontier community which is destitute of 
 spiritual leadership. The frontiersman is environed by 
 much of the loneliness of pioneer life, and is even more 
 desperately in need of aid in setting up the saving forces 
 of society. He is not a man of the schooner and overland 
 trek, but of the Pullman car, automobile, and telephone, 
 and he has the information that has come from reading 
 newspapers and from contact with men. With the frontier 
 community of the Southwest the pace is very rapid, and the 
 crystallization of community life into good or bad forms 
 equally so. The needs of the old pioneer community could 
 and did wait; not so with the needs of new communities on 
 the plains, where speed seems to be a condition of success 
 and of life itself. In great sections of Texas and Oklahoma, 
 nearly all of New Mexico, and in some parts of Arkansas 
 and Louisiana, there is still a large mission service to be 
 rendered, if we are to bring new communities into existence 
 under the wholesome restraints and the inspiration of re- 
 ligious purpose. Southern Baptists are doing a fine work 
 in this field, which could well be doubled or even quad- 
 rupled.
 
 80 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 Other belated people. In the "piney-woods," "wire- 
 grass," "sand-hill," and other remote sections in most of 
 the Southern States there is still a disadvantaged and be- 
 lated population that will aggregate possibly a larger num- 
 ber of white people than are in the mountains. In some 
 small sections of Virginia, in parts of eastern North Caro- 
 lina, coastbelt of South Carolina, lower Georgia and Ala- 
 bama, much of Florida, some of Mississippi, districts of 
 Louisiana, parts of the plains of Arkansas, and certain parts 
 of western Kentucky and Tennessee, there is a population 
 which aggregates still unverified millions, who are quite as 
 much in need of aid from the agencies of enlargement and 
 Christianization as are the mountain people. Nor is Texas, 
 though a younger State, to be left out of this count. There 
 are some places in eastern Texas in which the forces of 
 progress and education have passed the people by, leaving 
 them in the backwater of remote communities. No modern 
 expert has undertaken to set forth in a survey the needs 
 and numbers of these neglected peoples of the South. No 
 religious body has sought to gather up to its heart in sym- 
 pathetic understanding and put forth again in appropriate 
 helpful activities the needs of these our undistinguished 
 neglected brothers. These belated outlanders are probably 
 the most neglected people in the South. They are the joy of 
 the Holy Roller propagandist, the favored foraging ground 
 of the Mormon elder, the most promising field of the Rus- 
 sellite tract distributor, the delight of the political dema- 
 gogue, and an anxious problem of the Christian statesman. 
 There is great need that they shall become the objects of 
 anxious concern and of suitable aid on the part of our 
 evangelical religious bodies. Many of them are nominally 
 Baptists. Most of the rest who profess any religion are
 
 SOME NEGLECTED AMERICANS 81 
 
 Methodists. A great responsibility is here for the shoulders 
 of these two religious bodies. Every quack religionist, ex- 
 citing and misleading these uninstructed people, is a rebuke 
 to the Baptists and Methodists. We have had their ear 
 and confidence, and our neglect has left them to become 
 victims of the first peddler of emotional religious nostrums. 
 In a day when the Southern Baptists are raising about half 
 a million annually for all their Home Mission effort, here 
 is an almost untouched field of effort, which we have not 
 even surveyed, but in which probably our entire gifts to 
 Home Missions could be wisely expended. 
 
 The ultimate American native. The Indian is a neglected 
 American and about one-half of the 330,000 now in the 
 United States are in the Southern Baptist Convention ter- 
 ritory. Oklahoma has 125,000 Indian population, about 
 three times as many as any other State. New Mexico 
 comes third in the number of Indians, with 25,000. North 
 Carolina has 8,000, Mississippi 1 ,300, Alabama 1 ,000, and 
 Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, Texas, and 
 Virginia have each from 350 to 800 Indians. For more 
 than sixty years, Southern Baptists have conducted mis- 
 sionary work among the Oklahoma Indians. Recently the 
 Home Mission Board has reopened a mission among the 
 Cherokees in Western North Carolina, which it conducted 
 before the Civil War, and started a new mission among 
 the Mississippi Choctaws. Our mission work in Oklahoma 
 has been greatly prospered. There are in that State now 
 about 4,600 Indian Baptists in 1 23 churches, of which more 
 than three-fourths are self-sustaining. It is estimated that 
 half of the membership in religious bodies among the Okla- 
 homa Indians is in Baptist churches. This is a fine testi- 
 monial to the value of our Baptist efforts, but does not indi-
 
 82 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 cate that we have done a full and satisfactory part in 
 teaching the native Red Men of America the gospel of 
 Christ. Among the Indians of New Mexico, the Home 
 Mission Society of New York is still conducting mis- 
 sionary work for the Baptists, which they are also doing 
 among some of the Oklahoma Blanket Tribes and in the 
 Indian school, Bacone University. The Indians do not 
 number many, as compared with other peoples who are in 
 need of missionary aid in our country, but their need is 
 very great. Except as they are evangelized, their heathen- 
 ism is as complete as that of the people of any pagan 
 country in the world, and the treatment which they have 
 received at the hands of white men who coveted what 
 the Indian had has been unworthy of a civilization which 
 calls itself Christian. It constitutes an appeal which should 
 move Christian men and women to a large and generous 
 effort to Christianize them. The Indians are an impres- 
 sive demonstration at our doors that education and civ- 
 ilization do not Christianize or even civilize, but that 
 Christianity does civilize. I respectfully challenge any in- 
 terested man or woman to the proof. Any of the faithful 
 missionaries to the Indians will gladly afford facilities for 
 the investigation. 
 
 Baptist thanks due the Presbyterians. A Christian body 
 that has a great extensive outreach is by its very success 
 in evangelism ever creating a great task of intensive devel- 
 opment. The life is to be saved, as well as the soul. Baptists 
 in the South have for a century been soul winners whose 
 success has not been surpassed by any other American 
 group. But they have had no conviction concerning their 
 obligation to save the lives of the converts, at all compar- 
 able to their passion for evangelism. Our leaders have
 
 SOME NEGLECTED AMERICANS 83 
 
 always pointed us to the necessity of educating those who 
 shall become leaders. Our people in more favored com- 
 munities have sensed the importance of an educated laity. 
 But our individualism and democracy have conspired to 
 make us tardy in a cultural mission program to strengthen 
 and save the lives of the rank and file of our people, even 
 when they are in our churches. Following years of ad- 
 monition and pleading by the saintly Isaac T. Tichenor, in 
 1900 we bethought ourselves of the need of doing some- 
 thing to enlarge the lives and outlook of our brothers in 
 the Southern mountains, but not even Dr. Tichenor's pleas 
 were sufficient, unaided, to produce the result. In 1879, 
 Northern Presbyterians started to develop a system of 
 schools among our mountain people. They said: "We 
 recognize that the mountaineers are chiefly in the Baptist 
 communion, but if the Baptist Boards and Conventions are 
 not in a position to give these people educational oppor- 
 tunity, we feel that we are and that we must do so." Dr. 
 John E. White, then Secretary of Missions in North Carolina, 
 a statesman every inch, and with a generous passion for and 
 understanding of the highlander people, in 1898 chal- 
 lenged the North Carolina Convention, whether they would 
 leave our manifest Baptist duty for Presbyterians to per- 
 form. Their prompt, No! became the response of all 
 Southern Baptists, in 1900, when Dr. White before the 
 Southern Convention made a plea for the establishment 
 of Baptist mission schools among the mountain people, and 
 outlined a plan which the Convention adopted and under 
 which our Home Board system of schools is conducted 
 until this day. The point I now offer for consideration is 
 that we are due thanks to the Presbyterians for spurring 
 Baptists forward into the performance of their duty in
 
 84 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 working to save for Christ and society the lives of a large 
 and neglected section of their people. 
 
 The mountain country. No more inviting and beautiful 
 country or interesting people are in America than in the 
 Southern highlands. There is much about the highlander 
 which suggests a hallowed past. People who live near to 
 nature inspire an interest which shrinks and dies in the 
 presence of the conventionalities and artificialities of man- 
 kind in crowds and cities. The glory of nature appeals to 
 men and this glory abides in matchless profusion and 
 beauty in the great section where our forest-clad moun- 
 tains rear their mighty heads. Glory, majesty, mystery, and 
 a strange beauty have their favored haunts amid the val- 
 leys and peaks, where the vast silences are broken by the 
 song of waterfalls and the muttering of summer thunders, 
 speaking of God. This region of mystery and majesty in- 
 cludes in the Southern Appalachians, at the least, 1 78 coun- 
 ties, in seven States, and has an area of 76,600 square 
 miles. It extends from the northeast toward the southwest, 
 about 600 miles, and in places is 200 miles across. Its 
 higher watersheds form the boundaries between most of 
 the Southeastern States and its area and population are 
 about twice as great as those of any one of those States. 
 Its forest-clad valleys and peaks crown with their beauty 
 and the unexhausted resources of soil, forests, mines, and 
 unspoiled human beings, the seven States of Virginia, North 
 and South Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and 
 Alabama. 
 
 'The back of beyond." Under the heading here used 
 Horace Kephart has a chapter in his book, "Our Southern 
 Highlanders." Mr. Kephart has made an able and valu- 
 able contribution to American literature in this work, and
 
 SOME NEGLECTED AMERICANS 85 
 
 has placed under obligation to him every friend and student 
 of the Southern highlands. In addition to giving more in- 
 formation about the mountains and the people than can 
 be found anywhere else, he writes with a charm that fas- 
 cinates and holds. My best safeguard against quoting Mr. 
 Kephart at great length here is the rigid necessity of dis- 
 posing of the subject with brevity. In the chapter, "The 
 Back of Beyond," the author describes the unique environ- 
 ment which conditions life in most of the highlands. "The 
 back country is rough," he says. "No boat or canoe can 
 stem its brawling waters. No bicycle nor automobile can 
 enter it. Here is a land of lumber wagons, and saddle- 
 bags, and shackly little sleds that are dragged over the 
 bare ground by harnessed steers. This is the country that 
 ordinary tourists shun. And well for such, whoso cares 
 more for bodily comfort than for freedom and air and 
 elbow-room should tarry by still waters and pleasant pas- 
 tures." Again: "All about us was the forest primeval, 
 where roamed some sparse herds of cattle, razor-back hogs, 
 and the wild beasts. Speckled trout were in all the streams. 
 Bears sometimes raided the fields, and wildcats were a com- 
 mon nuisance. Our settlement was a mere slash in the 
 vast woodland that encompassed it." In this country the 
 hill-side farms are often on a slope of forty-five degrees, 
 sometimes tilled to the brink of a precipice. John Fox tells 
 of a Kentucky farmer who fell out of his cornfield and 
 broke his neck, and a mountain woman said to Horace 
 Kephart: "I've hoed corn many a time on my knees yes, 
 I have." Another said: "Many's the hill o' corn I've 
 propped up with a rock to keep it from fallin' downhill." 
 It was a Virginia mountaineer who said: "I plant my po- 
 tatoes in rows straight up and down the mountain side to
 
 86 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 save digging. At digging time I just open the lower end 
 of each row and catch the potatoes in a bag." 
 
 Sensitiveness of mountain people. The mountaineer is 
 high-strung and sensitive to criticism. He resents having 
 attention called to his peculiarities. It seems to him that 
 to do so is to hold him up to ridicule or blame. He does 
 not see how the outlander can find beauty and charm in 
 the story of the quaint ways of life which the rest of the 
 world has cast aside. He is likely to consider the most 
 tactful effort to tell the story of the peculiarities of his life 
 and environment as a vulgar curiosity and meddlesomeness. 
 He has not been without just cause for resentment. Some 
 writers have without fine sympathy exploited him before a 
 curious and more or less vulgar public. But, even with the 
 utmost caution, one can hardly write graphically of our 
 mountain cousins without arousing in them a certain an- 
 tagonism. The mountaineer feels that he is as good and 
 worthy of respect as the outlander, and in this he is right. 
 But if he had advanced in social organization to where he 
 was trying to gather up the interest of all the Highlanders 
 to help others than mountaineers, he would find it necessary 
 to portray to his people the conditions which circumstance 
 the people to be aided. The mountain people have good 
 native qualities and great currents of unexhausted blood, 
 which must and will bless and strengthen the whole of our 
 Southern life. But the ramparts of the hills have for long 
 shut out from the mountaineer's children the opportunities 
 which those of other sections have. A God-inspired desire 
 has arisen among Christian people to aid in remedying this 
 lack. It is aid that we ought to give, and the mountain 
 brother may receive it without any discredit to even his 
 spirit of independence.
 
 SOME NEGLECTED AMERICANS 87 
 
 A wish for the Highlander. Our mountain brother must 
 permit us to portray the conditions of his life out of which 
 arise the needs which we want to aid. He need not assert 
 that he is "just like other folks." In his pure American 
 blood and his pioneer independence, he is really more "like 
 other folks" than they themselves are. But he has lived 
 in the backwaters of modern life currents, which elsewhere 
 have flowed rapidly. In this he is not like other folks. 
 Even when he shall have, through the Christian education of 
 his children, gotten the best which modern life may be able 
 to aid him in getting, many of his best and most loyal 
 friends hope he shall still not become "just like other folks," 
 but that he shall, amid the glory of the hills and valleys of 
 his own great skyland country, maintain a civilization of 
 high thinking and simple living. Such a civilization in 
 Appalachia would at once rebuke and bless the outlander 
 people, who are in grave danger of becoming vulgar and 
 selfish in their haste for material benefits. Meantime, it 
 will relieve the embarrassment of some of his truest friends 
 and well-wishers if the mountain man will try to get over 
 his squeamish distrust of even the most sympathetic efforts 
 to interpret him and his highlands to the mere outsiders. 
 
 Isolation. The differences of the Highlander from the 
 average native American may be summed up in the single 
 word isolation. Other sections of our population have suf- 
 fered from isolation, but no other single group of these 
 is so large as this group. Nor has the isolation been so 
 complete with other retarded groups. Comparatively, the 
 remote piney-woods, wire-grass, and sand-hill sections are 
 like so many small islands in a restless sea of social move- 
 ment. The people from these look out across the waters of 
 surrounding social progress and occasionally go to sea for
 
 88 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 themselves. Not so with the average mountaineer. His 
 land is like a great island continent. He usually does not 
 look out from its shores. And his home in "the back of 
 beyond" is too difficult of access for the "furriner" to influ- 
 ence it much by peaceful penetration. In isolation the high- 
 lander is America's last and greatest word. Does his quaint 
 dialect interest you, with its idioms of obsolete English? It 
 has been preserved by his isolation. Are you touched and 
 won by his smple reverence and faith, in a day in which 
 the smile of skepticism mars the face sof many at the least 
 provocation? Solitude, meditation, and intimate contact 
 with the great unchained forces of nature account for his 
 reverence. Are you charmed by the cordial hospitality of 
 the poorest mountain cabin? It is the solitude of life that 
 opens each man's heart to the needs of his fellow, in a 
 wholesome free-masonry of human kinship. Does the 
 rugged independence and self-reliance of this people excite 
 your admiration? It is the fruit of generations of battling 
 with nature each man for himself, with none to help. And 
 it is the same with the stoicism with which the highlander 
 endures pain or makes a joke of his deprivations. Prac- 
 tically every peculiarity of this great belated section of 
 our citizenship may be explained in terms of his long iso- 
 lation from the ordinary currents of American life. It 
 should be understood that the mountaineer's isolation is not 
 merely from the outsiders, but from any considerable con- 
 tact with his hillsmen. There is a reason. The mountains 
 themselves discourage intercommunication with neighbors. 
 Kephart tells of a mountain ridge nearly 150 miles long, 
 which is practically impassible for the entire distance. An- 
 other writer speaks of a married daughter who lived in a 
 straight course six miles from her father's home across the
 
 SOME NEGLECTED AMERICANS 89 
 
 mountain for twelve years, without visiting it once, because 
 it would have required a trip of twenty miles over rough 
 roads. Since the hills have discouraged the formation of a 
 community spirit, the hillsman is conscious of no tug of 
 public interest that would lead him forth into conclaves of 
 his kind. 
 
 The land of do without. Kephart has a charming chapter 
 on "The Land of Do Without." This writer's gifted inter- 
 pretations of mountaineer life doubtless got their charm in 
 part from the fact that he is himself a native of the North 
 Carolina mountains. After portraying the one-roomed cabin 
 in which many of the people live, the scant wardrobe of 
 men and women, the abstemious diet usually in vogue, and 
 the various resourceful expedients of the people to make 
 meet the tongue and buckle of physical life, he sums up 
 the theme by saying: "The poverty of the mountain people 
 is naked, but high-minded and unashamed. To comment 
 on it, as I have done, is taken as an impertinence. This is, 
 in a way, a fine trait, though rather hard on a descriptive 
 writer, whose motives are ascribed to mere vulgarity and a 
 taste for scandal-mongering. The people, of course, have 
 no ghost of an idea that poverty may be more picturesque 
 than luxury" or that a portrayal of the actual conditions 
 is the surest way to awaken the good people beyond the 
 mountains to a sense of their duty and opportunity to aid. 
 
 A night in a cabin home. With a friend, atter a tramp 
 of thirty miles from railhead, I once enjoyed the hospi- 
 tality of an old mountaineer. The log cabin was a com- 
 fortable single room, eighteen by twenty feet, with a 
 door on the front and back sides, but without windows. 
 The spring was sixty steps away. Fifty hives of bees in sec- 
 tions of hollow logs stood around the apple trees on the
 
 90 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 hill back of and above the house. Our reception was hearty 
 and our entertainment of undoubted cordiality. Weary from 
 my long walk, I sat and watched the housewife get supper 
 over the oak fire in the broad chimney. There was a 
 "skillet," which cooked biscuit and then cornbread. There 
 was a kettle which sang and sang, and a frying pan in 
 which a chicken browned appetizingly, to be followed by 
 some slices of ham, which fried and sizzled, giving off an 
 odor which was even more appetizing. Above the table 
 from the joists hung strings of red pepper and onions 
 and various empty lard buckets, which did duty for water 
 and milk and other things. Then came supper, to get 
 which that dear mountain matron had bent up and down 
 over that hearth a hundred times at least. Then, after 
 we chatted awhile, a pallet was made down behind the 
 table, and my friend and I were told it was for us. 
 The elderly man and his wife had a bed in one corner 
 and a married daughter and her child in another. How 
 did we disrobe without immodesty? Well, we did it, and 
 without immodesty. That good man and woman had lived 
 in their cabin for forty years and reared a family, now 
 grown men and women with homes of their own. Like 
 most ministers in the South, I have enjoyed sweet and gen- 
 erous hospitality in many a home, but never any of kinder 
 spirit or finer quality than did Col. Frank Bailey, of South 
 Carolina, and myself, the night we slept together on a pallet 
 in that Southern highlander's cabin. Mr. Kephart's phrase 
 deserves to become fixed in the public mind, as a badge of 
 the mountaineer's honor: The poverty of this people is 
 naked, but high-minded and unashamed! It is the poverty, 
 not of "poor whites," but of a people of patrician spirit, 
 like that of the ragged but lofty chiefs and clansmen of
 
 SOME NEGLECTED AMERICANS 91 
 
 old Scotland, from whom the mountaineers are lineal de- 
 scendants. 
 
 Religious faith. The last available estimate of the re- 
 ligious membership in the Southern highlands is that of 
 the Religious Census of 1906. This includes the mountain 
 sections of the seven Southeastern States in which Southern 
 Baptists maintain mission schools. The total religious mem- 
 bership is 973,000. Of this number 463,200, or forty- 
 eight percent, are Baptists; 304,900, thirty-one percent, are 
 Methodists; 56,400, or six percent, are Presbyterians; 
 48,900, or five percent, are Disciples. All other classes 
 have ten percent. If the Alabama mining region and Chat- 
 tanooga be counted out, there are only 3,000 Romanists 
 in the entire region. These are in towns and it is safe to 
 say that practically all of them are importations. The 
 Episcopalians number only 6,700 in this mountain empire. 
 Of the 1 78 mountain counties, 1 43 have not a single Cath- 
 olic and 107 not a single Episcopalian. In the mountain 
 counties of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia 
 Baptists outnumber all other religious bodies combined, 
 while they are almost as numerous as all others in highland 
 Tennessee and Alabama. Methodists are more numerous 
 than Baptists in one mountain district, that of Southwest 
 Virginia, where they number 45,600 and Baptists 35,800. 
 The Scotch-Irish who settled in the highlands were mainly 
 of Presbyterian lineage, but for the most part they became 
 Baptists long ago. Various reasons have been given for 
 the change. In the first place, they were not all Presby- 
 terians. Following the Battle of Alamance in North Caro- 
 lina, ten years before the Revolutionary War, was a great 
 religious movement to the mountains from Sandy Creek 
 Baptist Association. Records are also extant of itinerant
 
 92 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 campaigns through the highland country of early Baptist 
 preachers of power and holy passion. From such influences 
 and from the comparative lack of adaptation of the Pres- 
 byterian ministerial system to the exigencies of frontier 
 needs, it came about that the highlanders remained Calvin- 
 ists, but accepted the Baptist democracy and teaching as 
 to the ordinances. 
 
 Preachers and churches. The churches are the only co- 
 operative institutions which are found generally throughout 
 the highlands. There are schools, and their number is in- 
 creasing, but these are said to be only about one-fifth as 
 numerous as the churches. Outside of the railway towns, 
 practically all the highland churches are of the once-a- 
 month variety and are served by absentee preachers. These 
 preachers are men of piety, and some of them of com- 
 manding personal force. But they are uneducated. The 
 ignorance of some of them is pitiable, while others are 
 not ignorant, though uneducated. Few of them are pro- 
 gressive, and some are still prejudiced against education 
 as a thing of pride and ungodliness which, alas! it often 
 is when not consecrated to worthy service. In many 
 remote sections the preachers in speaking still affect the 
 sing-song cadences of what has been irreverently dubbed 
 the "holy whine." This rhythmic intonation is pleasant to 
 the ear, and many of the older mountain church members 
 regard this method of delivery by the preacher as a hall- 
 mark of downright earnestness and humility. A mountain 
 woman who had been brought up under the recurrent ser- 
 monic "a-ahs" of old Brother Jones, after hearing Dr. John 
 A. Broadus, who was reckoned the foremost American Bap- 
 tist preacher of his day, remarked: "I'd ruther hear 
 Brother Jones line out one verse of a hime, than to hear
 
 SOME NEGLECTED AMERICANS 93 
 
 that thar man preach a whole sarmont." The church 
 buildings are almost always either of unceiled plank con- 
 struction or of rough logs, in either case the building 
 being an unrelieved rectangle. Usually the doors are left 
 unfastened throughout the month, and not seldom they 
 stand ajar, oddly emphasizing to the chance passer-by the 
 solitude and mystery of the encompassing forests. Of the 
 leadership of these churches, Dr. John E. White, whose 
 chapter on the Southern highlands in the book, "The 
 Home Mission Task," is the best interpretation I have 
 seen of the mountaineer's needs, writes: "Religious lead- 
 ership is practically confined to the preachers, of whom 
 there are a great many indeed, very many more preach- 
 ers than there are churches. This fact has not always 
 contributed to the peace of Zion, and still less to the peace 
 of the preachers. The most difficult feature of the moun- 
 tain problem is connected with the churches and the 
 preachers. In their present state of development the 
 churches do not want and will not support better preachers. 
 The preachers in turn, in their present state of development, 
 will not give the mountain people better churches. It is 
 for this reason that the religious problem waits upon the 
 educational problem. The school must blaze the way and 
 create the necessity for an improved religious and church 
 life." Under the old system, declares Dr. White, "each 
 pioneer pressed upon the heels of the other, and except in 
 the few favored valleys in touch with the outside world, 
 the mountaineers were standing stock still or moved in the 
 endless circle which led nowhere." It is not a flattering 
 picture, but a true one, and by a leader who has for years 
 been one of the most influential and helpful friends in 
 America of the Southern highlanders.
 
 94 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 Mountain youth want to learn. No interpretation of the 
 conservatism and isolation of the mountain people can 
 stand, which does not make room for the anxious readiness 
 of the mountain boys and girls to profit by the schools 
 which have been provided for them. Inspiring stories 
 abound, showing the positive hunger of hundreds of the 
 young hillsfolk for an education, and of the self-denial they 
 are willing to practice to secure it. The applications for 
 an opportunity to pay for tuition and board by work are 
 always greater than the schools can provide for. The girls 
 gladly cook and serve and the boys do chores or work on 
 a farm, if this will help to open the door to knowledge. 
 Some of the parents seem indifferent to the opportunities 
 the schools will afford for their children, but many are not. 
 More and more they are coming to stand for the schools 
 which are to give their children a better chance than they 
 had. It is a fact that every one of the thirty-seven mountain 
 schools of the Home Mission Board has been inaugurated 
 and is maintained by the active cooperation of the moun- 
 tain people themselves, and this is one of the reasons why 
 the success of these schools has been so exceptional. There 
 is a prophecy in the hunger of mountain youth for an edu- 
 cation, which I may indicate by a brief story. Dr. White 
 and Dr. J. L. M. Curry, were journeying together among 
 the mountains. Said Dr. White: "It almost breaks my 
 heart to see so many boys and girls here in the mountains 
 who are fairly famishing with the hunger for an opportunity 
 to get to go to school, but who cannot get it." Dr. Curry 
 replied: "That is nothing to break your heart over. The 
 thing that almost breaks my heart is to find outside the 
 mountains so many boys and girls who are not hungry for 
 the opportunities in education which are lavished upon
 
 SOME NEGLECTED AMERICANS 95 
 
 them." It is the prophecy of a time when these young 
 dreamers of the hills shall be doing far more than their 
 share to perform for society everywhere the tasks of fash- 
 ioning the mind and spirit to higher and nobler ends than 
 merely the material prizes of life. Little as the South may 
 realize it, it has no latent human resources more full of 
 promise for the future than is to be found in the red blood, 
 the unjaded nerves and unspoiled souls of the youth of 
 our highland country. 
 
 As to leadership. One of the reasons why cooperative ef- 
 fort is the best way of establishing and maintaining Chris- 
 tian mission schools for the mountain people, is that the iso- 
 lation of pioneer life has afforded almost no training in co- 
 operative community effort, and therefore no opportunity 
 for the highland people to develop a broad leadership of 
 their own. They have fine latent qualities for leadership, 
 but they are undeveloped. A prime necessity is some 
 method which shall put leaders from without at the service 
 of these people, for the purpose of training a native leader- 
 ship of their own. The mission schools are admirably 
 adapted to this, though there has doubtless been some 
 ground for the criticism that too many of the young men 
 and women go into life and service beyond the mountains, 
 and too few see the immense moral significance of a life 
 spent in leading the people of their native hills into better 
 and higher living. It will be a poor performance for these 
 schools, if they shall exploit the mountain people for a lead- 
 ership for service beyond, like modern denominational 
 life has exploited the country church as a recruiting 
 ground for men and women for city pulpits and pews and 
 social tasks. The mountains ought to send out of their 
 trained youth for the high and worthy tasks of society. But
 
 96 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 first and chiefest emphasis must be placed on their de- 
 veloping a leadership with vision and force enough to do 
 the tasks so urgently needed for their own people. Not 
 enough emphasis has been placed here. The future of 
 Appalachia lies mostly in the hands of those resolute native 
 boys and girls who shall win an education fitting them for 
 this leadership. 
 
