We come this morning to the eighth and last sermon in this series on the Principles and Practices of our Baptist people. It has been a great joy to me to preach these sermons and they have not been without profit to me personally. I trust they have not been without profit to you. There are those who are always afraid of what is usually called Doctrinal Preaching because the impression has been made upon their minds that Doctrinal Preaching must abuse everybody else who does not believe exactly as we do.
I trust I have been able to demonstrate by the grace of Christ and the goodness of our Father in Heaven that Doctrinal sermons can be preached in the spirit of the Saviour. I am preaching for the truth’s sake and not to wound anybody’s feelings.
The subject for this morning is the Primacy of Baptists. I have been in doubt as to a text; I think I shall just read both of them. Psalms 16:6.
"The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places: yea, I have a goodly heritage" And Psalms 126:3.
"The Lord hath done great things for us; whereof we are glad."
If God has seen fit to honor our people in any particular way above all others, it is a matter for humble thanksgiving and gratitude and not a matter for arrogant boastfulness.
What I say then, this morning, is an acknowledgment of God’s goodness in setting our people in the high place of honor and in the forefront of all worthy activities in the world of service and not in arrogant boastfillness.
Just a casual glance into the history of our people and especially the church and religious history, will reveal at once that Baptists have always stood at the very forefront of all great enterprises for the good of the world and the glory of God. This is not a universally known and acknowledged fact. My only desire then is to set in order our thinking concerning the place and position of the Baptists in the world’s enterprises.
Our people, for example, have been considered as being backward and ignorant and impotent; that is due perhaps to the fact that there are so many of us and that we extend clear out to the nooks and corners of all the habitable globe where educational, financial, and cultural opportunities are not as good as they are in some other places, but we are to see this morning that in at least three of the biggest and best things that bless the world, Baptists have been in the front. These three things to which I shall invite your attention are:
1. Educational Activities:
2. Sunday School Work, and
3. Missionary Propaganda.
Let us then first of all consider the part which our Baptist people have had in modern educational movements. The general impression is that Baptists are backward intellectually and in educational matters.
It is a notable fact in history that the great free school system which is now the pride of our national life was originated by a Baptist preacher, Dr. John Clark, who established in Rhode Island in 1675, the first public school that was ever established for free education. Our own denominational school system in the United States and elsewhere has been of the very best.
It began in 1764 with the establishment of the Rhode Island College by the Philadelphia Association of Baptists, which a short while afterwards became Brown University and from which have gone out thousands of noble men and women to bless the world and gladden the streams of life. In 1769 several young men received from Brown University the Bachelor’s Degree, which was the first ever conferred by a Baptist Institution in the United States. Since then our Baptist activities for higher education have grown by leaps and bounds.
We have in the United States today over a hundred universities and colleges with $45,000,000 worth of property and endowments; 2,000 instructors and 30,000 students. Among the lists of these great universities and colleges may be mentioned Chicago University, Brown University, Colgate University, Baylor University, Stetson University, Mercer University, Richmond College, William Jewell College. Vassar and Judson for girls, than which there is none better on the face of the earth.
In addition to this we have over a hundred academic institutions with $5,000,000 worth of property and 20,000 students. We have scores or more of theological institutions such as Rochester Theological Seminary, Chicago Divinity School, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Pacific Baptist Seminary, Southwestern Theological Seminary, Kansas City Seminary, all of which have over $7,000,000 worth of property and endowments.
In full, Baptists have in the United States 297 institutions of learning, 53,723 students, with property and endowments aggregating $72,955,849, which is more than that of any other religious denomination.
In the second place, let us consider what Baptists have done in the world of Sunday School work, Bible teaching and Bible distribution.
The name of Robert Raikes is almost always thought of in connection with the origin of the great modern Sunday School movement, but those who are most familiar with the history of its genesis know that William Fox, a Baptist deacon, and not Robert Raikes, organized the first Sunday School ever established for the studying of the Word of God. The school which Mr. Raikes conducted on Sunday afternoons was not a Bible school. The Bible was never taught in it at all, but it was a secular school, which Mr. J. Henry Harris, the biographer of Robert Raikes states had for its object "to teach them," the ragged ruffian boys from the streets whom he gathered in, "to teach them their letters and to humanize them."
Dr. J. W. Porter says: "It is also true that the movement started by Mr. Raikes soon died and never had a direct successor."
The movement which has resulted in our great Sunday School organization was started by Deacon William Fox in 1783 by the purchase of the Home estate of Clopton. The school was conducted on week days and the spelling book was used for those who were being taught, "but," says Dr. B. W. Spillman, "the one purpose of this school was to give instruction in the Word of God." If spelling and reading were taught in that school, it was in order that the pupils might learn to study the one Book that William Fox had in mind to be taught, the Word of God.
