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AS TO “METHODS”.

We have been thinking that the methods of Christ were divine as well as his truth, and that when the Christian world will use Christ’s methods in the propagation of truth there will be a great advance upon some features of the present.  Dr. Parkhurst has some very suggestive sentences in this line of thought in a sermon on “The Regenerative Force of the Gospel.”  His words are:  “Christ never patches.  The Gospel is not here to mend people.  Regeneration is not a scheme of moral tinkering and ethical cobbling.  In the Gospel, we move into a new world and under a new scheme.  The Gospel does not classify with other schemes of amelioration.”

This accords with our thought of the methods of Christ.  The way to meet that which is wrong, is to meet it as a wrong.  We shall not do well to ameliorate it.  If we may not expect those who have been “raised” amid prejudices and ignorance to be leaders for the absolute rectitude of things, those who have not lived where this excuse is available should be the leaders.  If some do not lead, none will follow.  Where principles were at stake, Christ never gave way to prejudices.  He never yielded to that which was in itself wrong.  If those to whom he ministered could not come up to his standard, then he waited, but he never compromised.  That which is right should not yield to that which is wrong.

It may take a right hand.  It may take an eye.  But “If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off,” and “If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out.”  He would not “cut it off” by amputating the finger and gradually disjointing it up to the mark; and plucking out the offending eye is not to bandage it so that it temporarily does not see the evil to which it is attracted.  No, the Gospel is not a system of repairs.  It is not here to temporize, but to make all things new, and it strikes at the heart of evil and not at its surface.

It was not Christ’s method to ignore an evil which confronted him.  He did not evade or get around issues.  He met them.  He answered them.  He was an “incarnate conscience” in the land.  He knew what was in man.  His followers cannot fail when they walk closely with him in the path which he has made plain.

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FIVE QUESTIONS.

1.—­If the Georgia Association had been without any colored members in it, would the Georgia Conference ever have been formed?

2.—­If the Georgia Association had been without any colored members, would the Georgia Conference have declined to unite with it, on some one of the terms submitted by the Georgia Association?

3.—­If the Georgia Association had been without any colored members, would this curious and ingenious scheme of “co-ordinate and equal bodies,” “to elect delegates” to visit each other now and then ever have been concocted?