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The People Called Baptists
By George F. McDaniel, 1919

I

WHO THEY ARE: WHAT THEY HAVE DONE.

      The name "Christians" was first appHed, in derision, to the followers of Christ, by enemies at Antioch. The name "Baptists" was first given, in ridicule, by Pedo-baptist opponents of the people who rejected the baptism of babes. Both names, like the cross, have been changed from marks of shame to badges of honor.

      The distinguishing principles of the people first called "Christians" and now called "Baptists" are:

      1. The Scriptures, the only authoritative guide-book for our religious life. There may be no appeal from, or addition to, their precepts and principles.

      2. The individual and direct access of every soul to God; none between man and God, save only the God-man.

      3. The complete separation of Church and State in their respective fields; the Church


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dealing with religious, the State with civil affairs.

      4. The simple polity of the church's government; each church autonomous and a democracy in itself.

      5. The baptism of believers only, or a regenerate church membership. Incidentally, they believe in baptism by immersion only, according to the Scriptures, as symbolizing the death, burial and resurrection of Christ; and that the Lord's Supper is a church ordinance.

A Noble Ancestry.

      To be well born is to enter life with advantage. Baptists are justly proud of their parentage - the New Testament. They have an ancient and scriptural origin. Certain characters in history are named as founders of various denominations: The Disciples began with Alexander Campbell, the Methodists with John Wesley, the Presbyterians with John Calvin, the Lutherans with Martin Luther, and the Church of England with Henry VIII and Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer in the reign of Edward VI. Not soft


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with the Baptists. There is no personality this side of Jesus Christ who is a satisfactory explanation of their origin. The New Testament churches were independent, self-governing, democratic bodies like the Baptist churches of to-day. We originated, not at the Reformation, nor in the Dark Ages, nor in any century after the Apostles, but our marching orders are the Commission, and the first Baptist church was the church at Jerusalem. Our principles are as old as Christianity, and we acknowledge no founder but Christ.

An Honorable History.

      Character is determined by ideals and achievements. If we would know the place of Baptists, we must consider their historic greatness, their heroic fidelity to human liberty and their part in the life of the world. Our principles develop a type of character and life which tends to make men potent factors in achievements worth while.

      Baptists have been pioneers in so many fields that to enumerate these might seem to


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assume a braggart spirit. But a statement of irrefutable facts must be taken as dis- passionate and impartial. Baptists have al- ways been champions of civil and religious liberty. Roger Williams, who took ground in advance of his Puritan compeers on the subject of personal liberty, being banished from the colony of Massachusetts, went to the present site of Providence, Rhode Island, where he founded what is regarded by some as the first Baptist Church in America, and the first commonwealth on earth in which there was absolute civil and religious liberty. The framers of the Constitution of the United States caught the spirit of Roger Williams and as a result we have a country which has been the refuge of the persecuted and op- pressed of all nations. Article VI. on religious liberty in the American Constitution was introduced into it by the united effort of Baptists in 1789. The first amendment to the Constitution of the United States, guar- anteeing freedom of speech, freedom of re- ligion, and the right to petition, was adopted largely through the activity of Baptists. They took the initiative in a letter to President
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Washington and a month later Madison, with Washington's approval, presented the amendment.

      John Clarke, highly educated in arts and in medicine, the most outright and upright, important and influential American Baptist of the seventeenth century, did more than anyone else to call the attention of the world to Puritan intolerance. He secured the Charter of 1643 which made Rhode Island a free democratic State with full provision for liberty of conscience, and he was the originator of the public free school system. He founded the Newport church, which, for consistent and persistent devotion to Baptist principles, for completeness of organization and fervor in evangelism, deserves the priority.

      The father of modern missions was William Carey, an English Baptist. In thirty years he and his co-laborers made the Word of God accessible to a third of the people of the globe. He was "one of England's greatest men, doing more to make the India of to-day than Clive or Hastings, and contributing to the


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making of England hardly less than John Wesley."

      Organic foreign missions in America began with the "American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions" (1810). Two of these were Adoniram Judson and Luther Rice. Judson and his wife, studying their Greek New Testament, became convinced that the immersion of a professing believer is the only Christian baptism. They were baptized by a Baptist missionary in India. Rice, upon reaching his destination, arrived at a similar conclusion. Luther Rice is noted as a missionary and the founder of the old Columbian College, Washington, D. C. and Adoniram Judson is the foremost name in the annals of American missions.

