Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1902-03-31
Postal Development and Probable Results
BY BISHOP WARREN 4. GAMBLER.

with all its other attractions. will have
elements of entertainment and enlight-
eminent it never before possessed, and
it ought to be proportionately more
popular.
With improved public roads and
daily mails, country life in the south
ought to become so attractive as to
draw many back to it who have fed
from it, and to arrest in a great meas
ure the popular movement city-ward. :
Increased opportunities, offered by
the mails, for reading matter, will in
tensify interest in our common schools.
knowledge creates an appetite for
knowing more, and no man will be
long followed who proposes now any
backward step in the work OF our
common schools. Mark the words. II
these schools have defects the people
will hear any one who can suggest a
way to remedy those defects, but they
will not heed any proposal to cure the
defects by killing the schools. Nor will
they agree to have the schools Grip
pied.
Whether popular education is a good
or a bad thing the people are going to
have it. For one think they ought to
have it.
When the common schools are prop
erly supported the higher education,
will, as it ought to do, take care OF
itself. A large number Of prepared
students will come forward to MI the
halls Of all our colleges, and they may
as well set about preparing for this
body of stuoents.
Increased popular intelligence win
make 1t harder for the demagogue to
ply successfully his arts. The dark
corners are rapidly growing smaller
IN area and fewer in number. They viii
presently disappear.
The country preacher must also
raise his pulpit to the higher level OF
intelligence which will confront him
when he rises to preach to the people.
This does not mean that the old Bible
is to be revised nor the old faith
amended; but rather that their truth
be more wildly conceived and warmly
proclaimed than ever before. The in-
tellectual area to be illunlined by re-
ligion is being rapidly extended and the
light must be proportionately increas-
ed and intensifed-not by any patent
burners Of sensationalism, but by put
ting more oil in our vessels-getting
the sacred oil Of the tabernacle from
the same old source, but getting mora
Of it
The rural ministry must not make
the mistake that some urban preach
ers have made. Standing amid cur
rents Of increasing intelligence and
wealth, some city pulpiteers have
thought to make up for their made
ohate resources, intellectual and spir-
itual, by retailing theological novel
ties. or by degrading the pulpit to the
level of a sensational platform. Observ-
ing men have discerned the straining
after effects which inspires all such
meretricfous methods, and many have
turned away In disgust from them
These devices have had their brief
day. and they have failed, as they de-
served to fail.
with the material and educational
progress of the day, whether in town
or country, we do not need, In order
to fill the churches, religious novel
ties, nor novelty-mongers prating or
progressive orthodoxy, Tree
thought" an @up-to-date pulpit and
advanced methods"
The Christ of Paul and Luther. and
Knox and Wesley. If really believed in.
and warmly preached, viii command
the attention Of this age or Of any age
that may come, however enlightened.
Those great men caught the ear and
improved the life of their generation,
not by proposing some new thing,
but by reviving all things that had
been lost sight of-by preaching tlae-z
"old, old story OF Jesus and His love-"
II any one Of them should come back
and preach in our age he would re-
peat the same process-and he would
get a great hearing.
How small some ambitious. pretend
ing parsonettes, who are now making
much ado about nothing" would APP
pear II Martin Luther, John Knox or
John Wesley should come back for
Just one dayi Well, one like them
may appear some day, and 1t may be
before long But when he comes he
will come from the country, and he
will first be heard preaching IN the
wilderness. City churches DO not make
preachers-they do rather unmake
preachers. Those denominations IN
which there are few rural churches
get the bulk of their pulpit supply
from beyond their own limits; and the
denominations which have rural
churches get their preachers mainly
from their country churches.
1t is a sad sight to see what was
once a robust, genuine minister OF
God, fresh from the interrupted sim
plicity Of rural life and filled with the
fervor of a genuine faith. gradually
turn into a dainty, artificial clerical
performer at the behest of city
church. But we sometimes see 1t! The
messenger Of heaven becomes the pur-
veyor Of pulpit and pastoral delicacies
to a morbid social set who meet in a
club house constructed after the forms
Of ecclesiastical architecture once a
week to have themselves played on
pleasantly for an hour. What a fall
is therei
May the spread OF the town TO the
country not corrupt but enrich the
soil from which we draw most Of our
ministerial s1IunIv