Hereafter the business of our annual meetings will be conducted according to an order published in advance by a standing committee. In this way it is hoped that missions, education, orphanage and benevolent work generally may be so partitioned as to secure fair and full consideration. The visiting brother, our secretaries, of the various boards, will know just when the particular work in which they are chiefly interested will be discussed. It remains to be seen whether in practical operation this plan will prove more satisfactory than the one now suitably characterized as one of "spontaneous generation." The odium of "cut and dried" need not follow and hinder the workings of the new plan. The State Convention will hereafter hold its annual meeting one week later than our recent past custom, thus allowing the pastors to remain at home during thanksgiving time in November. The custom of holding thanksgiving services has grown rapidly in this State during the last ten years and promises to yield great spiritual benefit and large contributions within the next few years. The prevailing custom now is to give the contributions on that day to the Orphanage. The Convention will meet in the future on Friday and continue until the next Tuesday, following the good example of the Southern Baptist Convention. Another important feature of the changes wrought in our methods at our last meeting is that of having one committee to nominate all boards and standing committees, thus avoiding the frequent repetitious of names usually occurring under our former plan of having a committee of nomination for each board.South Carolina has long been noted for the progressiveness of its country churches. In one of our Associations several years ago the churches were so well cultivated that services were held every Sunday, the fifth Sunday meetings, styled "union meetings," were outgrown, and almost every community had its parsonage and pastor. This aggressiveness has been retarded within the last few years by the stringency of the times on account of the low price of our staple product, cotton, but there are some new evidences that our country churches are on the alert. It is perhaps singular that a staid old country church, composed in former years of wealthy planters, should take the initiative in this State in adopting the "individual cup" at the Lord's supper. I saw yesterday one of the little cups, trumpet-shaped and golden-lipped, from which communicants of Springtown Baptist, whose pastor is hoary with age, and president of the Convention, drink wine when the Lord's supper is observed, without fear of touching a cup poisoned by the lips of his pious but diseased neighbor. Theoretically I most heartily endorse the "individual cup;" practically I most heartily object to it. Unfortunately for me, this is not the only instance in which my practice lags far behind my creed. In the theological field I am not entirely favorable to "rapid transit."
We still have several important pastorates vacant. Rev. W. E. Thayer goes from Ridge Spring to Rock Hill, where is located Winthrop Industrial College, the State school for young women. He is a growing young man and will ably follow the lamented John D. Robertson.
Camden Baptist Church is now in quest of a pastor to succeed Pastor Jamison as soon as he enters upon his work at the Orphanage.
Rev. T. M. Galphin, after having been recalled three times, returns to Orangeburg Baptist, where he was pastor several years ago. There is no fear in this case that he will prove a misfit. He is very popular In Augusta as pastor of Curtis Baptist Church.
The Sumter Baptist Church holds Its "quarto-centennial and semi-jubilee" of Dr. Brown's pastorate the last days of the year. He has done a great work at Sumter. He is indefatigable, unjealous, generous, versatile, methodical, humorous and surprising. Sometimes he seems to go off at a tangent to some wise brother's beautiful sphere of truth, but he is always going. At other times he becomes temporarily erratic in some scheme, but he never becomes inert. He pursues his schemes sometimes to defeat, but no one ever saw him discouraged because forced to relinquish some project. He is so good-natured that he is one of the best enemies I ever saw. His church is to be congratulated on this occasion. He is one of our most successful pastors and his study witnesses his labors early and late.
Of State Missions in the Palmetto territory there seems to be no end. The new cotton mills have wrought new social conditions and created new fields for evangelistic work. Not a few Baptists in "good standing and full fellowship" in the remote country church where no missionary of the State Board has ever labored, become morally metamorphosed in the new social life of a cotton mill. Doubtless their spiritual atrophy had taken place before the cotton mill was established, though their gathering in a new community presents a strong appeal for enlargement of mission work within our borders. Some might think that an old State, without any rapidly growing cities or influx of foreign population, would have finished the work of State Missions in three score years and ten. On the contrary, the field seems to be more pressing than it was years ago. Next week our State Board will meet in this city to map out an enlarged work for the coming year. Our veteran State Secretary, Dr. T. M. Bailey, seems to possess a ripening with increasing years.
Some special features in our educational work are on the nib of my pen, but I hasten to wish a "happy New Year" to the Baptist family of Tennessee.
D. W. Key. Greenville, S. C., December 28, 1899. ========== [From Baptist and Reflector, January 11, 1900, p. 8. Scanned and formatted by Jim Duvall.]