General Baptist Home Mission. A NEW YEAR'S APPEAL. 322, Commercial Road, E., January 7th, 1881. DEAR BROTHER,-Your church has plenty to do. Its hands are quite full. We are anxious, under such circumstances, lest even ordinary duties should be forgotten. It is within your knowledge that our Association, some twenty years ago, determined to lay upon the churches "no greater burden than these necessary things," viz., the support of three institutions, among which the HOME MISSION is first named. We ask you not to overlook this primary duty in the year on which we have just entered. Will you kindly make arrangements for a Home Mission collection between now and the close of the financial year, which will be early in June? There are many considerations why you should give your very best attention to this request. We mention the following: 1. The Home Mission is the institution, not of a committee, but of the Denomination. The Association controls it, and the Association urges its claims upon every church in the Connexion. 2. Its aim, as the name indicates, is to extend the influence of the Denomination in England. It renders support to poor churches which, without its aid, could not continue their good work. It helps new causes till they are able to help themselves. It seeks to open up new ground, and to establish churches in places where there is a lack of spiritual provision for the needs of the people. It also seeks to unite the whole strength of the Denomination in the building of one new chapel at a time. 3. The means of the Society are utterly inadequate to the work it is expected to do. Earnest and deserving appeals for aid have to be rejected every year for lack of funds. With the present income it is almost impossible to do any aggressive work. The contributions for last year amounted to fivepence farthing per member. Surely our churches can do more than that. If the 119 non-contributing churches were to contribute at the same rate as the 68 contributing churches, the income would be increased by £700 or £800. Is not this a consummation devoutly to be wished? We believe it can be realised, but the churches want leaders. Will you kindly read this circular to your church, and earnestly press the friends to do something? Will you pray for the Home Mission? If you will do this we are quite sure that the year 1881 will witness a revival of the Home Mission spirit throughout the Denomination. We are cordially yours, J. CLIFFORD, M.A., J. FLETCHER, } Hon. Secs. P.S.-See the offer of a deputation on page 459 of the December Magazine. HAVE met with a cordial welcome, and a ready response. One correspondent states that "the relation between the ministry and the congregation is far from being what it ought," and hints that some opportunities of a fair and candid criticism on the work of the pulpit is one of the chief desiderata of the hour. I have written to him, asking for a fuller statement of his views. Another thinks the letter of the doctor's wife "capital, and full of sense," and concludes with the hope that "our minister will take a hint." A third writes about the "Lord's Supper Service and the minister." But I pass by these, to two letters that happen to be on the same topic, and that show the two sides of a familiar shield so well, that to give one without the other would certainly be unfair—they are on what I may call (as the phrase occurs in each), II. THE "SIMPLE GOSPEL" IN THE PULPIT. "Dear Sir,-As you have opened a page of the Magazine for Words from the Pews' about the Pulpit, I take the liberty of writing to say that, as far as I can judge, although I am only one, what we want in the pulpit now-a-days is the simple gospel. We get something called science, and history, and duty, and self-sacrifice, and work, and I don't know what, but it doesn't seem to me that we get the simple gospel. Our minister has been with us more than two years, and yet I've scarcely heard him, in all that time, say anything about the blood,' or the atonement,' or 'saving faith.' He did once preach from 'Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world;' but where our old minister would have mentioned the blood,' and the 'atonement' fifty times, this young man didn't do it more than once. I don't mean that he doesn't believe in the atonement. I know he does, for I wouldn't write this to you if I hadn't spoken to him first. I don't believe in giving hints' in a round-about way, and writing to magazines, without going first, according to the scriptural method, and 'telling it to the brother.' I have had a long talk with him, and I can tell that he has as strong a belief in the death of Christ as the sacrifice for our sins, and the proof supreme,' as he calls it, of the love of God, as I have; and this puzzles me all the more. For do as I will I can't help feeling that I miss something from his preaching which makes me wonder whether I haven't heard another gospel altogether, as Paul says. Really I don't know what to make of it. He is a very good young man, and works a deal harder than ever our old minister did, and the people do come and get good, and they do a lot of work; still I feel as if I don't get any spiritual food. Can you help