      The first president of Harvard College was Henry Dunster, who, by his enthusiasm and by sacrificing his means and health for its interest, brought the college into a position exceeding the hopes of its best friends. He lost his office because of his espousal of Baptist views. The largest early benefactors of Harvard College were Thomas Hollis, a wealthy English Baptist, and his descendants.


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      He founded the Hollis Chair of Theology, the first in the United States.

      The man who snatched the Southwest from Mexico and handed back to the United States what is now Texas, part of New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado and Wyoming was General Sam Houston, a loyal Baptist. Nathaniel Macon, pronounced by John Randolph and John Jay among the very wisest of men they had known and whom Randolph in his last days called the best and purest man he had ever met, was a Baptist.

      President Abraham Lincoln attributed all that he was to a Baptist mother. President Jefferson Davis devoted the ground where he was born in Kentucky as the site for a Baptist Church and it is so used now. At the dedication of the building he delivered an address and stated that perhaps some people wondered why he, who was not a Baptist, should be so interested in that faith. He explained thus: "My father, who was a better man than I am, was a Baptist." Henry Clay, President Arthur and Justice Hughes were the sons of Baptist preachers. William Jennings Bryan's and William Howard Taft's


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fathers were Baptists. General Madison, brother of President Madison, was a Baptist; so was Mrs. Woodson, the favorite aunt of Jefferson. Thomas, when young, loved to visit her house in Goochland County and to attend the Baptist Church with her. Major General Tasker Bliss, one of the American peace commissioners at Versailles, is the son of a former professor in Rochester Theological Seminary. Major General William Graves, head of the American forces in Russia, is a Baptist and a graduate of Baylor University. Lloyd-George, who piloted the British ship of State through the stormy seas of the world's worst war, says of himself: "I am a Baptist."

      Bible societies were originated first by a Baptist, Joseph Hughes. The International Uniform Sunday School Lesson System is due to a Baptist layman of Chicago, B. F. Jacobs. The first Sunday School paper for young people in the United States, "The Young Reaper," was established by Baptists. The Baraca movement was started by a Baptist layman. Marshal A. Hudson.

      Sir Henry Havelock, the valiant British general and the deliverer of Lucknow, united


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with the Baptists of India and was baptized by one of Carey's fellow missionaries. In Cromwell's Irish garrisons there were twelve Baptist governors of cities, ten colonels, three lieutenant-colonels, ten majors, and forty-three company officers. In the War of the Commonwealth in England and the War of the Revolution in the United States, Baptists were all patriots.

      Among the many Baptists who rendered military service in the Revolution, a few conspicuous names may be mentioned. Pastor M'Clanahan, of Culpeper County, Virginia, raised a military company of Baptists and served on the field, both as captain and chaplain. Reverend David Barrow shouldered his musket and showed how fields were won. Colonel Jacob Houghton, grandfather of Spencer Cone, was in a Baptist meeting- house when the news of the defeat of Lexington reached him. The services ended, he stood in the open before the building and spoke: "Men of New Jersey, the Red Coats are murdering our brethren in New England. Who follows me to Boston?" Every man stepped into line and answered, "I." General


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Scriven, when ordered by the British officer to give up Sunbury, near Savannah, sent back the answer, "Come and take it." Deacon Mills, of the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia, commanded skilfully one thousand riflemen at the battle of Long Island and for his valor was made a brigadier general. Deacon Loxley, of the same church, commanded the artillery at the battle of Germantown with the rank of colonel. "He was always foremost when great guns were in question." Add to this galaxy John Hart, who signed the Declaration of Independence, and John Brown, whose fleet of privately owned vessels attacked the Gaspee which had entered Narragansett Bay to enforce British reve- nue customs. Lieutenant Duddington was wounded, the other officers and the crew left and the Gaspee was blown up. "This was the first British blood shed in the War of Independence," In their list of Tory sympathizers made up by Judge Curwen appear nine hundred and twenty-six names living in America, and a larger number were already exiled by Colonial law, but there is not the name of one Baptist on the list. This is why
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President Washington, in his letter to the Baptists, could pay them the just tribute: "I recollect with satisfaction that the religious societies of which you are a member have been, throughout America, uniformly and almost unanimously, the firm friends to civil liberty, and the persevering promoters of our glorious Revolution." It explains how Thomas Jefferson could write to a Baptist Church, "We have acted together from the origin to the end of a memorable Revolution."