Quoting Dr. Spillman further:
"At the Baptist monthly meeting at the King’s Head Tavern in the Poultry in May, 1785, Mr. Fox told of the work which he had for two years been doing, and he submitted the matter of organizing a society to promote schools for the study of the Bible. The meeting asked Mr. Fox to issue a call for a general meeting to be held in the same place on August 16th, and to extend the invitation to all interested persons, regardless of denominational affiliation. The call was issued. When the matter became public the attention of Mr. Fox was called to the work of Mr. Raikes. This was the first time he had ever heard of Mr. Raikes and his work. He opened a correspondence with Mr. Raikes and made a personal visit to Gloucester to study his work. So impressed was he with it that he determined to have his proposed organization adopt Sunday as the day, but to stick to the original purpose of making the study of the Bible the most prominent feature. This was done, and after two preliminary meetings a meeting was called for the Paul’s Head Tavern September 7th, 1785, at which time and place was organized the first Sunday School Society in the world. It was first called ’The Society for the Support and Encouragement of Sunday Schools;’ afterwards changed to ’The Society for Promoting Sunday Schools throughout Britain and the Dominion of the English Empire.’ "
In addition to starting the modern Sunday School movement themselves. Baptists have been foremost in all essential and important features of Sunday School work. At first the teachers were paid, but it was William B. Gourney, a Baptist, who started the voluntary service of teaching in the Sunday School.
Joseph Hughes, a Baptist, organized the work of Sunday School tracts and literature which has resulted in the organization of many tract and Bible literature societies, among which are the Great Britain and Foreign Bible Societies, which have sent out millions of copies.
The first Sunday School in the great Northwest of our own American territory was organized by Miss Harriet Bishop, a Baptist.
The first Sunday School in St. Louis was organized by John Mason Peck, a Baptist.
Benjamin Franklin Jacobs, a Baptist, was the leader in organizing the Sunday School forces and "welding the workers into a compact and enthusiastic army. It was Jacobs who saw the vision and issued the call for workers for the organization of the World’s Sunday School Convention. It was Jacobs the Baptist who established the international uniform Sunday School lessons as we now have them.
It was Dr. Warren Randolph, a Baptist, who was the first Secretary of the International Sunday School Committee.
It was W. N. Harthshorn, another Baptist, who succeeded Jacobs as president of that organization.
The first course of advanced Sunday School lessons was prepared by Dr. John R. Sampey, a Baptist preacher and teacher, in our own Louisville Seminary.
The Cradle Roll which has swept the world of Christianity, was established by Miss Julia Dudley, a Baptist in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Let those who think that Baptists neglect the babies mark that historical fact down in their note-books.
It was Henry J. Rowland, a Baptist, who established the first Primary Department in any Sunday School.
The great Baraca movement which has gathered thousands upon thousands of young men into the Sunday School was organized by Mr. Marshall A. Hudson, a member of the First Baptist church of Syracuse, New York. It was his daughter, Miss Hudson, who organized for young women a similar movement known as the Philathea Classes and which has gathered thousands upon thousands into the Sunday Schools of the world.
The first full professorship for Sunday School pedagogy established in any theological institution in the world was in our own Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville and Dr. B. H. De Ment was the occupant of the chair.
In addition to the large part which our Baptist people have had in the modern Sunday School movement, We have had a large place in every movement for the translation and circulation of the Scripture and for the dissemination of Scriptural knowledge. This has been referred to in a previous sermon, but it might be noted here that the marginal references in our Bible, which so greatly aid you in Bible study, were first invented by a Baptist. This man’s name was John Canne and his work was done in 1673.
Thirdly and finally, it is an undisputed fact that our modern missionary activities for the propagation of Gospel truths to the ends of the world were born in the bosom of a Baptist brother, a shoe cobbler, Wiliam Carey. Is it any wonder that that was so, since we Baptist people have always emphasized the Word of God as the final authority in matters of faith and practice. When that simple man who had that conviction in his soul read in the Word of God "ask of Me and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession;" then read again the imperial Word of the imperial Christ "Go ye therefore and disciple all the nations;" is it any wonder that he sat down to write a tract on the obligation of Christian people to use means for the conversion of the heathen nations and then preached a sermon out of Isaiah 54 with these two points as his outline: "Expect great things from God; "Attempt great things for God," which, one biographer says, set all the people to mourning over their derelictions in behalf of the heathen? Is it any wonder that God should call a man like that to be the fore-runner of the greatest enterprise that the hearts and hands and heads of men have ever been set to; namely, the enterprise of evangelizing a lost world?
For long centuries prior to 1793, that great commission of Christ’s had lain dormant. The churches had neglected it and God’s cause had endured everlasting suffering on account of it, but there sat that cobbler as he looked upon the map upon the wall and read his Hebrew Bible before him. The great Baptist preacher, Andrew Fuller, came in for a little work on his shoe, and with the Baptist preacher and the Baptist cobbler the great modern missionary enterprise that is the joy of every denomination was born and set going.