me? What ought I to do? I write to you not in much hope, but with a little. Please don't print my name, it is not necessary-but if you can say anything about this matter that will explain it and help me, I shall be very much obliged. Yours, *****" I have a theory that for every problem there is a fact somewhere, if we could only find it, that is its solution. But life is so isolated, and the all-interpreting facts so rarely come into the neighbourhood of our perplexing experiences, that we carry our problems with us for years unsolved. Still the following letter, separated by only two posts from the former, goes some way to suggest an explanation of *****'s difficulty. Omitting the preamble, it runs thus: "I came to this town, as you know, five months ago. I have been to both the Baptist chapels, for I am a Baptist, and I am convinced that I ought not to support error by uniting with a church whose avowed beliefs and practices I do not accept. But I am in a strait. Both ministers are earnest and good men, and preach what they call 'the simple gospel;' i.e, the most thoroughly washedout, lifeless, narrow evangelicalism; and add to this, fiery and impatient denunciations of men who do their work in another way, as heterodox,' blighted by 'modern thought,' and so on. Against scientific men, although they themselves are as innocent of scientific knowledge as my pen, they are rabid, and make me writhe in my seat by their insane statements. They use obsolete language, as though they were last century men risen from the dead; talk again and again of 'the blood' without saying 'the blood of Jesus Christ,' or ever taking the trouble to give any idea whatever as to what that most profound and solemnly suggestive phrase means; constantly drop into intolerable palaver about the 'the Lord's WIDE-AWAKE BOYS. 65 dear people;' and are so unctuous in their speech, and fall so incontinently into the snare of vapid over-appeal, that every sermon is an affliction almost greater than I can bear. I verily believe they think every man is a Philippian jailor, fresh from an earthquake, quivering with fear, and asking "What must I do to be saved ?" It never occurs to them that men do not exactly know what it is they have lost; that in many, yearnings for God and righteousness are extremely feeble, a sense of sin dull, and a feeling of doubt about religious truth ever present. Now, Mr. Editor, I am not unaware that this kind of thing (I won't call it preaching) suits some people-I know it does: more's the pity! -but surely we need not have two editions published at the same time, and within half a mile of one another. Could not something be done to distribute Baptist preachers with a little more regard to the probable wants of the neighbourhood in which they are located? To cease being a Baptist in fact, as well as in name, I am ashamed; but how to endure this, I know not. "I am yours very truly, J. R. HUME." The first thing I thought of when I read those letters was, How true is that saying of George Eliot's, that you can only do people good by using the ideas they already have? The correspondent ***** has been so long accustomed to associate certain ideas with particular phrases and terms, that if the phrases and terms are missing all is missing. The same truths expressed in the current English of the day, and free from ancient technical and theological language, do not reach her mind. The joint is cooked in a different method from the one adopted for fifty years, and therefore there is no food. Is it too much to say that the hearer should make a vigorous effort to get at the truths, and therefore should try to free herself from the bondage to particular terms? If the facts and truths are given in clear, fresh, and crisp English, then, surely, that is a gain to the majority of hearers, and is likely to be a gain to the kingdom of heaven and the world. Mr. Hume's suggestion is one that no less august and responsible a body can deal with than our Association, and I advise that he make a Case" of it and send it to the Secretary. JOHN CLIFFord. lide-Awake Boys. For the Young. GENERAL GRANT is reported as having told a story lately to illustrate how much luck or chance circumstances had to do with making a man's fortune. When a boy, he stated, his mother one morning found herself without butter for breakfast, and sent him to borrow some from a neighbour. Going into the house without knocking, young Grant overheard a letter read from the son of his neighbour, who was then at West Point, stating that he had failed in examination, and was coming home. He got the butter, took it home, and without waiting for breakfast, ran down to the office of the Congress-man from that district. "Mr. Hamar," he said, "will you appoint me to West Point?" "No, is there, and has three years to serve." "But suppose he should fail, will you send me?" Mr. Hamar laughed. "If he don't go through, no use for you to try, Uly." "Promise you'll give me a chance, Mr. Hamar, anyhow." Mr. Hamar promised. The next day the defeated lad came home, and the Congress-man, laughing at Uly's sharpness, gave him the appointment. "Now," said Grant, "it was my mother's being out of butter that made