      Baptists are renowned the world over for their loyalty. At the coronation of the late Czar at Moscow, May 15, 1895, fear filled all hearts, and it was not known who was loyal. Someone told a prominent officer that he could trust the Baptists. Many of them were therefore chosen, some of whom had just returned from exile and were drafted for this special service. William of Orange was sustained in the gloomiest hours of his struggles for the Dutch Republic by the sympathy and aid of the Baptists. He testified to their loyalty, industry and virtue.

      Baptist loyalty to country has met the test in the present war. State and General


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Conventions, without exception, have rung true in patriotic resolutions. Our churches have backed the war with their money and their members. Pacifist pastors were few and without weight in the councils of the denomination or churches. Hundreds of ministers have served in various capacities, some as military combatants. Patriotic fervor burned in the Theological Seminaries and their students enlisted in large proportions. Our sons went to war by the ten thousands, and they went with the benediction of the denomination upon their heads. Our daughters donned and adorned the Red Cross and alleviated human suffering. The soil of France is enriched with Baptist blood, America's name is made more glorious by Baptist devotion. And all of this was done in spite of certain govern-mental acts which we could not and did not approve.

      The Christian pulpit has been occupied by able and eloquent Baptists. Alexander McLaren, famous as the greatest biblical ser- monizer of a century; F. B. Meyer, whose preaching and writing have circled the globe; A. J. Gordon, who has been called a titanic


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expounder of God's Word; Andrew Fuller, who held the rope while Carey went down in the well; Robert Hall, whose elegant diction is unsurpassed by any English orator; Christmas Evans, whose impassioned eloquence won thousands to Christ; and Charles Spurgeon, whose sermons were heard and read by more people than those of any other preacher of all time, were all Baptist preachers. Dr. Chalmers said of the English Baptist preachers of his day: "Perhaps there is not a more intellectual community of ministers in our island, or who have put forth to their number a greater amount of mental power and mental activity in the defense and illustration of our common faith."

      The largest contribution of the New World to civilization was the principle of separation of Church and State. Historians ascribe to the Baptists the chief credit for the establishment of this principle in the United States. John Locke said: "The Baptists were the first propounders of an absolute liberty, just and true liberty, equal and impartial liberty." Chief Justice Story said: "In the code of laws established in Rhode Island we


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read for the first time since Constantine ascended the throne of the Caesars, the declaration that conscience should be free, and men should not be punished for worshipping God in the way they were persuaded He requires." Oscar S. Straus, in his life of Roger Williams, contests the Romanists' claim about Maryland and claims that Williams antedated Lord Baltimore. We know that a large majority of the settlers of Maryland were Protestants; that what Baltimore did was from expediency rather than principle; and that he was an immoral money-getter who never contributed a dollar to a church.*

      Baptists have been forward in education in America. Brown University, the first college in the Middle States and in the front rank of American institutions of learning, was
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* Since Catholics make so much out of the founding of Maryland, it should be remembered that twenty years before the occupation of Maryland the Baptists of England (1614) pubUshed a confession of faith in which they used this language: "We believe that the magistrate is not to meddle with religion or matters of conscience nor compel men to this or that form of religion, because Christ is the King and Law-giver of the church and the conscience." Then, again, the Maryland adventure was purely mercenary. Mr. E. D. Neil, after the most painstaking and accurate study of the original sources of this part of colonial history, characterizes Cecilius, second Lord Baltimore, as "one


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founded by Baptists in 1764, and the charter requires that the president shall be a Baptist. The first real college in America for the higher education of women - Vassar - was founded by Matthew Vassar, a Baptist. Other colleges for women have since been founded, but "the primacy of Vassar is far more than chronological."

      The literature of the world has been enriched by Baptist writers. Daniel DeFoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe; John Foster, the great essayist; John Howard, the philanthropist; John Milton, the great epic poet and statesman; and John Bunyan, the immortal dreamer, whose "Pilgrim's Progress" ranks next to the Bible in extent of its circulation, were all Baptists.

