THE GEORGIA ASSOCIATION.
We drop down from Savannah, thirty-one miles on the Florida railroad, to McIntosh, in Liberty County. Then it is four miles east over the old Yankee high-way to Midway and its “Lost Church Found,” and the brethren are on hand with their buggies to take us out. Pastor Snelson’s house and the teacher’s home are filled up, and the two rooms of the Academy furnish space for beds and cots for the lodging of eight persons.
Quite a village it is that has grown up there; the large church, the Dorchester Academy, and half a dozen houses and two or three small stores. Heretofore, the two teachers, Misses Kinney and Gibson, have been quartered in a cabin. Now, a new house is under process of construction for them.
All but one of the fifteen churches are represented. Pastor Kent, of Atlanta, preaches the opening sermon upon the Growth of Christian Character, a discourse which proved its fitness to the occasion by the fact that its truths were constantly bubbling up through the course of the meeting. The body changed its name from that of “Conference” to that of “Association,” elected Revs. A. J. Headen and J. E. Roy, with Revs. E. Kent and J. H. H. Sengstacke as alternates to the next National Council, made deliverance against putting churches on the color line, and had the full measure of essays, discussions, sermons, etc. During the Lansing temperance meeting, Rev. George V. Clark, of Athens, thrilled us all as he told of his being a saloon tumbler boy, of his going, full of liquor, to the Storrs School temperance meeting, and of his signing the temperance pledge at the solicitation of Miss Rose M. Kinney, who was at that time a teacher there, and who was then before him. Such a result was a reward of her fifteen years of service. The talks upon the converting power of the Sunday-school were stimulating indeed. The Association received the new Church at Athens, also Revs. George V. Clark and N. B. James.
On the Sabbath the fine large church, 50×60, which had been used several years as simply inclosed, and which had been brought to completion, was re-dedicated. The sermon by Superintendent Roy was upon the Glory of the Sanctuary as the place of Spiritual Nativity: “This and that man was born there.” The prayer of dedication was offered by Rev. E. T. Hooker, of Charleston, S.C. In the afternoon a grand missionary meeting was held in behalf of the American Board, the A. H. M. S., the Congregational Union, and the A. M. A., with addresses made by Revs. E. Kent, S. E. Lathrop, E. T. Hooker, and J. E. Roy, all of them using Mr. Kent’s two big maps, one of the world, and one of our country. Miss Kinney read a paper written by Miss Hardy upon that whole missionary scheme. The ladies appointed the wives of Revs. E. Kent, S. E. Lathrop and Dana Sherrill as a Provisional Committee to prepare the way for organizing a State Woman’s Missionary Society at the next meeting of the Association, to be held at Athens. Meantime the ladies propose to organize in each of several of the churches an auxiliary society, and these will unite in the State Society. Between the two services of Lord’s Day I went out and counted the vehicles and the animals that had brought the great assembly to church; I counted 68 vehicles, of which 38 were buggies, 95 horses and 30 ox teams, 40 oxen in all, as some of the carts were drawn by a single ox. There were two other important gatherings in that region on that day, or, as some of the brethren said, you could not have seen the ground, for the animals and the carryalls that would have been there. As it was, we had, by fair estimate, six hundred people present, and their’s was truly, as they call it, “A Big Meeting.”
J. E. R.