me General and President. But he was mistaken. It was his own shrewdness to see the chance and promptness to seize it, that urged him upward. Another instance, where the success was not so great, occurs to us. A lad of sixteen, shop-boy in a Western town, had saved three hundred dollars in 1860. Going down street one day during the winter, when the Southern States were seceding one by one, he heard a passer-by remark, "North Carolina has gone out." At the same moment, his eye fell on a barrel of turpentine exposed for sale. "No North Carolina, no turpentine," thought he. He ran to the bank, drew out his precious three hundred dollars, and invested it all in turpentine. Before the year was out, he realized enough to give him a good capital with which to embark in business. But how many boys in the place of these two would have moped sluggishly along, gaining nothing but the butter and the news. I. OUR MAGAZINE FOR 1881.-From various commendatory notices of this year's magazine, we select this one from the Greenock Daily Telegraph :—“Mr. Clifford continues to make the General Baptist Magazine so lively and interesting that it can be read with pleasure by members of all the other churches. Even here in the North it has not a few friends, though some of its features would probably startle the more stereotyped and slow-paced of the sons of the Covenanters. Mr. Clifford does not believe a bit in dullness; but he always writes like a scholar and a Christian gentleman." Our readers will be glad to know that "outsiders" appreciate their organ. We may add that The Freeman also favoured us with a specially eulogistic word. II. PARLIAMENTARY PATIENCE has been strained almost to breakage by the incontinent length and prodigious triviality of the debate on the Address. No doubt it is politic to pay out to the Home Rulers as much hemp as is necessary for the purpose of self-strangulation; but it must be a little irritating to a minister like Mr. Gladstone, who is more eager to stay the rebellion by acts of justice than to suppress it by the strong arm of the law. Liberal England waits the Prime Minister's measure with confidence; but it is becoming weary of the folly that puts off the day of the expected boon. III. THE TACTICS OF THE HOME RULERS.-It does not seem difficult to find the key to the movements of the Parnellite section of the House of Commons. They know, as everybody does, that it is difficult, if not impossible, to wring ameliorating measures out of the aristocratic House of Lords except by wholesale menace. English and Irish history alike show that they do not yield a fragment till they are compelled. The Parnellites know that their case is desperate, and hence the policy of the Land League in Ireland, and the persistent and seemingly blind and fatuous course of obstruction in the House of Commons. It is as easy to condemn them as it is to speak, but if we were in their case and had their work to do, how should we do it? That is the test. Let us try it. IV. FACTS ABOUT IRELAND. (1.) Total male population is 2,600,000; above 20 years of age, 1,300,000. Farmers, 42,000; farm labourers, 400,000. (2.) The whole land measures 20,000,000 acres. The grazing land amounts to 10,198,139, or a little more than half; and that for tillage amounts to 5,121,788; the rest being bog, and waste, and mountain. (3.) The owners of land in Ireland number 68,758; and of these 1758 live abroadie., are absentee landlords; leaving a total of 67,000 at home; and yet the 1700 draw one-quarter of the entire rental. (4.) The Three F's are, fixity of tenure, fair rents, and free sale. (5.) Out of 682,237 tenants there are 428,925 whose holdings are under £15 per annum; and 63,154 less than £30. V. WHAT TO DO WITH IRELAND.— Mr. Daniel Grant, M.P. for Marylebone, in a most able lecture on this subject, recommends 1. The reclamation of the waste lands. 2. The abolition of the laws of primogeniture and entail in Ireland. 3. An alteration of Land Tenure Laws, so as to secure the 1st and 2nd of the three F.'s, and fixed terms of purchase instead of the 3rd. 4. Increased facilities for emigration. VI. "SNOWED UP."-Many Englishmen will remember the 17th, 18th, and 19th of January, 1881, as long as they live, as the time when the supposed weather of the North Pole visited us. Judges have been snowed up-London isolated-railway traffic stopped-piers washed away-pedestrians blown off their feet-many lives lost-and many others filled with misery and want. Let us comfort the bereaved, cheer the suffering, and relieve the poor and needy. VII. TROUBLE IN THE ENGLISH CHURCH AND THE EMANCIPATION OF CHRISTIANITY.-St. Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey have recently been made to resound with the voices of two most able "political" Churchmen. Canon Liddon, goaded by the imprisonment of Messrs. Dale and Enraght, the two disobedient ecclesiastics, threatens Disestablishment, and looks forward to freedom from State Patronage and Control with keen interest. But Canon Farrar will have none of it. Disestablishment, says he, is wanted by infidels and secularists because they are the foes of Christianity, and by Ritualists because they wince under the galling control of the secular courts; and therefore he, like others, is for embracing everything and anything everything and anything rather than Disestablishment. This is the evil to be feared. Let us resist the perfidious policy of wholesale comprehension of believers, misbelievers, unbe SCRAPS FROM THE EDITOR'S WASTE BASKET. lievers, and know-nothings. It is perilous to manhood. It enfeebles the conscience, saps conviction, and destroys vital religion. Christianity is always strongest when it is free. VIII. WHO IS FREE?