A Trip Abroad Part 8

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This Church of Christ earnestly pleads for the complete restoration of the primitive Christianity of the New Testament, for the cultivation of personal piety, and benevolence, and for loving service for Jesus the Christ.

Twynholm is the name given to a piece of property, originally intended for a hotel, situated in the western part of London, at the intersection of four streets in Fulham Cross. These streets make it a place easily reached, and the numerous saloons make the necessity for such an influence as emanates from a church of G.o.d very great. There is a good, commodious audience-room at the rear, and several smaller rooms about the premises. The front part is owned and controlled by a brother who has a family of Christians to live there and run the restaurant on the first floor and the lodging rooms on the two upper floors, where there are accommodations for a few young men. Here I had a desirable room, and was well cared for by the brother and sister who manage the house. The restaurant is not run for profit, but to afford the people a place to eat cheaply and to spend time without going where intoxicants are sold.

The patrons are allowed to sit at the tables and play such games as dominoes, the aim being to counteract the evil influences of that part of the city as far as possible. One night I attended a meeting of the Band of Hope in a big bas.e.m.e.nt room at Twynholm, where a large number of small children were being taught to pray, and were receiving good instruction along the line of temperance. Several older persons were on duty to preserve order among these children, many of whom had doubtless come from homes where little about order and good behavior is ever taught. Soon after this meeting I went up on the street, and there, near a saloon with six visible entrances, a street musician was playing his organ, while small girls, perhaps not yet in their teens, were being encouraged to dance.

At Twynholm I also attended the Social Hour meeting, which was an enjoyable affair. A program of recitations, songs, etc., was rendered.

This also, I suppose, is to offset some of the evil agencies of the great city and keep the young people under good influences. The Woman's Meeting convenes on Monday afternoon. The leaders of the meeting are ladies of the church, who are laboring for the betterment of an inferior cla.s.s of London women. I spoke before this meeting, by request, and was, so far as I now recollect, the only male person present. It is the custom to use the instrument in connection with the singing in this meeting, but I asked them to refrain on this occasion. An orphans' home is also conducted, having members of this congregation as its managers.

It is a very busy church, and for being busy and diligent it is to be commended, but I believe there is too much organization. But here, as elsewhere in Britain, there are many very commendable things about the brethren. I have already spoken of system in their proceedings. They outline their work for a given period of time, specifying the Scriptures to be read, the leaders of the meetings, and who is to preach on each Lord's day night. Then, for the sake of convenience, these schedules are printed, and they are carefully followed. This is far ahead of the haphazard method, or lack of method, at home, where brethren sometimes come together neither knowing what the lesson will be nor who will conduct the meeting.

Whatever may be the faults of these disciples in the old country, it must be said to their credit that they are kind and hospitable to strangers, and make a visiting brother welcome. The talent in their congregations is better developed than it is here, and their meetings are conducted in a more orderly and systematic manner. They are more faithful in the observance of the Lord's supper than many in this land.

The percentage of preachers giving their whole time to the work is less than it is here, but the number who can and do take part in the public work of the church is proportionately larger than it is here.

I will now close this chapter and this volume with the address of Brother Anderson, chairman of the annual meeting held last year at Wigan:

DEAR BRETHREN:--In accepting the responsible and honorable position in which you have placed me, I do so conscious of a defect that I hope you will do your best to help and bear with. Please speak as distinctly as possible, so that I may hear what is said. There may be other defects that I might have helped, but please do your best to help me in this respect.

I heartily thank you for the honor conferred upon me. Whether I deserve it or not, I know that it is well meant on your part. We prefer honor to dishonor; but what one may count a great honor, another may lightly esteem. The point of view is almost everything in these matters; but if positions of honor in the kingdoms of the earth are lightly esteemed, positions of honor in the kingdom of G.o.d have a right to be esteemed more highly.

We are met in conference as subjects of the kingdom of G.o.d, as heirs of everlasting glory, having a hope greater than the world can give, and a peace that the world can neither give nor take away. To preside over such a gathering, met to consider the best means of spreading the Gospel of Christ among men, is a token of respect upon which I place a very high value. The fact that it came unexpectedly does not lessen the pleasure.

I know that you have not placed me here on account of my tact and business ability to manage this conference well. Had I possessed these qualities in a marked degree, you would no doubt have taken notice of them before this time. I know that you only wish to pay a token of respect to a plain old soldier before he lays aside his harness, and, brethren, I thank you for that.

For forty-four years I have enjoyed sweet and uninterrupted fellows.h.i.+p in this brotherhood. For over forty years my voice has been heard in the preaching of the Gospel of the Grace of G.o.d. For close on thirty years all my time has been given to the proclamation and defense of New Testament truth as held by us as a people. Every year has added strength to the conviction that G.o.d has led me to take my stand among the people who of all the people on the earth are making the best and most consistent effort to get back to the religion established by Christ and his apostles. I therefore bless the day that I became one of you.