      Milton began as a member of the Church of England, then became a strong Presbyterian,
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whose whole life was passed in self-aggrandizement, first deserting Father White, then Charles I., and making friends of Puritans and republicans to secure the rentals of the province of Maryland, and never contributing a penny for a church or school-house." Says Bacon: "Lord Baltimore may not have been a profound political philosopher nor a prophet of the coming era of religious liberty, but he was an adroit courtier, like his father before him, and he was a man of practical good sense engaged in an enormous land speculation in which his whole fortune was embarked, and he was not in the least disposed to allow his reUgious predilections to interfere with business."


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then finding that Presbyterianism represented "as much of intolerance and tyranny as belonged to the Roman Church," he became an Independent, and theoretically a Baptist. He held the fundamental Baptist principle of separation of Church and State, rejected infant baptism, and contended that immersion in water is the proper form of baptism. Two quotations from his "Christian Doctrine" will suffice. "Infants are not to be baptized in as much as they are incompetent to receive instruction or to believe, or to enter into a covenant, or to promise or answer for them- selves, or even to hear a word." "The bodies of believers, who engage themselves to pure- ness of life, are immersed in running water." Under the influence of Roger Williams he came out squarely and opposed interference of the State or civil magistrate in any way in matters of religious belief. He and John Bunyan, by the estimate of Lord Macaulay, were the two minds of the latter half of the seventeenth century which possessed the "imaginative faculty" in a very eminent degree. One produced "Paradise Lost"; the other, "Pilgrim's Progress." Differing in
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many respects they were alike in their de- pendence upon the word of God, and in their tenacity to Baptist principles. One sounded those principles "like a grand organ peal"; the other sounded them with the simplicity, unaffectedness, and persuasiveness of a singer of the soil.

      It is a noteworthy fact that to the Baptists the world is indebted for the most popular national hymn of our language, "My Country, 'Tis of Thee." Baptists also wrote:

      How Firm a Foundation; My Hope is Built; Jesus, Thou Art the Sinner's Friend; Awake, My Soul, in Joyful Lays; O, Could I Speak the Matchless Worth; Majestic Sweetness Sits Enthroned; Come, Humble Sinner, in Whose Breast; Did Christ O'er Sinners Weep? The Morning Light is Breaking; Take the Name of Jesus With You; Saviour, Thy Dying Love; Shall We Gather at the River? He Leadeth Me, O Blessed Thought; I Need Thee Every Hour; I Am So Glad that Our Father in Heaven; Almost Persuaded; Where is My Wandering Boy Tonight?; On Jordan's Stormy Banks; Dare to be a Daniel; Blest Be the Tie that Binds; How Precious is the Book Divine; Lord, Dismiss Us With Thy Blessing; Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing; Softly Fades the Twilight Ray; Come Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove; Father, Whate'er of Earthly Bliss; My Jesus, I Love Thee; God, in the Gospel of His Son; O, Safe to the Rock That is Higher Than I; Go, Preach the Blest Salvation; Our Country's Voice is Pleading; Holy Bible,


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Book Divine; Ye Christian Heralds, Go Proclaim; O Thou My Soul, Forget No More; More Holiness Give Me; Wonderful Words of Life; Whosoever Will; The Light of the World is Jesus; The Half Was Never Told; Bringing in the Sheaves.

      W. H. Doane, a Baptist, wrote the music for many of our popular hymns, such as:

      Pass Me Not, O Gentle Saviour; Near the Cross; I Am Thine, O Lord; 'Tis the Blessed Hour of Prayer; Some Sweet Day; Saviour More Than Life to Me; More Love to Thee, O Christ; Hide Me, Oh, My Saviour, Hide Me; Will Jesus Find Us Watching? What Shall the Harvest Be? Rescue the Perishing; To the Work.

      Robert Lowry, a Baptist, wrote the musci for "Saviour, Thy Dying Love," and "We're Marching to Zion." "Coronation," the tune sung round the world, was written by Oliver Holden, a Baptist. These songs have smoothed more dying pillows and comforted more sorrowing hearts than all the philosophies from Plato to Bergson.

      Baptists have an honorable history. Their record is clean upon the separation of Church and State. Having given to the United States religious freedom, at the cost of their property, their liberty, their good name, and their lives, it is their chief glory that, suffering


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all martyrdom themselves, they never yet have persecuted others.

