The central Presbyterian. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1856-1908, 1906-11-14

sistently to effect union with ours. We
were shut out from the Church that we
and our fathers had loved and labored for.
We were condemned and cut off by the
Church which had sought and received
our aid in the battles of 1879. We were
isolated by a wall of fire and steel for
four long, dark, bitter years. In those
years we learned many lessons and one
of them was that loyalty to her King
and Lord is the one duty of the Christian
Church, as is the loyalty of wife to her
husband. But we are not nursing these
memories nor trying to keep them alive
as barriers to all or any forms of CHOPPER
alton. We accept the amends offered by
the Church which scorned and spurned us
forty years ago. We appeal not to the
past (save when we are forced to do so
to defend the memory of our dead), but
we stand in our lot and testify for the
principles and practices which are now
denied, and almost divided, by those who
seek union with us on such terms as
would require the surrender of our testi-
mony and our claims to exist as a Church.
But we are cooperating with other
churches practically, without blowing any
horns about it, all the time. There is
no promise in the Articles of Agreement
of any more or better cooperation than
we can exercise without them, and in fact
we are now doing all along that line that
we could do with them.
8. There is no vital doctrine involved"
say our brethren on the other side. If
the kingship of Christ is not vital what
is? Christ, as our Redeemer, executeth
the offices of a prophet, of priest, and
of king" If he is not king then he is
neither prophet nor priest. The Presbyte-
rian Church, U. S. A, has once openly
discrowned him, and, though dlsclaiming
it now, has the same spirit that it had in
1861. Symptoms of deadly disease, how
ever slight, are evidences. of unsoundness.
But why divide the Church over a
question of doctrine?" "They are so ac-
tive and so successful" "It is foolish for
our little Church to hold herself alooI
from this rich, powerful, popular, ma
tional Church" Again l would recon-
mend the reading of Jude's epistle to
these brethren. He exhorts those to
whom he wrote Ito contend earnestly for
the faith once delivered unto the saints"
Faith (dOctPine) is worth contending for,
and, if need be, dying for. John saw
under the altar the souls of them that
were slain for the word of God, and for
the testimony which they held-and white
robes were given unto every one of them"
But the reasoning of these brethren, car
ried out to it's necessary conclusion, would
prove every martyr who ever died for
the truth either an idiot or a suicide.
A. "The Old South is dead,' said one of
these brethren lately, in the presence of
number of ministers and elders, at a
meeting of Presbytery. But that is not
true. The Old South is not dead. The
new South is what it is because the old
was what it was, for all there is of good
in the new has its roots and foundations
in the old. All the beauty and life of the
coral islands of the Pacific grows out of
the reefs below them, and those reefs are
builded out of the shells OF millions of
coral insects which lived on the oceans
bottom long ago, and dying laid their own
shells down for the foundation on which