The Greenville times. [volume] (Greenville, Miss.) 1868-1917, 1899-12-09

human IHVt! Nu0h beauty, such
strength, such grecciulness, such
geniality! Faces y ithout the mark of
one sorrow! CheeGs that seem never
to have been wet by one tear A race
s0blimatedl 4 new world born!'
But | say TO our escort: ibid all
this merely happen so? Are all the
good here spontaneously good2 How
did you get the old shipwrecked world
alioat again, out of the breakers into
the smooth seas" NO, MOI" responds
our twenty-trst century escort. DO
you see those towers? Those are the
towers of churches, towers of reform
qtory institutions. towers of Christian
schools, Walk with me, and let us
enter some of these temples" We en-
ter, and | find that the music is in
the major key and none of it in the
minor. "Gloria In ENcelss' Using
above "Gloria In EXcelsis." Tremoo
stop in the organ not so much used
as the trumpet stop. More Of Ariel
than of Naomi. More chants than
dirges. Not u thin song, the words
of which no one understands on the
lip of a soloist but mighty harmonies
that roll from outside door to chan
eel and from floor to grained rafter
as though Handel had come out of
the eighteenth century into the TWEEN
| ty-iirst and had his foot on the organ
pedal, and Thomas Hastings had come
out of the early part of the nineteenth
century into the tweuty-frst and were
| leading the voices. Music that moves
the earth and makes Heaven listen.
But | say to our twenty-first CEN
fury escort: 81 cannot understand
! this. Have these worshipers no sor-
rows, or have they forgotten their sor-
rows?" Our escort responds: "Sor-
rows! Why. they had sorrows more
than you could count but by divine
| illumination that the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries never enjoyed
they understand the uses of sorrow
and are comforted with supernatural
coincidence such as previous centuries
never experienced"
ask again of the interpreter: HAS
death been banished from the world ."
The answer is: NO, but people die
now only when the physical machine
ry is worn out and they realize ii is
time to go and that they are certain
ly and without doubt going into Il
world where they will be infinitely bet
ter off and are to live in Il mansion
that awaits their immediate occu-
pancv." But how was all this eff
fected ?'' ask our escort. Answer:
by floods of Gospel power. You who
lived i'm the nineteenth century never
saw revival of religion to be com
pared with what occurred in the lat
ter part of the twentieth and the early
part of the twenty-first century. The
prophecy has been fulfilled that "A
nation shall be born in a day'-that is,
ten or twenty or forty million people
converted in "a hours. I'm our church
history we read of the great awak
ening of 1857, when 100000 souls were
saved. But that was only a drop of
the coming showers that since then
took into the kingdom of God every
thing between the Atlantic and the
Pacific, between the Pyrenees and the
Himalayas." The evils that good peo
Pile were in the nineteenth century
trying to destroy have been overcome
by celestial forces. What human
weaponry failed to accomplish has
been done by omnipotent thunder
bolts.
As YOU and | see in this terrestrial |
visitation of the coming centuries that |
the church has under God accomplished |
so much. we ask our escort, the spirit of |
The twcnty-first century, to show us the
different kinds of churches. SO we are |
taken in and out of the churches of diff |
fcrent denominations, and we find that |
they are just as different in the twenty !
first century as they were different in
the nineteenth when we wGrshiped in |
them. There is unity in them as to the
great essentials of salvation. But we
enter the Baptist church, and it is bap-
tismal day and we see the candidates
for membership immersed. And we go
into a Presbyterian church and see
group of parents around the baptismal
font holding up their children for the
And we enter the Episco-
pal church and hear the solemn roll of
her liturgies, and her ministers are
goUned and surpliced And we enter
the Lutheran church, and we hear in the
sermon preached the doctrines of the
greatest of German reformcrs. And we
20 into the ethodist church Just in
time to sit down at love feast and give
audible "Amcn" when the service stirs
us. At least 50 kinds of churches in the
twenty-first century, as there were $50
different kinds of churches in the nine
teenth century.
"But what is yonder row of buildings,
majestic for architecture?' The spirit
If the twenty-frst century says:
Those are our legislative halls and
places Of public trust and if you would
ike it | will show you the political cir
lies. the modes of preferment, the styles
IF election, the character of public men
n this century" "fhank YOU" | re-
1ly. II can easily understand how Cos
1elization would improve individual life
md social life and commercial life, but
would like to see what it can do for {
political life" LET me tell you" says {
he spirit of the twenty-frst century,
that | have read about political chi {
.anery and corruption of more than 100
ears aeo-the nineteenth century, in
which YOU lived here-but the low po- ;
itical caucus has gone from the face OF {
he earth, and the stuffed ballot box,
nd he bribery by money and by prom
Sc Of Office. and the jobs got through {
legislatures and congresses by lobby
SITS. We have nothing like a Credit Mo {