The Donaldsonville chief. [volume] (Donaldsonville, La.) 1871-current, 1886-01-09
7'be DoQaldsoqvine Chief
Sam Jones Theology.
southern 1,ivotac for January
Two Dollars a Year,

1OulIElH 11AyONte ALL WoANnAts
He has an element OF popular power.
which adds tlloughtfolness to bis muses. of
tpterested hearers. This is his rebellion
against all accepted theological formulas
for the statement of truth. tQuit your
meannees is his defnition of repenta, CO
and he will be tralnmeled BY no other. He
steers clear of the Sor bonean bog of modern
theology, viz, technical definitions and uses
Of the word faith, and puts instead Of them
the practical result, Do what you ought to
DO" Ever body understands him, and
;5ine-tenths of his hearers of all grades of
intelligence believe him right. His rebellion
is more than simply discarding the thread
bare forms Of theological expression, it is
rebellion against the characterization
OF the modern evangelical pulpit. What
Socrates WIS to the Sophists of his day,
what Bacon was to the scientists who had
goue before him, what Thomas Carlyle at
tempted to be to the religions which had
preceded his time, this simple, unlearned
Georgian aspires to be to the peculiar forms
OF American evangelical religion-forms
which have 20 dominated Southern
life that till now the Southern ear has
been deaf to any voice which has been raised
toquestion their infallibility. The listening
masses Of to-day declare that freedom Of
thought, for good or evil, is at the door, He
calls the preachers from the mystic and
transcendental to discussion of The prac
ical. You may or may not be right, he in
Inmates, in your theories of Trinities and
Unities, your declarations of what exist
ed in the mind of God before the world was,
of the contract between God and Christ and
the effect of the Sons death Upon the Fa-
Their and the Holy Spirit, in your fine spun
theories as to the methods of the Spirit. He
ia too much in earnest in bringing men to
the resolve of about face and the discharge
of the daily duties of life. among which he
emphasizes prayer, to hinder, bewilder and
drive from him tho hungry multitude with
feeding them upon the "east wind" In
this respect one wonders how man of pro-
vincial life, of narrow,acquaintapce with
books has come to voice 80 marvelously the
cry of the age. Next to his genius for SYM
patty with men as men, and his freedom
from the trammels of an early technical
theological training, perhaps two men with
whom. his Iot. has been cast have helped to
his Acknowledgement. Both of these ara preach
ers in his:own church. The one, man of
marked strength, of natural endowment,
and in constant conflict with many Of the
stereotyped forms of theological expression
4 man as bold and unsparing in his de-
nouncement Of sin as Jones himself, but
whose wit is so nearly bounded by sarcasm
as to narrow his influence. He was, for
some years, Jones' presiding elder, and be-
came in much his model, The other, man
M deficient on the Practical side as Jones
is powerful, but an omniverous reader OF
books. Through his conversation, Jones
with his alert and electric powers, seemed
10 become aware that the world of thought
was not necessarily done up in few Insti-
tutes Of Theology, and that there were
mountain-tops Of truth gilded by the sun
ligh' aeyond lite ordinary domain. The bold,
practical originality of the one, the ipdeti-
mite horizon of the other, came to Jones
IA an inspiration, creating his rebellion in
met Cd and his d,senthrallment from the
mystic aud barren topics 50 much discussed
in the pulpit.