 A vast reservoir of unclaimed idealism. The mountain 
 school system of the Home Mission Board has been in op- 
 eration less than twenty years, but that period has been 
 sufficient to demonstrate that latent in the average highland 
 boy and girl lie rich stores of unsuspected idealism. Also 
 that when the dreamer awakens, he is exceptionally well 
 equipped with the personal force wherewith to coin his 
 dreams into concrete realities of high service. Our Bap- 
 tist system of schools, according to a survey made two 
 years since, has sent out 350 preachers, 200 lawyers, 
 225 doctors, thirty trained nurses, thirty missionaries and 
 2,500 school teachers. 3,000 have returned to the farms, 
 900 are merchants, forty are bankers and eighteen 
 have become State legislators. Observe how large is 
 the number who chose a calling that looks primarily to 
 the service of society rather than to personal gain and com- 
 fort. More preachers and teachers are coming from these 
 schools than from any other schools of equal grade and 
 attendance. The reason is not far to seek. Mountain youth 
 live near nature and where the heart more easily hears the 
 voice of God. Inured to near-want, and reared to respect 
 a man for what he is, instead of what he has, it is not hard 
 for them, under the leadership of high-thinking and devout 
 teachers, to see that the life that really counts for most is 
 the life that helps most, instead of getting most for its own
 
 SOME NEGLECTED AMERICANS 97 
 
 gratification. And herein are the beauty and the glory of 
 the fruits of our highland schools, which, in a day that is 
 becoming more mad all the while in pursuit of material 
 prizes, still come forth from the modest and unpretending 
 life of the highlands to admonish men that there is some- 
 thing of immeasurably higher value. 
 
 Our system of schools. This chapter will not deal in 
 detail with the great system of schools through which 
 Southern Baptists are seeking to aid their brothers of the 
 highlands. For the present purpose it will suffice to say 
 there are thirty-seven of these schools, three being in 
 the Ozarks. There are 200 teachers, a student body of 
 about 6,000, and a property valued at about $700,000. At 
 the head of this system is a man who in his own person 
 is by far the most valuable single asset of this great system, 
 Dr. Albert E. Brown, of Asheville, North Carolina, Super- 
 intendent of the Home Board's schools, himself a native 
 highlander. The skill and wisdom with which Dr. Brown has 
 for years conducted this difficult work and directed the chan- 
 nels of its expansion are beyond praise, and have won for 
 him the unqualified confidence of the Home Mission Board 
 and of all who have observed the schools and their work. 
 Other denominations besides ours are also doing a fine 
 work in mountain schools. The Presbyterians, both North 
 and South, have been particularly active in this field, and 
 the work of the Southern Presbyterians is at present grow- 
 ing. Methodists of the South are also conducting some 
 schools, and Northern Methodists a few. Some other re- 
 ligious bodies conduct schools, and certain other highland 
 schools are supported by non-religious organizations. The 
 Southern Baptist system is reaching a larger number of 
 the people than any other agency, and, by common con-
 
 98 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 sent, is not surpassed, if indeed it is equalled, in its adapted- 
 ness to the needs. 
 
 Value of schools to the mountain people. What of the 
 value of these institutions to the life of the highland coun- 
 try itself? As the system has hardly been in general opera- 
 tion more than ten or twelve years, and as social growth is 
 necessarily slow, it is too early to take stock with the ex- 
 pectation of exhibiting the full fruition of the work. The 
 thousands who have returned from the schools to their 
 homes are the least conspicuous, but perhaps the most sig- 
 nificant, contribution of these schools to the general weal. 
 If there is an exception, it is in the 2,500 young people 
 who from the schools have gone into the teaching pro- 
 fession, most of them in their own mountain country. The 
 contribution of preachers and others to service away from 
 the mountains has been invaluable. But I cannot bring 
 myself to rank even this great service above the direct con- 
 tribution of the schools to those ends for which they were 
 primarily established and for which they are still being pri- 
 marily maintained. It is a great thing to give a chance to 
 youth hungry for improvement; it is a greater to train 
 these youth to give their lives to the uplift of the disadvan- 
 taged people of their own highland country. This service 
 promises less ephemeral repute in the mouths of men, but 
 it is vital with the spirit of service which Jesus taught. 
 Most of the young people have gone back to their homes, 
 and the notable progress of the churches and of prohibi- 
 tion sentiment in sections near the schools testify that their 
 influence is already being felt for social betterment, as do 
 also the improvements which are being noted in many 
 mountain homes.
 
 SOME NEGLECTED AMERICANS 99 
 
 The Story of a "forlorn joke." Yancey Collegiate In- 
 stitute, at Burnsville, North Carolina, is typical of the 
 mountain schools of the Home Mission Board. Even a brief 
 story of it will be instructive. Superintendent Albert E. 
 Brown, in making the first survey of the highland country 
 for school locations, came to Yancey County. There were 
 many people and they were poor, but they wanted a school. 
 For years they had talked about and tried to start a school, 
 but nothing came of it. Their hearts were right, but they 
 were unaccustomed to co-operative community action. The 
 superintendent talked it over with them. He found them 
 dazed; the elusive school had become a kind of forlorn 
 joke among the people. When Dr. Brown confided to a 
 leading Asheville physician, who came from Yancey, that 
 he was going to raise $3,000 in that county to start a 
 Christian school, that gentleman laughed incredulously and 
 told him that the only way he would ever get $3,000 in 
 Yancey County to build a school would be to start "wild 
 cat stills." At Burnsville was Mr. E. F. Watson, a young 
 lawyer whom Superintendent Brown had once taught. 
 Through him Dr. Brown got in touch with the responsible 
 leaders. A campaign was launched and every church in 
 the county canvassed for that nest-egg of $3,000. The 
 people were skeptical about it and defeat was predicted on 
 every side. Within a week, speaking an average of two 
 or three times daily, Dr. Brown had secured half the 
 amount. Within two weeks, enough was secured to erect 
 a five-room building. The croakers quit saying, "You can't 
 do it." They now said, "You may build a house, but you 
 can't run a school." Heroic giving characterized the cam- 
 paign. Men without a dollar gave a cow or a colt or a 
 calf. Women, who had never seen a school such as was
 
 100 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 contemplated, gave wool or chickens. Children picked up 
 chestnuts or gathered medicinal herbs so they might give to 
 the school. Such men as E. F. Watson, Ben Riddle, Wes 
 Banks and Jake Sams backed up the superintendent with 
 credit and help. The building was erected. On a small 
 scale the school was started. There were still discourage- 
 ments. But God blessed those good people in their heroic 
 effort to go forward. 
 
 The rich fruition. They pressed on from that small be- 
 ginning. Prosperity came. To-day the school plant at 
 Yancey Institute is worth $50,000. The Southern Baptist 
 women contributed $5,000 through the W. M. U. to erect 
 and administration building in honor of Miss Annie Arm- 
 strong. The people gave $5,000 more. The administra- 
 tion building of the school is a credit to the whole high- 
 land region. There are now two dormitories for boys. One 
 of these is so provided that the mother or some other 
 member of the family can come with the boys and cook 
 for them, in order to economize. The results cannot be 
 detailed here of the good work of Yancey Institute. But 
 they include a public school system in that section with far 
 more capable teachers than formerly, better churches and 
 church buildings and a demand for trained preachers, bet- 
 ter homes, better living and many young people who have 
 gone into the service of society in regions beyond. And 
 the end is not yet; the work of Yancey Institute is only 
 well begun. The courage, faith and devotion of Superin- 
 tendent Brown, the devotion and consecrated determina- 
 tion of E. F. Watson, a manly Christian lawyer, deserve to 
 be treasured in the history of that section as being central 
 among the forces that turned its face toward God and out- 
 ward toward the service of the needs of humankind.
 
 SOME NEGLECTED AMERICANS 101 
 
 Aiding a people to find themselves. Fundamentally the 
 largest service the highland mission schools can render is 
 to aid this great section of our people to find themselves in 
 their twentieth century environment. That environment is 
 quick with nervous haste and material improvement. Al- 
 ready it has shown that it will not even let the highlander 
 alone in his quaint eighteenth century quiet. Defying the 
 mountain walls, it is thrusting forward one railway after 
 another into the very heart of the highlands. Ridges, peaks 
 and coves, and the serpentine valleys and streams, have 
 been unable to preserve the secret places of the skyland 
 from the invasion of commercialism. The conquering out- 
 lander is after the wealth of coal and timber in the moun- 
 taineer's home country. With him the invader brings a 
 new economic system, which promptly proceeds to tear up 
 root and branch the whole ordered system of the high- 
 lander's life. Before this onslaught the people find them- 
 selves under the necessity of readjusting their lives. To 
 this end their crying need is a competent and trustworthy 
 leadership of their own. This they cannot hope to find in 
 untaught preachers who journey once a month to preach 
 at the little mountain church. Where may they hope to 
 find it? The States which touch Appalachia are doing 
 better, but still far too little, toward educating the highland 
 people. Far and away the most hopeful and promising sem- 
 inaries for training the needed leadership are in the mission 
 schools in the highland country. This training will assur- 
 edly make for a more vital church and religious life. More 
 and more, as the young preachers from these schools sense 
 the heroic quality of the service, there will also be a direct 
 impact from the schools on the efficiency of the churches in 
 serving their communities. Already great good has been ac-
 
 102 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 complished by the admirable Bible teaching in the schools 
 and the training for church service. 
 
 As to vocational training. Vocational training is being 
 tried out in various schools in the mountains. In our own 
 Baptist schools beginnings of this kind have been made. 
 Two of them have farms where lads are instructed in soils 
 and in plant culture. Elsewhere the young women are 
 getting some training in home making and in handicraft. 
 At present Superintendent Brown is investigating the prac- 
 ticability of establishing a model country home at each 
 school, in which the girls in relays shall have some weeks 
 of training in actual home making. This promises to be 
 of conspicuous value, for one of the least inviting things 
 about mountain life has been the undue burdens and hard- 
 ships borne by the women. It is eminently desirable that 
 the schools shall by actual teaching and demonstration 
 point the way to better conditions. All practicable effort 
 should be put forth to enlarge the vocational element in 
 the mountain schools. If some outlanders are suffering 
 because they cannot see the value of anything which cannot 
 be coined into money, many mountain people are suffering 
 because they live so near the edge of actual poverty that 
 they are without the means to set up the best material con- 
 ditions for wholesome living. Economic improvement must 
 go hand in hand with the enlargement of the mental and 
 moral outlook. It would be well if there was at least some 
 capable elementary training in fanning and stock-raising in 
 many of the schools. We are beginning to see that voca- 
 tional training may be over-emphasized, but there is no 
 danger of over-doing it in the highland country for some 
 time to come. There is a crying need for more of it.
 
 SOME NEGLECTED AMERICANS 103 
 
 The Ozarks. The Ozark Mountains are in Arkansas, 
 Missouri and Oklahoma. They are not so high as the 
 Southern Appalachians, but are about one-third as exten- 
 sive, and have about 1,500,000 inhabitants, practically all 
 white, and most of them Baptists in religious faith. In 
 general, their lives are conditioned like those of the Ap- 
 palachian highlanders, and they exhibit many of the same 
 qualities. They have suffered from neglect and from the 
 remoteness of their country from the cross-currents of hu- 
 mankind. Like their highland cousins to the east, they 
 have lacked for schools, for a vital church life, and for 
 leadership. They have in not a few instances been without 
 even a rudimentary provision for religious services. A few 
 years since, on a Sunday evening at sunset, Dr. John T. 
 Christian, then the Secretary of Missions in Arkansas, found 
 himself in a little mountain hamlet, far from the railroad. 
 There was no church in the place and the people were 
 gathered in groups, loafing the time away. He found a 
 stump for a pulpit, and began to sing. The crowd gath- 
 ered and he preached. They besought him to stay and 
 preach throughout their section, much of which they said 
 was entirely without provision for religious service. Near 
 this same place, but five miles from any church, the Secre- 
 tary established a Sunday-school out in the open, which 
 was soon attended by 150, most of them grown. In the 
 Arkansas Ozarks the Home Mission Board is now aiding 
 two schools for highlander youth, and in the Missouri 
 Ozarks one. It is the beginning of a fine educational 
 service for the Ozark mountain people, which may be ex- 
 pected to grow in influence and usefulness.
 
 TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY IN CHAPTER IV. 
 
 1. Give a survey of the chief groups in the South of neglected 
 native population. 
 
 2. Describe the Southern Appalachian mountain country. 
 
 3. Describe the quaintness and sensitive independence of the 
 highlander people. 
 
 4. Tell of his isolation and how he has learned to do without 
 that which his own labor does not secure. 
 
 5. Give an estimate of his religious faith, his preachers and his 
 churches. 
 
 6. Tell of the lack of leadership, and the hunger of the young 
 people for an education. 
 
 7. Show how the Mission Schools supply the needs of the high- 
 landers. 
 
 8. Give the story of a typical mountain school.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 A GOSPEL FOR A PROSPEROUS AGE. 
 
 An urgent need. In these times, every step we take 
 seems to be dogged by new imperatives. In very weari- 
 ness we resent the proposition to present a new problem. 
 The pressure of life gives us a vivid understanding of the 
 emotions which once drove men and women into monas- 
 teries and convents. My reluctance is the greater to invite 
 the reader's thought to this subject, when I consider the 
 impossibility of setting forth in the allotted space, even if 
 I adequately understood, the ins and outs of the great 
 theme, Man, Money and God. Perhaps a similar shrinking 
 accounts for the small amount of preaching and writing 
 on this subject. Yet a dazed silence affords no competent 
 method for meeting the phenomena of the most rapid in- 
 crease of wealth in history, in the wealthiest nation of 
 the world. In 1892, I heard Dr. T. T. Eaton, before the 
 student body of the Baptist Theological Seminary at Louis- 
 ville, prophesy that the conflict of sin and righteousness 
 would soon settle down to an outright grapple between 
 God and Mammon. I pondered his words and wondered. 
 I am wondering still, for what has happened is more stag- 
 gering than even the keen mind of Dr. Eaton could well 
 have conceived. 
 
 America's fabulous wealth. The mind grows tired try- 
 ing to grasp the significance of the figures which set forth 
 the wealth of America. A single billion of dollars is almost 
 an incomprehensible sum. It amounts to $16.50 for every 
 hour from the birth of Christ to the year of grace 1917.
 
 106 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 From 1 870 to 1 900 the wealth of America increased almost 
 two billions annually. From 1900 to 1904 it increased 
 five billions annually. In 1912 our national wealth totalled 
 $187,000,000,000. In a meeting of bankers and financiers 
 in Atlanta, in December, 1917, it was asserted that the 
 national wealth totalled not less than $250,000,000,000, 
 while some of those present estimated it to be fifty billions 
 more than that. If we accept the lesser amount, our na- 
 tional wealth has increased more than twelve billions annu- 
 ally for the past five years, and our present per capita 
 wealth is about $2,500. The above equals the total com- 
 bined wealth of Great Britain, Ireland, France, Germany 
 and Russia, by the last available figures. The income from 
 our farms, in 1917, was $21,000,000,000, and from mining 
 and industry considerably more. In the effort to visualize 
 the meaning of these figures, the mind sinks exhausted. The 
 splendor and richness conjured by the luxuriant imagina- 
 tion of the author of "Arabian Nights" pales into com- 
 monplaceness before such inconceivable totals. 
 
 The Sooth's ordeal of plenty. The South has shared in 
 these increases. Starting from a condition of artificial but 
 actual want, after the Civil War, and making small relative 
 progress for twenty-five years, the rate of increase for the 
 last twenty-five years has been striking and phenomenal. 
 In 1917, our cotton crop was valued at two billions, and 
 the value of all agricultural product was more than six 
 billions, while our mines and industries produced more than 
 five billions. These amounts combined, eliminating other 
 sources of income, represent an average of more than $300 
 for every man, woman and child in the South. Our agri- 
 cultural products were worth more than those of the entire 
 nation in 1912, and our manufactures almost as much as
 
 A GOSPEL FOR A PROSPEROUS AGE 107 
 
 those of the nation in 1900. What do these incomprehen- 
 sible figures mean concretely? It would take a book to 
 tell in actual detail. During the Christmas holidays, in 
 1917, I made a visit to the old home place of my child- 
 hood. Turning my back on numerous automobiles to be 
 had on call from kinsmen and friends, I walked with my 
 nephew from the city of Anderson, South Carolina, out 
 along the road, to see my dear old uncle, who alone of all 
 those who made the environment of my childhood still 
 remained in his home near that in which I first saw the 
 light. We followed the old road, now a "national high- 
 way." The hills had disappeared from the road; the 
 streams were bridged; the mud holes had dried up. We 
 swung along on a smooth highway, standing aside now and 
 then to allow a careering automobile to pass. Nineteen 
 ^chicles passed us on three miles of the highway. One was 
 a horse-drawn carriage and contained Negroes, eighteen 
 were automobiles, only three of them being inexpensive. In 
 ten of them were whites, and in eight Negroes. Most 
 of these people were farmers. On the return tramp, the 
 darkness of a winter evening was closing in, and the auto- 
 mobiles were too numerous to count of the country people 
 returning from town with the Christmas presents for their 
 children. Those people owned their machines- Most of 
 the Negroes had new machines, the speedy reaction of 
 the black to the opportunity afforded by thirty-cent cot- 
 ton. It was only an instance of the tendency of the Negro 
 to imitate the white man, whose speed and greed for the 
 good which money can buy has been so startling. 
 
 The poignancy of plenty. If one dares to say that there 
 is a pathos in our platform of wealth, it is not that he hopes 
 to catch the popular ear. To many his words will sound
 
 108 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 as the insulated utterance of a fireside oracle, whom age 
 or illness has kept from actual contact with the currents of 
 life. And yet one must endeavor to speak the truth, and 
 trust that God shall cause it to fructify. Let the reader 
 think of the time of our post-bellum poverty, when the 
 South's manhood rose superior to her adversities. We pray- 
 ed God for temporal blessings that we might serve him 
 therewith. A dominant and conquering North had no great 
 opinion of us. Our poverty was patronized by the dull- 
 souled many of other sections, who looked not upon the in- 
 ner life of the people, but upon the outward. This unkind 
 spirit of some who observed was blessed of God to the 
 South's good. The people of this section bore their bur- 
 dens, humbled their souls before God, and developed a 
 gentleness of spirit which was worth more than all the 
 billions we have now gained. Then heaven's windows 
 opened. On a people chastened and refined by suffering 
 was poured out wealth of which they had never dreamed. 
 Wealth is a temptation and a responsibility. If we really 
 had all the greatness of soul we believed we had, we would 
 be able to show it by using our wealth for service, instead 
 of spending it for power and pleasure. And here lies the 
 poignancy of our plenty. 0, merciful God, are we so 
 weak, so dull of heart, so greedy of pleasure, that we shall 
 forget thee, just so soon as thou dost remove from us the 
 chastisements of the days of stress and want! If we are, 
 our boasting is made void of the holy idealism and spiritual 
 insight which we have claimed. 
 
 The temptation of wealth. The rate of the increase of 
 our wealth is fabulous and intoxicating. It is as if God 
 had determined to test man, whether it is ever possible to 
 satisfy his heart by putting into his hands untold material
 
 A GOSPEL FOR A PROSPEROUS AGE 109 
 
 values. God has said that the life consisteth not in the 
 abundance of the things a man possesseth, and that the 
 possession of the whole world would be a loss if it should 
 cost him his soul. He has declared that a man can not 
 serve God and Mammon. Line upon line, precept upon 
 precept, he has warned man of the folly of being dominated 
 by things. All we have we hold as the stewards of his 
 bounty. If this age shall sell its soul to Mammon, it can 
 only do it by stubbornly taking the bit in its teeth and 
 rushing blindly on, ignoring God's warning that the road 
 leads over a precipice. Jesus said: "It is easier for a 
 camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a 
 rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven." His disciples 
 were amazed at his teaching. It is evident that his warn- 
 ing was against the love of money and not its possession. 
 The poor man who worships a single dollar is as much in 
 danger as the rich who worships a million. But he is less 
 likely to worship the dollar. "They that will be rich fall 
 into temptation." Jesus pronounced woe upon those who 
 trust in their riches. In the parable of the rich fool he 
 shows what it is in riches that destroys the soul. He set 
 forth that he came to preach the gospel to the poor. If 
 fat-heartedness possessed men who have wealth, Jesus 
 would find in the outcast and the lame and blind guests for 
 the feast. If this seems a hard doctrine to the prosperous, 
 it is yet no harder than that which we preach to all men. 
 The price of peace with God is that we shall give ourselves 
 and our all to God, forsaking every hindering thing. 
 Heaven is for the poor in spirit, whether a pauper or a 
 millionaire. It is not to condemn the rich; it is to wrestle 
 mightily for the hearts of men against the snares of the 
 devil, of which riches is one of the most potent.
 
 110 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 The man or the dollar? Can an age which is almost 
 obliviously absorbed in accumulating wealth be brought 
 to feel the force of God's warnings about its dangers? and 
 by prophets who, while they deal with spiritual things, are 
 dependent for their material support upon such sparse por- 
 tions of the mammon of unrighteousness as this same age 
 shall deal out to them? The relation of capital and labor 
 and of wealth and poverty, the problems of the distribution 
 of wealth, of trusts and labor organizations, of the great 
 unorganized public, which between the contending parties 
 is mulcted of its dues, are questions too involved for treat- 
 ment in a chapter. But there is a problem which outranks 
 them every one, and which bears upon each. It is the 
 comparative value of a man and a dollar, of the soul and 
 Mammon. This is a problem for legislation, education, 
 statesmanship. It is a tremendously timely problem for 
 the pulpit and for the individual. This was the problem 
 confronted by the rich young ruler who came to Jesus. 
 President Edwin M. Poteat, of Furman University, whose 
 utterances on the consecration of wealth have probably 
 not been surpassed in force, points out that the young 
 ruler failed because his religion did not get full expression 
 in the field of his predominant interest. Our Lord's advice 
 to him "sell and give" means this: You get on re- 
 ligiously only if you carry your religion into the field of 
 your predominant interest. That young man was good 
 and religious by all ordinary standards. He would be 
 highly valued as a member of any of our churches. He 
 prayed, went to public worship, and paid his part to main- 
 tain religious teaching, and to the poor. He kept his body 
 and heart clean from the grosser sins of pleasure and ap- 
 petite. Apparently his wealth had not intoxicated him
 
 A GOSPEL FOR A PROSPEROUS AGE 111 
 
 with a conceit of his power and superiority, else he would 
 not have been doing so tractible a thing as listening to 
 a preacher who was hated by the accredited ecclesiastical 
 powers, nor would he have openly asked the Saviour for 
 counsel. But Jesus saw into the man's heart. "Do you 
 want joy in religion? You can have it, if you will bring 
 the handling of your property under the restraints of re- 
 ligion." But when the young man heard, he went away 
 sorrowful, for he had great possessions. 
 
 Stewardship. The dealing of our Lord with the young 
 ruler presents the heart of Christian stewardship. This 
 teaching is clear throughout the New Testament. It is 
 that, when Christ redeemed us, he became Master and 
 Lord of the life and all that appertains to life. Rich in 
 the glory of heaven, he emptied himself and became obe- 
 dient unto death; for our sake he became poor, that we, 
 through his poverty, might become rich. Stewardship 
 touches the heart and soul and body. It also touches our 
 possessions. God gave them. He gave the sunshine and 
 rain and soil fertility. He gave the health and brawn of 
 body, and the mental ability, necessary to production, or 
 trade and barter. He gave the ingenuity to make the 
 machine and harness it to meet the needs of man. He 
 made the steam and water power and electric current. 
 The land is his. He gave himself to redeem the souls, 
 lives and possessions of man. This teaching is so clear 
 that there is no gainsaying it, but there are few of 
 us who can set it forth without condemning himself. As 
 these chapters were being written, the nation was giving 
 to humanitarian activities which were to serve the needs 
 of the American armies, as never before in our history. 
 Compared with the past these gifts are wonderful. It is
 
 112 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 well they are. The moral and physical weal of our soldier 
 boys is beyond all price, and we cannot do too much. 
 But the unparalleled gifts of the nation were a mere baga- 
 telle compared with what it ought to give, if we really ac- 
 cepted the principle of stewardship. While these great 
 gifts were made mainly to conserve the physical welfare of 
 our armies, those which were given for definitely religious 
 service among the soldiers and among the lost millions of 
 our land and other lands, were in comparison pitifully, 
 shamefully small. It was as if we would say: We must 
 do our part to care for the wounded and to provide recre- 
 ation and amusements for our poor, dear lads, so that 
 they may live wholesome and clean lives, but as for their 
 souls, which Jesus died to save, as for their hearts, out 
 of which flow the issues of life we are not sure about 
 that. The very liberality of our gifts to the humanitarian 
 causes of the war, worthy as they are, rise up to condemn 
 every Christian man or woman who give nickels and dimes 
 to foster soul-saving and dollars for providing for physical 
 and mental needs. 
 
 Stewardship and Kingdom-building. The average brick- 
 layer in America gets five or six dollars a day, while the 
 average preacher gets $700 a year, or $2.50 per day. 
 The average railway engineer gets about $2,000, while the 
 average college professor gets less than $1,300, and those 
 in Christian colleges less still. The average country church 
 in the South pays about $100 to an absentee preacher for 
 one Sunday a month (because it is cheaper than two Sun- 
 days), while the ignorant Negro farm hand gets about 
 $300. The average member of our Southern Baptist 
 churches gives about sixty cents annually to all classes of 
 mission work, while . But there is no secular interest small
 
 A GOSPEL FOR A PROSPEROUS AGE 113 
 
 enough for comparison with our gifts to Christian missions! 
 The brilliant lamented Dr. J. V. Dickinson once reported 
 a discussion he had with a Hardshell Baptist preacher on 
 a train. The preacher declared that his people show up 
 about as well in giving nothing to missions, in which they 
 do not believe, as the Missionary Baptists do in giving 
 only about sixty cents each to a world-wide cause in which 
 they profess that they do believe. It means much to ac- 
 cept right principles, even if one is as slow as a snail in 
 coming to live up to them. But it is impossible to consider 
 the parsimonious support given to preachers and churches 
 and to missions, by the millions in our country who say 
 they belong to Jesus, without being almost appalled at the 
 inconsistency of it. Small wonder that the world wags a 
 skeptical head and sticks its tongue in its cheek. Many 
 there are, who would be skeptical still if we should remove 
 this stumbling block, but the obligation on us to remove 
 it is none the less great. And the clear command of our 
 Lord, which we have neglected or disobeyed, arises to 
 rebuke us. 
 
 What real stewardship would accomplish. Christianity 
 has been and is the salt which saves society. Poor and 
 halting as has been the discipleship of many who profess 
 to love Jesus, Christianity is the most potent force of up- 
 lift in the world. But when we consider the generations 
 of Christians who have throughout their lives turned their 
 backs upon the teachings of the New Testament about 
 stewardship, it is to wonder that our religious progress 
 has been so large. If a lame and halting service has done 
 so much for the weary souls of sinful men, what could 
 God's people not do if they would really serve God and 
 men with their substance. Preachers could preach and
 
 114 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 study, instead of making their living by the labor of 
 their hands. God would honor and bless churches which 
 ceased to discredit and dishonor the men who teach and 
 lead them. God would call preachers from among churches 
 which thus obeyed him and honored his ministers. Our 
 Christian colleges would be equipped for a great service, 
 instead of forever under the necessity of heroic appeals 
 to ears which are not quick to hear. Our theological 
 schools would have more money for their work and would 
 have to double the size of their plants to accommodate 
 the students who would come. Our Mission Boards would 
 devote their entire energies to conducting their great activi- 
 ties and making them more effective, instead of nervously 
 watching that at the end of the fiscal year they may not 
 be unable to make the tongue of income fasten over the 
 buckle of outgo, and thus jeopardize the confidence of the 
 brotherhood in their administration! It is a pitiful thing 
 to see true and godly men, entrusted to lead the work 
 of the Mission Boards, periodically, under the apparent 
 necessity of making the most urgent appeals they know 
 how to make, lest there be a debt a debt that will come, 
 perhaps, because the average church member gave fifteen 
 cents during the year to the cause, instead of twenty-one; 
 that is, five war-time postage stamps, instead of seven! 
 This world is never more in folly than in discrediting of 
 vital power which is in the gospel of Christ. But the 
 world despises men and women who are babies in charac- 
 ter, and in the Christian stewardship many of us are still 
 infants. 
 
