THE KING’S BUSINESS 7 converted in childhood, we would hardly have enough members left to carry on the work of the churches. Mr. Spurgeon bore testimony to the fact that he had received large numbers of children into the membership of the church, and that while he had had occasion to regret the receiving of many into the church in adult years, he never knew one whom he' had received in early child hood whose reception he had afterwards regretted. About a year ago one of the students in the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, preparing for missionary work, came to the Dean of thè Institute and told him that she accepted Christ when a child during his special meetings in Sydney, Australia. A few days ago a young man, who is now studying at the Bible Institute, came to the Dean and told him that he had, been converted as-a little boy during his meetings in Dunedin, New Zealand. Many years ago one of the prominent officers of Newman Hall’s church in London said to the writer that a very large sharè of the active workers in the church had been brought to Christ fifteen years before as children, under E. P. Hammond, the evangelist. It certainly pays for many reasons to bring the children to a definite and intelligent acceptance of Jesus Christ as their personal Saviour, and a definite surrender to Him as their Lord and Master. Are we doing as much as we ought in that direction? Such emphasis has been laid, in the last few years, upon efforts to reach the men, that there is reason to think that the children have been neglected in many places/ “It gives me the greatest possible pleasure to preside over this meeting. I shall not take up your time with many opening remarks. I understand the great object of the League is that the reverence of many in our nation and Empire for- the Holy Scripture may be deepened and intensified to the advancement of the nation’s well-being in these days of solemn crisis. If that object is in any way attained, I feel sure that the Mansion House can never have been used for a better purpose, or the official arid personal support of the Lord Mayor more beneficently employed. There probably never was, a time in the history of the world when reverence for arid study of the Holy Word was more called for than at this supreme moment in the destiny of the nation. We see the world in mortal conflict, and with, I think, only one exception, the antagonists are so-called Christians, to whom the Word of God, as revealed in the Scriptures, has hitherto been the charter of their faith. That strikes me as a very curious fact which wants a deal of explanation. I think we have been too prone in the past to allow modern criticism, particularly by eminent German scholars and theologians, to whittle away our belief inj and therefore our reverence for, the great leading tenets of the Christian faith, with the Result that we have become lax and indifferent, and we now tolerate and condone specious doubts and the putting forward of plausible difficulties with regard to the Scriptures, which in our childhood would have been treated as mortal sin. Let us hope that when the war is over we may return to a greater reverence for the Word of God than has of late been prevalent, and that in a humbler and more chastened and contrite spirit the revival of studious interest in the Holy Scriptures may tend to soften all the asperities which the war has raised, and that by a deeper appreciation of the truths of the Divine message, war among Christians may never again be possible.” These words of the Lord Mayor are worthy of the most serious considera tion. The truth is that war never is possible among real Christians. But.the trouble is so many of our rulers who are professed Christians, and so many of the people also, are Christians only in name and not in fact. And there is a still deeper trouble, and that is that many who call themselves Christians and Sir Charles Wakefield, the Lord Mayor of London, in taking the chair at the Annual Meeting of the F ible League at the Mansion House, over which he presided, on May 9, 1916, said: The Bible in Times of Crisis.
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