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THE CHRISTIAN'S LIFE AND THE CHRISTIAN'S MONEY BY REV. J. S. KIRTLEY, D. D. Biblical Recorder JOSIAH WILLIAM BAILEY, Editor. RALEIGH, N. C , WEDNESDAY, JUNE 3. 1903. VOLUME 68, NUMBER 48. BETTER: THE CHRISTIAN'S WORD. The nobler warfare is not between the Good and the Bad. The nobler warfare is between the Bet ter and the Good. One lives but lowly whose battle is with the Bad. Man was meant to fight upward not against going downward. The doc trine of "let well enough alone" is heathen. The struggle against the Bad is as the life in Egypt: the struggle for the Better is as the life in Canaah. Better is, therefore, a great word. It is also the word of the race's hope. It is also the word of the race's consolation.. It is a word of prime position in Christianity. J. W. Lynch was recently preaching in Raleigh. He painted out that Better is the great word in Paul's letter to the Hebrews. He uses it again and again. He bears his brethren the message of a "better hope," a '"better sacrifice," a "better country," a "better covenant," a "better resur rection." Christianity is the religion of Better the bet ter day, the better life, the better land. In noth ing is its divine character more worthily shown. A religion that puts such aspiration in the heart of its subject, a religion that not only creates the aspiration but also supplies the aspiration with motive, must be divine. Christianity that is, Christ has been the motive in all the race's prog ress. It is He that has made men desire to be better and capable of being better. Those who have caught the vision of Him are divinely dis contented forever more. They are led by a never waning, never setting star. Their word is Better. Each day nrast record rie No attainment is suf ficient. Eternity is required by them for the ful fillment of their aspirations, because, having re ceived of God, they have infinite capacity to rise. It may be true that heaven is a place to be gained at a single bound, but a man may not be blamed for thinking that it is a place of infinite rising, seeing that of such does happiness here consist. There may be deeper joy than the joy of progress, of achievement, of rising, but men have not known it. Who can live through a day and come to its close without consoling himself that on the mor row he will "do better" or "be better?" It is just this in your heart that carries you and the whole race onward. In this very hope do we build our heavens, and at the last we reassure ourselves by saying that all the bettering that our hearts have craved shall be attained in the moment of death. Heaven is the reaping of life's deferred aspira tions. To say that the meaning contained in the word "Better" iajhe race's hope, is to say that it is the race's consolation. For our consolation is hope. In the presence of loss we say Better; in the hour of pain we say Better; in the sorrow of death we Bay Better; we Christians do. Our un derstanding is not the world's understanding. Loss and pain and death may not be altogether clear to us; but we know enough to break their power with our word Better. So we sing our song, "I worship thee, sweet will of God." So we whisper; , "'Tis better so," and find ourselves possessed of peace that passes knowledge because it is better than knowledge. We all remember Sydney Carton. That boy or girl who never heard of him is poor indeed. Of all the names in the Tale of Two Cities his will be longest remembered. Sydney Carton gave hia life for the life of his friend, and he finished it with these words, "It is a far, far better thing mat i do, than I nave ever done; it is a iar, zar better rest that I go to, than I have even known." By such a consolation he was enabled to go un faltering to his death. He was not mistaken. There are times when it is better to suffer; better to lose; better, at length, to die. The common notion that only they are forjtunate who do not suffer, is after all but vulgar ignorance. Life is good, to be sure, and pain is no more to be wooed than death. But let us never think that life con sists wholly in the happier things. A good woman wrote us recently of long sickness and financial reverses. It was easy to remind her that God blesses with misfortune as often as with fortune; that "we are put upon our backs in sickness that we may look up to God." Undeniably it is hard to see it so in the hour of the thick darkness. But in such an hour, let the word the Christian's word Better, arise in your heart and come forth from your life. To do less is to forfeit your re ligion, to give up Christ. And, remember, in the day of fortune and at tainment, the word is Better. We live not to be good, but to become Better. No curse could be more disastrous, no attainment so self -destructive, as that which convinces a man that he has reached his goal. j . . THE SOUTH'S UNEQUALED COMBINATION OF ADVANTAGES. (From Facta About tbe South." by R. H. Edmonds.) Nature has given this section advantages un equalled by those of any other countr. About 75 per cent of the world's cotton is raised in the South. More than one-half of all the standard tim ber in the United States is in the South. Iron and coal are in unlimited supply, and owing to their proximity, and to the low cost of mining, pig-iron ftnd. steel jean be made at a smaller cost than in "any otherpart of Ihe country, if cot in the world. Nearly every Southern State has an abundance of the best water-powers to supplement the advant ages of cheap coal. It is not an exaggeration to say this favored land has greater advantages and resources, such as mineral, timber and agricultu ral potentialities, than any other section; it has greater advantages than any other country in the world; by virtue of its rivers and long seacoast it has the guarantee of the lowest freight rates; it has a climate that is conducive to good health and long life a climate that reduces the cost of living to a minimum; it has all of these mighty factors to insure its prosperity, and with fewer disadvantages than any other factors to insure its prosperity, and