 Preaching stewardship. I have no confidence in cheap 
 and easy proposals looking to the development of our 
 people in Christian stewardship. The one outstanding
 
 A GOSPEL FOR A PROSPEROUS AGE 115 
 
 thing we have done in recent years in this direction is the 
 Laymen's Movement. Its Secretary, Prof. J. T. Hender- 
 son, oppressed with a sense of the immense educational 
 task which he confronts, has found himself drawn more 
 and more to educational methods. Thrilling speeches are 
 fine. Southern Baptists till this day pin unusual faith to 
 them, and have an exceptional number of men who can 
 make them. But thrilling speeches can only touch the 
 hem of the garment of this need. "My people perish for 
 lack of knowledge." In stewardship, as in the general 
 nurture of the new-born spiritual life, Baptists seem to 
 have reached an impasse. Once the spiritual babe is 
 born, we seem to have an unwarranted faith that he may 
 be left to forage for himself. Tracts and newspaper ar- 
 ticles are useful. But neither tracts, newspaper articles, 
 thrilling speeches on big occasions, nor the annual campaign 
 period of importunity of our Mission Boards, can do so 
 great a thing as teach stewardship to 3,000,000 Southern 
 Baptists. Nor, under existing conditions, may we hope that 
 the preachers themselves will do it, in many of the 
 churches. It is too ripe a fruit to be successfully de- 
 veloped under once-a-month cultivation, by a preacher 
 who is supposed to look after many other spiritual needs 
 in his far-apart hours of instruction. Moreover, some of 
 the preachers will first need to be converted to the doc- 
 trine of stewardship. Still, we can succeed when we are 
 ready to pay the price. But beware of the man who has 
 a ready-made panacea. Character-building is slow and 
 difficult. Mushrooms often grow over-night; hardwoods 
 may take a century. A miner's shack may be erected in 
 a few hours; it took many years to build Saint Peter's. 
 Secretary Henderson has accomplished much by his ad-
 
 116 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 dresses, but he soon saw that there must be something 
 more substantial and abiding. In my work with him for 
 some days in laymen's institutes, I found that he had 
 adopted methods much like those of the Home Board's 
 Enlistment men, and that they were bearing a large fruit- 
 age. But what is one man, what are twenty of our most 
 gifted men, in the face of so immense a cultural need! 
 Like the handful of Enlistment men, Dr. Henderson is, so 
 to speak, a John the Baptist, crying in the tangled wilder- 
 ness of our neglect, calling us to repentance by showing 
 us that stewardship is a great doctrine, and that there 
 is no fix-it-while-you-wait cure for an ill which is the fruit 
 of generations of chronic inattention. 
 
 Slow teaching, fast age. The situation is that of un- 
 trained Christian lives in a day of marvelous progress, and 
 in which science and learning are the handmaidens of 
 dollar-coining. It is a situation of torpid Christian ac- 
 tivities, resultant on a chronic lack of teaching, in a day 
 when man to further his material welfare has made ma- 
 chines, speeded them up to the breaking point, and then 
 tried to speed himself up to the same pace. Perhaps God 
 intends to compel us to forsake our somnolent religious 
 methods by thrusting it patently before our eyes that, if 
 we do not more adequately teach men to know and do 
 his word, he will forsake us. This dilemma actually con- 
 fronts us. If the rank and file of our people shall move 
 like the tortoise in their efforts to serve the spiritual needs 
 of an age that is moving like an express train in material 
 progress, may we not indeed expect that God shall reject 
 us for other means of reaching men? 
 
 Have we a gospel for the prosperous? A gospel virile 
 enough to reach prosperous people is needed in our day.
 
 A GOSPEL FOR A PROSPEROUS AGE 117 
 
 There is no inherent evil in wealth. Christianity fosters 
 prosperity. It is not bad in itself; it is only dangerous, 
 because man is inherently weak and sinful. If a man is 
 genuinely saved from his sins, his wealth may become a 
 power for righteousness. Now, we have a gospel for the 
 troubled, for the worn and tired, for the weak and out- 
 cast. Thank God, we have! We shall always need it. 
 If the millions of disappointed and anxious and grieved 
 and discouraged, whose hearts cry out in yearning for 
 help and strength and comfort in this day and in every 
 day, had no one who could see and feel and help, when 
 man's help does not avail, life would be a miserable, hope- 
 less, worthless thing. But God wants all men to be saved. 
 The atonement of Christ is for the prosperous man also. 
 He may be full of the fret and worry of business. His 
 heart may be foolishly seeking power and pleasure in his 
 wealth. But his sins are not worse than other sins, except 
 as we allow him to remain blinded to his higher interests. 
 He has a heart that hungers. Are we strong enough to 
 point out to a man thus insulated by affairs, that there is 
 no real satisfaction in wealth except through service, and 
 no availing way to the life of service except the way of 
 the cross? 
 
 Where our mission effort stops. Many church members 
 are little interested in missions. Some of those who are 
 interested, do not seem to consider religious effort mis- 
 sionary unless it reaches down to help some one up from 
 the gutter, or takes a pagan and civilizes him. It is easy 
 to get money for the Indians, or to stir up people with the 
 story of an unlettered mountain boy and his heroic strug- 
 gle for improvement. But there is usually no thorough- 
 fare when money is needed to bring Jesus to the knowledge
 
 118 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 of the prosperous. Do we believe that the woman in the 
 limosine and the man who radiates prosperity need Jesus? 
 If we really love souls, ought we not to love them in pro- 
 portion to their need? Their need is in proportion to the 
 blocks which beset the way between them and Christ If 
 wealth is a more disastrous block, it calls for more love, 
 rather than less. Christians never needed bigger hearts, 
 a clearer vision, or more courageous purpose in missions 
 than now, when many of our fellow countrymen have 
 won the world's prizes only to find that somehow they do 
 not satisfy the soul. But it will take a faith of real virility 
 and depth to deal with such. If ours is weak and fearful, 
 we shall fail. 
 Discontent 
 
 "The lovely toy so fiercely sought 
 Hath lost its charm by being caught." 
 
 The sentiment of these lines not inaptly describes the 
 undercurrent of discontent which is now in society. There 
 is one whom we call Lord and Master who taught that 
 "the life consisteth not of the abundance of the things 
 which a man possesseth." But, though it shames us to 
 confess it, relatively few of us have really believed it 
 With hungry desire, men have battled for possessions, 
 spurred on, not simply by a wholesome wish to provide the 
 things which are needful, while putting God's Kingdom 
 even before these. Their imaginations have reached out 
 after the power and worldly influence money gives, and 
 the pleasures which money can buy. There is Capital 
 and Labor, meaning the small percent of labor which is 
 organized to meet organized capital. Together they make 
 up less than five percent of our population. But they have 
 an influence out of all proportion to their number. Capital
 
 A GOSPEL FOR A PROSPEROUS AGE 119 
 
 seeks to get a larger proportion of the wealth of the nation 
 for its own uses; organized labor seeks a larger propor- 
 tion for its brawn and brain. Both usually succeed be- 
 yond their just deserts, as compared with the great unor- 
 ganized mass of the citizenship, who labor more than or- 
 ganized labor and who own more capital than the cap- 
 italists, but get relatively small consideration in legisla- 
 tion, having no bandit's bludgeon conveniently at hand 
 wherewith to command it. There is enough for all, if we 
 wanted to do right, and were ready to help each other, 
 instead of watching each like a hawk for his own interest. 
 With the exchanges and stock markets thronged with men 
 who greedily, restlessly seek to shunt golden streams from 
 the common wealth into their private pockets, without 
 rendering a fair service to society for it; with Capital and 
 Labor playing see-saw, each desperately trying to kick up 
 his end of the plank; with phenominal, mind-paralysing 
 wealth throughout the land, our nation has come into a 
 condition of unrest and discontent which is pitiable and 
 alarming, but not hopeless. 
 
 In the crucible. We pray God to take away from the 
 earth the nightmare of war. May he speedily break down 
 the wicked and greedy designs of kings and emperors, and 
 set the people free. We believe that God will do it. 
 But when these words were written it looked as if he 
 would do it by putting our nation through the crucible of 
 heart-ache and suffering. We would that this cup might 
 be removed from us, but may it not be the hand and wis- 
 dom of God, sorely chastizing us for the greediness of 
 heart with which we have sought satisfaction in our pos- 
 sessions, while all the time he was calling us to give our 
 hearts to him! If the world ever had a convincing demon-
 
 120 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 stration that wealth does not bring happiness, it has it in 
 America now. Piles and piles of wealth are ours, but in 
 his nervous haste to make money and keep money and 
 spend money, the average American has found only a 
 growing dissatisfaction. We wanted "to improve our con- 
 dition in life." Well, we have done so. And now, heaven 
 is no nearer, the heart is no fuller, love is no sweeter, and, 
 alas! often the soul is smaller, its eyes suffering from a 
 myopia which neither money nor opticians can cure. The 
 possession of things kills desire. The possession of God 
 and his Christ fills the heart and grows a soul-hunger for 
 which there is unfailing satisfaction. But, gracious God in 
 heaven, who among the cowards who haste after wealth 
 and pleasure will believe it? Must each mortal man butt 
 his own individual head against the stone wall of experi- 
 ence? Can none learn from the experience of others? 
 What one of the mad, hurrying, speed-obsessed, money- 
 getting, automobile-buying, pleasure-chasing, train-riding, 
 globe-trotting, luxury-consuming crowd that surges and 
 twists and hurries on, will stop from his wild career to 
 consider? God will find a way to make us think. 
 
 A prayer for mercy and teachableness. Lord God of 
 grace and love, look down upon us, thine erring children. 
 We are prone to evil. With thy words before us, we are 
 still often stubborn of heart and blind to their meaning. 
 A feverish desire consumes our soul. Thou hast said that 
 happiness is not to be had from things, but we have not 
 believed it. We have taken the bit in our teeth. With 
 greedy self-will we have speeded up the iron-hearted ma- 
 chine to make wealth, and then dedicated our own brain 
 and body and nerves to an effort to keep up with the 
 thing we made. Yet, in our heart of hearts, we confess
 
 A GOSPEL FOR A PROSPEROUS AGE 121 
 
 to thee that we have not found happiness in the absorption 
 which has crept upon us. We hunger for that peace and 
 that good which money cannot buy, and which cannot be 
 locked up in strong boxes. Thou wast our God, in the 
 days of our poverty and distress. Now, Lord, hold on 
 to us, that we may not become enslaved to Mammon. We 
 thank thee for prosperity. But if we are so weak, so bar- 
 ren of spirit, so fat of heart that prosperity shall sodden 
 our souls, take these possessions from us, we pray, that a 
 worse thing may not befall us. Open thou the hearts of 
 the Christian people of the South, that they may become 
 stewards of thine, rendering unto thee and unto thy service 
 the first fruits of their substance. Put heavily upon those 
 among us of leadership and influence the conviction that 
 we must nurture the people of God, to live for him and 
 not merely to offer their naked souls, while carelessly re- 
 maining through life unnurtured babes in Christ. Make us 
 worthy, we beseech thee, that our deeds may be of love and 
 our substance accepted for service, and that our works 
 may abide as gold and silver and precious stones. We 
 ask it humbly in the name of thy Son, who emptied him- 
 self of heaven's riches, and became poor for our sake, 
 that we might become rich in grace through him. Amen!
 
 TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY IN CHAPTER V. 
 
 1. Give evidences of the great wealth of America and of the 
 South. 
 
 2. What is the New Testament teaching concerning wealth? 
 
 3. Give the Bible teaching concerning stewardship, and show 
 what effect its general practice in the churches would have 
 on religious life. 
 
 4. What sort of a gospel may we expect to be adequate for a 
 prosperous age? 
 
 5. Show how and why all our present prosperity has failed to 
 bring content and satisfaction to the hearts of men. 
 
 6. Does God purpose that the suffering of war shall win us 
 from sinful absorption in the pursuit of prosperity?
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE IMMIGRANT. 
 
 An unparalleled people movement. The hegira from 
 Europe and Western Asia to America for the last gen- 
 eration has been a movement of people such as the world 
 never witnessed before. In its size and the distance cov- 
 ered across ocean wastes, the inundation of immigrants 
 which has swept down on this country, has been without 
 precedent. Sociologists, statesmen, and religious workers 
 have puzzled over it. Religious bodies and missionary 
 agencies have experimentally grappled with it, hoping they 
 may learn how to Christianize and Americanize this in- 
 choate mass. There is no time card to tell how soon we 
 may expect these millions of aliens in our land to arrive 
 at the terminal of real Americanism. Foremen in great 
 steel mills, on railway construction or in the manufacture 
 of garments, can estimate what they will get out of these 
 old-world industrial adventurers; not so can the compara- 
 tively unorganized forces of religion and moral uplift tell 
 what we may expect next year, or a generation hence, 
 in their reaction on American life. 
 
 A question of statesmanship. The pessimist says the 
 flocking alien spells the undoing of American religion and 
 civil institutions, the driving out of the sacred traditions 
 for which our fathers suffered. The optimist declares that 
 the ancestors of all of us were once immigrants. He has 
 no doubt that America can take care of all manner and 
 kinds of strains that may come from immigration, or from
 
 124 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 anything else. Somewhere between these two extreme 
 positions lies the truth. It is proposed here to outline a 
 few leading factors of the problem and to utter a true 
 word concerning what we should undertake to do for the 
 new-comers. I go this far with the pessimist: I am filled 
 with amazement at the easy confidence of many writers 
 and religious workers to the effect that America, appar- 
 ently by some unspecified kind of good luck, may be de- 
 pended upon to assimilate without deterioation unlimited 
 thousands of people whose lives and ideals are utterly 
 foreign to those of America. If the immigrant's improve- 
 ment is to be accomplished only by the weakening of our 
 country's religious and civic ideals, it will be to kill the 
 goose that lays the golden egg. We cannot inspire and 
 lift other people by permitting our own ideals and insti- 
 tutions to be water-logged, or by losing our identity in a 
 vast inarticulate mass of polyglot peoples. Nor can the 
 patriot forget that America has a duty to her own sons 
 which takes precedence over any she has to masses of 
 people in other nations, who wish to flock to our land 
 for the money they hope to get here. Both patriotism and 
 religion require that we shall conserve American stand- 
 ards, for America's own sake and for the sake of the 
 world. Perhaps the World War and the threat that has 
 come to this country from thousands of aliens here who 
 would willingly have betrayed the country that has given 
 them shelter and opportunity, will awaken us to some of 
 the dangers in immigration. May it be so! 
 
 Some immigrant figures. During the last hundred years, 
 30,000,000 of these humble argonauts have left home and 
 people and braved the ocean's expanse for the hope of 
 good in America. Since 1900, 13,500,000 have come.
 
 THE IMMIGRANT 125 
 
 forty percent of the movement for the century. William 
 P. Shriver, in "Immigrant Forces," says that for a period 
 of five years, ending in 1912, thirty-four percent of the 
 immigrants emigrated. If this average of departure has 
 prevailed since 1900, the increase of American population 
 from immigration during that period has been 9,000,000, 
 nearly one person in every ten in the Republic. The 
 report of the Commissioner of Immigration for 1917 called 
 attention that the average influx annually for the decade 
 from 1905 to 1914 was 1,012,194. The great war cut 
 down the movement, so that there were only 298,000 in 
 1916 and 295,000 in 1917. The net increase from immi- 
 gration for the three years ending in 1917 was only 
 392,000. The new literary test had been in operation only 
 two months when the 1917 report was made. During those 
 two months, 391 aliens were excluded through the appli- 
 cation of this test. The exclusions do not measure the 
 significance of the test; to do that we would have to know 
 the number restrained from coming because this test would 
 confront them. 
 
 Who the immigrants are. Up to about thirty years ago, 
 most of the immigrants were from northern Europe. They 
 were English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, Scan- 
 dinavians. Since that time, and especially for the last 
 twenty years, the larger number came from southern and 
 southeastern Europe. The Italians, Russians, and Greeks, 
 and the Austro-Hungarian peoples, show up in bewilder- 
 ing numbers. These are not the racial strains which made 
 America. Their standard of living is lower. Religiously 
 about two-thirds of them are nominally Roman Catholics, 
 though there is a considerable Protestant element from 
 Hungary. The great majority of the incomers are of
 
 126 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 the peasant class. America has no native population anal- 
 agous to the European peasant. Though they congest the 
 tenement district of our cities, nearly all of them came 
 from the soil. Usually the peasant was indigenous to the 
 land. Disadvantaged by heavy taxes and an oppressive 
 overlord system, the peasant of Europe often lives on land 
 where his people have taken root through generations. 
 This fact suggests a certain stability. It will be well if 
 some of this may be persevered in America, where even 
 the sluggish immigrant becomes nervous and mercurial with 
 the leaven of our speeded-up civilization. The immigrants 
 are the best and strongest specimens of the social stratum 
 from which they come. The weakest people of a class 
 are not those who break away from the trammels which 
 bind to try their fortune in the far unknown. 
 
 Why they come. Once the Pilgrim Fathers and others 
 came to America's unsubdued wilds to find religious lib- 
 erty. That was long ago. Few come now for political 
 or religious liberty. The magnet that draws the mass is 
 American money. Poets have told us how the statue of 
 liberty in New York harbor inspires the poor immigrants, 
 as their vessel approaches the land. It is a pleasant pic- 
 ture. We wish it was true. It is true, however, only for 
 the exceptional man. Most of them know next to nothing 
 about this country and its people and care very little. 
 They have heard of America as a place where one picks 
 money from the trees, where millions may be made. A 
 large proportion of them expect to return to their former 
 homes to enjoy the fortune they hope to make here. 
 About one-third of them actually do return. There are 
 some immigrants who come with a desire to become citi- 
 zens of America, because of the great measure of human
 
 THE IMMIGRANT 127 
 
 rights to be enjoyed here. But we need not shut our eyes 
 to the fact that the great mastering motive behind the 
 movement is the selfish motive of gain. There is an ele- 
 ment among them who hold our institutions in a positive 
 dislike. Among the large number of Russians who seem- 
 ingly expected to cure their country's ills by speech-mak- 
 ing, following the overthrow of the Tzar, some of the 
 most vociferous were men who had returned from America, 
 and who derided the idea of setting up a government as 
 imperfect as they say ours is. 
 
 The immigrant and industry. The immigrant nearly al- 
 ways finds his place in industry. Naturally he takes the 
 jobs at the bottom. He constructs most of our railways, 
 makes most of our clothes, does most of the hard work in 
 steel and iron mills, and digs most of our coal from the 
 mines. He leads in smelting copper, refining oil, and mak- 
 ing furniture. A survey which has been in great vogue 
 in this country, declares that he manufactures ninety-one 
 percent of the cotton goods. Of course this is untrue, 
 since about fifty percent of the cotton goods are made in 
 the South, and not one operative in thirty in the Southern 
 mills is a foreigner. The survey evidently took no account 
 of Southern mills. Southern readers of Northern writers 
 on American problems have learned that they must correct 
 many statements which refer to this section. This partic- 
 ular error has been sown broadcast among students of 
 the immigrant problem, and until now I have seen no cor- 
 rection of it. The great industrial zone of America is in 
 the North and Middle West. If the student will draw a 
 straight line from the southwest corner of Illinois north- 
 west to the national boundary, passing just west of Min- 
 neapolis, and another line from the starting point to the
 
 128 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 Atlantic coast, passing between Washington and Baltimore, 
 he will include to the north of these lines eighteen percent 
 of the national area. In 1910, this territory had 46,000,- 
 000 people, about half the population of continental United 
 States. Three-fourths of the foreign born people of the 
 country are in this territory, where they form the mud- 
 sill of industry. In the same section are thirty-two cities 
 of more than 100,000 population. Many of these cities 
 were built by industry, and the foreign quarter, with the 
 problems of congestion, of health and moral sanitation, 
 presses for adequate treatment in every one of them. 
 
 The South and the foreigner. Rapid as is the industrial 
 development of the South, the immigrant is still in a pe- 
 culiar sense the problem of the North. At the same time, 
 there are nearly 4,000,000 foreigners and children of 
 foreigners in the South, a larger number than the re- 
 ligious bodies of the South have yet demonstrated their 
 ability to Christianize and Americanize. The religious 
 forces of Northern denominations are grappling with the 
 needs of the immigrant more vigorously than we of the 
 South. Baptists of the North are particularly active, but 
 not all the saving agencies combined are sufficient to 
 show that American Christendom is fully awake to the 
 responsibility and opportunity which the immigrant brings. 
 In the coal mines of Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee; 
 in the mines and cities of Missouri and Oklahoma; on 
 the rice farms of Arkansas and the sugar plantations of 
 Louisiana; on the plains of Texas; in the oyster and fish 
 business of southern Mississippi; in Tampa, Pensacola, Key 
 West, Norfolk, Charleston, Baltimore, Birmingham, New 
 Orleans, Memphis, Galveston, San Antonio, St. Louis, 
 Louisville, Southern Illinois, El Paso, and New Mexico,
 
 THE IMMIGRANT 129 
 
 there are foreigners by thousands who need the loving 
 ministries and teaching of God's people. That the mass- 
 ing of these hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the 
 industrial centers is a menace to the moral, political, and 
 religious life of the country only an incorrigible optimist 
 will deny. Unhappily the incorrigible optimist has more 
 vogue among us than he deserves. At his best, he keeps 
 people feeling good so long as their house of cards stands, 
 without any ability to help when it falls. At his worst, 
 he prevents men from safeguarding against peril by keep- 
 ing them from seeing it. "But these immigrants furnish 
 labor to develop our resources," says the economist. "Be- 
 sides, it is cheap labor." Precisely! In saying which the 
 economist has set forth perhaps the chiefest reason why 
 it is so difficult to get men to think and act sanely about 
 immigration. "These millions," says the religious enthusi- 
 ast, "are our opportunity to save the world at our doors." 
 He speaks truly. But to continue to speak thus, without 
 seriously seeking to put forth effort adequate to meet such 
 great needs, is to suggest an effort to save the immigrant 
 by words and theories. It will require deeds to save him, 
 great deeds inspired by the love of Christ. 
 
 The religion of the immigrant Most of the immigrants 
 have been brought up in a ritualistic religion, which has 
 made it difficult for them to find Christ as a personal 
 Saviour. Tens of thousands of them have a form of god- 
 liness without its power. These are often as much in need 
 of Christian teaching and aid as are those who have no 
 religion at all. Others, whose religious connections were 
 evangelical, need to be brought into identity with the re- 
 ligious life of their new country. There are not a few 
 immigrants who have come from pagan countries, and
 
 130 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 who bring their religion with them. There are said to be 
 on the Pacific coast 150,000 immigrants from eastern Asia. 
 Buddhists claim to have seventy-four temples in America. 
 In order to adopt this Oriental pagan faith to American 
 people, the Buddhists have appropriated the tunes of Chris- 
 tian songs, as, "Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing my 
 Holy Buddha's praise." With Los Angeles as a center, 
 the Buddhist priest and his helpers regularly visit eight 
 missions. Seventy-five American women were counted at 
 service at one of these missions, their limousines waiting 
 outside. The Hindus and Mahommedans are also seeking 
 to set up their religions in America. 
 
 Foreign Missions at our door. Spokesmen for American 
 missions have often insisted on the greatness of the op- 
 portunity the immigrants afford us to do foreign mission 
 work in our own country. This emphasis cannot be made 
 too strong. Until American Christian bodies come to do 
 more than they have done for the new-comers, it will be 
 evident that the emphasis is not strong enough. The 
 American Missionary Society states the case thus: "The 
 greatest Foreign Mission land on the globe today is our 
 own America. Here we do not go in search of millions; 
 the millions come to us. We are not compelled to learn 
 their language; they are anxious to learn ours. We are 
 not obliged to conform to alien customs; they are here to 
 adopt ours. We are not a little group engulfed in hun- 
 dreds of millions; we are the majority. These strangers 
 are cut loose from their native governments and religious 
 customs. We are not compelled to uproot and displace 
 old established beliefs. This is the great open world field 
 for propagating Christian faith." In a missionary meet- 
 ing at Canton, China, there were fifty Chinamen who were
 
 THE IMMIGRANT 131 
 
 engaged in Christian work as native preachers, of whom 
 it transpired that twenty-five had been converted while in 
 America. Ng Poon Chew, editor of the Chinese daily 
 paper of San Francisco, recently visited his native village 
 in China. A Christian from American teaching, he ex- 
 plained Christianity to the people. In the temple where 
 the idol of his ancestors stood, he told the idolators of the 
 true God and of Jesus Christ, his Son. The people heard 
 gladly and in two days the seven hundred families com- 
 posing that community destroyed their idols. 
 
 What we are doing for foreigners. Methodists, Presby- 
 terians and Baptists are each doing something to evan- 
 gelize and Christianize the foreigners in the South. Our 
 Baptist effort engages about sixty workers, of whom twenty 
 are co-operative missionaries among the Texas Mexicans 
 and ten are co-operative missionaries in Louisiana among 
 the French-speaking population and the Italians. The 
 other workers are teachers, pastors, port-workers, and 
 mining town missionaries. The teachers are at Norfolk, 
 Tampa, and El Paso, and in South Louisiana. Teaching 
 is combined with what may be called deaconess work by 
 women missionaries in Southern Illinois and Oklahoma. 
 The pastors are in foreign communities in Missouri and 
 Alabama, Illinois and Texas, and at Tampa, Florida. The 
 largest local effort of the Board for foreigners is in Tampa, 
 among Cubans and Italians. There are here two mis- 
 sionary pastors and eight women teachers. The port work 
 makes the strongest appeal to the imagination, and for 
 years the Home Mission Board has had Miss Marie 
 Buhlmaier, a gifted and consecrated woman, at the Bal- 
 timore port, whose untiring activities have been of great 
 aid to many hundreds of the needy and often helpless
 
 132 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 immigrant arrivals. While the lady is indefatigable in 
 her deeds of kindness, by her words of loving instruction 
 she leads many to find the Saviour of souls. The work of 
 the teachers is not so dramatic, but, along with missionary 
 pastoral service, it is invaluable in turning whole immi- 
 grant communities toward religion and toward American 
 ideals. The foreigner service of our Home Mission Board 
 is conducted by consecrated and devoted men and women 
 and its successes are large and gratifying. 
 
 The churches and the foreigners. In addition to the 
 direct value of the service rendered by the Home Board 
 missionaries, is the encouragement it gives local churches 
 to look after the foreigners in their own communities. 
 There are in our towns and cities hundreds of churches 
 near which live a number of foreigners. Though these 
 groups are often too small to justify sending a special 
 worker, the aggregate number of people in them is much 
 greater than those who are in larger colonies. These lonely 
 people are more easy to reach than they would be if they 
 had around them a community of their own people. It is 
 a service which our churches can render and in doing 
 which both the foreigners and church would be helped and 
 strengthened. Much as we need an increased support of 
 our organized mission work, perhaps we do not need it 
 quite so much as we do an awakening of each church to 
 its obligation to save and build up the people in its own 
 community. It will not suffice for the church to establish 
 a mission school in a shack in some obscure corner. If it 
 has not something vital of itself to give, it will fail. But 
 the humiliation of even such a failure, might be a whole- 
 some first step in many a church toward the time when 
 it shall wake up to understand the spiritual benefits which
 
 THE IMMIGRANT 133 
 
 come from going out into the hedges and byways and com- 
 pelling them to come in. 
 