      Their place has ever been with the pioneers of humanity. On many a field of battle and of blood, the banner of civil and religious liberty has been borne aloft by Baptist hands. To them the two things stipremely worth while are Religion and Liberty. These are closely akin. They are essential to the highest good of man. Joined in one word, Religious-Liberty, the perpetuity of each is guaranteed. The draft of the League of Nations read by President Wilson to the Peace Conference provided freedom of conscience or religion to the colonies of Central Africa. Baptists had, months before the war ended, petitioned that these rights be granted in every nation. We have come a long way from the days of oppression and have come through much tribulation. If our principles are now the possession, or aspiration, of all people who read and think, and our passionate love of liberty is the native air of this great land, and the growing sentiment of all lands, it is largely because these principles have been woven into the warp and woof of human thought by


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generations of heroic souls who held the Baptist faith.

A Mighty Present.

      The legacies of the past have made the present rich and strong for us. Baptists have no extensive ecclesiastical appliances for gathering statistics and the figures do not show our full strength. However incomplete they may be, they are nevertheless very gratifying. The total number of Baptists in the world, according to the Baptist Year Book, is 8,070,762. Baptists of the world have increased 8,000 per cent, in one hundred and twenty-five years and they number one-twentieth of the Christian population of the earth. Government statistics for 1918 give us in the United States 58,913 churches, 43,656 ministers, and 7,213,922 members. We are second to the Methodists, with 7,608,284, and every one in our figures represents a person who has reached the age of accountability. Our ministers exceed those of the Methodists by 1,405. Presbyterians number 2,171,601; Lutherans, 2,455,334; Episcopalians, 1,078,435; Disciples of Christ,


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1,337,450; Church of Christ Scientists, 85,096; Unitarians, 71,110. Excepting the Methodists, Baptists outnumber any three denominations in the United States. From 1850 to 1900 the population of this country increased three and a half times, while the Baptists increased almost six times. Though the Episcopalians decreased 11,000 and the Disciples 35,000 in 1918, the Baptists increased 128,000, which was 50,000 more than the Catholics and 78,000 more than the Methodists.

      The stronghold of Baptists is the South. The white members here number 2,593,249 and the colored 2,150,929. Their growth has been rapid. In fifteen years Southern white Baptists increased 61 per cent, in membership, 28 per cent, in churches, 105 per cent, in baptisms, 353 per cent, in contributions to missions, and 333 per cent, in total contributions.

      Baptists outnumber any other Protestant denomination in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia; while


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in each of the States of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia there are more members of Baptist churches than of all other denominations, including Roman Catholics. In the territory of the Southern Baptist Convention east of the Mississippi River Baptists have forty-five and seven-tenths per cent, of all membership in Christian denominations, and west of the river they have twenty-seven and five-tenths per cent, which is six and two-tenths per cent, more than the next largest evangelical denomination.

      Baptists have the largest theological seminary in this country, and perhaps in the world. They have fifteen theological seminaries, one hundred and two colleges and universities, and one hundred and eighteen academies. Baptists have more money invested in property and endowments for educational institutions than any other religious body in the United States. The value of the property, including the endowments, is $99,608,885 and the total income of these educational institutions in 1917 was $7,266,015. We need carefully to note this and compare this


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income with the total expenses of $8,087,215. Here is an item that demands our most serious attention. The income must be increased. There were 63,979 students in these educational institutions and 2,371,750 volumes in the libraries. Baptists also have their share of students in the State schools.

A Bright Future.

      Our advance has always been greatest where the people are the freest. The world moves freedom's radiant way. The shackles of oppression are falling from the peoples of the earth. Men are coming into a consciousness of their right to think, to decide, to act for themselves, unawed by any arbitrary power. Rulers are paying more attention than ever to the masses. Democratic doc- trines have turned the world upside down. Even the Romanists, age-long hierarchists, are talking democracy; uniformly advocates of the union of Church and State, they are professing belief in religious freedom. They have "about-faced," and now professedly look the way Baptists have always faced and marched. We should welcome their change,


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provided they "bring forth fruits meet for repentance." When order follows the holocaust of war we will confront an unparalleled opportunity. Just as America, by a self-sacrificing devotion to political democracy, has risen to the foremost place among nations, so may the Baptists by a no less ardent devotion to spiritual democracy, gain the hegemony among denominations.