with fewer disadvantages than any other equal area in the world. It can produce nearly everything, from the widest range of agri cultural growth to the widest limit of manufac turing and mining diversity, at the lowest cost. It is becoming a great iron and steel centre ; it is monopolizing the manufacture of coarse cotton goods, and is turning its attention to the finer grades; it is becoming the market garden of the North; its people can live more cheaply, because of natural advantages, than those of other sec tions, thus always insuring the maximum profit on everything that the South produces. The vast traffic of the West, which has heretofore sought a foreign market through Northern ports, is now turning to the South, and along the South Atlan tic and Gulf coast there will of necessity grow up a number of opulent seaports. Climate attrac tions are making the South a winter home for an ever-increasing number of tourists and health seekers, who annually spend in the aggregate many millions of dollars there. Some countries have coal and iron, some have timber, some have oil, some have phosphate, some have good agricultural lands, some a good climate, some have water powers, some have other advantages, but no other country combines all these, and to them adds cotton, which is the foundation of one of the greatest manufacturing interests in the world. Nowhere else is ( this com bination found. The South is a well-watered country, with a regular and abundant rainfall. From the great mountain ranges that form its backbone innunv erable streams and rivers flow to the Atlantio and the Gulf of Mexico. Some furnish cheap transportation and will forever regulate railroad rates; others afford water-powers, used only to a comparatively small extent now, but capable of furnishing sufficient power to spin all the cotton which the South produces. The lumbering business of Michigan and the adjoining States was for years the foundation of much' of their progress and prosperity; it afford ed employment to millions of capital, to many thousands of hands, and yielded very large prof its. In the extent and variety of its standing timber the South far surpasses any other section. It has the basis for a lumbering and wood-wQrk-incr business much erreater than that of the North XXT A Ti r . l 1 3 !! r eew j.us virgin loresia oi narawooa wm xur nish the raw material for as many factories to manufacture costly furniture and fine woodwork of all kinds as are now in operation in the entire country; its cheaper lumber will go into the lower grades of furniture, while its pine will continue, as it now is, indispensable in building operations. Nowhere else are the natural conditions so fa vorable for the production of iron and steel on the largest scale that the increasing consumption demands and at the lowest cost. In the greater mineral and timber belt which stretches from West Virginia to Northern Alabama, covering, roughly speaking, an area of about 700 miles in length and 150 to 200 miles in width, there is a concentration of mineral and timber wealth great er than can be found in any other equal area in America or Europe, with ideal conditions for its development. Instead of having to haul ore 1,000 miles, as many jNortnern lurnaces do, and coke oUU to 6U0 miles, as many Western furnaces are compelled to do, the iron-maker in this section finds ore and coal and limestone within a few miles of each other. And as new railroads open up new and large fields, the cost of production should steadily decrease, against a gradual but certain increase in a very large part of the North and in Europe. On one side of this mineral belt is the cotton, fruit and truck-growing and yellow-pine region of the South, needing the coal, iron and hardwoods of the mountains, and furnishing in exchange its cotton, its fruits, its vegetables and its pine lum ber, creating a mutually profitable exchange. On the other side are the rich and populous prairie States, which will afford an almost unlimited mar ket for all the manufactured products of this central work-shop region, while the development of these industrial interests will create a new market for all diversified products of the farm. The assured construction of the Isthmian Canal will open to the cotton and the coal and the iron of the South new markets, in which the demand will tax the productive capacity of this section. A PROTEST AQAINST THE TlflES. That man standing yonder, with pencil and note-book, measuring the hours, counting the min- . utes, examining the seed, writing "growth" here, and "success" there, and "failure" in another place; that man, I say, I wish he would go away and let my heart live for an hour! He is ever speaking of "bringingsthings to pass," of figures as representating the true measurement of life; when the fact is, he is not measuring life at all. Heart throbs are not found in statistical tables nor are longings after the infinite on stock ex change reports. He is truly achieving who is liv ing; whose heart is right toward God and his fel lowmen; who makes each day a season for honest service, for lofty motives, for kindly relation ships. Only vice is news, according to the news paper standpoint; but heaven does not read the newspaper. The best life is the unrecorded life, and the success of heaven is a matter of heart and not of yard-stick or bushel measure. Baptist Union. A GOOD COAT. A Scottish nobleman once, seeing an old garden er of his establishment with a somewhat thread bare coat, made some passing remark on its con dition. "It's a verra guid coat," said the honest old man. "I cannot agree with you there,' said his lordship. "Ay, it's a verra guid -coat," per sisted the old man; "it coders a contented spirit and a body that owes no man ony thing, and that's mair than mony a man can say of his coat." John .Mitchell v..v.:.v7 .v:: ; Write it on your heart that every day is the best day of the year.- Emerson.
The Biblical Recorder (Raleigh, N.C.)
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June 3, 1903, edition 1
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