 To sum up. The immigrant lacks much of being the 
 chief mission problem in the South, but he is a far larger 
 problem than we have shown ourselves prepared to care 
 for. We do not know what will happen in immigration 
 after the World War is over, but the conflict itself has 
 shocked into an awareness of danger some of our com- 
 placent opportunists. There is ground for hope that the 
 selfish forces which have wrought for unrestricted immi- 
 gration will not be able to have their own way in the future 
 as they have had in the past. The immigrant is our respon- 
 sibility. We must Christianize him and Americanize him, 
 or he will become a sinister threat to American religious 
 institutions and democracy. The tens of thousands who 
 are ever returning from America to the ends of the earth, 
 make a foreign mission opportunity in America, such 
 as never came to any other country. The apparent 
 indifference of many of us to the unmatched opportunities 
 thus afforded, is not encouraging, to say the least. Does 
 it not amount almost to a confession that we do not feel 
 that we have a religion which is able to save men and 
 send them out as evangels of salvation? It is a symptom 
 of a weak faith, from which we should humbly seek a 
 cure. If we are to hold our country for Christ, and if 
 we are really to send the gospel out with saving power into 
 the sinful and needy world, we must save the foreigners 
 who come to our country. As never before, we are now 
 emphasizing strategy in religious effort. Here is strategy 
 so simple that all may understand its value, and large 
 enough in promise to profoundly impress every sincere 
 Christian, whose heart is open to see the truth and to
 
 134 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 perform the doing of it. Here is an opportunity to evan- 
 gelize the nations which never before came to a people. 
 If we are zealous for the coming of the Kingdom of our 
 Lord among men, we will gladly give ourselves to a service 
 which promises so abundant a harvest both in America and 
 in other lands. 
 
 TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY IN CHAPTER VI. 
 
 1. Show that immigration is a question of Christian stateman- 
 ship. 
 
 2. Describe American immigration in terms of racial origin and 
 numbers. 
 
 3. Discuss the motives which bring the immigrants, and indicate 
 the large part the in-comers play in industry. 
 
 4. Describe immigration in terms of the religions brought in, 
 of the influence on American Christianity, of the Foreign 
 Mission opportunity their coming affords. 
 
 5. Discuss what Southern Baptists are doing for foreigners, and 
 the obligation of local churches to them.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE REVOLT AGAINST DOCTRINE. 
 
 Intolerance, in new robes. In this age a small group of 
 men, making a noise out of all proportion to their num- 
 ber, professes great tolerance in religion. Its confidence is 
 in its broad-mindedness. Faith was counted to Abraham 
 for righteousness. The token by which the spirit of our 
 times would challenge heaven's approval is not faith, but an 
 extravagant liberalism, which often makes a virtue of tol- 
 erating what God condemns, and of discrediting those who 
 hold strictly to the teachings of the Bible. These men have 
 tolerance for every religious faith, but bring to bear con- 
 centrated intolerance on those who stand boldly for the 
 faith and teachings of the gospel of the atoning Christ. In 
 business, politics and social life they reserve the right for 
 each to think and choose for himself; else he might run 
 athwart the faith of his neighbor. Particularly he must not 
 teach the faith he has learned from the New Testament, lest 
 he should offend others who do not accept all of it as he 
 does, or those who accept none of it. For this reason these 
 men with great hatred hate doctrinal teaching, and boldly 
 seek to justify their hatred by making such teaching appear 
 odious. One may contend for his views in temporal and 
 selfish concerns, but not in the concerns of the immortal 
 spirit; that would be bigotry. You may believe anything 
 or nothing, but you must not teach against even the most 
 subtle and destructive errors. If you did, you might run 
 athwart the sentiments of other men, and these "advanced"
 
 136 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 thinkers will not allow that in religion, though it is all right 
 in any other zone of life. This, if the reader please, is a 
 glimpse of the devil of intolerance in his new, angel-of- 
 light robes. 
 
 The new "tolerance." Only at the peril of his soul and 
 of the souls of all whom he influences, may the child 
 of God silently acquiesce in this fair-seeming creed of tol- 
 erance. For one thing, the aggressive campaign through 
 which this creed advertises its professed virtues, should 
 make one suspicious. The Spirit of God works more 
 quietly. Its wonderful popularity with the world is also an 
 illuminating circumstance; the world knows its own. True 
 religion does not laud its virtues nor belittle others, but this 
 modern gospel of tolerance does. It attributes to unoffend- 
 ing Presbyterian elders, Methodist stewards and Baptist 
 deacons motives of narrow hate and of sectarian bitterness 
 toward each other, which those faithful men never con- 
 ceived. With them it includes the half-paid preachers, who 
 for Christ's sake are giving their lives in the battle of God 
 for the fortress of man-soul against the cunning wiles of 
 the devil. Though ready to rail upon men whose shoes 
 it is unworthy to loose, the new toleration suffers from 
 a lapse of memory when there is some real case of intol- 
 erance to report. It speaks softly or not at all about the 
 horrors of the inquisition conducted by the Roman Cath- 
 olics in the Middle Ages. In newspaper, pulpit and maga- 
 zine, and on the platform, it is unable even to see the 
 present machinations of Rome in America, much less char- 
 acterize them for what they are. That would be "bigoted." 
 But it is apparently not so to caricature and falsely malign 
 good men and Christian bodies, whose loyalty to Jesus Christ 
 and his teachings hinders the full fruition of the new toler-
 
 THE REVOLT AGAINST DOCTRINE 137 
 
 ance. The bloody persecution of a crude age is discredited 
 So the devil of intolerance, through progressive phases of 
 hypocritical pretense, has adjusted himself to the new en- 
 vironment. Look for him in the smooth-tongued and plaus- 
 ible advocate of a larger liberality and tolerance. Toler- 
 ance is not large enough to suit him so long as men con- 
 tinue faithfully to hold to the doctrines of sin and re- 
 pentance and salvation through the atoning blood of Christ, 
 though they may hold forth at liberty on the brotherhood 
 of man. The more human fellowship is magnified the 
 better, if in doing so men are led to forget Jesus and the 
 Cross. The devil is in favor of any good thing that will 
 make men forget the best. He is content with any gospel 
 that does not ring clear on the meaning of the Cross. "Lib- 
 erality" suits him better than bloody persecution if it hides 
 Christ more effectively from the hearts of sinners. The 
 most cunning wile of the devil in our day is this sleight 
 of hand by which he has, so to speak, become the presiding 
 officer of a world-commission for the abatement of re- 
 ligious prejudice. 
 
 The lion preaches tenderness to Iambs. Bigotry and in- 
 tolerance deserve to be destroyed, but when the lion begins 
 to admonish lambs against cruelty, even lambs may be 
 excused from hiding away from so strange a convert to 
 tenderness and love. There is something wrong when many 
 who have most ignored the Christ, God's greatest and chief- 
 est expression of love, in the name of love and liberty chide 
 for bigotry and hate those who have humbly and sincerely, 
 if imperfectly, surrendered themselves to the love and mercy 
 of God. To illustrate: Even the most guileless and least 
 subtle may be pardoned if they distrust and wonder when 
 the hierarchy, with nearly every page of its history stained
 
 138 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 with the blood of the martyrs, sets up in America a "com- 
 mission on religious prejudice" to foster good will and tol- 
 erance among the religious bodies! The Saviour has said, 
 "By their fruits ye shall know them," but our tolerant age 
 would not have us call attention to fruits of deceit and spir- 
 itual treachery in powerful quarters. Our age cries, Peace, 
 peace. The devil of intolerance in order not to be without 
 a job has arrayed himself as an angel of light, and many 
 there be whom he is deceiving in his new role as the chief- 
 est sponsor of liberality. 
 
 Paul, as a witness. There are modern advocates of 
 soft-spoken tolerance toward Antichrist teachings, who, 
 under the cry, "Back to Christ!" are seeking to discredit 
 the witness of Paul to the character of Christ and to the 
 sacrificial offering which Christ made. They would like 
 to be able to get rid of Paul's manly defense of a pure 
 gospel and his insistence that it shall be preached, but while 
 men still hold on to God and his revelation they will hear 
 Paul rather than his modern detractors. Paul loved men. 
 He wrote to the Thessalonians (1 Thes. 3:12): "The Lord 
 make you increase and abound in love one toward another 
 and to all men." But Paul clearly set forth that Christian 
 love must exhibit itself in something more honest and manly 
 than man-pleasing and flattering words. To the Thessa- 
 lonians he wrote: "We were bold in our God to speak 
 unto you the gospel of God with much contention." Con- 
 tention! If there is any one thing the modern spirit can- 
 not tolerate in religion, it is contention for the truth. Any 
 contention, all contention about religion is taboo. The 
 truth is fostered by discussion in any other realm, but the 
 modern spirit of tolerance is madly intolerant toward such 
 discussion in the realm of religion. There must have been
 
 THE REVOLT AGAINST DOCTRINE 139 
 
 prototypes of the modern intolerant sponsors of toleration, 
 for Paul adds to the words quoted above, "not as pleasing 
 men, but God, which trieth our hearts." According to the 
 Apostle, the precept to love all men was consistent with 
 faithfully contending for the faith once delivered to the 
 saints. Elsewhere Paul writes: "Do I seek to please 
 men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant 
 of Christ." In matters of form and custom he gladly be- 
 came all things to all men that he might win them to Christ. 
 In matters of principle, of teaching the revealed will of 
 God, he declared that an effort to please men by softening 
 the truth of God and failing to bear testimony to it would 
 be tantamount to turning his back on Christ. Intolerance 
 has no place in religion. Neither has a cowardly refusal to 
 testify to the truth of Christ, in order to please business as- 
 sociates, or further social or political reputation, or secure 
 the applause of the world. It is a far call from the stake 
 and the wheel, where martyrs of the faith gave up their 
 lives for the testimony of the faith, to the soft-spoken and 
 specious pleas of the present-day liberalist. But it is the 
 same old devil of intolerance, leagued with seven other 
 devils and clad in shining garments to please the modern 
 eye. If the reader desires proof, let him consider the fanat- 
 ical hatred which many of these "tolerant" persons exhibit 
 toward a faithful teaching of the truths of the New Testa- 
 ment. A toleration which is born of the love of Christ is 
 not of the kind which sneers at and caricatures any honest 
 and faithful effort to teach and obey the revealed word of 
 God, whether that teaching agrees with what men say and 
 want or not. 
 
 "Will not endure sound doctrine." "For the time will 
 come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after
 
 140 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, hav- 
 ing itching ears." These words of Paul have had many a 
 fulfilment, but none so impressive or so general as at the 
 present time. In the Dark Ages of Europe, a corrupt Roman 
 Catholicism dominated the religious world, and the faithful 
 preachers of a pure gospel hid in corners and caves. But 
 that dark spectacle is less impressive than the situation 
 to-day, when enlightenment and civilization have spread 
 among the nations. Now millions have an open Bible, and 
 evangelical faith has spread among multitudes. It is exactly 
 in this day of the greatest apparent opportunity of Chris- 
 tianity, that the world is witnessing an unprecedented re- 
 vulsion against Christian doctrine. Not a few learned men 
 and also many of the unlearned have developed an almost 
 violent antipathy to the very word doctrine. Romanism, 
 that historic hierarchy which binds the faith of the people 
 to such interpretations as it chooses to ladle out to them, 
 beholds this unspiritual ferment among the freer evangel- 
 icals, and chuckles in unholy mirth, congratulating itself 
 that it, at least, holds its own in such old paths as it has 
 made. Rome declares that the boasted liberty of the evan- 
 gelicals is merely a destructive license, and points with a 
 satisfaction which it does not try to disguise at what it 
 dubs the speedy breaking down of Protestantism. We need 
 not be much disturbed at the prognostications of the priests ; 
 but what shall we do with the patent facts that confront us? 
 That secular newspapers and magazines should set them- 
 selves against any Scripture teachings upon which all the 
 professed followers of Christ are not agreed, is not surpris- 
 ing. It is only an exhibition of intelligent selfishness, which 
 easily passes current with the unthinking for a commend- 
 able liberality, and wins the advantages of the favor thus
 
 THE REVOLT AGAINST DOCTRINE 141 
 
 gained. Nor is it surprising that the sinful world should 
 stumble over the differences between Christian denomina- 
 tions. It is one of the most patent excuses it can discover, 
 and its removal would only make room for another. The 
 surprising thing is the superficiality which some religious 
 teachers exhibit in capitulating before this liberalistic spirit 
 of the age, the full fruition of which would be the surren- 
 der of the atoning sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 Will not have the atoning Christ. These false faiths are 
 more numerous and successful to-day than at any former 
 time. Though some of them use the broad spirit of the 
 day as a springboard from which to project themselves into 
 public favor, every one of them has its own system of 
 teaching to which it requires assent. Or, if its basis of 
 appeal is an anarchistic revolt against all authority, it is 
 as intolerant of those who contend for right authority as 
 the narrowest sect which ever excited its derisive contempt. 
 Except Holy Rollerism and Romanism, practically every- 
 one of these false faiths agree, in one thing: They agree 
 that they will not have Christ, the Son of God, as the atone- 
 ment for sin. Holy Rollerism is a gospel of ignorance and 
 emotion, thriving mainly on the prejudices of the people, 
 but it does not repudiate the efficacy of the blood of Christ. 
 But Unitarianism, Mormonism, Russellism, Universalism, 
 Christian Science, Emmanuelism, Theosophy and New 
 Thought, and the "New Religion," which was announced by 
 a learned ex-president of a highly celebrated American uni- 
 versity, are a unit in rejecting Christ as Saviour and Lord. 
 Everyone of them makes some kind of place for Jesus in 
 its system, no two of them agreeing just what he was, but 
 they all hate the sacrificial atonement, and with one voice 
 cry out that they will not have the crucified and rejected 
 Christ as Saviour and Lord.
 
 142 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 Antichrists. The Scriptures teach that (I John 2:18) 
 there are many Antichrists, and they tell how we may know 
 them. I John 2:22: "Who is a liar, but he that denieth 
 that Jesus is the Christ? He is Antichrist, that denieth 
 the Father and the Son." 2 John 7: "For many deceivers 
 are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus 
 Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an 
 Antichrist." Antichrist is whoever or whatever denies 
 the deity and sacrificial atonement of our Lord Jesus. It 
 is beyond the scope of this discussion to try to throw light 
 on the Second Coming of our Lord. But it cannot fail to 
 impress thoughtful Christians that there are more Anti- 
 christs springing up in more unsuspected quarters to-day, 
 than ever before, and that the Scriptures warn us that this 
 is an omen of the last days. 1 Tim. 4:1: "Now the Spirit 
 speaketh expressly that in the latter times some shall depart 
 from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doc- 
 trines of devils ; " 2 Tim. 3:13: "Evil men and seducers 
 shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived." 
 It may not be agreeable to an amiable optimism to have 
 thrust upon its attention the evidences of an increase of 
 Antichrist teachings under the guise of religion. But, if 
 there are many among us who do reprobate any honest ef- 
 fort to present the facts on this great basal doctrine, how- 
 ever unpleasant they may be, this will in itself be a startling 
 evidence that we have reached the age when "they will not 
 endure sound doctrine." In addition to the roll of partic- 
 ular Antichrist sects which I have called, and which might 
 easily be lengthened, consider the significance of the fact 
 that many of those who profess the name of Christ are be- 
 coming more concerned not to differ with each other, than 
 they are to be loyal to Christ. Consider the amazing sweep
 
 THE REVOLT AGAINST DOCTRINE 143 
 
 of social service propaganda in recent years, and what it 
 means that many a pulpit is becoming a more expert voice 
 on a moral and physical clean-up program, than it is on 
 men's hopelessly sinful nature, God's holiness, and Christ's 
 sacrificial love. Consider how the devil took social service, 
 a good thing, and made it more damaging to real spirituality 
 than bar-rooms and brothels, by getting good people so 
 busy with secondary benefits, that they forgot to hold up 
 the God-appointed and only availing source of all spiritual 
 good. Consider how in Germany, under the astute guid- 
 ance of its ruling class, a whole nation has for a period of 
 years been deliberately educating itself away from the 
 Christ, because it could not otherwise be so callous and 
 brutal and cruel in war as it had determined to be. Con- 
 sider the ceaseless clamour in America for a formal Church 
 Union, led mainly by religious groups which have the most 
 signally failed to hold up the sacrificial Christ before the 
 people. This clamour, almost without exception, proves its 
 insincerity by deliberately confusing Christian unity, which 
 is needed, with Church Union, which would be an unmiti- 
 gated curse, if acquired at the sacrifice by even one of the 
 participants of any of the doctrines of the Book. Consider 
 the angel-of-light plausibility with which these strategists 
 set about breaking down the contents of the faith of the 
 people in the name of brotherly love and efficiency, and 
 how blinder than a bat they are to the awful lessons of 
 history on this matter of an ecclesiastical autocracy. A fair 
 valuation of such indications as the above can hardly fail to 
 convince the student that our age is gravely beset by 
 danger from false faiths. 
 
 The leaven of science. Modern science has not estab- 
 lished any facts that discredit the Christian religion. It
 
 144 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 has made discoveries in the realm of matter which have 
 greatly changed the conditions of life, but neither its 
 X-rays, its microscope, nor its hypothesis about the origin 
 of life, have been able to uncover the secrets of the spir- 
 itual realm. Science has neither disproven or proven the 
 facts of the spiritual life. By his wisdom man does not 
 find God. But the false assumptions of some scientists 
 have demoralized the faith of many, and the fruits of sci- 
 entific discovery have so enlarged the reach and power of 
 our material life that only a virile Christian life can hope 
 to dominate it for good. The chief contribution of science 
 to the present spiritual crisis, declares Bergson, the French 
 philosopher, has been to enlarge the reach of man's body. 
 Telescopes and microscopes have increased the power of 
 our eyes. Telephones have stretched our hearing to some 
 three thousand miles. Telegraphs have made our voices 
 sound around the earth. Locomotives, automobiles, and 
 steamships, better than seven-league boots, have multiplied 
 the speed and power of our feet French big guns have 
 elongated the blows of our fists from two feet to twenty- 
 five miles. Man never had such a body since the world 
 began. The age of giants had nothing to compare with 
 this. But man's soul there the failure lies. We have not 
 grown spirits great enough to handle our greatened bodies. 
 There lies the secret of the deep discontent in our times, 
 which physical comforts and intellectual advances are 
 powerless to prevent. This is the womb from which are 
 born many of the false faiths of our day. Christian faith 
 which was so weak it did not do as it should its saving 
 work in a far less intense and absorbing world-environ- 
 ment , becomes frightened and discouraged when con- 
 fronted by tides of worldliness many times more powerful.
 
 THE REVOLT AGAINST DOCTRINE 145 
 
 Religious quacks see their opportunity; Antichrist sets 
 himself forth in various fair-seeming embodiments. The 
 power of the omnipotent God is available for the churches, 
 if they will claim it through faith, and in this power they 
 can overcome. But we must have this power in great 
 measure. The innermost necessity of mankind is a spir- 
 itual life which can handle our new scientific acquisitions. 
 Our deepest need is a new access of spiritual vision and 
 power. Without it we are utterly undone. 
 
 The faith that saved us. The South has been freer from 
 the scourge of false faiths than other sections of the coun- 
 try. Almost entirely its people have been led to Christ by 
 the evangelical bodies. With certain other bodies strong in 
 a few Southern States, the Baptists, Methodists, and Pres- 
 byterians have been the outstanding religious groups which 
 led the people in every section of the South. Differing 
 at understood points between themselves, each of these 
 three groups has not failed in the South to hold up the 
 crucified Christ as God's sacrifice for sin, the only hope of 
 the redemption of the souls of men. This faith has been 
 the more easily safeguarded in the South through the 
 failure of alien immigration with its strange and varie- 
 gated creeds to come to this section in large masses. 
 Perhaps this sense of safety has in part been respon- 
 sible for the lamentable neglect of Baptists and Meth- 
 odists adequately to nurture in the Christian life a large 
 proportion of the masses they have evangelized. They 
 have not failed with holy passion to testify that Jesus is the 
 Christ, but they have largely done so after the insufficient 
 manner of the once-a-month pioneer church. But life has 
 become tenfold more intense in the environment of the
 
 146 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 church, and new and strange currents of thought are bat- 
 tling for acceptance. Even in the remotest community, the 
 voice of the Russellite and the Mormon and the Holy 
 Roller is heard, and the theology of the magazine and 
 the Sunday supplement has penetrated. Also the mul- 
 tiplication of means of intercommunication has brought 
 into the quietest nooks the yeast of the world. As usual, 
 the first forces which have come are largely flotsam and 
 jetsam. The faith which saved the South and made life 
 pure and sweet was the doctrine of sin and of the atoning 
 blood of Christ. The men who preached it sometimes used 
 their pulpits as forums from which to excoriate each other's 
 alleged doctrinal infirmities. To-day we complacently con- 
 gratulate ourselves that we do not preach against what we 
 believe are the errors of others, while some of us work over- 
 time to exalt human fraternity. As between the gospel of 
 our fathers, with their infirmities, and this gospel of human 
 love and fellowship before humble repentance before God 
 and obedience to him, if we had to choose either, we 
 should choose that of our fathers. Their gospel saved 
 souls. The new gospel, moving heaven and earth to save 
 lives, but neglecting the one dynamic of God which can 
 save either a soul or a life, makes a fair show in the flesh 
 but really fails in all. 
 
 Where we are weakest The weakest point of evangel- 
 ical religion in the South, as it confronts the false faiths 
 which would mislead and destroy, has been in its failure 
 to project a program of church service and life adequate 
 to save the lives, as well as the souls, of the people. Ours is 
 a dynamic age. People want to do something. In every 
 realm but the religious, we have wonderfully accelerated 
 the pace. But the rank and file among our church members
 
 THE REVOLT AGAINST DOCTRINE 147 
 
 have not been so nurtured that the religious life is capable 
 of the larger outlook and the intense service which would 
 match the world about them. Our danger is that in a do- 
 much age, our people, with a do-little religious life, will be- 
 come restive and be captured by the first blustering and 
 pretentious preachment which promises to do more than the 
 churches. Baptists and Methodists, before God, are largely 
 responsible for the success of Holy Rollers, Mormons, Rus- 
 sellites, and other false sects in the South. The people ac- 
 cepted Christ under our preachers, and we left them unnur- 
 tured, particularly in the rural districts. Therefore they be- 
 came food for the first plausible peripatetic vender of 
 strange doctrines. If we had taught them, it would not have 
 been so. It is not that we need with unfruitful clamor 
 and bustle to urge our people to do more religious work. 
 We just need, line upon line, precept upon precept, to 
 teach and nurture the new life of the convert, so that he 
 shall not be blown here and there by every wind of doc- 
 trine. If we shall plant the seed and cultivate the crop, 
 the harvest will come, manifold. But so often we have 
 planted the seed and left them to fight unaided with briars 
 and grass and noxious weeds. 
 
 Unionism. Church Unionism by its own motion would 
 never qualify as a false faith. Perhaps it gets its great- 
 est satisfaction in the thought of its imposing show of 
 breadth and charity. From superior heights it can look 
 down upon the various Christian bodies and label their 
 peculiarities, as having risen for lack of its broad and deep 
 understanding of truth. There is danger that the people 
 on whose faith Unionism makes its attack shall be confused 
 by its brave and plausible talk. If they are, it will lead 
 most of them, not into Unionism, but into giving up their
 
 148 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 church allegiance altogether. Strange to say, much as the 
 Unionists appear to know, it has not seemed to dawn on 
 one of them that the success of their theory would be the 
 destruction of the faith of many. This obtuseness alone 
 should make sensible people fear the doctrine of Unionism. 
 We need more Christian unity, but it is as far as the poles 
 from Church Union. There is another difference not 
 dreamed of in all the philosophy of Unionism. Its failure 
 to make this distinction convicts it of being an advocate of 
 a party, instead of the sponsor of a principle. The spirit 
 of Christian unity makes one respect the convictions of his 
 brother in Christ, instead of cultivating movements and 
 uttering words the purpose of which is to belittle and make 
 untenable and contemptible all he holds from which the 
 crowd differs. After all the fair show of plausible words, 
 the first Christian body is to appear which has shown 
 itself willing to give up a single article of its belief for the 
 sake of union. When one does appear, it may be time for 
 us to have more respect for and patience with the Church 
 Unionists than they have yet shown themselves to merit. 
 Church Union by elimination and compression would offend 
 the consciences of millions of God's people, and open wide 
 the door to unbelief. Christian unity by inclusion and com- 
 prehension we have now in spirit, though the Church Union- 
 ists loudly deny it. We are warranted in looking upon this 
 preachment as a vehicle of confusion and of minifying of 
 the inviolability of a "thus saith the Lord." So far, it is 
 not only the friend of every false faith, but is in itself false 
 to the faith. 
 
 Salvation by syndicate. Those who fan the fires of 
 Unionism are busier to-day than ever before. They think 
 they see in the World War the opportunity to rout de-
 
 THE REVOLT AGAINST DOCTRINE 149 
 
 nominationalism. Nearly all the money for the co-opera- 
 tive welfare activities among the soldiers is coming from 
 the members of the Christian denominations. But there 
 is no squeamishness of conscience on the part of the 
 Unionists against using the power this money gives as a 
 means to discredit the denominations. Unionism usually 
 does not even treat the Christian bodies with the respect 
 to call them denominations. It better likes the belittling 
 flavor of the words "sect" and "sectarianism." Bishop 
 Warren Candler, of the Southern Methodists, recently 
 wrote an article to show that salvation by syndicate is 
 doomed. It would be doomed, even if it succeeded. Its 
 effort is not to bring the inner life into reconciliation with 
 God, but to build up an imposing syndicate of the religious 
 forces of the world. Its success would impress the world 
 with its might and power; it would be an eye-filling achieve- 
 ment. But this kind of impression never has led and never 
 will lead a single soul to God. The success of this em- 
 bitious scheme would make American Christianity as de- 
 void of power as is that of most of the European countries, 
 where immense energy has been spent on trying to secure 
 and maintain a single ecclesiastical machine. Unionism 
 would reduce all religion to a subjective and senseless 
 sentiment. Virile sentiment is called into existence only 
 by some truth, to which it more or less accurately cor- 
 responds. And its force is in exact proportion to the power 
 of the belief from which it springs. In the leveling down 
 of belief to which Unionism is of necessity committed there 
 could not but come a bankruptcy of noble sentiment in 
 the soul. When men suppress their religious convictions 
 with the hope of getting together on some platform of sen- 
 timent, they will find nothing on which to stand. On the
 
 150 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 other hand, they are the most religious who most earnestly 
 maintain definite principles of belief in God's revelation. 
 Concerning this Bishop Candler says: 'This explains why 
 the most vigorous Christianity in the world is now found 
 in the United States, where the most energetic denomina- 
 tionalism has prevailed from the foundation of the Colonies. 
 In Europe all sorts of schemes of uniformity have been 
 enforced, until there are to-day in our country representa- 
 tives of European countries who confess that the lands 
 from which they come are spiritually bankrupt, and they 
 are begging the American churches to help them lest Chris- 
 tianity perish from among them. The result might have 
 been expected. The suppression of individual belief in 
 order to preserve a monotonous conformity has paralyzed 
 faith and quenched the zeal by which Christian effort is 
 quickened." Unionism holds forth on the wastefulness of 
 "sectarianism." Granting that there is some wastefulness, 
 from the standpoint of the standards of syndicated ef- 
 ficiency in business, it is yet true that the submergence of 
 all the churches beneath a flood of incoherent sentiment- 
 alism would be far worse; it would be ruinous. The 
 Christian family is indefensible from the standpoint of the 
 efficiency expert. But it would be an ominous day for 
 America when our people should give up their homes for 
 the more economical apartment houses. There are values 
 of soul and heart which are not set down in all the figures 
 of the efficiency man. To put out of existence or even to 
 discredit the churches of Christ, which have put America 
 ahead of all the world as a Christian nation, for a huge 
 ecclesiastical apartment house, is a proposition, monstrous 
 and abominable in the sight of God and devout men. It 
 lends itself admirably to the purposes of the various Anti-
 
 THE REVOLT AGAINST DOCTRINE 151 
 
 christ movements of our day. But there are indications 
 that this scheme will be even more relentlessly pressed in 
 the next few years than it has been until the present. 
 The people of God should fortify themselves for the con- 
 flict. The denominations will not come through it without 
 the loss of some whose religious convictions are weak, and 
 who are infatuated with the bigness and plausibility of 
 the Unionist scheme. 
 
