The Brandon news. (Brandon, Miss.) 1892-1961, 1908-02-06

ally, that we have almost stood still.
We have striven together. But the
striving has been of the wrong sort.
We have stood fast in one spirit. But
very largely that spirit has been that
we have refused to inconvenience
ourselves in the interests of the king
dom of God, for the good of His chill
dren and for the glory of the King.
But God commands something diff
ferent. He summons us to another
variety of living.
His call is that we shall be stead
fast in our adherence to and advo-
cacy of those spiritual truths that
constitute the reason for and the
richness of His church. Primarily
the church is not an institution that
exists to regulate morals, to supply
means for social intercourse, to
gather a crowd That is in no sense
to minimize the Importance, the place
and the work of the church as
mentor and purifier Of morals, a min
lister to the social necessities OF men.
a gatherer of men for the purpose
of supplying that verve that comes
simply and solely because we are a
crowd filled with the same desires
and adoring the same Lord. For
we must direct conduct and meet the
needs of man as a social animal and
recognize the value and the in
f1uence of the crowd.
But the call of God first to His
church is that she shall be expert
enced in the knowledge of those in
effable and spiritual truths out of
which spring the impulses that make
for a godly ethics, a consecrated So
ciety, a spirit-moved crowd, in such
measure and manner that she shall
be able to declare, delineate and re-
veal to men with compelling power
that wisdom of the saving Father to
know which and whom is life eternal.
That is to say that the call Of the
church first-and all the time-is to
be a spiritual evangel.
Our duty is to be true to this call.
To live to this work. To cleave to
this program. To plan after this pat
tern. To exalt this as our ideal. Let
us stand fast persistently in and for
this, rather than pat upon our past.
Let us strive together for this rather
than among ourselves. Let us have
the spirit of helpfulness rather than
of laziness, and faith in God and in
the power of His truth.
Let us be in nothing scared by our
adversaries. We have been. Sin
makes a brave show. We have taken
to our heels. as it were, often at its
approach. We have had an unreas-
oning terror of its power. And we
have chronically overrated its ability
to beat us. But we have no more
reason to be scared by sin than a
child has to be frightened by Jack
in-the-boX.
The church can put sin to rout
when it gets into right relationships
with deity and into the proper sort of
fighting clothes, or else God, who can
not lie, prevaricates. He says we can
do it. He promises to enable us. He
demonstrates the method. He pro-
vides the stone and the sling, the
helmet, the breastplate, the armor,
the two-edged flaming sword of His
own consuming truth. Either we can
or we cannot. If we can we ought.
And we can if we will.
For one, I believe that sin, unlike
Achilles, is vulnerable at every
point. We have but to hit with the
right weapons and hard to subdue
it, For sin is hulking, rotten mon
ster to whom we need be in bondage
no longer than we desire-thanks to
the grace and the potency Of God.
And this is the call of God that
we shall be true to the spiritual mis-
sion for which we are endowed and
that we shall fight sin fearlessly to
finish. May we be true thereto.