Had our position been wrong, I have given myself every opportunity of knowing it. Circ.u.mstances have compelled me to examine our foundations again and again. I have been called upon to defend our faith, when attacked, times not a few. Whatever may be the effect that I have had upon others, my own confidence has been increased at every turn. To-day I am certain that if the New Testament is right, we can not be far wrong; and if the New Testament can not be trusted, there is an end to the whole matter. But the claims of Christ and the truth of the New Testament are matters upon which a doubt never rises. As years roll on, it becomes more easy to believe and harder to doubt. Knowledge, reason, and experience now supply such varied yet harmonious and converging lines of evidence that a doubt seems impossible. Difficulties we may have, and perhaps must have, as long as we live, but we can certainly rise above the fog land of doubt. Considering all this, it gives me more pleasure to preside over this gathering than over any other voluntary gathering on earth. It is a voluntary gathering. We do not profess to be here by Divine appointment. It is a meeting of heaven's freemen to consider the best means of advancing the will of G.o.d among men. While met, may we all act in a manner worthy of the great object which brings us together.

Faith, forbearance and watchfulness will be required as long as we live, if we wish to keep the unity of the faith in the bond of peace. All those who set out for a complete return to Jerusalem have not held on their way; some have gone a long way back and others are going. What has happened in other lands may happen here, unless we watch and are faithful. The more carefully we look into matters, we shall be the less inclined to move. Putting all G.o.d's arrangements faithfully and earnestly to the test, and comparing them with others, increases our faith in them. Faithfulness increases faith. This keeps growing upon you till you become certain that only G.o.d's means will accomplish G.o.d's ends. Sectarianism, tested by experience, is a failure.

The time was when our danger in departing from our simple plea of returning to the Bible alone lay in our being moved by clerical and sectarian influences. To the young in particular in the present day that can hardly be called our greatest danger. The influences at work to produce doubt in regard to the truth of the Bible were never so great as they are now. This used to be the particular work of professed infidels; now it is more largely the work of professed Christian scholars. If you wish to pa.s.s for a "scholar," you must not profess to believe the Old Testament. You must not say too much against the truth of that book, or you may be called in question, but you can go a good long way before there is much danger.

Jesus believed that old book to be the word of G.o.d. But he was not a "scholar." He was the son of a country joiner, and you must not expect him to rise too far above his environment. It surprises me that the "scholars" have not called more attention to the ignorance of Jesus in this respect. They will no doubt pay more attention to this later on; for as _Christian_ "scholars" it becomes them to be consistent, and I have no doubt that they will shortly, in this respect, make up for lost time.

To expect that none of our young people will be influenced by this parade of scholars.h.i.+p is to expect too much. But faith in Christ should keep them from rus.h.i.+ng rashly out against a book that Christ professed to live up to and came to fulfill. This battle of the scholars over the truth of the Bible is only being fought. We have no wish that it should not be fought. Everything has a right to be tested with caution and fairness, and when the battle is lost, it will be time enough for us to pa.s.s over to the side of the enemy. This question as to the truth of the Old Testament will be settled, and as sure as Christ is the Son of G.o.d, and has all power in heaven and on earth, it will be settled upon the lines of the att.i.tude which he took up towards that book, and it will be settled to the disgrace of those who professed to believe in Jesus, but deserted his position before full examination was made. That no transcriber ever made a slip, or that no translator ever made a mistake, is not held by any one. But the day that it is proved that the Old Testament is not substantially true, faith in Christ and Christianity will get a shake from which it will never recover.

We have not lost faith in the Bible. There is no need for doing so. The word of the Lord will endure forever. But meantime, brethren, let us be faithful, prayerful, and cautious, and be not easily moved from the rock of G.o.d's word by the pretensions of "scholars" or of science, falsely so called.

I do not know that there is any necessary connection between the two, but a belief in evolution and scholarly doubts about large portions of the Old Testament, as a rule, go together. You must not profess to know anything of science in many quarters if you doubt evolution. In the bulk of even religious books it is referred to as a matter that science has settled beyond dispute. To expect that many of our young people will not be so far carried along by this current is to expect too much. Many of them will be carried so far; it is a question of how many and how far.

There perhaps never was a theory before believed by as many educated people without proof as the theory of evolution. It is an unproved theory; there is not a fact beneath it. That you have low forms of life, and forms rising higher and higher till you get to man, is fact. But that a higher species ever came from a lower is without proof. Let those who doubt this say when and where such a thing took place, and name the witnesses. Not only are there no facts in proof of it, but it flies in the face of facts without number. If like from like is not established, then nothing can be established by observation and experience. What other theory do we believe which contradicts all that we know to be true in regard to the subject to which it refers?

Not only does it contradict fact and experience, it contradicts reason.

If you listen to the voice of reason, you can no more believe that the greater came from the less than you can believe that something came from nothing. We are intuitively bound to believe that an effect can not be greater than its cause. But the theory of evolution contradicts this at every step along the whole line.

I am anxious to find the truth in regard to anything that has a bearing upon my belief in G.o.d or religion. But in trying to find the truth, I have never regretted being true to myself. To slavishly follow others is, to say the least of it, unmanly. I do not believe in evolution because G.o.d has so made me that I can not. Wherever man came from, he sprang not from anything beneath him. When a man asks me to believe a thing that has not facts, but only theory to support it,--said theory contradicting fact, experience and reason,--he asks me more than I can grant. The thing is absurd, and must one day die.

I am agreeably surprised that we, as a people, have suffered so little as yet from the sources of error referred to. Still they are all living dangers, and if we would hold fast the faith once for all delivered to the saints, we must see to our own standing, and as G.o.d has given us opportunity let us be helpful to others. Our ground is G.o.d-given and well tested. The fellows.h.i.+p with G.o.d and with each other that it has brought to us has given us much happiness here. Let us be faithful and earnest the few years that we have to remain here, and our happiness will be increased when the Lord comes to reward us all according to our works.