 "After the World War." Unionism makes hay out of 
 whatever grows or happens under the sun. It was inev- 
 itable that it should have an on-the-spot interpretation of 
 the World War to prove that the troublesome denominations 
 are done for. The Germans do not find more evidences 
 that their enemies are whipped than Unionism finds that 
 denominationalism is dead. Like the Germans, Unionism 
 seems obtusely aggravated when the enemy, whom its soph- 
 istry has proven defeated, still persists in living and fight- 
 ing. The Unionists are now saying: "When this war is 
 over, denominationalism will be dead. The ex-soldiers will 
 not ask what you believe, but will remember what you did 
 or did not do for them at the front." Hearty recognition 
 is here given to the importance of the Christian bodies serv- 
 ing the spiritual needs of the soldiers. We sincerely rejoice 
 and devoutly give thanks at the indications that they will 
 be safeguarded and aided as few troops have ever been. 
 But if the future of religious belief is to be determined by 
 what the soldiers say when they come home, and if what 
 they say is to be determined by how we have ministered 
 to their physical welfare and comfort at the front, it affords 
 the best chance the devil has had in our age to ensnare 
 in sin's net the headstrong, fair-show-in-the-flesh religionists 
 of our day. All the devil will have to do, is to encourage
 
 152 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 some smart sect, that has more cunning than godliness, to 
 do more for the welfare of the soldiers than others. This 
 sect may reject the sacrificial atonement of Christ and feed 
 the poor lads in the trenches on cheap heroics about their 
 sufferings being of like value to those of the Christ, but if it 
 helps our boys in their material needs, they will, forsooth, 
 make its religion theirs and the world's, after the war is 
 over! Unless true religion and the spirit of Christ shall de- 
 sert this world, the religion which will stand the test after 
 the war is that which shall, in war and in peace, at the 
 front and at home, obey God and magnify the crucified and 
 enthroned Christ! If men are so blinded that they cannot 
 and will not see him who died for our sins, but only his hu- 
 manitarian works, it will indeed be time for denominational 
 systems built up around Jesus as Lord and Saviour to give 
 place to a Unionism which puts the verdict of ex-soldiers 
 before the response of the conscience to the revealed will 
 of God. If, indeed, we shall have to face this colossal folly 
 after the war, let every true child of God gird his armor on 
 and be ready to stand for Christ, against the subtle wiles 
 of the devil. 
 
 Superficial testimony. The sons of America had not 
 been long assembled in the army camps at home and in 
 France before the public was given repeated testimony to 
 the effect that the religious workers among the soldier boys 
 were not able to accomplish anything preaching the old 
 doctrines of grace. And the reports which discredited the 
 usefulness of the New Testament doctrines invariably set 
 forth that the human fellowship of the religious worker and 
 the humanitarian services he rendered, did accomplish great 
 and good results. This insistence, in connection with re- 
 ligious war work, that the power of the gospel is in good
 
 THE REVOLT AGAINST DOCTRINE 153 
 
 deeds, rather than in reconciliation with God through the 
 atoning blood of Christ, bade fair to force speedily a clean- 
 cut issue between salvation by environment and salvation 
 by faith. The various Christian bodies in America, by the 
 President's order, have done their work in the army through 
 the Y. M. C. A. The Y. M. C. A. leaders are on record as 
 being in favor of the principle of denominationalism, which 
 is here practically identical with the principles of faith in 
 the New Testament doctrines. By far the larger number 
 of persons who contributed the great sums of money for 
 the use of this institution in army welfare work, are mem- 
 bers of the denominational churches. If they thought the 
 Y. M. C. A. would countenance a propaganda to discredit 
 the preaching of Scripture doctrines, their zeal for its wel- 
 fare work would greatly abate. Since the leaders of this 
 agency are on record as favoring the denominational prin- 
 ciple, it would seem that they would be anxious to correct 
 insistent rumors, in connection with religious efforts in the 
 army, to the effect that the power of the doctrines of the 
 Bible is dead, when offered to a soldier. The teaching con- 
 cerning the suffering and enthroned Christ is a doctrine, 
 the great basal doctrine. For a church or other organiza- 
 tion, responsible for religious effort, to allow to go unre- 
 buked rumors of the worthlessness in its efforts of the doc- 
 trine of the Christ, is to lend itself to the work of Anti- 
 christ. Editor Z. T. Cody, of The Baptist Courier, on 
 this point writes: "In religious work the worker gets what 
 he gives. If the worker is a deeply spiritual man, who 
 loves Christ and most earnestly believes in Christ's salva- 
 tion, he will find depths in men that will never be found 
 by a worker who has a shallow religious nature and who 
 has no doctrinal convictions. The man who has a cigarette
 
 154 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 religion finds a cigarette religion in others. The man who 
 has found peace in Christ finds in men a response to that 
 great reality. We must bear this in mind when we read 
 the testimony of any religious worker as to what our 
 soldiers take to. Those religious workers who are earnest, 
 evangelical Christians bear a very different testimony as 
 to what is going on in the minds and hearts of our soldiers." 
 Testimony which is true to God and man. It is true that 
 the testimony of a religious worker who does not know 
 Christ, may he not be expected to tell of the hunger of 
 men's hearts for salvation. Such are blind guides; it 
 is to be expected that they shall give testimony only to 
 such values as the world and Christians hold in common, 
 and not to those which are distinctly Christian. The boys 
 of our country had been in the camps of the army less 
 than nine months when these words were written. But 
 there was already competent and abundant testimony that 
 the young soldiers were susceptible to the gospel story to 
 a degree which was the delight and the marvel of prac- 
 tically every minister of Christ who spoke before them. 
 Many thousands of them made a profession of faith and 
 united with churches, who had seemed indifferent to the ap- 
 peal of Christ under ordinary conditions. Their guileless 
 simplicity and patent hunger for a foundation on which 
 they could rest their hearts, were even the means of con- 
 verting some preachers, who had allowed themselves to 
 fall into the husk-feeding spirit of their lukewarm churches. 
 Mell Trotter, the well-known entertainer, carried with him 
 on an itinerary of the camps a male quartette. At first 
 these fellows sang the gay and flippant songs of vaudeville. 
 The great crowds before them sat unmoved. Then, by 
 chance, they sang a simple gospel song. A great wave of
 
 THE REVOLT AGAINST DOCTRINE 155 
 
 feeling visibly swept over the gathered crowd of boys; 
 they were melted and spellbound. After the performance, 
 some of the men asked the musicians why they did not 
 sing more of the gospel songs. Mr. Trotter told this story 
 publicly, and declared that never after that did either he 
 or his singers throw away their opportunity on merely en- 
 tertaining, which was so ripe for deeper and better ends. 
 Groups of soldiers off duty were seen to go into a movie 
 show, where the usual love story was being depicted, only 
 to get up and come away after a brief sitting. One of the 
 camp pastors followed up three of four of these, and asked 
 them why they left. "Mister," said one of the boys, "we 
 don't care anything about all that make-belief stuff. We 
 are lonely, and we want somebody to talk to who can help 
 us." Such testimony is abundant from camp pastors, 
 showing that, so far from the superficial devices of human- 
 itarian kindness being all the soldier boys want, their hearts 
 are exceptionably tender and open to deeper approach. 
 The Church Unionists appear to have great hopes that 
 the World War will be followed by that formal ecclesias- 
 tical union of Christendom which has so persistently dis- 
 turbed their dreams. Unfortunately for the reputation of 
 their cause with men and women who really know the 
 Saviour, they seem to have allied themselves with those 
 humanitarian forces which do not pretend to preach the re- 
 conciliation of the sinful soul of man to God through the 
 blood of Christ, and still others who openly disavow the 
 supernatural in religion. On the other hand, the Christian 
 bodies, which they have sought to discredit and belittle, 
 are afresh humbling themselves before God and his Christ 
 This fact is an additional suggestion that there is in de- 
 nominational liberty that which pleases Christ, while the
 
 156 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 appeal of Unionism is displeasing to him, though popular 
 with unregenerate men. 
 
 A "New Religion." Observing the rationalistic tendencies 
 in certain educational circles and the increasing vogue of 
 the evolution theory among some who had been drinking 
 at the poisoned fountains of German learning, a certain 
 old man in America hastened to announce the advent of a 
 New Religion. As the utterance of a private individual, 
 the conceit and bombast of this deliverance would have 
 brought upon its sponsor only contempt and derision. But 
 the announcer of the New Religion is the ex-president of a 
 great American university. True, the Scriptures declare 
 (Jer. 29: 14) that the wisdom of the wise men of this world 
 shall perish, and (1 Cor. 1 :21): "In the wisdom of God 
 the world by wisdom knew not God, for it pleased God by 
 the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe." 
 But why should not the learned in books and strange sci- 
 ences be better able to measure and know Almighty God, 
 than the mere unlearned man? is the foolish thought of 
 the world. So we have the spectacle of this aged familiar 
 of strange lore announcing a New Religion which shall 
 conform to the yardstick of man's scientific learning. In- 
 stead of this exciting pity and laughter, it is taken seriously 
 by many, affecting and weakening even the utterances of 
 some pulpits. The New Religion is a religion without au- 
 thority. It sets aside the Bible as the inspired Word of 
 God. It refuses to believe in the deity of our Lord Jesus. 
 It denies his virgin birth. It is monotheistic, Unitarian. It 
 denies the priesthood and heavenly intercession of Christ. 
 It rejects the doctrine of original sin and ties its faith to 
 the theory of evolution and rationalism. More than all 
 else, it rejects the cross of Christ, through the cruelty and
 
 THE REVOLT AGAINST DOCTRINE 157 
 
 mystery of which our sins are atoned. It makes much of 
 love, but is in hopeless darkness as to the meaning of that 
 passage ( 1 John 3:16): "Hereby perceive we the love 
 of God, because he laid down his life for us." Not to ex- 
 pound the New Religion further, it is Antichrist, dressed 
 up in the decorous and self-complacent robes of skeptical 
 human learning. Like the Pharisees of old, it is not averse 
 to its saving virtues being known by the commonality, 
 but its favored habitat is the scholastic shades, and, thank 
 God, its dignity and lack of passion that humanity may 
 profit by its wisdom, makes it count little as an active prop- 
 aganda, except when sensational Sunday supplements and 
 a few pulpits, which do not know the Christ, pass its mes- 
 sage of spiritual barrenness on to the people. 
 
 Unbelief in institutions of learning. Too somnolent and 
 dignified to carry its empty gospel to the masses, the New 
 Religion is doing business more than our people realize in 
 not a few educational institutions. With worldly wisdom the 
 New Religion has understanding. Are not the graduates of 
 the colleges to have unusual influence in shaping the 
 opinions of men? If we can take Christ from them, will 
 they not take him from the hungry-hearted, unlearned 
 masses in the market place? The South has been freer 
 from atheism than other sections, but latterly the poison 
 of rationalism and evolution has percolated into not a few 
 Southern colleges and universities. Not even the Christian 
 schools, which have back of them religious bodies that 
 would certainly, if they knew, scourge every professor from 
 his place who would teach contrary to the Christ of God, 
 have had altogether an easy time in safeguarding the class 
 rooms from the miasmatic utterances of teachers who have 
 been contaminated by the rationalistic and evolutionary
 
 158 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 imaginings of the New Religion. The thought of our Chris- 
 tian bodies in the South is so patently opposed to ration- 
 alistic teachings from the professor's chair, that an infected 
 teacher cannot remain, once he is discovered by the people 
 who maintain our Christian schools. It is unethical for a 
 man to teach that which would undermine the very foun- 
 dations on which the school is built, though many a ra- 
 tionalistic teacher is so sure that he has ultimate wisdom 
 in trust for the benighted that he forgets all ordinary 
 ethical standards, and becomes a traitor in any Christian 
 school. It avails nothing for one of these to declaim about 
 the right of a teacher to teach the truth, wherever it leads. 
 Our denominational schools give all possible liberty to teach 
 the truth, but they are in bondage to Christ. For a pro- 
 fessor, on the strength of the evolution guess, which has 
 been discredited by the scientists themselves from nearly 
 every angle of its claims, to demand freedom to put his 
 puny wisdom against the Christ of the word of God, is 
 absurd, ridiculous and contemptible. Though some of our 
 Christian schools have had to do with rationalistic teachers, 
 it is my grateful belief that, as a rule, they are free from 
 this subtle curse. But our people should courteously but 
 frankly and firmly let faculties and trustees of these schools 
 understand that they must positively hold to the supernat- 
 ural in religion, and avoid teachers who are infected with 
 rationalism. It is with no purpose to attack State-con- 
 trolled and other non-Christian institutions that I call at- 
 tention that in these schools, along with some men who are 
 devout Christians, there are others who make a god of the 
 sciences they teach to the discrediting of the God of revela- 
 tion. It is tragic to think of the unformed minds of young 
 men and women coming plastic into the fashioning hands
 
 THE REVOLT AGAINST DOCTRINE 159 
 
 of one of these professorial skeptics. Moreover, if the tax- 
 payers, who in the Southern States are in the large ma- 
 jority of cases Christian men, really sensed the significance 
 of the poison which some of these men are dispensing to 
 the future leaders of the land under the label of scientific 
 learning, they would seek and find a way to put a quietus 
 upon such teaching, or else would warn our people against 
 these institutions as against a plague. 
 
 The assassination of a soul. A young lady came to an 
 evangelist of the Home Mission Board and said: "Dr. 
 Blank, I am drawn by your appeal, but I am all torn to 
 pieces in my belief. Once I believed the Bible, which my 
 mother taught me. I do not now, and I am greatly dis- 
 tressed. Throughout my course of study at a State college 
 I have been drilled in evolution. I have accepted its teach- 
 ings and I believe it, because my professors have over 
 and over assured me it is true. I cannot reconcile it with 
 my old faith in God. It don't help me and its pompous 
 negations leave me tired and hungry, but it is all they have 
 left me." That professor had done his best to assassinate 
 a soul and had apparently succeeded. It is appalling to 
 think of the devil-work which such complacent vendors of 
 learning are permitted to do. The South has had a signal 
 victory over the curse of the saloon. Bad as is the whiskey 
 demon, ten institutions training the brightest minds of the 
 land to feed on the husks of infidelity and rationalism will 
 do more to damn the South than any thousand bar-rooms 
 that ever sapped the manhood of the country and turned 
 men into besotted beasts. Not in gaudy red, but in the 
 robes of an angel of light Satan does his most astute work 
 to destroy souls.
 
 160 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 Salvation by environment. Salvation by environment is 
 social service gone to seed. I have before me a book on 
 Home Missions. The thesis of that book through about 200 
 pages is that the new Home Missions is to sanctify the 
 dipping vat and chase to their ultimate lair the various 
 noxious germs that jeopardize the health of the human 
 body. Not once does the author say that the new Home 
 Missions must bring lost and sinful men to accept the sac- 
 rificial offering of Christ for redemption. Such a writer, 
 who Athenian-like, spends his time "in nothing else, but to 
 tell or hear some new thing," might possibly say, if cor- 
 nered, that salvation by grace was to be taken for granted. 
 But this is the one thing of all things under heaven which 
 can never be taken for granted. God has ordained to save 
 men by the foolishness of preaching the crucified Christ, 
 and they are born again. In grace, as in nature, not to 
 provide the conditions under which life reproduces itself is 
 to have no life. Salvation by environment is concerned 
 with what it calls the "practical" in religion. It has small 
 patience with the supernatural. It cares little about the 
 worship of Almighty God, but coolly asks: "What is God 
 good for?" Like the crowd who, in the hope he would 
 provide unfailing provender for their stomachs, wanted to 
 make Jesus a king, the advocates of salvation by environ- 
 ment want only a utilitarian God. Well, the true God 
 refuses to be used. Jesus refused every effort of men to 
 use him for their ends. Men may harness the forces of 
 nature, but they cannot harness God, even for the most 
 seemly humanitarianism. They must worship him with the 
 whole heart or be forever separated from him. 
 
 Social salvation. Elsewhere reference has been made to 
 the phenomenal growth of the social gospel in this country.
 
 THE REVOLT AGAINST DOCTRINE 161 
 
 Within a few years, scores and scores of writers have set 
 forth their views in an unceasing stream of books, each 
 contributing what he considered his own special thought 
 to the progress of greater social service. Some ransacked 
 the Old Testament and ran forthwith to the band-stand in 
 the market place and shouted that the sacred books of the 
 Jews had social salvation as their prime object and a 
 spiritual religion only as a secondary object. With a micro- 
 scope they collected the comparatively few words and acts 
 of our Lord that seemed to look primarily to environmental 
 improvement and raced posthaste to publisher and pulpit to 
 tell about it. Though these advocates, as many others, 
 found the churches and preachers the easiest mark at which 
 to cast the stone of criticism, and promptly set about doing 
 it, they hardly had more haste in heralding the millennium 
 which awaited the social service quickening than many of 
 the preachers themselves. Some are crying: "Christianize 
 the social order ! " meaning that men will evolve into godli- 
 ness, if we will clean up the environment for them. Others 
 cry: "Socialize Christianity!" meaning that the pulpit and 
 church must become expert "dividers" of property among 
 men, which Jesus refused to do. But our Lord said: 
 "Except a man be born again he cannot enter the Kingdom 
 of God." Herbert Spencer said: "There is no political 
 alchemy by which you can get golden conduct out of 
 leaden instincts." A nice fresh coat of paint on the pen 
 does not change the nature of the pig it contains. Shall 
 a preacher be interested in the community welfare? Cer- 
 tainly, but the greatest service he can possibly render is to 
 bring wrong-hearted men to Jesus. Shall he not stand for 
 prohibition and other moral reforms ? Yes, always when they 
 are distinctly moral reforms. But in the pulpit his appeal
 
 162 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 must be to conscience and principle. It is not his function 
 to lead in executing a community clean-up, but to preach 
 a gospel which will make men who will do it. 
 
 Discredit those who disagree. Unionists, evolutionists, 
 and rationalists in religion have much in common in their 
 attitude toward those who hold strictly to the doctrines of 
 the Bible. They all assume that they live in an atmos- 
 phere of superior breadth of view and knowledge, from 
 which they can look down upon and compassionate per- 
 sons who believe something definitely concerning God's 
 revelation to man. This arrogant assumption comports 
 poorly with the charitable liberality and breadth which 
 these gentlemen claim. They smile with favor upon the 
 weakest neophyte who adopts their doctrines of doubt, but 
 brand as narrow and non-thinking all who do not accept 
 their dogmas. This pose serves well before the world, but 
 it absolutely negatives their claim that they live in on high 
 and dispassionate plane of love and untroubled reason. 
 Since when have supercilious sneers and lofty assumptions 
 become the earmarks of intellectual breadth and spiritual 
 elevation? This intolerance on the part of the self-adver- 
 tised exponents of tolerance should not intimidate any 
 child of God. The world will give vogue to this veiled 
 spirit of persecution, for the world knows its own. Chris- 
 tians should meet this, not by an effort to please the world 
 through forsaking the truth, but by diligently studying to 
 know the truth of God, to teach it to others, and to exem- 
 plify it in their own lives. Before me is Rauschenbusch's 
 "Theology of the Social Gospel." This leading exponent of 
 salvation by environment tells of a farmer who swore an 
 oath because the city authorities got after him for selling 
 impure milk. The farmer's church excluded him, says
 
 THE REVOLT AGAINST DOCTRINE 163 
 
 Rauschenbusch, not for the dirty milk, which might kill 
 babies, but for swearing. Upon which basis the writer con- 
 demns the man and the church. The reader can imagine 
 how the average audience would be swept by this. The un- 
 thoughtful would rail on the church for a "dead ortho- 
 doxy" and for indifference about clean milk and all other 
 devices for cleaning the material side of life. But this 
 would be absolutely unfair. The public has only recently 
 been taught about deadly germs. Though this is not their 
 main business, the churches are learning about them more 
 rapidly than most other agencies of service. But this 
 church had learned that God requires a clean heart, and 
 that profanity is a sign of an unclean one. It did well to 
 discipline the offender. But social gospel radicals and 
 other enemies of the supremacy of the spiritual in religion 
 are ready on the minute to take any snap judgment to 
 condemn the Christian bodies. Let no true child of God 
 be disturbed. Those who would discredit the religion of 
 Jesus Christ, as it has been taught and exemplified by the 
 churches of Christ, are doing the work of Antichrist. The 
 churches are imperfect, but men who bring a general and 
 railing accusation against the bodies which have through 
 the generations kept the light of Christian faith burning in 
 human lives, by that very act show that their teachings are 
 unworthy of respect.
 
 TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY IN CHAPTER VII. 
 
 1. Show some of the inconsistences of the new gospel of "toler- 
 ance." 
 
 2. By Paul's teaching, and by their tendency to minimize or 
 deny the deity of our Lord, show that teachings of liber- 
 alism are Antichrist 
 
 3. What leaven has science furnished? 
 
 4. Discuss the kind of faith which has sweetened and purified 
 American life. 
 
 5. Discuss Unionism, its proposition of "salvation by syndi- 
 cate," and its prophecy concerning religion after the World 
 War. 
 
 6. Discuss the "New Religion," and rationalistic and evolution 
 teachings in colleges and universities. 
 
 7. Discuss salvation by environment and the effort of its advo- 
 cates to discredit churches that preach salvation by grace 
 through faith.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 FALSE FAITHS AND OTHER FOES. 
 
 Romanism. Romanism is a religious autocracy. It be- 
 lieves that it represents God on earth and that no other 
 religious body does. Its astute organization is built up 
 around an infallible pope. The hierarchy has only anathe- 
 mas for all other religious bodies. Everyone of them it 
 classes as heretical, whose followers are to be scourged from 
 earth just in proportion as it gets opportunity and power 
 to do so. As a Christian system it encourages the worship 
 of saints, and especially of the mother of Jesus. It de- 
 nounces the right of private interpretation of the Scriptures, 
 and in countries where it has the right of way keeps the 
 Bible from the people. Its gospel does not rest on salva- 
 tion by faith; it makes a large place for the merit of good 
 works. Through all this clutter, a soul under Romanist 
 leadership has a difficult time in trying to find Jesus the 
 Saviour. In truth, the multitude of them are cut off from 
 the living Christ. But it is as a political system that Ro- 
 manism is especially out of place in America. It is a religio- 
 political autocracy, seeking to become dominant in a country 
 whose most sacred traditions and ideals are those of democ- 
 racy. By secret diplomacy, by intimidation and threats, 
 Romanists take unfair advantage when they can, in the 
 way of governmental patronage. Romanism seeks to cor- 
 rupt and does corrupt the press, to such an extent that, 
 even in the South, where the Catholics are a mere urban 
 handful, many of the daily papers advertise the hierarchy 
 and keep their mouths closed about Romanist political per-
 
 166 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 versions, while the evangelical bodies, which number twenty 
 to one, as compared with the Romanists, get scant con- 
 sideration. This speaks highly for Catholic astuteness and 
 discreditably for Catholic principles. Through the same 
 unscrupulous shrewdness the agents of the hierarchy are 
 prostituting the moving picture shows to their purposes. 
 Protestant patrons of these shows, who throughout America 
 outnumber Catholics five to one, must have their sensibili- 
 ties and sense of justice outraged by the pictured piety of 
 priests and nuns wherever these vehicles for Vatican dogma 
 can be lugged in. Openly and everywhere Rome fights the 
 American public school, without which this nation could not 
 endure as a democracy. Rome knows her autocratic pre- 
 tensions could not live long in the American atmosphere, 
 if Catholic youth were educated alongside of the children 
 of their fellow citizens. She wants to control education in 
 order to saturate youthful minds with her discredited auto- 
 cratic ideas, which belong to the Dark Ages. Because of 
 its great strength, its unscrupulous methods, its astute cun- 
 ning, and its announced ungodly ambition to make this 
 democratic nation dominantly Catholic and autocratic in 
 religion, Roman Catholicism is probably the most dan- 
 gerous foe of American liberty to-day. We ought to try 
 lovingly to teach Roman Catholics the truth. Many of 
 them are ready to accept it, and Christian patriotism of 
 America should set itself sternly against the insolent po- 
 litical assumptions of an organization which, notwithstand- 
 ing its amazing record of blood and persecution in history, 
 arrogantly claims to be the one and only true spiritual 
 guide of mankind. 
 
 Mormonism. If there is another religio-political organ- 
 ization in the world from which Romanism could learn
 
 FALSE FAITHS AND OTHER FOES 167 
 
 something new in the autocratic control of a religious group, 
 that organization is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- 
 Day Saints. Salt Lake City, Utah, is headquarters for the 
 Mormons. Like an octopus this religio-commercial autoc- 
 racy spreads its tentacles over the Rocky Mountain States. 
 It either has the political control or is a sinister balance of 
 power in Utah, Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, while it is 
 also coming into influence in Arizona and New Mexico. 
 In Chattanooga it has Southern headquarters, from which 
 its elders are working throughout the South all the while. 
 They have churches in every Southern State. Mormonism 
 is a species of paganism. The Bible and the Book of Mor- 
 mon it claims are the Word of God. But the Bible revela- 
 tion was made to meet needs in olden times and suffers 
 from the mistakes of translation, while the Book of Mormon 
 is modern and, though it was juggled to an amanuensis 
 from behind a curtain by the founder, Joseph Smith, who 
 said he got the stuff from certain golden plates, yet the 
 Mormon book is in our own tongue. It has not "suffered" 
 from translation. Moreover, the Mormon leaders claim to 
 get "up-to-the-minute" revelations of inspired truth, when- 
 ever they are needed. Practically, the President of the 
 Mormons outranks the Bible in authority. The Mormon 
 hierarchy teaches and secretly practices polygamy, though 
 to get Statehood it solemnly promised the United States 
 government to give up polygamy. It sets forth in its sacred 
 writings its purpose to overthrow "republics and kingdoms" 
 by fire and sword. It has many gods. Adam is the god 
 of this world. It baptizes for the dead and is devoid of 
 spirituality. It seeks financial power and is winning it 
 rapidly, with the tithes of the faithful as its commercial 
 nest-egg. A bronze statue of Brigham Young, in front of
 
 168 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 the Eagle Gate in Salt Lake City, has its back toward the 
 Mormon Temple and an open palm extended toward the 
 bank on an adjacent corner. It is a fine unconscious im- 
 personation of the attitude and spirit of the Mormon hier- 
 archy toward financial and commercial power. 
 
 Russellism. This false faith is known by the name 
 of its founder, "Pastor Russell," a man whose wife got a 
 divorce from him on statutory grounds, and who was en- 
 gaged in sundry questionable financial operations in New 
 York and elsewhere. Among its clutter of false teachings, 
 Russellism sets forth that when Jesus died on the cross he 
 ceased to exist. His body disappeared, probably in gases, 
 says Russellism. After three days, God caused him to be 
 created again as an invisible spirit. Before his death, Rus- 
 sellism says, Jesus had only ordinary human nature. He 
 became partaker of the divine nature for the first time 
 after his spirit rose from the dead. When Christ appeared 
 to his disciples, it was in a body created especially for that 
 occasion. Salvation is purely a matter of personal merit. 
 Everybody will have a "second chance" after death. If 
 any are so confirmed in wickedness that they do not want 
 to be saved when the "second chance" is offered, they will 
 have the privilege of being Forever blotted out. This sys- 
 tem is a mass of Antichrist teaching, from beginning to 
 end. The above is enough to show how utterly destructive 
 it is to spiritual life. It takes away the Christ of the Bible, 
 discounts salvation by faith, and encourages men and 
 women to live in sin in the belief that they will never 
 suffer for it. It is glad tidings of great joy to every robber 
 and adulterer and murderer. This system is being spread 
 among the people in the South by the broadcast distribu- 
 tion of tracts, by lectures in cities, and by newspaper
 
 FALSE FAITHS AND OTHER FOES 169 
 
 advertisements. A reputable newspaper ought to be asham- 
 ed to take such an advertisement. It has not only en- 
 snared many in remote communities, but has won adherents 
 in the cities. There is not a more destructive heresy in the 
 world than this system. That it has made so much head- 
 way reflects on the adequacy of teaching in our pulpits 
 and on the efficiency of our missionary impact on the life 
 of the South. 
 
