The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1902-12-11
DEBT OF THE FINALE UNIVERSITY
a Strong Determination Shown to
Pay it off and Equally Strong
Indications That Steps Will be
Taken for a Federation OF the
Primary or Secondary Schools OF
the State---The Business of the
Convention Begins To-day.

Durham, N. c., Dec. 10.-The
town is filled with Baptists. The
seventy-second annual convention
of this body of religious work .
ers began this evening with the intro
ductory sermon by DR.. Calvin 5. Black
well. of Wilmington, one of the leaders
of the denomination in the State.
DIR. BLACKWELL'S SERMON.
Dr blackwell spoke with great power
and eloquence. His subject was the
Gospel, and he presented it with the
fervor and force born of intense feeling
Quoting from Romans 1 and Corinthlan
Is as his text, he spoke as follows:
81 am not ashamed of the Gospel of
Christ: For it is the power OF God unto
salvation to every one that believeth. =
Rom. lis.
Moreover, brethren, l declare unto you
the Gospel which l preached unto you,
which also ye received, and wherein We
stand; by which also We are saved. For L
delivered unto you first of all that which
l also received, how that Christ died for
our sins according to the Scriptures, ana
that he was buried. and that he rose
again the third day, according to the
Scriptures. II Cor. IBID.
Ours is a gospel-hurgry AEGEAN age
starving for the gospel, Christ 1t is a
fearful thing to preach anything else
than the crucified Christ to an age, both
as misanthropic and as aspiring as our
own. "Dr Roswell Hitchcock mentions
a Bedouin in the desert whose piteous
condition was this: He had been without
food so long that he was starving. His
hope was that some other traveller, who
had already gone that way, might have
left, by chance or intention, pocket
containing food. Away beyond, near
fountain he spied what he took to be
travellers bag, and to his hunger it must
contain bread. Slowly and hardly he
pulled himself over the hot sand to the
little pouch. He took it up and poured
cut before his vacant eyes a stream of
glorious gems. AS they wooed the sun
by their splendor, his famished body fell
over, while he murmured: oh, it is only
diamonds, only diamonds!'
Merciful heaven, that this should be
an honest description of so much of our
preaching. Diamonds, only diamondsi'
1t is a piteous thing for the preacher and
the people. Both are disappointed sadly.
Diamonds And he, the preacher, works
so long, to find them. and so hard to grind
them we'll. and so increasingly, perhaps,
to set them in golden paragraph-and
they the people, want only the bread of
life. One mouthful of plain bread and
you may have the polished dogmas, the
glittering periods. the fame-l like phrases,
the splendid lenses.
The gospel that saves this lost world
with an everlasting salvation must have
colossal structural strength. Strong
holds of sin are to be torn down. Be-
sotted, depraved human nature is to be
regenerated and built up. What ale the
essential structural elements of a gospel
sufficient for these things?
First-Three Facts to be Believed.
% the death; (2) the burial; co the
Resurrection of Jesus Christ
Second-Three Commandments to be
Obeyed: ID to Repent toward God; CD
to confess the hearts faith in the Lord
Jesus Christ; (3) to be Baptized in the
name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Third-Three Promises to be Received
ID the Remission of sins; CD the gift
of the Holy Ghost; (S) Eternal life in
Christ Jesus
THE FACTS.
Whatever else the New Testament in
folds to begin with, it is simple record
of historical facts, addressed to mans
faith. The unfolding may become
philosophy; a revelation from God of
God; an unveiling of the deepest in man;
body of ethical precepts, but it is.
first of ALL, a story of something that
took place-to be believed by US
Never to be forgotten is Paul's first of
al'-important, foundational, super
natural trinity of facts, the death, the
burial and the resurrection of Jesus
Christ.
These inyincible facts believed and