It was in 1793 that William Carey, the first missionary, sailed for his missionary activities in India, and here is a statement of the Schaff-Hertzog Encyclopedia of Religious knowledge which says:
"The successful inauguration of missionary work in India and Carey’s achievements in the acquisition of Oriental languages and Bible translation gave the denomination a prestige and popular acceptance which it had not before enjoyed."
This movement soon spread its great wings across the water and was borne to the loving hearts of the people of God in America, and it was here that Adoniram Judson, a Congregationalist, in sympathy with the movement of "William Carey, started on a missionary tour, and on the high seas, while reading the New Testament, he came to the conviction that the Baptists were right and, acting upon that conviction, asked for baptism and for membership, that he might be their missionary.
So from America started out those first rays of the glad gleams of gospel glory that were to gladden all the dark corners of the earth in bearing the missionary message to the benighted and besotted souls that reek in darkness and the shadow of sin’s black night.
My brethren, if God has chosen us to restore the long sleeping commission and has given to us this imperial message to evangelize the earth, shall we not join hands across the centuries and seas with our Baptist brothers who started the movement and put life’s best blood and purse’s best money into the glorious cause of making Jesus known "where’re the sun doth his successive journeys run?"
In addition to all of these things of which I have spoken, the Baptists have been numbered and are still numbered among the great world leaders in every avenue of activity and in every line of service.
Among the great financiers of the world are such names as William Colgate and John D. Rockefeller, our Baptist brothers.
Among the political leaders and great statesmen of the states and nation have been such Baptist brethren as Governors Eagle of Arkansas, Heard of Louisiana, Longino of Mississippi, Northern of Georgia, Hooper of Tennessee, Foss of Massachusetts, Folk of Missouri, Hughes of New York, and many others too numerous to mention.
Among the great preachers of the world have been the Baptist preachers Richard Baxter, John Wyckliffe, commonly called the Morning Star of the Reformation, Alexander McLauren, than whom the world has never produced a greater Bible expositor, George C. Lorimer, the silver-tongued orator of America, whose son now edits the Saturday Evening Post, and last of all the universally acknowledeged mightiest preacher since the apostle Paul, Charles Haddon Spurgeon.
Among the foremost writers of the world is John Bunyan, the Baptist preacher of Bedford jail fame, whose allegory has been translated into every known language with a circulation second only to that of the Bible itself.
Among the great hymn writers who have written hymns that have comforted, stirred, and moved the hearts of the religious world are those of our own Baptist people who have stood at the very forefront. Among the great hymns of these writers we might mention:
"Blest be the Tie That Binds," by John Fawcett.
"Did Christ O’er Sinners Weep," by Rev. Benjamin Beddome.
"He Leadeth Me, O Blessed Thought," by Prof. ’Glenmore.
"How Firm a Foundation," by Robert Keene.
"Majestic Sweetness Sits Enthroned," by Samuel Stennett.
"My Hope is Built on Nothing Less," by Edward Mote.
"O Could I Speak the Matchless Worth," by Samuel Medley.
"On Jordan’s Stormy Banks I Stand," by Stennett.
And many others, including such evangelistic songs as:
"Saved by Thy Power Divine," by Scholfield.
"Throw out the Life-Line," by U. S. Ufford.
And such missionary hymns as:
"The Morning Light is Breaking," by Smith.
And such patriotic hymns as:
"My Country ’Tis of Thee," by Samuel Francis Smith.
Each one of whom is a Baptist.
One out of every three songs that are sung in every church in the world was written by a Baptist.
Let me say in conclusion then that what I have just been saying is not Baptist brag, but is a simple statement of historical facts too long neglected and too long misunderstood and that are made only in grateful recognition of this high honor bestowed by our Heavenly Father upon our people. Let us then in the spirit of the humble Christian recognize our stewardship of obligation to the lost and perishing world and never sit down and fold our hands in ease until the last lone soul in earth’s darkest corner shall have heard of Christ our King, of the Bible, our light and of our soul liberty, our greatest Baptist heritage.
"I love thy kingdom, Lord,
The house of thine abode,
The church our blest Redeemer saved
With his own precious blood.
I love thy church, O God;
Her walls before thee stand
Dear as the apple of thine eye,
And graven on thy hand.
For her my tears shall fall;
For her my prayers ascend;
To her my cares and toils be given,
Till toils and cares shall end.
Beyond my highest joy
I prize her heavenly ways,
Her sweet communion, solemn vows,
Her hymns of love and praise.
Sure as thy truth shall last,
To Zion shall be given
The brightest glories earth can yield,
And brighter bliss of heaven."
Come, my brother Baptist, let us put our hands and our hearts and our heads to this great task committed by our Saviour and never rest easy until all the world shall be redeemed by His precious blood.