 Holy Rollerism. Like practically all the false faiths, 
 Holy Rollerism, or Sanctificationism, seeks converts not so 
 much among the lost as among the members of the churches. 
 In fact, the Holy Rollers are sometimes called "Come- 
 Outers." In one vital respect, this system is less ruinous 
 than most of the false religions which afflict the people. 
 It does not reject the doctrine of Christ. It is a faith of 
 emotional excesses and depends for its vogue upon the 
 ignorance and emotional excitability of those to whom it 
 appeals. Baptists and Methodists have much to their 
 credit in the South. They have done most of all that 
 has been done to evangelize and Christianize the masses 
 of our people. But the easy successes of the frenzied ef- 
 forts of Holy Rollerism are an incontrovertible evidence 
 that these two bodies have not done their duty in instruct- 
 ing the people in religion. If the reader wants an experi- 
 ence which will make him feel like weeping over the failure 
 of our Baptist system to nurture the masses of the people 
 in the Christian life, let him go into one of the Holy Roller 
 meetings and observe how, under the spell of the inco- 
 herent exhortations of the preacher, the poor people be- 
 come mesmerized and succumb before the sway of his 
 delirium. These men profess to have more religion than 
 any of the evangelical churches, which they roundly de-
 
 170 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 nounce for worldliness. They offer their almost maniacal 
 earnestness of manner as evidence of their superior piety. 
 Following their preaching, many poor men and women 
 swoon or cry out in pitiful groanings, or "speak with 
 tongues." There is competent evidence in my possession that 
 gross immorality is often associated with the Holy Roller 
 worship, which is not surprising to a student of the psy- 
 chology of emotion. The outstanding lesson of these ex- 
 cesses is one of reproof to the evangelical religious bodies 
 which have had the following of the people. It is 
 a stinging rebuke to us to consider that we have so 
 neglected to teach the people in the South, where God has 
 placed them in such easy access to the Baptists and Meth- 
 odists, that they can be misled by the first ignorant religious 
 charlatan who comes along with a fervent appeal. If we 
 had half done the service of teaching which God committed 
 to our hands, there would be no open door for such false 
 teachers. Our failure to instruct the people is a tacit in- 
 vitation to every false religion in the land to have its try 
 at winning them. 
 
 Christian Science. Christian Science, so-called, is the 
 religio-medical masquerade of a woman, who was mar- 
 ried three times, and perhaps four. The first husband 
 died soon. The second, after a number of years with 
 this female revealer as his consort, sought and se- 
 cured a divorce. The third died, according to the 
 wife, only after she had twice brought him back 
 from death. Equal though she claimed to be to Jesus 
 Christ, she seems to have failed on the third resurrection 
 of the third husband. Much married as Mrs. Mary Baker 
 Glover-Patterson-Eddy was, she disapproved marriage in 
 her system of mental healing, which she gradually de-
 
 FALSE FAITHS AND OTHER FOES 171 
 
 veloped the monumental hardihood to set forth as a religion, 
 revealed from heaven. She says: "Is marriage nearer 
 right than celibacy? Human knowledge inculcates that it 
 is, while science indicates that it is not." This woman's 
 pretended revelations are not only un-Christian, they are 
 anti-Christian. A few quotations will do, though many 
 could be given: Eddy "There is no matter;" Bible "In 
 the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." 
 Eddy "Man is incapable of sin;" Bible "All have sin- 
 ned." Eddy "Man is never sick;" Bible "They brought 
 him all sick people." Eddy "There is no death;" Bible 
 "It is appointed unto man once to die." Eddy "Jesus is 
 not the Christ ; " Bible "Who is the liar but he that denieth 
 that Jesus is the Christ?" But why should people who are 
 capable of reasoning at all be asked to follow the blas- 
 phemous and pretentious allegations of this woman, whose 
 system has rightly been called an advocacy of mental as- 
 sassination. She died herself, and still her dupes continue 
 to meet on Sundays in the so-called churches of the cult 
 and read alternately from the Bible and her "Science and 
 Health" book, which these pitiable people reverence as the 
 Bible. They do not preach; Mrs. Eddy saw to it that her 
 jargon-book should be the great thing in the pulpit. They 
 read that. They read the Bible alternately with her book, 
 pretending that her talismanic formulas of pretentious words 
 and foolish sentences throw light on the meaning of the 
 Bible. Surely there is an amazing effort to get away from 
 Christ when people, usually women, who know enough to 
 go about without a guardian, are so devoid of sense on 
 religious matters and so ignorant of the Bible teachings, 
 that they will swallow whole the presumptious nonsense 
 of a woman whose own personal record was such that it
 
 172 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 cannot bear close scrutiny with any hope of remaining above 
 suspicion. There is some evidence that we have passed the 
 crest of the wave of psychological mania which has swung 
 so many people, usually otherwise harmless, into this haven 
 of cheap superstition and ignorance. If we could sense the 
 suffering of the little children alone, whose superstition- 
 crazed mothers have let them suffer and even die without 
 medical attention, while they recited the parrot-incantations 
 of that woman about there being no pain and no sickness, 
 it would fill us with unspeakable horror and loathing. 
 
 Weak-kneed preachers. I have no sympathy with those 
 who would bring a railing accusation against preachers. 
 As a class, they are the best men in any section any day. 
 They suffer from many accusations which are false. Chiv- 
 alry protects women, but often goes lame over safeguarding 
 the men of God, who are in some respects more defenseless 
 against scurrilous tongues than women. But, in connection 
 with the false faiths named here and others not named, it 
 needs to be said that some preachers either lack in courage 
 or suffer greatly for lack of information. Consider Chris- 
 tian Science. Most of us remember how, a few years ago, 
 some of our preachers were telling us there was surely 
 something good in a thing which could get hold of the 
 people like Mrs. Eddy's hodge-podge did. It sounded so 
 amiable and charitable thus to speak. In fact, to the 
 superficial it suggested that the speaker was deeper of 
 thought and more loving of heart and appreciative of spirit 
 than most! And all the time, silly women and foolish men 
 were being drawn into confidence in the lying formulas of a 
 system that was blasphemous, which a woman who was 
 once a spiritualistic medium had borrowed from a physician 
 without permission and gravely set forth as a religion!
 
 173 
 
 From Catholicism to Eddyism, from Mormonism to Holy 
 Rollerism, and from New Thought to Spiritualism, the 
 preachers have an obligation before God so to teach the 
 people the truth of Christ that they shall not be deceived 
 by infected winds of doctrine. It matters not whether 
 secular newspapers and politicians applaud or do not ap- 
 plaud. Of course they will not applaud. Neither will time- 
 serving church members. If we have become so afraid as 
 this of the criticism and anxious for the approval of the 
 people of this world, whose social ease, political success, or 
 business advantages may be made uneasy by our faithful- 
 ness in speaking the truth, the time is fully ripe for us to 
 confess our lack of manhood and loyalty and get out. We 
 had better give place to men who shall think more of faith- 
 fulness to the crucified Christ than they do of what a lot 
 of world-serving people and selfish interests shall have to 
 say about it. We do well not to criticise from our pulpits 
 other Christian bodies than our own, as our fathers some- 
 times did. But when we give up our testimony to truth, 
 lest some fastidious soul should squirm, we do not well. 
 Most of the false faiths I have mentioned, are in no 
 sense Christian bodies at all. Though every one of them 
 juggles with pretended respect with the name of Christ, in 
 order better to deceive the unwary, each of them shows the 
 cloven foot of Antichrist when it denies that Jesus is the 
 Lord. And shall men who stand up to speak for God, use 
 mincing words to please finicky people, when they have to 
 deal with such blasphemous errors as these? Every religion 
 which denies the deity of the Christ belongs in the pit and 
 shall go there. Shall we, whose business it is to win men's 
 souls from the pit and to Christ, sedulously choose soft 
 words when we deal with such errors, hunting for kind 
 phrases to utter about the devil himself?
 
 174 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 Indifferent church members. A fair-speaking and com- 
 placent optimism, in the face of the Antichrist systems 
 which are seeking to destroy souls, would be traitorous. 
 It would be abominable in the sight of God. It would be 
 a prophecy that the departing from the faith in the latter 
 days, of which Paul spoke, is now in progress. But 
 there is another enemy to the effectiveness of the call of 
 missions in the South which perhaps contains a more subtle 
 danger than do false faiths. It is the indifference which so 
 many church members exhibit toward the work of Chris- 
 tianizing our own country. Elsewhere I have quoted lead- 
 ing missionary statesmen in a united testimony that the 
 work of Christianizing America is the most crucial task in 
 the work of evangelizing the world. But there are tens of 
 thousands in our churches who see nothing in missions be- 
 yond a heraldic proclamation to those who have never 
 heard. Tens of thousands believe that, if we save the soul, 
 we are under no obligation to seek to save the life. Prac- 
 tically, tens of thousands believe that missions apply only 
 in the abstract and to the far-away. The unpicturesque 
 problems of the near do not appeal to them. We love a 
 naughty sinner and patiently pray for him till he is saved. 
 But we withdraw our ministries of missionary love from 
 the convert, once he is born a babe into the Kingdom. 
 From a missionary standpoint, we exhibit little or no patient 
 love or helpfulness for him any more. We love humanity 
 in the mass far away, but so often we do not love humanity 
 in the concrete near at hand. The folk near at hand are 
 always too difficult to be cured of their ills by delegated 
 aid or by a hurried heraldic proclamation. The far-away 
 ones cannot be so cured either, but we put all the worry 
 about that on our missionaries. In our own city there are
 
 FALSE FAITHS AND OTHER FOES 175 
 
 slums and so-called churches of half a dozen false faiths. 
 Undeterred and unchecked, these are chaining souls of 
 men and women to doctrines which damn. At our doors 
 are the needy blacks by thousands. Such conditions are 
 a test to our faith, whether it is indeed shot through with 
 the missionary spirit. 
 
 They do not see the need. Ask some church members 
 for contributions to missions for their own community or 
 State or nation, and they wonder why the money 
 should be needed. Ask a missionary society to select 
 'and study some phase of Home or State Missions, and 
 it will usually choose the farthest-away particular ac- 
 tivity that the work embraces. How much we need such 
 a readjustment of our vision of spiritual values as shall en- 
 able us to see the rich, unmined possibilities of the near- 
 at-hand. If we want to be like our Lord, we had better 
 earnestly seek it. For he loved and saved the neglected, 
 the sinful and the abandoned who crowded about him. 
 He saw rich and blessed possibilities even in those who 
 were marred by sin and baffled and stranded in the life- 
 struggle, and made the possible a blessed reality. Society 
 Hill, South Carolina, is known far and near as one of the 
 most remarkable communities in the Palmetto State. The 
 people are of Welsh descent, and are mainly Baptists. 
 Among the good things in which these Baptists have led, was 
 the distinguished task of organizing the activity among 
 our Baptist women which has now become the powerful 
 Woman's Missionary Union. Recently two Mormon elders 
 came into my office. They asserted that there is to-day a 
 thriving Mormon church within two miles of Society Hill. 
 I have since confirmed their statement. In Atlanta there 
 is a Mormon church, which has recently erected a hand-
 
 176 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 some house. Where it stands there was once a Presby- 
 terian church. A prominent Presbyterian minister told me 
 one day, as we travelled together on a train toward the 
 Southwest, that two of the families in this Mormon organ- 
 ization were once Presbyterians. Then he held up his 
 hands and exclaimed: "My God, what sort of preaching 
 did that Presbyterian preacher do?" I said: "I don't 
 know. But I venture to guess that, if that Mormon church 
 has in it two Presbyterian families, it will be found to have 
 six Baptist families." Such stories might be multiplied 
 endlessly. Alas! God's people so often do not see. 
 
 Does arithmetic blind as? Arithmetically, the 18,000,- 
 000 persons of responsible age in the South to-day who 
 make no profession of faith are not impressive, after we 
 have learned to think in terms of hundreds of millions. 
 Yet these legions of unsaved among our own people 
 are our peculiar opportunity and responsibility. If we 
 do not lead them to Christ, who will? No program 
 of world-saving which shuts its eyes to the significance of 
 this unconquered territory at home will go very far in sub- 
 duing nations beyond. Arithmetically, 35,000 white 
 churches in the South Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian 
 with their doors closed from preaching service three Sun- 
 days out of four, are not impressive. True, these make up 
 nearly three-fourths of all the churches through which these 
 bodies may hope to nurture the religious life of the South. 
 True, these three bodies in most of the South have the 
 religious following of nearly all the population. True, 
 Christ has given pastors and teachers (Col. 4:12-14) "for 
 the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, 
 for the edifying of the body of Chirst; till we all come in 
 the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of God, unto
 
 FALSE FAITHS AND OTHER FOES 177 
 
 a perfect man, * * * that we henceforth be no more 
 children, tossed to and fro, and carried about by every 
 wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men and cunning crafti- 
 ness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive." True, to ac- 
 complish an adequate safeguarding of the disciples from the 
 craftiness of false teachers and from the infantile anaemia 
 of withheld diet, Paul established a plurality of pastors in 
 the New Testament churches, so that teaching might abound. 
 But our eyes have been holden from seeing how this ap- 
 plies to our intenser day. With most of the churches re- 
 ceiving teaching one day in the month, and getting almost 
 no "work of the ministry" in pastoral service; with false 
 faiths preying upon the people whose higher spiritual needs 
 our systems have not provided for; with an alarming mor- 
 tality among those brought into the churches by evangelism, 
 from lack of instruction and guidance, very many of God's 
 people in the South either do not see their responsibility, 
 or else are unwilling to accept it. For the most part, not 
 even has our trusted leadership seriously tried to arouse 
 our people to the situation. 
 
 A call to awaken. Who shall solve for us this riddle? 
 Under God no one can solve it but ourselves. Standing- 
 still churches in a forward-going civilization, are the major 
 part of our trouble. The churches must become dynamic. 
 We have a recognized religious leadership. We trust 
 it to shape ideals for us. If it fails to point to us the 
 fundamental principles and tasks, we shall reconstruct it 
 when we come to find out its unfitness. If it prophesies 
 smoothly when we need a jolt, we shall lose respect for it. 
 Let every man with a voice that carries, in pulpit, editor's 
 chair, Mission Board service, the presidency of our schools, 
 or elsewhere, consider his responsibility. He is under
 
 178 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 obligation to point our people to the things which are most 
 needed by them in their present situation. Measured by 
 this yardstick, has our religious leadership in the South 
 done its full duty about warning our people of the danger 
 of disaster which lies in indolently holding on to a program 
 that utterly fails to provide adequate instruction to our 
 church members, and leaves tens of thousands of them an 
 easy prey to false teachings from peripatetic fanatics 
 and in godless colleges and universities? Is it true 
 that the great evangelical church membership of the 
 South is so indifferent that faithful admonition and teach- 
 ing by honest, God-fearing men cannot arouse in it a vigor- 
 ous response, looking to the vitalization of the churches 
 and of our service to society? It would be unjust to make 
 this charge. Some of the noblest Christian men and 
 women who ever lived are in the South. But what a 
 tragedy it would be, if our unhindered opportunities should 
 prove to have lulled us into an unappreciative indifference, 
 so that God in anger should have to take away from us 
 these opportunities because in our blindness we despised 
 them! 
 
 The Christian school a corrective. I have mentioned 
 educational institutions as a grave danger point in the 
 conflict with false faiths. But the power of these to betray 
 our faith is not greater than their power to safeguard it, 
 if they shall be faithful to revealed religion. The right 
 arm of the power of the Christian bodies to use education 
 for Christ lies in the denominational schools. These they 
 control and can protect from the poison of the secular 
 movement in education, which received its impulse in Ger- 
 many, though there is a recent disposition among its spon- 
 sors not to speak of its paternity. President John E.
 
 FALSE FAITHS AND OTHER FOES 179 
 
 White, of the Anderson College, South Carolina, in the 
 winter of 1917, published an article of exceptional power 
 on the need of the Christian college, from which I quote: 
 "It is now becoming clearer every day that the higher 
 education of Germany was the powerful reinforcement of 
 barbarism. The colleges and universities were mighty for 
 science, for intellectualism, for efficiency, and for ambi- 
 tion, but they were weak for the gospel of Christ and for 
 the souls of the people. Our leaders in secular education 
 are frankly disconcerted. The president of the richest and 
 largest university in the United States has given frank 
 expressions to misgivings which are spreading. He says: 
 'We once thought if we could put higher education in the 
 reach of all we would solve the problem of injustice, 
 wrong, and evils of society. But we have found that to be 
 utterly mistaken. Men do not do what they know they 
 ought to do, but what they want to do.' " I must inter- 
 rupt the quotation to comment on the fact that the cata- 
 clysm in Europe has opened this great educator's eyes to 
 see what he might have learned any time from the New 
 Testament or from any real Christian. "Surrendering its 
 function of education," continues Dr. White, "Christianity 
 is insomuch no longer the religion of Jesus. If it is im- 
 portant to have Christianity healthy and vigorous and to 
 hold secure that good thing which was delivered by the 
 Holy Ghost, the Christian college is indispensable. Out 
 of the colleges comes the Christian leadership, the teach- 
 ers, the writers, the thinkers. Secular education needs 
 the Christian college to influence its spirit and methods in 
 the direction of the Christian ethic. What can be done to 
 impart religious instruction in the public schools? The 
 answer is, the Christian teacher. A new and great field of
 
 180 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 opportunity is here open to the Christian college." There 
 is no single influence which threatens faith in a super- 
 natural religion comparable to rationalistic teaching in col- 
 leges and universities. The clanger itself suggests where 
 lies a suitable remedy. It is in the Christian college, sec- 
 ondary school and university. There is good ground for 
 hope in the determined effort of Baptists in practically 
 every Southern State to raise large sums to strengthen 
 their colleges. Never was the mission of education under 
 Christian auspices so evidently necessary as it has become 
 in the light of the great war. There is hardly any single 
 thing we can do which will count more for the faith of 
 the future than greatly to strengthen our Christian schools. 
 At the same time, we must frankly exercise caution that 
 the canker of rationalistic philosophy does not sneak even 
 into these institutions, and must insist that they shall be 
 saturated with the spirit of faith and evangelism. 
 
 Other available remedies. Much might be written on 
 proper means for meeting and offsetting the false faiths of 
 to-day, but a single additional paragraph must suffice. 
 Like the lions who blocked the path of Bunyan's pilgrim, 
 these sons of Anak present a fearsome spectacle to the 
 timorous. But if we shall live and labor in the strength 
 of our God, we are well able to overcome them. We do 
 not need new and strange armor, but in faith and conse- 
 cration to use what God has already given us. ( 1 ) In the 
 public ministry of the pastor he has an unsurpassed oppor- 
 tunity to teach the people the truth and to warn them 
 against error. Not enough doctrinal teaching is done in 
 our pulpits. We plume ourselves that the polemical ran- 
 cour of a past generation has forever gone. That had 
 its faults, but it is a greater fault to dodge the clear and
 
 FALSE FAITHS AND OTHER FOES 181 
 
 forceful teaching of scriptural doctrines, because some 
 sensitive soul may squirm. It is cowardly not to set forth 
 teachings which cluster around the great central doctrine 
 of the deity of Christ. We urgently need a great revival 
 of doctrinal preaching. (2) In his personal visitations 
 the pastor has in some respects even a better opportunity 
 to fortify them against error. He can thus adapt his in- 
 struction to individual needs. (3) A good Sunday-school 
 can accomplish great results. Capable teachers have an 
 approach in the class work which affords an invaluable 
 opportunity to present doctrinal truth and show the danger 
 of the fair-seeming formulas with which Antichrist errors 
 seek to make converts. (4) The Young People's Unions 
 have in doctrinal instruction one of their most useful po- 
 tencies. They reach young men and women just when 
 they are beginning seriously to formulate their beliefs and 
 can do untold good by rightly guiding the youthful en- 
 quirers. (5) The local missionary organization should 
 give attention to teaching doctrinal truth. At home and 
 abroad much of our missionary effort is directed to saving 
 people from ruinous errors in faith. The societies through 
 which we foster and study missions cannot perform their 
 whole function without studying to know the truth and 
 to understand the snare of Antichrist errors. (6) Our 
 denominational papers have done much to teach the Bible 
 doctrines. We should let them know we appreciate their 
 efforts, and call upon them to meet the present Antichrist 
 emergencies by a fresh study and setting forth of the doc- 
 trinal dangers and needs of the present day. In a time 
 when there are powerful organized efforts to discredit doc- 
 trinal stalwartness and denominational loyalty, let the de- 
 nominational paper stand to its guns, asking no quarter
 
 182 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 from error and giving none, loving men but obeying and 
 fearing God. This applies to other Christian denomina- 
 tions, as well as Baptists. (7) We need more tracts and 
 books which shall set forth the truth. They must be pre- 
 pared under the direction of a responsible Christian body. 
 We should multiply the circulation of doctrinal tracts. Our 
 Sunday School Board has published an admirable series. 
 We must prepare and circulate books for Mission Study 
 and for the general reader that shall set forth salient doc- 
 trinal truths in a way that shall instruct the unwary how 
 to avoid the nets which Antichrist fowlers spread for their 
 feet. If we shall live and teach the truth, God will give 
 us the victory. 
 
 TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY IN CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 1. Name some doctrines of Romanism, and show the danger of 
 its political activities. 
 
 2. Name some doctrines of Mormonism and of Russellism, and 
 show that they are Antichrist sects. 
 
 3. Describe Holy Rollerism, and show that our neglect to teach 
 the people gives it its opportunity. 
 
 4. <?ive a brief exposition of the false teachings of Christian 
 Science. 
 
 5. Show wherein weak-kneed preachers and indifferent church 
 members are responsible for false faiths and for the weak- 
 ness of denominational effort to save the people from sin 
 and such destructive errors. 
 
 6. Show that the Scriptures hold us responsible for instructing 
 the people to safeguard them from such errors. 
 
 7. Name the powerful corrective agencies which are in our 
 hands, and discuss our obligations to use them.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 SAVING WHAT WE HAVE. 
 
 The situation. More than three-fourths of Southern 
 Christendom is rural. Much of the rest of it is fresh from 
 rural traditions and from the strength and weakness of 
 rural church tutelage. A large teaching task is yet to be 
 done in our urban churches. But it will add to definite- 
 ness and will touch the great fountain head of the nur- 
 turing need in the churches of the South if this chapter 
 shall confine itself to glimpsing the vitalization needs in 
 rural churches. It is not meant to imply that country 
 churches are in greater peril than city churches, or that 
 they are more delinquent in seeing and seizing opportuni- 
 ties for spiritual service. "In perils in the city" was one 
 item in Paul's amazing catalog of experiences that many 
 a city preacher has painfully verified. In the struggling 
 tides of life in a growing city, many churches are on the 
 defensive and many have been wrecked by the fierce social 
 and economic competitions and conflicts. But, as a rough 
 sea makes a good sailor, so many a city church has grown 
 strong in overcoming an unfriendly environment. If one 
 were comparing and contrasting city and country churches, 
 it would not result unfavorably to the quiet church em- 
 bosomed in the affections of a rural community. The 
 country church has been and will continue to be the chief 
 inspirer of rural life, and a high and satisfying rural life 
 is essential to our national and social welfare, doubly so 
 in the South, where the Government Census of 1910 shows
 
 184 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 rural life to be more than eighty percent in many of the 
 States. As it now stands, the country church has lost much 
 of its prestige and its power to inspire rural life. It did 
 no evil act which brought this result. It simply did too 
 nearly nothing. The country church has remained static 
 in a dynamic environment, and out of that has grown its 
 troubles. In substance, Dr. J. B. Gambrell said the same 
 thing when he declared concerning Baptists: "We have 
 evangelized and we have baptized, but we have not taught, 
 and out of that have come most of our troubles." 
 
 The dynamic environment Marvelous changes have 
 taken place in rural life. Within the last generation, its 
 intensity has been multiplied manifold. Transportation 
 and the building of cities have furnished new and far 
 larger markets for produce, and have brought to the 
 fanner himself new contacts and wooings from his iso- 
 lation. Farmers' colleges and newspapers, and farm bul- 
 letins and demonstrators, furnished by the government, 
 have conspired to teach him that there is much more in 
 his job than he thought. Good roads, rural mail delivery, 
 telephones, and automobiles have multiplied his contacts 
 by ten, and needed legislation has at last untied his hands, 
 so that he may run the race without discriminatory dis- 
 advantages. The last word in conservatism though the 
 farmer is, these forces have broken up his opposition to 
 change and also his belief that change is unnecessary and 
 impossible. They have literally shaken him into an aware- 
 ness that a new day has dawned on the farm. No longer is 
 farming an unending routine of taking in and wearing out 
 more acres. It has become the intensive business of get- 
 ting more out of the acres, while conserving their fertility. 
 The old farmer was a pioneer. Soil-robbery was his daily
 
 SAVING WHAT WE HAVE 185 
 
 task, and he had no conscience about it. The new farmer 
 farms with his brain as well as his brawn. He puts back 
 into the soil the fertility which his predecessor took away, 
 and makes old fields produce more than the virgin soil 
 did for his forebears. 
 
 The church is still pioneering. What the new farmer has 
 done for the soil, the new religious program has not done 
 for the country church. Indeed, the new religious pro- 
 gram has not yet gotten itself into running order, so far 
 as the country church is concerned. When we were mak- 
 ing programs we were almost never thinking of the needs 
 of the quiet church by the roadside. More obvious ap- 
 peals from places where the challenge was louder and 
 under influential observation, have filled our thoughts. In 
 the perspective the country church seemed far away and 
 it had no voice. So it did not seem to matter so much, 
 especially as we were continually getting for the towns, 
 anyhow, about all the little church had to give. It was 
 an undiscerning judgment and it has done our religious 
 bodies no credit. It amounts to this, that in regard to 
 the rural churches, the pioneer program of a century ago 
 is usually still in undisturbed operation. Spiritual soil- 
 robbery is still being habitually practiced. In the country 
 churches we evangelize and we baptize, taking from the 
 virgin field that which it can give quickly to the first- 
 comer and the infrequent-comer. Even with such poor 
 attention these churches have produced our preachers and 
 most of the men and women for city churches and tasks. 
 We have not faithfully taught in the rural churches. We 
 have taken all they had to give, but we have not, by 
 faithful nurturing, put back into them the intensive effort 
 which would renew the springs of their spiritual fertility.
 
 186 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 Like pioneers, we have robbed the soil. And out of that 
 most of our troubles have come. 
 