      This is no time for Baptists to be underlings. Possessors of a heritage which has enriched the world, they are to live lives worthy of their historic greatness. They dare not stand still and see a mighty stream flow by in channels cut by their own prin- ciples. Their place is on the bosom of the water, in the very middle of the stream. In order to do this at least two things are necessary.

      (1) A new standard of giving. Our per capita contributions are shamefully small. We must be done with miserly contributions from the rich, and with no contributions from the many. The missionaries on the foreign field must be proportionate to our membership on the home field. Baptist institutions


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of learning must be adequately equipped and amply endowed. The pall of illiteracy that hangs over America must be lifted and our country illumined by the Baptist light. The doctrine of stewardship must put a dynamic in our doctrines of faith. We dare not return to pre-war standards of giving to the Kingdom of God. The war loosened plethoric purse strings. How long will periodic war be necessary to lower the high blood pressure of material prosperity? Has not this awful war been sufficient to instruct us? The next few years will demonstrate. Will our Christian men lapse into old habits of ease and drop down to old standards of giving? Then look out for another deluge! Will they think world thoughts for the Kingdom of God? Will they render sacrificial service for Christ? Will they support the churches with millions as they have backed the government with their cash and credit? To put it bluntly: Do we love our souls as much as we love our bodies? Will we do for Christ's cause what we have done for our country? Are we pre-eminently Christian?

      (2) A new standard of living. The modern


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mind is more concerned with life than doctrine. It conceives religion as an undertaking rather than an investigation. To be sure, one must know in order to teach, must believe before he speaks. Assuming that Baptists have this knowledge and conviction, let them become formative forces in all movements for moral betterment and social uplift. To say that the truth which Baptists hold is impaired by contact with life is a confession of weakness. The truth, like leaven, should permeate the lump, and assimilate instead of being assimilated. Other denominations need contact with the Baptists. Intimate acquaintance would promote understanding and heighten respect. By entering world affairs America is moulding them after her ideals. America might remain aloof in selfish geographical isolation. By so doing she possibly would preserve her own life; but what about those whom she could help? Leave them to discord and disunion and death? The conscience of the majority of Americans answers, "No!" Such a course ultimately would be fatal to ourselves and to them.
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"Say not: 'It matters not to me
My brother's weal is his behoof;'
For in this wondrous human web
If his life's warp, your life's woof.
Woven together are the threads,
And he and you are on one loom;
For good or ill, for glad or sad,
Your lives must share a common doom."
      The largest mission and brightest future of the Baptists He in serving God by enriching the lives of men. Jesus defined this mission in one sentence: "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." A denomination must so serve that those whom it reaches shall have a fuller, diviner life. The denomination which points out that the high road to the betterment of the world lies through moral principles rather than legal enactments; which preserves the mass by proclaiming the inexpressible value of the person; which acts as the mentor of the national conscience by reflecting with faultless precision the conscience of the individual; which preaches a gospel of industrial and social repentance; which breaks down the middle wall of partition between classes and reveals the meaning of brotherhood and love;
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which has the spirit of self-sacrifice and willingness to lose its own life for Christ; that is the denomination to whom the future belongs. Such a denomination makes a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.
"God grant us wisdom in these coming days,
And eyes unsealed, that we clear visions see
Of that new world that He would have us build,
To life's ennoblement and His high ministry.

"God give us sense - God-sense of Life's new needs,
And souls aflame with new-born chivalries;
To cope with those black growths that foul the ways.
To cleanse our poisoned founts with God-born energies.

"To pledge our souls to nobler, loftier life;
To win the world to His fair sanctities;
To bind the nations in a pact of peace.
And free the Soul of Life for finer loyalties.

"Not since Christ died upon His lonely cross,
Has time such prospects held of Life's new birth;
Not since the world of chaos first was born.
Has man so clearly visaged hope of a new earth.

"Not of our own might can we hope to rise
Above the ruts and soilures of the past.
But, with His help who did the first earth build,
With hearts courageous we may fairer build this last."

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[From George W. McDaniel, The People Called Baptists, 1919, pp. 11-38. Scanned and formatted by Jim Duvall.]



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