-Canon Farrar insinuates, that Nonconformist ministers are not free to say all they think to be true. Is there any necessity for the eloquent Canon to defend his own position by such inuendoes? He knows that the Nonconformist ministry has been one of outspoken courage and daring in the main, though, like other conditions of life, it has furnished some incapables who have had to keep a place by cowardice that they could not keep by ability. And if he does not know, we can tell him, that where a man has capacity for pulpit and pastoral work, there is no place so free, so gladdening, and so bathed in blessing, as that filled by a Free Church minister. That statement we can back by a cloud of witnesses. IX. THE REVISED ENGLISH VERSION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT is expected within a few weeks. Our March issue will contain papers thereupon. X. AUGUSTINE said, in one of his incisive sermons, of the ladies of his congregation-"In one tip of her little ear she wears a ring, the price of which would give food to ten thousand persons." Are the ladies of our churches prepared to give an honest account of their expenditure in the light of the needs of the church of Christ, and of the abundant suffering on its borders. "Every one of us" must give account of what he wastes or misspends to God. XI. A BAZAAR, it will be seen from our advertisement sheet, is about to be held at Burton-on-Trent on behalf of the Parker Street chapel. Our friends have raised over £600 since the summer of 1879; but having a debt of nearly £800, they are naturally anxious to reduce it as early as possible. Burton grows with prodigious rapidity, and this "new" work is in a new part of Burton, and deserves our hearty help. Will not our lady friends respond heartily to this appeal? XII. MANY OR FEW.-Mr. Browning wrote in 1868-"I can have little doubt that my writings have been, in the main, too hard for many I should have been pleased to communicate with; but I never designedly tried to puzzle people, as some of my critics have supposed. On the other hand, I never pretended to offer such literature as should be a substitute for a cigar or a game of dominoes to an idle man. So perhaps, on the whole, I get my deserts, and something over-not a crowd, but a few I value more." 67 XIII. ANOTHER SIGN OF THE TIMES. -Note this.-In its review of the medical year the Lancet (December 25) says:"Alcohol, as a general therapeutic agent, is being subjected every where to most suspicious treatment by physicians and by boards of guardians alike. It has still friends who think it indispensable either to preserve health or to cure disease, but the wisest physicians show themselves chary either of taking or recommending much of it." XIV. WHAT CAUSES THE MIRAGE?Experimental proof that mirage is the result of difference of temperature in the strata of air near the ground, and higher above it, has been obtained by M. Dufour, at Lake Leman, in Switzerland. The professor tested the temperature at different heights above the lake, while yet the sun was hidden by the Alps, finding the strata nearer the water warmer than those farther above it. His paper on this subject, read before the French scientists lately, gives some interesting examples of the illusions of the mirage. XV. THE SUN AS A COOK.-The sun, it is well known, is the chief source of heat and motion; but the difficulty we have is to turn it to our own use. This difficulty, like all others, is being mastered. A Frenchman has utilized the solar radiance by so reflecting and concentrating it upon a kettle, as to keep up a supply of steam available for cooking food and running light engines, like sewing machines. What next? XVI. "THE RED CROSS KNIGHT" method of Christian work is very much in vogue just now; but it gives no more promise of abiding results than in any former period. The late Mr. Robert Barclay, a member of the Society of Friends, who made it his business to inspect the various Christian missions carried on in London, says distinctly "that he was deeply impressed with the fact that Home Missions not in any connection with any church, and without any system of membership, had few of those elements of success, vitality, and stability, which the direct efforts of Christian churches to extend their borders seemed to him to possess." "Putting forth in quest of adventures" is very interesting, no doubt, but it is not so effective as warfare waged on organized and well-sustained methods. But who's to blame? Mainly the churches. Look to it, pastors and officers all! There are voluntary workers near you! Find them a place. Set them to work, and seek to give permanence to the results of their labour. |