 Troubles have come. The troubles which have come 
 from a system that was strong in evangelism and weak 
 in teaching and pastoral care, apply to all Christian bodies 
 in the rural South. But I have in mind mainly our Bap- 
 tist people, in naming here some of the evils which have 
 developed: (1) The loss of influence on the part of rural 
 churches, so that they are in most cases not holding the 
 people and inspiring the community life. (2) The failure 
 of a large number of these churches to participate in the 
 co-operative work of missions and benevolence. (3) Their 
 failure to equip their members so that they may capably 
 stand for Christ and serve others, after they leave the 
 country home for the city. Witness tens of thousands of 
 so-called "trunk" Baptists in the cities. (4) The loss of a 
 large percent of our converts to the world and to false 
 faiths. The figures in the Southern Baptist Convention 
 statistical tables show that this loss has in the last twenty 
 years reached the staggering total of thirty-seven precent 
 of the entire number baptized. (5) A do-little religious 
 program in our do-much day has helped to drive many 
 to a so-called do-much religion which does not believe in 
 Christ as Lord and Saviour. (6) Our failure to do more 
 to take the city for Christ is in part a result of our having 
 done so little for the country. When the people were in 
 an environment where it was relatively easy to reach and 
 teach them, we provided a minimum of effort to do it; 
 when they come to the city, we greatly intensify our ef- 
 forts. If we would do more for them where the effort 
 would have the better opportunity, we would not so often 
 fail with intense efforts in the city. These are some of the
 
 SAVING WHAT WE HAVE 187 
 
 troubles. If we should cancel all of them but the first, 
 there would still be abundant cause for us to enlarge our 
 efforts to secure in the country church, a program which 
 shall help to cure the chronic evils of spiritual soil-robbery. 
 A bill of particulars. In "Country Church in the South" 
 I devoted the larger part of the volume to diagnosing the 
 country church's needs, on the theory that you cannot 
 cure until you can get the patient and his friends to 
 realize that he is ill. It will suffice here to give in bare 
 outline some of the more obvious particulars of the inade- 
 quacy of our rural church program. Of 24,600 churches 
 in the Southern Baptist Convention, more than 20,000 are 
 rural. Of the rural churches, not fewer than 18,000 have 
 preaching only once monthly and as many are served by 
 absentee pastors. The figures for the white Methodists are 
 almost as distressing. In the South these two bodies are 
 almost the entire dependence to serve the spiritual needs 
 of the 29,000,000 persons who live in a rural environment 
 Together they have 33,000 once-a-month rural churches, 
 out of their entire number of 36,500 country churches, and 
 29,000 have not a resident pastor. This is enough to 
 arouse any one who can be reached by figures, but there 
 are other depressing conditions. The 36,500 rural churches 
 are served by about 9,500 ministers, 5,000 of them Bap- 
 tists. All Methodist prea<jhers are required to do at least 
 certain non-resident theological reading. This is about all 
 most of their rural preachers have in vocational training. 
 The Baptist situation is both better and worse; better in 
 some hundreds of country preachers who have had regular 
 theological training and a considerably larger number who 
 have had college training, but worse in a large number 
 who have had no special training at all, some of them not
 
 188 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 more than a partial common school training. These 
 preachers usually make their support largely from some 
 other source than preaching. The average salary of one 
 of our Baptist country preachers who is preaching full- 
 time is possibly more than $600. But the average wage 
 paid by the once-a-month churches is hardly above $100, 
 which would be about $400 for all of the preacher's time. 
 Not only is the little-as-possible program the rule in 
 preaching and pastoral support. The same holds in regard 
 to subsidary church organizations. Practically all of the 
 once-a-month churches have no mission society and nearly 
 half of them have no Sunday-school. 
 
 A doctrinal consideration. Christian doctrine is New 
 Testament teaching. There are some in our age who have 
 cultivated an extreme dislike for doctrine, for definite New 
 Testament teaching. The once-a-month country church 
 has little enough teaching to please even those writers 
 and speakers who are now figuring so prominently in the 
 effort to turn popular opinion against denominational 
 loyalty. We may yet need to revise our time-honored 
 saying that country churches are the great conservators of 
 Christian doctrines. This was once true and it is true yet 
 in some of them. It is not true in any adequate sense in 
 a large number of once-a-month churches. Once these 
 communities held little commerce with the world. The 
 churches had infrequent teaching, but there was more 
 leisure and inclination for mediation and Bible reading. 
 Left to themselves, they did not feel the wooings of the 
 impulse to tone down belief to please others. In those 
 days their preachers, through newspapers and magazines, 
 and through the town environment where most of them 
 now live, had not been bombarded by a propaganda that
 
 SAVING WHAT WE HAVE 189 
 
 was contemptuous of doctrine and made a god out of 
 liberalism and conformity. That is changed now. More 
 sorely pressed than formerly with whatever substitute for 
 tent-making he finds at hand for securing a living, the 
 country preacher discovers that he is in a world where 
 assiduously-cultivated popular opinion is becoming intol- 
 erant of doctrinal truth, and in conditions in which it is 
 difficult to study as he ought, even when he knows how 
 to study. When he goes to preach, he often finds himself 
 before an audience which in the Sunday supplement and 
 magazines has had it suggested how bad and narrow it 
 is to believe in Scriptural doctrines not accepted by every- 
 body else. Then, the old polemic does not suffice, how- 
 ever true it may be. The truth of God's word abides. 
 But a preacher must intelligently sense the problems of 
 the people to whom he preaches, if he is to set forth that 
 truth so as to inform and satisfy, and many of our country 
 preachers are not doing the study necesasry thus to in- 
 terpret God's message. I could wish the above was an 
 over-statement of facts, but the testimony of competent 
 and sympathetic observers verifies it. Both preachers and 
 churches need from us understanding sympathy and un- 
 tiring aid, until the rural church shall function adequately 
 in its twentieth century environment. 
 
 Should the denomination help? As a means for aiding 
 rural churches to function more perfectly, the Home Mis- 
 sion Board, four years ago, acting under the Convention's 
 instructions, created an Enlistment Department. Though 
 the name suggests campaign methods to secure larger co- 
 operative efforts, rather than patient nurturing methods to 
 enlarge the content of the Christian life through providing 
 more teaching of the engrafted word, the Department seeks
 
 190 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 to accomplish the latter rather than the former. It in- 
 creases co-operative effort through enlarging the Christian 
 life and motive which God intended we should do. The 
 Enlistment effort has been blessed with success. But until 
 now it has been conducted on so restricted a scale that 
 the denomination at large has not had a near view of its 
 potentialities. The present indications are that our people 
 are slowly coming to realize that they must do something 
 large and worthy to help to bring again into their own 
 the mass of rural churches. The Enlistment Department 
 has given the Home Mission Board a good opportunity 
 to conduct a sustained educational propaganda in which 
 the needs and claims of rural life and church are pre- 
 sented, and this the Board has done with enthusiasm and 
 conviction. It is hoped that the number of Enlistment 
 Workers shall yet be much increased. But, however much 
 good these may accomplish, the task is larger than hun- 
 dreds of such specialists will soon be able to perform. 
 The whole denomination must make a re-appraisement of 
 rural church and country life values. It must come to 
 see that stupendous issues are at stake in what we shall 
 do or fail to do to aid the rural life and church to attain 
 that fuller content which shall comport with an age of 
 electric progress. 
 
 Self-help by the church. The accumulated inerta which 
 has come about in thousands of churches will not be 
 changed into mobility and progress without loving and 
 patient aid and inspiration from without. But, first or 
 last, the success of the church in doing its appointed task 
 will depend on itself. There are two or three essentials 
 that lie at the foundation of any program which may be 
 expected to succeed. If the churches would look after
 
 SAVING WHAT WE HAVE 191 
 
 these, or if the pastor would work to their accomplishment, 
 it would obviate the necessity of much Enlistment work. 
 To name only three: More preaching than once-a-month, 
 more pastoral services than an absentee preacher can give, 
 and more pastoral support than a pittance which leaves 
 the pastor largely under the necessity for self-support, are 
 remedies which lie at the bottom of any program which 
 can possibly cure the present ills of the country church. 
 These requirements are commonplace, but fundamental. 
 If we are to be worthy of our own highest self-respect, we 
 will not allow ourselves to withhold our hands from grap- 
 pling with fundamentals on which hang great issues, be- 
 cause, forsooth, the task is not bedecked with the garlands 
 of romance, but is homely, as are the offices of love and 
 as beautiful. The churches must help themselves, but the 
 denomination must also aid, if it is to justify the confidence 
 reposed in it by the churches for wise leadership and com- 
 prehending love and fellowship. 
 
 The country preacher. As a class, country preachers 
 have an uneven load to carry. They have been much ad- 
 vised by others and not always with fine sympathy or 
 understanding. The country preacher carries uneven bur- 
 dens, but he is not as a rule doing the work that is needed 
 in our rural churches. In character and devotion he ranks 
 as well as his urban brother. In his work, he has usually 
 turned his back upon those ambitions for advancement 
 and social and educational advantages which figure largely 
 in the average town preacher's choice of a field, and which, 
 to say the least, are not to be classed as missionary mo- 
 tives. The country preacher has pegged away at a job 
 that is so poorly paid that he cannot live on the stipend, 
 and in which he usually sees little chance unaided of pull-
 
 192 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 ing the churches out of deep and discouraging ruts. He 
 often has to see many of the brightest and best young peo- 
 ple he has evangelized depart for the city, where, with 
 many like them from other inconspicuous country churches, 
 they make up perhaps most of the strength of an urban 
 church that pays its relatively prominent preacher a much 
 better salary. This country preacher does not want or 
 need our pity. But he does need our understanding, co- 
 operation and love. It is true that there are country 
 preachers who are narrow and almost hopelessly opposed 
 to progress. This complicates the situation. Faithful rural 
 preachers have to bear the reproach created by these 
 "slackers," in the minds of those who do not discriminate. 
 But the fact stands that country preachers bear an un- 
 even load the dead weight of these ordained slackers be- 
 ing part of their burden. We must appeal for missionary 
 spirit on the part of young preachers, in connection with 
 the rural field, the spirit to sacrifice ambition and worldly 
 advantages for the sake of Christ. We must invite many 
 of our most capable young preachers to consider the spir- 
 itual value of a life which will be underestimated by an 
 uncomprehending public opinion, and sometimes discredited 
 even in those religious circles where the ideals of these 
 young men are molded, but which will mean the lifting up 
 of the lives and enlarging the outlook of people in entire 
 communities, to a degree not often accomplished by a city 
 pastor. Our churches should earnestly pray God to raise 
 up many such young men for rural pulpits and that he 
 may forgive us for the dulness of spiritual comprehension 
 which has made us neglect great things. 
 
 Two duties of preachers. I wish to name two particular 
 things which our ministers can do that will greatly help.
 
 SAVING WHAT WE HAVE 193 
 
 The country pastor can preach to the churches on their 
 obligation to support their pastors, and the pastor from 
 the county seat or other principal town in the district can 
 give some of his time to preaching to the country churches 
 and showing them the way into a fuller life and service. 
 Rev. R. J. Pirkey, of Longview, Texas, accomplished strik- 
 ing results by thus aiding surrounding country pastors and 
 churches, and the service reacted on his Longview people 
 to the increase of their religious vitality. The county-seat 
 pastor practically always has the confidence and good will 
 of the surrounding churches. His place gives him good 
 repute and opens the way for his efforts to count for their 
 full value. The same may be said of laymen in the county- 
 seat church, who are known and usually highly respected 
 by the people throughout the surrounding county. They 
 could often serve their own church better on Sunday by 
 going out and helping needy country churches than by 
 sitting under the pastor's sermon. Pastor Pirkey says: 
 "Lack of vision on the part of the county-seat church is, 
 in the majority of cases, responsible for the condition in 
 the surrounding country churches." The country preacher 
 has almost never preached to his people about their duty 
 to support the pastor, and for this he is not without blame. 
 In First and Second Corinthians and in our Lord's own 
 words there is abundant evidence that God intends that 
 they who preach the gospel shall live of the gospel. The 
 tent-making of Paul at Corinth, studied and understood, 
 only confirms this teaching. A certain sensitiveness has 
 kept the preachers from preaching the truth of Scripture 
 on this subject, but they should have done their duty in 
 the matter. The miserable dole with which many a church
 
 194 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 still satisfies its conscience in pastoral support is partly ex- 
 plained by the fact that the pastor has not been faithful 
 in preaching a truth which the narrow and prejudiced 
 might pervert. 
 
 An educated ministry. Space does not permit the re- 
 hearsal of our Baptist attitude toward an educated min- 
 istry; still less an adequate portrayal of how we have 
 for many years, not without success, plead for more edu- 
 cated preachers, careful always not to offend good men 
 who had not enjoyed scholastic training. Speeches on 
 ministerial education before our Associations and other 
 gatherings have had with painful care to deal in an un- 
 varying set of preambles and exceptions, to clear the way 
 for the educational appeal. I raise the question, has 
 not the time come when we may forsake some of 
 these time-honored explanations, and definitely advise the 
 churches to put a test to candidates for ordination as to 
 whether they are willing to do all they can do to prepare 
 themselves by study for the teaching responsibilities to 
 which they propose to devote their lives? The opportuni- 
 ties for a young preacher to educate himself are many 
 times better than they were in the days of our fathers. 
 Any young preacher can get an education, if he has the 
 kind of determination that is likely to accomplish much. 
 The young people of the country are being better educated 
 than formerly and twice as many of them are receiving 
 some education. How can an untaught man believe himself 
 fit to teach taught people, in a vocation one of whose scrip- 
 tural perquisites is aptness to teach? God is not de- 
 pendent either on our learning or our ignorance, but if we 
 would become God's official spokesmen to our fellows, how 
 dare we presume to discredit the value of an honest devo-
 
 SAVING WHAT WE HAVE 195 
 
 tion to that study which Paul commended to Timothy? 
 Fortunately there is growing up among the churches a gen- 
 eral demand for educated preachers and a refusal to call 
 men who have not studied. We must help all the preach- 
 ers we now have to a fuller efficiency, regardless of their 
 educational advantages. But the time has come when 
 we must recommend to churches that they shall decline to 
 ordain to the ministry any man who does not heartily 
 agree by faithful study to do all he possibly can to pre- 
 pare himself for the ministry. Many of our preachers who 
 had no educational advantages are seeing this and telling 
 young preachers so. The churches, thus advised, will 
 generally act on the advice, for the shoe is beginning to 
 pinch these churches. Their educated young people are 
 declining to go to hear men preach whose knowledge and 
 outlook on life are more meagre than their own. 
 
 Pastoral support. I often think of our country church 
 troubles in the figure of a circle, around the inside of 
 which are moving a church and a preacher. The church 
 is saying, If we had more pastoral service and better preach- 
 ing, we would pay a better support for the pastor. The 
 preacher is saying, If I had a better support, I would stop 
 this once-a-month makeshift and do more pastoral work 
 and better preaching. Some thousands of churches and 
 preachers have been engaged in this unprofitable journey 
 around the circle for many years. The denominational 
 problem is to break this circle and get the church and 
 preacher into action along a tangent that will lead some- 
 where. Selfishness and worldly wisdom cannot do it. But 
 love and a Christ-like spirit of sympathy and helpfulness 
 can and will break it. There are still other churches and 
 preachers so dazed and helpless that they do not say any-
 
 196 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 thing. We will not cure the country church ills without 
 preachers of vision and consecration and missionary spirit; 
 they must be ready to dare the task of making bricks with- 
 out straw; taking their chances on 'tent-making* as a sup- 
 plemental expedient, believing that God will show the way. 
 On the other hand, the solution of this problem awaits a 
 larger and more adequate support of the pastors. The poor 
 wage paid preachers is the shame of American Christianity, 
 and the country churches of the South are about at the 
 bottom of the list. Farmers who ride in $700 automobiles 
 and spend thousands on farm machinery are still giving 
 only a pittance to support the institutions of religion in 
 their communities. In the realms of business and pleasure, 
 and sometimes of education for their children, it is a mat- 
 ter of thousands; but in the field of the church it is often 
 still nickels and dimes. One thing we must have, if we 
 are to cure the country church's inability to serve its day, 
 is an ability on the part of the farmers to think in large 
 terms in religion as well as business, and to give accord- 
 ingly. We must have more educated preachers, who shall, 
 for Christ's sake, sacrifice the ambitions of other men for 
 the prizes of this life, in order that they may serve. But 
 the church must wake up too. It must do some sacri- 
 ficing and some giving. If we should strike a balance 
 of the record to date, it would be found that the preachers 
 have done by far the larger part of the sacrificing. 
 
 A re-appraisement needed. A re-appraisement of the 
 country church and rural life is necessary. The religion 
 of Christ has done more for the country than all other 
 forces combined, but the denominational conventions, con- 
 ferences and agencies of effort in which the ideals of our 
 religious bodies head up, have been about the last of all
 
 SAVING WHAT WE HAVE 197 
 
 the agencies which serve society to get awake to the fact 
 that something must be done to quicken rural life. The 
 Country Life Commission, the Y. M. C. A., the State col- 
 leges and universities, the agricultural schools, the farm 
 press and the national government, through its new policy 
 of helpful legislation, have all become active in aiding 
 country life to readjust itself to new and untried condi- 
 tions, while for the most part the religious bodies have 
 not yet gotten beyond the stage of disposing of the country 
 church by weakly lamenting the difficulties and remarking 
 that the preacher is "the key to the situation." So is the 
 farmer "they key to the situation," but his friends have 
 not therefore left him without any serious effort to im- 
 prove the conditions under which he lives and works. 
 Throughout its entire history, every considerable Christian 
 body in the South has gotten from the country church its 
 preachers, its boys and girls for the Christian schools, and 
 most of the men and women for leadership in the city 
 churches and tasks. Each of them is still depending on 
 the country church for moral and spiritual reinforcements 
 for service and leadership. Is it because the little country 
 church mother has just given and given and made no 
 complaint that we have seemingly become incapable of 
 seeing that the lusty denominational child should in the 
 day of the mother's need consider the mute appeal of love 
 and the peremptory challenge of the square deal in com- 
 mon, ordinary things? Perhaps through the exercise of 
 filial care we should find that, in the non-spectacular tasks 
 of ordinary justice and common fairness, we had stumbled 
 on to the truest strategy and the greatest statesmanship. 
 Educational re-adjustment. Both colleges and theo- 
 logical seminaries need to come to a re-appraisement of
 
 198 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 the significance of country life and the country church. 
 Colleges can open the eyes of students to rural life values 
 in a way that will send many of them back to the country, 
 where their lives would mean more to themselves and 
 others. But they cannot do it, if they themselves have 
 no vision of the significance of a full and satisfying rural 
 life. Theological seminaries have a great responsibility 
 in this connection. With their buildings and class rooms 
 filled with a student body ninety to ninety-five percent of 
 whom were reared in the country or small towns, what an 
 odd spectacle, in this day of great rural needs, to find 
 hardly one in fifty among them who believes that his life 
 will count for much in the country pastorate, or that he 
 can go there without his own comrades looking down upon 
 him as inefficient! Something is wrong when such things 
 can be. It cries out against the religious body whose 
 vision is so obliviously devoted to breadth that it cannot 
 see the bigness of the plain and simple things which mul- 
 tiply the meaning of life. Our theological seminaries have 
 done for Southern Baptists a great service, and they will 
 do a greater. We should have in them twice the students 
 now there, and we shall need to have hundreds of addi- 
 tional workers training in the Baptist Bible Institute in 
 New Orleans. But, in the name of the eighty percent of 
 our Southern Baptists in the rural churches, the churches 
 that have made possible the great seminaries and supplied 
 the denomination with its leaders in the name of this 
 great mass of God's people, voiceless always in our denom- 
 inational counsels, I declare that there must be in our the- 
 ological seminaries a re-discovery of the country church. 
 These institutions ought to send a large number of their 
 brighest and best back to the country to tackle the great
 
 SAVING WHAT WE HAVE 199 
 
 unsolved rural church problem. They will go, if they are 
 led to see it is a man's job, and many will see it, if their 
 teachers in their hearts believe it City pulpit tasks are 
 difficult and need strong men, but, seeing that they have 
 all the while gotten the lion's share of our trained and 
 well equipped men, not a few of our best ought to go 
 to the country now, even if the complacent city church 
 does occasionally suffer by not getting all of "the best." 
 Fruits of one Seminary address. Rev. Greene Clay 
 Smith, D. D., made an address at the Seminary in Louis- 
 ville, in the early eighties. In simple, conversational style 
 Dr. Smith earnestly and forcefully set forth the call of 
 the small village and country churches, especially those of 
 the mountains of Kentucky. It was a call for men who 
 were willing to make themselves of no reputation, to pass 
 by the more desirable places, which would be sought after, 
 and to pull off their coats and go to work. It was an 
 impressive appeal for men who would be willing to live 
 the simple life and to serve in difficult fields, where study 
 gowns, slippered feet and polished fenders would be un- 
 known. Many of the students listened with throbbing 
 hearts to his recital of prevailing conditions of need in 
 wide sections of the South. A short time afterwards, Dr. 
 John N. Prestridge, then a student, now among the im- 
 mortal, hung on the wall before Dr. Broadus* class in 
 homiletics a hand-drawn map of the mountain section of 
 Alabama, and made a heart-moving appeal for laborers 
 both there and in the mountains of Kentucky, especially 
 about Williamsburg. There soon developed a sort of 
 rivalry among the students to magnify the attractions of 
 the small fields with great hardships. Rev. D. W. Key, D. D., 
 now a highly honored and useful Georgia pastor, was one
 
 200 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 of those students. It led him to accept an inconspicuous 
 mission pastorate under Secretary R. H. Griffith in South 
 Carolina, and to the development of a breadth of sym- 
 pathy and understanding with our churches which has led 
 the denomination to put many responsibilities and honors 
 upon him, including the presidency for years of the South 
 Carolina Baptist Convention. Perhaps there is not a greater 
 single need in our denominational leadership than an 
 understanding comprehension of the problems of our coun- 
 try churches. Lack of it is making many a program, 
 wrought out by able men, visionary and impracticable. 
 Such understanding comes only from experience. On this 
 account, and from the greater consideration of the needs 
 and worth of the work, there should be many a lecture in 
 our seminaries and colleges like that which Dr. Smith de- 
 livered in the Louisville school of the prophets, many years 
 ago. 
 
 The denomination. It should be said, even in so brief 
 a treatment as this chapter, that the denomination itself 
 needs to re-appraise the significance of the country church 
 and rural pastors. We have loved the country church, but 
 we have not respected its worth or understood its value. 
 In our Conventions the rural preacher is seldom placed on 
 committees or denominational boards or otherwise hon- 
 ored, and the little country church, which in the aggregate 
 is the mother of all the brave ensemble of our great days 
 of the feast, abides forgotten in a hazy perspective. It is 
 not to plead that the possible sensitiveness of rural men 
 should lead us to celebrate them. That is entirely beside 
 the point. They show less evidence of caring for promi- 
 nence than any other class among us. It is a question of 
 statesmanship and of self-respect through respecting the
 
 SAVING WHAT WE HAVE 201 
 
 worth of the rural sources from which we came. It is a 
 question of creating and maintaining a denominational 
 ideal to the effect that country people and country churches 
 count along with our best. No less attitude will encourage 
 our preachers to endure the hardness that many will need 
 to endure, if they are again to bring the country church 
 into its own. How many speeches has the reader heard at 
 one of our Conventions on rural problems and country 
 needs? I dare say, very few; perhaps none. But many 
 great addresses by gifted men sway those bodies on many 
 other great tasks. From the country church itself, which 
 has accepted the be-littling estimate of the denomination 
 and is surprised when a preacher with a broad reputation 
 consents to become its pastor, to the great Conventions of 
 the denomination, there is urgent need of a re-discovery of 
 the value and needs of rural life and the rural church. 
 Saving what we have. The best thought of our Baptist 
 people everyhere accepts the truth of Dr. William E. 
 Hatcher's words, when he said: "It is at least as im- 
 portant to save what we have as it is to save that which 
 is lost." It is a question of an aroused denomination and 
 an aroused leadership, determined to do something to help, 
 rather than our mental acceptance of a principle. When 
 we believe in our hearts that something must be done to 
 carry out the nurturing commands of Christ and his 
 Apostles in terms of our rural church needs, we shall be- 
 gin to do something large and worthy. God speed that 
 day! Attention has been called that Southern Baptists 
 have, during the last twenty years, lost thirty-seven per- 
 cent of as many as they have baptized, to the world and 
 to false faiths. The Southern rural field in many sections 
 is rich proselyting ground for false faiths. Why? Because
 
 202 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 Baptists and Methodists, who had these people, neglected 
 them. Most of the once-a-month churches give little to 
 support missions or benevolence. Why? Because they 
 have not been taught, and the denomination has silently 
 acquiesced in a system which did not provide adequate 
 teaching and could not do so, while some of our preachers 
 and leaders have sometimes held these churches up for 
 special criticism. May the Lord quicken Southern Bap- 
 tists with purpose and faith to undertake the great task 
 of laboring more adequately to save what they already 
 have. Baptists stand for great principles which the nation 
 and American Christianity need. But if they should ac- 
 quiesce in a pioneer system of denominational effort, which 
 evangelizes great masses while it provides no adequate in- 
 struction for a large proportion of those they have evan- 
 gelized, Baptists would place themselves athwart the pur- 
 pose of God and the manifest path of progress in the 
 twentieth century. We cannot afford to do it We must 
 not do it Through Enlistment work and in every other 
 fit way we must grapple seriously with the great and blessed 
 task of saving what we have.
 
 TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY IN CHAPTER IX. 
 
 1. Give a survey of the amount of religious instruction received 
 by the average church member in the South, and contrast it 
 with the dynamic material environment. 
 
 2. Show that the churches are still following a pioneer spiritual 
 program, while material life is following that of greatly in- 
 tensified activities. 
 
 3. Show the danger of a doctrinal debacle which grows out of 
 the lack of teaching among our church members. 
 
 4. Indicate what the preachers and churches may do to im- 
 prove the situation. 
 
 5. What of an educated ministry and better pastoral support? 
 
 6. What ought the Christian colleges and seminaries to do? 
 What re-appraisement is needed? 
 
 7. Are Baptists aroused as to the importance of saving what 
 they have?
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 CRUCIALITY OF A SAVED SOUTH. 
 
 Is this a Christian nation? An interesting and edifying 
 debate could be conducted on whether or not America is 
 a Christian nation. On the affirmative side could be 
 ranged the evident religious intent of many of the early 
 settlers; the testimony of the organic law of many of 
 the Colonies; the constitutional guarantees of religious 
 and civil liberty; the rapid growth of evangelical religious 
 bodies; the present great strength of these bodies; the 
 immense sums given annually to benevolent and uplift ac- 
 tivities and Christian education; the altruistic attitude of 
 our government in connection with the Boxer troubles in 
 China, and in Cuba, the Philippines, and Mexico. Much 
 could be made of the high stand our country has taken in 
 connection with the present World War. Justice Brewer 
 of the United States Supreme Court could be quoted, who 
 in a volume on the subject, argues that America is a Chris- 
 tian nation. On the other hand, the negative of the propo- 
 sition would not lack for strong arguments. Waiving aside 
 the question whether the Constitution of our country and 
 certain of the founders ever intended to identify this nation 
 with the Christian religion, the defenders of the negative 
 could show that the Christianization of the country at no 
 time ever went to the extent of the open espousal of re- 
 ligious faith by a majority of the people. They could bring 
 from the closet skeletons of civic and national failure in 
 demonstration that the country was not wedded to that 
 righteousness which exalteth a nation.
 
 CRUCIALITY OF A SAVED SOUTH 205 
 
 The negative side. In detail they could raise some most 
 embarrassing questions about our use of wealth, our city 
 slums, our municipal corruption, our political sins, our 
 failure rightly to support ministers, teachers and other up- 
 lift workers, while we heap wealth on those who can amuse 
 us and contribute to our pleasure. Against the millions 
 spent for missions, they could place the scores of millions 
 spent for single items of useless indulgence. Against the 
 highly endowed Christian institutions, they could point to the 
 trail of the serpent of rationalism in some of these, making 
 foul the classic shades by the slime of doubts and negations 
 about the crucified Christ. They could show that not only 
 is more than half of the nation without religious profession, 
 but one of the largest of the religious bodies is by prin- 
 ciple and long practice set against the ideals of American 
 religious liberty, and is doing all it can to destroy separa- 
 tion between Church and State. It could show that evan- 
 gelical religion has spent nearly all its effort on saving 
 souls, but so little on saving lives that the ratio of toddling 
 babes in Christ to nurtured and serving disciples of the 
 Master, is only as one to ten, and that many of these babes 
 fall into destructive snares and many into false faiths, 
 which are becoming our national reproach, and a severe 
 rebuke to the faithfulness of the Christian bodies. 
 
