The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-05-04
SOUTHERN METHO-
 DISTS IN SESSION
Continued from Page oneJ

In polished and effective address Rev. J. H. Mccoy welcomed the dele- gates on behalf of the local Methodists, l A vein of humor ran through the ad-l dress in which Alderman J. R. Cope.
 land welcomed the delegates to the | city of Birmingham, and the speaker was several times applauded
 ! Dr. s. L. DobSs. speaking for the North Alabama Conference. gave wei come to the delegates, and told Of the | early iabors of the leaders of the con- ference which resulted In it's present !, great strength.
 I A thoughtful and eloquent reply to l these addresses was made by Bishop | Hendrix The Governor, he said, had not uttered a word too many in his remarks upon the wealth of the State. He congratulated the State that those l in authority recognized the aid that the church svould give in solving those
 problems which the State must meet and for the conference he thanked Bir- | mingham and Alabama for a generous, 1 hospitable welcome.
 1 In his address of welcome, Governor
 Jelks said:
 | The Governor of Alabama feels hon.
 ored in having the pleasant duty of
 welcoming to this State this most au-
 gust body. We welcome officially many gatherings of people bent on discharg
 ing very different obligations to the | public. In this case the task is ap- preached with reverence. You are the recognized legislature for the mem | bers of a great church covering many 1 States and holding the allegiance of several millions of people. You your seves must feel the responsibility of the
 work you are to do. A very heavy one i; 1t must lie on your heart and mind in
 an expressing fashion. The office I hold has great duties and great respon- abilities. but 1t deals with matters en- tirely temporal. The things which , come before you are influential in far wider field. In the one the infiu- ence of the ofice as such ends with the horizon which we can almost see; the other goes from confines temporal
 to the far reaches of eternity. The du- ties which fall on the great office which I hold do not look so significant in this presence. bow Burning to the pre- l siding Bishop) to you, sir. You come to us in a good time Our banks are running over with money | If you will allow me to be material | the income from our bursting hills and our smiling fields. I may say that riches nowhere on the earths surface | lie closer together than they do in our i hills. There the materials that go to make pig iron lie so close together that | running through convenient and hard | by furnaces we boast that we make 1t cheaper that it can be made in any | other portion of the world; and iron that is capable cheaply of being con- | verted into steel. There are many among us who hold to the idea that we | shall in future make the price of steel | for the world: not only so, but there Is | a fine chance ahead of floating the
 several ingredients separately and col | lectively, in finished form, from their very homes to deep water; and so we hope to be able to say that our Iron | and coal and ore and steel are in wa | ter-reach of all the ports of the seas. If might boast further, would speak | of the richness of our soils for many products; of our wealth in cement clays; of our expectation of floating out l from our rivers on whose banks these | clays lie, sufficient in the next few years to supply sides and bottom for
 the great new waterway, that is to hold hands at the ends with the At l lantfc and the Pacific.
 We even dream of a time when on the bosom of this waterway shall float great leviathans, built for peace or war, by Alabama hands, and in Ala bama yards, whose spars and huIls and engines are all from the product of our soil. What a great prospect stretches
 out before us. I would not have you go away unmindful of our resources. Nor would have you get an idea that any part of our population Is blind to the blessings which have been show cred upon the State the min erals plant
 ed there for us, and which our chill |
 dren's children may not possibly gath | CT; of the forests largely decimated, | but with sufficient remaining for any
 time to which we may possibly look l of the productive fields, where there is | life in motion, and plenty with little | effort I say this much for the State |
 I even hope that some of you may be | so attracted by the picture that you |
 will come again and abide with us.
 So much for some of our resources. To turn to the other picture. Allow
 me to speak of things in which we are deficient. We do not keep the laws Not Alabama alone, but Georgia, Mis-
 sssippi Tennessee, Texas, and all the
 other States from which you come; more than that, neither the east, nor the north, nor the west keep the laws, To the average man they are neither sacred nor supreme
 It is the first duty of the great
 church to which you belong to teach
 youth and old age to respect the di-
 vine ordinances. l know how those
 of you who have taken holy orders
 wear your lives away with that work
 ever DeIOTe you ana a prayer ever
 on your lips. There are other sta
 tutes. other ordinances. Barely less
 sacred than the laws which the Om
 nipotent has written in the revolving
 heavens, in the waters of the vosty
 deep, in the bosom of the hills and in
 the thunders from Sinai, are the stat
 utes of the State. And yet we are
 wofully indifferent to the statutes of
 the State.
 This brings me to where you ought
 to allow me to preach a bit. In all
 of the States yeu represent, no less
 than this one. men are killed in the
 streets, in crowded hotels and stores,
 shot from horse back and buggy as-
 sasinated from the roadside and from open windows. Unexpected and vio- lent death stalks abroad; this in spite of the statutes of the State, which are taken from the statutes of God. Few
 of the murderers of the well to do as- pirant class may see the inside of | prison; few go to any further punish ment, and only now and then does one