 The decision of the judges. Perhaps the judges of the 
 debate would say something like this: The affirmative ar- 
 guments prove that America has more nearly approximated 
 the Christian ideal than other nations have done. But the 
 negative has demonstrated that, in a country where for 
 the first time in history soul liberty and civil liberty have 
 together had an opportunity to show what they could do, 
 Christianity has failed to dominate great and increasing
 
 206 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 sections of the national life. It has shown that American 
 Christianity leads the world in pioneering, but stands per- 
 plexed and confused before the twentieth century necessity 
 of so nurturing the new life that it shall be able to master 
 an age of material prosperity and secular education. The 
 judges decline to decide between the contestant debaters, 
 on the ground that the terms of the question controverted 
 do not set forth with clearness what is meant by a Christian 
 nation. If the purposes of the early colonists, and the 
 attainments of the nation compared with others, were the 
 gauge, we would declare for the affirmative. But if the 
 standards of Him who is the founder and substance of 
 Christianity are the measure, the negative has won easily. 
 The judges take the opportunity to say that past good will 
 not suffice. However gladly we may point to the acts of 
 our country in the past as an evidence of our faith, the 
 only ground upon which we may safely claim that this is 
 a Christian nation is the effective operation and constant 
 re-creation of Christian principles in this country now. 
 
 God's providential purpose in America. Underlying each 
 step in such reasoning as the above is the suggestion that 
 God's hand has been in the making of America, with the 
 providential purpose that his people might here under the 
 most favorable circumstances take their last stand to labor 
 for the redemption of the world. Dr. J. F. Love, of Rich- 
 mond, Corresponding Secretary of the Foreign Mission 
 Board, is the author of a book, "The Saving of Our Na- 
 tion," in which this is the basal argument through two 
 hundred and forty well written pages. The closing sentence 
 of the book in epitome sets forth the author's conclusions, 
 in these words : "The Home Mission contest is for America, 
 and the decision will determine the future of evangelical
 
 207 
 
 religion, political democracy, and the destiny of the world." 
 In his argument, leading up to this conclusion, Dr. Love 
 says: "The Anglo-Saxon race has the distinctive capacity 
 for introducing its policies, its civilizations, its ideals, and 
 its institutions among other peoples. There is not a col- 
 ored race in the world which could evangelize a white race. 
 * * * It is God's will that in the day of Anglo-Saxon 
 power the testimony, the fame, the influence of the race 
 shall be for righteousness and the founding of his King- 
 dom in the world. Unless the Anglo-Saxons themselves 
 throw away their opportunity, America is to be the seat 
 of empire for this race." Dr. S. L. Morris, of Atlanta, 
 Secretary of the Southern Presbyterian Home Mission 
 Board, says in his book, "The Task that Challenges:" 
 "The effort for the evangelization of almost any other 
 nation is largely local, terminating with itself. The Chris- 
 tianizing of America is cosmopolitan in its scope. The 
 spiritual conquest of America looms larger than any other 
 task of the Church." Alexander Hamilton declared: "It 
 is America's to be the grave in which the hopes of the 
 world shall be entombed, or the pillar of the cloud that 
 pilots the race onward." After making a world tour for 
 the study of Foreign Missions, Mr. William T. Ellis recently 
 came home and wrote: "The entire Christianization of 
 North America is the greatest single enterprise confronting 
 the churches of the whole world." It would be easy to 
 multiply such quotations, but the above are sufficient to 
 indicate that Christian statesmanship accepts as a fact the 
 contention that God has prepared America for the task of 
 world-saving, and that the entire success of Christian mis- 
 sions in America has a strategic value to which no success 
 on any other field is comparable.
 
 208 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 The place of the South. If America's Christianization 
 is necessary for the world's salvation, the South 's Christian- 
 ization is strategic in the work of saving America. Anglo- 
 Saxon blood and evangelical faith have in the South 
 a far fuller opportunity than elsewhere in America. With- 
 out any purpose of invidious comparison with other blood- 
 strains in the American life, the Anglo-Saxon's evangelical 
 faith, his genius for political liberty, and for impressing 
 other races with his ideals, mark him for special considera- 
 tion and responsibilities. Other sections of America have 
 in a measure lost whatever there is of advantage in this 
 unmixed Anglo-Saxon blood. With it they have lost the 
 unhindered dominance of the Anglo-Saxon's faith. Ro- 
 manism has flooded their cities, along with the Romanized 
 immigrant, and to the extent that priestcraft could ac- 
 complish it, the tradition of religious and political democ- 
 racy has lost its meaning and power. New England was 
 influential in establishing American ideals. In politics, 
 literature and religion it won fame and prestige. From 
 New England went out the impulse of the modern revival 
 in Foreign Missions. Behold New England now! The 
 section is flooded with Roman Catholics; the home of the 
 Puritan scarcely recognizes itself. Not only has a strange 
 religion established itself with pomp and ceremony; it has 
 invaded and despoiled the old patriotism and the old cul- 
 ture and political ideals, and is to-day subjecting them to 
 the arrogant and autocratic traditions of an un-American 
 hierarchy. Influential also toward weakening the Ameri- 
 can democratic tradition have been the vast aggregations 
 of wealth and the equally great industrial plants, which 
 have enriched the few and kept the many in comparative 
 dependence. The later coming in the South of industrial
 
 CRUCIALITY OF A SAVED SOUTH 209 
 
 development, and the fact that it must here make its way 
 and form its social readjustments among Americans and 
 not among European peasants, suggests a hope that South- 
 ern capital will learn from the experiences of other sections, 
 and that the native American employees shall aid in mak- 
 ing the instruction effective. 
 
 The North looks to us. There are deep-thinking North- 
 ern men who are watching the South with hope, won- 
 dering if we shall rise to our God-given opportunity in the 
 nation. They desire to know if our unmixed Anglo-Saxon 
 blood, our unvexed Americanism and evangelical faith, will 
 so equip the South with spiritual comprehension and mo- 
 tive that it shall not only be able to save itself, but have a 
 blessed overflow to help the North and the West in their 
 struggle against new and strange forces, which are seeking 
 to choke America's political and religious testimony to a 
 hungry and weary world. Looking upon the South's unique 
 opportunity. Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis exclaimed: "Here 
 in the South, where we find the purest standards of po- 
 litical democracy, and the most chivalrous types of homes, 
 are the greatest opportunities for manufacturing a race of 
 great-souled men to govern a greater America of tomor- 
 row." Already his words have had a verification in the 
 large participation of Southern men in national leadership, 
 a leadership of a quality of which the South may fitly be 
 proud. May the South's sources never decline for produc- 
 ing such leadership. Its maintenance is in the last analysis 
 a question of missions, because it is a question of the 
 spiritual quality of the manhood our section shall produce. 
 
 Our new internationalism. Perhaps no nation in history 
 was so rapidly awakened from a grateful sense of isolation 
 from world movements and politics as America. The fancied
 
 210 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 security has been shattered of our separation by great 
 seas from the European centers of world politics. Not 
 only has our awakening been sudden to the point of rude- 
 ness. Not only is our aloofness gone. We have become the 
 cynosure of the eyes of all peoples. They desire to know 
 if our democracy with its human rights, and our religion 
 with its holy faith and freedom, have demonstrated their 
 practicability as cures for the burdens and disappointed 
 hopes of the struggling nations. The processes of inter- 
 communication, through which the American tradition of 
 isolation has crumbled, have been rapid but quiet. We were 
 slow to comprehend their significance. But the present 
 World War has startled every American into the certain 
 knowledge that the days of our nation's protected adoles- 
 cence have gone. It has been thrust into the prominence 
 of one of the lustiest of the family of nations, with all the 
 tremendous obligations and responsibilities of this unac- 
 customed relation. On his return from his visit to Europe 
 and Africa, Mr. Roosevelt said that he found the peoples 
 of other lands looking to America for leadership in those 
 movements which make for the larger emancipation of 
 humanity. He regretfully added that he also found a grow- 
 ing disappointment among the people that their expecta- 
 tions are being so imperfectly realized. If America in her 
 commercial and civic life and social relations really prac- 
 ticed the Christianity her missionaries preach, and which 
 our traditions of human rights and opportunity lead the 
 oppressed of other lands to expert of us, what a power our 
 nation would be in bringing the Kingdom of Christ to 
 earth! 
 
 Our impact on other nations not Christian. But the 
 samples of Christianity which American contact with the
 
 CRUCIALITY OP A SAVED SOUTH 211 
 
 nations have sent abroad have not usually confirmed the 
 message of our missionaries in those lands. America has 
 been singularly free from those greedy aggressions which 
 have crippled the influence in heathen lands of some other 
 so-called Christian nations. The confidence and apprecia- 
 tion which have been elicited by these manifestations of 
 national unselfishness and justice, have redounded to our 
 credit and influence in a degree that suggests what rich 
 and blessed fruits we might expect if the business men and 
 officials and globe-trotting travelers from this country did 
 not so often bewilder the peoples to whom we send mis- 
 sionaries by giving the lie to the gospel of the missionaries 
 and to the good repute our international relations have won 
 for us. Lord Bryce, an exceptionally well informed student 
 of racial relations, speaks thus of this handicap to the 
 spread of Christianity in the non-Christian nations. "Chris- 
 tianity has often come to them as a religion professed by 
 adventurers who, bearing the Christian name, have de- 
 spoiled or tricked them out of their lands, who have ex- 
 ploited their mines, who have ruined them by strong drink, 
 who have treated them with roughness and with scorn, and 
 sometimes with barbarity. Such men are the foul scum 
 upon the advancing wave of civilization, and they undo 
 and unteach by their lives what Christianity is teaching by 
 its precepts." Mr. John R. Mott, commenting on this sub- 
 ject in his book, "The Present World Situation," says: 
 "The large number of illegitimate children in German 
 Africa made necessary recent startling action in the Reich- 
 stag of Germany. What an occasion for humiliating re- 
 flection is the fact that some of the chiefs on the Lower 
 Congo forbid the women and girls of their towns to go to 
 the railroad towns even to trade because they recognize
 
 212 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 these centers are the sources of unnamable evils." Mr. 
 Mott and other observers testify that in mining and con- 
 struction camps and oil fields in Asia and Africa, where 
 American and European men are concentrated, the immoral 
 conditions are almost unbelievable. Nor have our soldiers 
 and sailors always behaved in a way to reflect credit on 
 the country they represent, when in the cities of these un- 
 Christian lands. In addition to teaching the heathen new 
 measures of lustful abandon, the so-called Christian coun- 
 tries have distilled for them the poison of materialism and 
 sent it along. Mr. Mott declares that in nearly every 
 Oriental city may be found the works of such men as 
 Nietzche, Spenser, Huxley, Haeckel, Ingersoll and Voltaire. 
 Oar visitors from other lands. Nor does the pagan visitor 
 to America always find here that which confirms the mes- 
 sage of the missionary at the front. In the new interna- 
 tionalism the ends of the earth are sending their people to 
 us, while ours are going to them. Their people, as well 
 as ours, are using the ships and trains and reading the press 
 despatches which like great shuttles are weaving the nations 
 into a complex pattern, the finished fashion of which does 
 not yet appear. We have long sent missionaries of Christ; 
 they are beginning to send missionaries of Buddha and 
 Confucius. We have sent business men; they are sending 
 great masses of immigrant labor. We have sent our manu- 
 factured products; they send their young men to study in 
 our schools. About thirty percent of the immigrants be- 
 come emigrants, non-commissioned evangels of the econ- 
 omic, political and spiritual gospel of America. Through 
 the mails the rest of them are spreading to the corners of 
 the earth their observations on life in America. All these 
 will form and express their own judgment of what they
 
 CRUCIALITY OF A SAVED SOUTH 213 
 
 find in America. If they are unkindly or unfairly treated, 
 they will mark down the fact as evidence against America 
 being the kind of country the gospel of the missionary led 
 them to expect. When they see for themselves the failure 
 of Christianity to dominate whole zones of life in com- 
 mercial, industrial, social and political practice we need 
 not be surprised if they ask: "If Christianity cannot drive 
 out these devils in the land where it is said to have had 
 its best chance, why should we believe in it?" 
 
 The Mikado and Christianity. Twenty years ago, the 
 Mikado of Japan publicly stated his willingness to issue a 
 decree which would make Christianity the state religion of 
 his kingdom. He told his council that he had observed 
 that the life and work of the Christian missionaries had 
 been more helpful to Japan than any other religion pro- 
 pagated in his empire. Some of his councilors suggested 
 that, before the decree should be made, a deputation be 
 sent to the United States and Great Britain to find whether 
 the doctrines of the missionaries were adopted and prac- 
 ticed in those two countries. The deputation made a sur- 
 vey of Canada, the United States and Great Britain. In 
 courts of law they found justice often defeated. In marts 
 of trade and industry they saw reputed Christian men de- 
 stroying each other in competitive business. They caught 
 the flavor of the stench of American municipal government. 
 They returned to Japan and reported that, "while it is true 
 the life of the Christian missionary among us is the purest 
 of any of the advocates of religion in Japan, and the prin- 
 ciples of Christianity taught by them are right and most 
 helpful to our citizens, the people of the United States and 
 Great Britain do not believe and practice the doctrines 
 taught us by their Christian missionaries." The edict was
 
 214 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 not issued. While the decree could not have made Japan 
 really Christian, it would have opened the doors of 40,- 
 000,000 Japanese to Christian teachers and preachers. 
 Their deliberate refusal to adopt Christianity, after inspect- 
 ing American and English life, is a severe arraignment of 
 the effectiveness of our Christian teachings in our own 
 country. 
 
 Civilization does not Christianize. In considering the 
 cruciality of a Christian homeland in world-saving, we 
 should understand that civilization is not Christianity and 
 does not Christianize. Civilization has its boons for man- 
 kind, but they have been greatly over-estimated. Sepa- 
 rated from Christian faith, every one of them details a de- 
 stroying poison. Beauty and poetry and the arts have 
 added to the soul's eyesight and the significance of life. 
 But, committed to unregenerated men, they have been 
 compelled to minister to sensuousness, selfishness and es- 
 sential ugliness, and have accomplished their own downfall. 
 Science and inventions have performed their wonders, but 
 divorced from Christianity, they mock and betray the civ- 
 ilization which makes of them a god. Education has in- 
 creased knowledge and power, but the world is even now 
 being treated to the spectacle of a nation with great educa- 
 tional institutions and all the paraphernalia of civilization, 
 which has in the most enlightened age of the world reverted 
 to barbarism. Will the horror of Germany's utter moral 
 collapse in the midst of all her boasted civilization, so 
 rebuke the folly of men in our own nation that they shall 
 worship God and not their own inventions? So far from 
 civilization Christianizing, it contains in itself the seeds 
 of its own destruction. Divorced from Christian faith, its 
 arrogant schemes of godless ambition and of cruelty far
 
 CRUCIALITY OF A SAVED SOUTH 215 
 
 outstrip any which the naked barbarians of the forests could 
 even conceive. Civilization does not even civilize. Only 
 Christianity can do that. The Indian graduate of Ameri- 
 can government schools often returns to the blanket and 
 the wild and debasing orgies of tribal superstition. But the 
 Christian convert in the mission churches is a changed man, 
 with a new countenance; Christianity has civilized him. 
 Dr. James Stewart, who had fine opportunities to study the 
 effect of the contact of civilized nations with Africa, de- 
 clares: "I have never seen a savage whom civilization 
 without Christianity had succeeded in civilizing." We shall 
 never Christianize the heathen by selling them sewing ma- 
 chines and graphophones, nor the immigrant by letting him 
 make money and ride on Pullman cars. It takes Christ 
 the Saviour to make people Christian, or even to civilize 
 them. Left to itself, civilization is such a traitor, so full 
 of ingratitude, such a renegade, that it is ever ready to 
 turn its cowardly back on the Christ who has made pos- 
 sible its comforts, its fuller pleasures and richer enjoyments, 
 and boastfully proclaim its scientific attainments and en- 
 vironmental improvements as its god and religion. More 
 reality in our Christian faith alone can save our civiliza- 
 tion, or civilize and save the nations that lie in darkness. 
 The crucial point in the South's ability to help America 
 and the sin-burdened world is the genuineness of its faith 
 in the lowly Nazarene. 
 
 Helping by having. Joseph E. McAfee, in "Missions 
 Striking Home," shows how German educational ideals 
 came to bulk so large in America. The Germans had what 
 American scholars (may they revise their opinion!) re- 
 garded as the best in education. Therefore our young men, 
 who elected to pursue learning to its degree-giving limits,
 
 216 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 flocked to Germany tor post-graduate work. Germany in- 
 fluenced us by having what we considered the best. Cecil 
 Rhodes, the South African millionaire, conceived a desire 
 to spread English ideals throughout the civilized world. 
 To accomplish it, he established the Rhodes scholarships 
 at Oxford. There, for generations to come, young men 
 who are likely to exert more than ordinary influence in life, 
 are to drink in learning and the English way of looking at 
 life. Rhodes* idea was to Anglicize the world by bringing 
 a promising section of it under the influence of what Eng- 
 land has to give. On the same principle, the world is being 
 Americanized in no small part through the thousands of 
 students from other lands now studying in American col- 
 leges and universities. There are said to be 1 ,200 Japanese 
 students now in American institutions. Within a decade 
 Chinese students in this country have increased from a few 
 score to more than 1,000. John R. Mott, who is authority 
 for the above figures, declares that there are also more 
 than 1,500 Latin-American students now in this country. 
 These foreign students, when they return to their own lands, 
 will wield a tremendous influence. How much it would 
 mean if the student bodies in the institutions they attend 
 really voiced in their life the spirit and genius of Chris- 
 tianity. The present Chinese Ambassador at Washington, 
 Dr. Wellington Woo, is only twenty-nine years of age and 
 is a graduate of Columbia University of New York. If 
 we, in our college life and in our business and civic life, 
 show forth the spirit and fruits of Christian faith, we shall 
 thereby reach the whole world with our gospel. This is 
 no mere logic of an advocate. A whole-hearted, effective 
 Home Mission program, is an incalculable aid to Foreign 
 .Mission effort, and an absolutely essential aid. If we do
 
 CKUCIALITY OP A SAVED SOUTH 217 
 
 not hold the homeland for Christ, what we are will speak 
 too loud to allow the great pagan masses to hear what our 
 missionaries say. 
 
 Testimony of men who know. In every day our foreign 
 missionaries have urged the cruciality of a triumphant mis- 
 sion program in our own country as essential to the ef- 
 fectiveness of Foreign Mission effort. The words of Austin 
 Phelps should not be forgotten. He said: "If I were a 
 missionary in Canton, China, my first prayer every morning 
 would be for the success of American Home Missions, for 
 the sake of Canton, China." One of the ablest and most 
 esteemed missionaries of our own Foreign Mission Board 
 is Dr. Everett Gill, of Rome, Italy. Dr. Gill writes: "There 
 is no room for argument and there should be no need for 
 appeal. Unless we Christianize America with the help of 
 Home Missions and furnish the financial, moral and spiritual 
 munitions, the work of Foreign Missions is doomed. If the 
 men in khaki at the front are dependent on the men in 
 overalls at home, equally, if not more so, the Foreign Mis- 
 sion enterprise is dependent on Home Missions." Dr. F. 
 B. Meyer, of London, was approached by Mr. Richard H. 
 Edmonds of Baltimore, with the question: "Dr. Meyer, 
 you have just traveled around the world studying Foreign 
 Missions; tell me what in your view is the greatest mission 
 field in the world." Quick as a flash came the answer: 
 "The United States, because here you have all nationalities 
 of the world centered." 
 
 We must Christianize the South. Each paragraph in this 
 chapter, and, indeed, each chapter in the book, has been 
 intended as a plea that we must Christianize our own coun- 
 try. For Southern Baptists that means that we must Chris- 
 tianize the South, the section of the nation in which we
 
 218 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 are responsible for the saving effect of the gospel mes- 
 sage. It is supremely important that this should be done. 
 For the South's sake and America's sake, we must do it. 
 A horrible example now paints lurid the sky of the world's 
 vision, showing that a civilization which rejects God may 
 be more miserable and bring a hundred-fold more misery 
 in the world than naked barbarism. For the world's sake 
 we must do it. Neither with carnal nor spiritual weapons 
 can we wage a triumphant warfare at the front, if we are 
 weakened and menaced by scores of untaken forts in our 
 rear. Not only does our non-conclusive warfare with evil 
 at home set a bad example to non-Christian lands; it also 
 lessens our vitality and power to help others. We cannot 
 win the victory over heathenism with a faith that is too 
 weak to conquer whole zones of life where it has had 
 generations of unchecked opportunity. I take off my hat 
 in gratitude for every capable advocate of spreading the 
 gospel to the world's end. We need more of them. But 
 my heart hungers that more of these same leaders shall 
 have an idealism which shall understand and be mastered 
 by the immense victories that are to be won and must be 
 won at home. If we do not win these victories or even 
 realize that need for winning them exists, there is no chance 
 that our bravest programs for other nations shall come to 
 the successful fruition our Lord intended. Dr. Robert E. 
 Speer, a noted Foreign Mission leader, declares on this 
 point: "It will be vain to send our little bands over the 
 world to preach the gospel of purity and peace, love and 
 power, if in our social, industrial and racial conditions in 
 America we are preaching uncleanness, strife, enmity and 
 failure." John R. Mott, looking to the bearing of this 
 principle on our mission impact at the front, exclaims:
 
 219 
 
 "The ultimate triumph of pure Christianity in non-Christian 
 lands depends absolutely upon Christianizing this impact. 
 Only a Christianity powerful enough to dominate our social, 
 national and international life and relationships will finally 
 commend itself to the peoples to whom we go." 
 
 Planters and waterers. Paul may plant and Apollos may 
 water, but God gives the increase. The divine plan in 
 missions is that there shall be both planting and watering. 
 Unexcelled in planting, Southern Baptists have been back- 
 ward in watering and cultivating their spiritual plants. 
 Their dominant point of view in missions has been that of 
 the pioneer. If the seed was only sown faithfully, they 
 have not had a tender conscience about nurturing the life 
 of the plants. This has affected their attitude toward mis- 
 sions at home and abroad. It has tended to minimize the 
 task in America, while it seemed to magnify that abroad. 
 Stirred into a more or less artificial zeal by the presentation 
 of the overwhelming extensive reach of the task in regions 
 beyond, our passion has usually lacked the ballast of an 
 understanding that not only must the world be reached, 
 but it must be taught, as we go, so that it, also, may join 
 the goers. This concept makes the Foreign Mission pro- 
 gram at once larger and less staggering, for the Kingdom 
 is like leaven, and leaven works. At the same time, our 
 pioneer attitude has unjustly minimized the compelling 
 appeal of missions in the homeland and in doing so has 
 crippled Foreign Missions, through resultant weakness in 
 the base of supplies, and through our failure to create a 
 Christian example and impact in America to back up the 
 efforts of our faithful missionaries on other shores. May 
 God graciously open the heart of each one who may have 
 patiently perused these pages to that fuller concept of the
 
 220 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 missionary program. May each of us take to heart, with' 
 out belittling or ignoring any of it, the whole program of 
 Christ. He was the founder of a world religion, but spent 
 his whole life teaching and healing in little Palestine. He 
 would have us practice the missionary spirit with our whole 
 hearts, in our home, our community, our State, our section, 
 our nation and the whole world. When we shall give our- 
 selves to the full program of Christ, without ignoring or 
 despising any of it, we shall reap the ripe and complete 
 results of full obedience to our Lord. May God graciously 
 open the heart of everyone of us to this committal! 
 
 TOPICS FOR SPECIAL STUDY IN CHAPTER X. 
 
 1. To what degree is America a Christian country? 
 
 2. Give Providential indications of God's purpose that the 
 South shall do much to save America and the world? 
 
 3. Give instances which indicate that our impact on other lands 
 does not confirm the message of our missionaries. 
 
 4. Show that only Christianity can civilize. 
 
 5. Give evidence that we must Christianize the South, or 
 greatly cripple our missionary value to the world.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 It has seemed that it may be of more use to the reader to 
 give here the list of books which have been most helpful to 
 me in preparing this work, rather than undertake to present 
 a complete bibliography. Practically everyone of the books 
 named is of distinct merit in its field. References to chapters 
 in "The Home Mission Task" are given because of the un- 
 usual value of those chapters. The book is temporarily out 
 of print, but several thousand copies of it are in the hands of 
 our Baptist people. Any of the books named may be had by 
 ordering from the Publicity Department of the Home Mission 
 Board, Atlanta, Georgia. Except "Our Southern Highlanders," 
 by Kephart, which costs $2.50 and is worth it, the books named 
 cost from fifty cents up, none of them above $1.25 the copy. 
 
 ON GENERAL HOME MISSIONS. 
 
 The Mission of Our Nation James F. Love 
 
 The Task That Challenges S. L. Morris 
 
 Missions Striking Home Joseph E. McAfee 
 
 World Missions from the Home Base Joseph E. McAfee 
 
 Housekeeping for Our Neighbor (Chap, in Home Mission 
 
 Task) Wm. E. Hatcher 
 
 Horizon of American Missions I. N. McCash 
 
 Baptist Missions in the South Victor I. Masters 
 
 ON THE NEGRO. 
 
 Negro Life in the South W. D. Weatherford 
 
 Present Forces in Negro Life W. D. Weatherford 
 
 Life and Times of Booker Washington B. F. Riley 
 
 Up from Slavery . Booker Washington 
 
 In Black and White Mrs. L. H. Hammond 
 
 Race Question in the South (Chap, in H. M. Task) 
 
 J. B. Gambrell 
 
 The Souls of Black Folk W. E. B. Du Bois 
 
 Negro Year Book Monroe N. Works
 
 222 THE CALL OF THE SOUTH 
 
 ON THE MOUNTAINEER. 
 
 Our Southern Highlanders Horace Kephart 
 
 The Southern Highlands (Chap, in H. M. Task) 
 
 John E. White 
 
 ON A GOSPEL FOR A PROSPEROUS AGE. 
 
 Money Mad Courtland Myers 
 
 The Money God John C. Van Dyke 
 
 Southern Wealth and Its Consecration (Chap, in H. M. 
 
 Task) Richard H. Edmonds 
 
 Religion and Money (a tract) Edwin M. Poteat 
 
 ON FALSE FAITHS, RATIONALISM AND LIBERALISM. 
 
 The Other Side of Evolution Alexander Patterson 
 
 Paul and the Revolt Against Him W. C. Wilkinson 
 
 The Signs of the Times I. M. Haldeman 
 
 The Religio-Medical Masquerade Fred W. Peabody 
 
 Christian Science I. M. Haldeman 
 
 American Ideals C. S. Cooper 
 
 The Church and the Kingdom Jesse B. Thomas 
 
 The Baptist Debt to the World J. W. Porter 
 
 Mormonism, the Islam of America Bruce Kinney 
 
 Christ in the Social Order W. M. Clow 
 
 ON IMMIGRATION. 
 Immigrant Forces Wm. P. Shriver 
 
 ON SAVING WHAT WE HAVE. 
 
 Country Church in the South Victor I. Masters 
 
 The Church and Rural Life Paul Vogt 
 
 Rural Christendom Charles Roads 
 
 The Country Town Wilbert L. Anderson 
 
 Country Church and the Rural Problem K. L. Butterfield
 
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