Litchfield enquirer., 1858-11-25
THE SABBATH AND ITS USES.

scheme of cur Christian civilization, which i managed with so little true economy as tn, Sabbath ministratioDs of the Church. There i IS constant complaint of lack of good min isters, constant breaking down of the health of ministers, and constant fault-fnding with 1 the performances of ministers yet ministers are made to do twice as much work as they can do well, and twice as much as is needed We mean simply this there is not one minis ter in one hundred who is capable. ill connec- tion with his other labors, of writing more than one good sermon week, and following it made to write two, and ill some instances three. We know enough of the amount of intellectual labor required to write a sermon to speak advisedly upon this point, and We have no fear of being disputed in the premises by minister No minister is willing, in his heart, to appearin his pulpit with sermon which is not the best he can write upon the subject in hand. Yet he is compelled to write two i'll a week that he knows are net as good as he Can write, and he knows that if he is to be judged by them, he will be voted an ordi- nary pr acier.
 Now let us see what the people gain or lose by tils process. Suppose the sermons are fine performances Suppose there are three of them, delivered OH the Sabbath. The first one mikes all impression, and might be remember ed, if there were nothing to interfere with it, but the afternoon comes on ard brings another sermon, which interrupts the current of thought and reflection, aud wipes out the impression of the first. In the evening, an equal perform ance follows, and when the tired auditor goes to bed, or wh;n he Wakes the next morning, he simply remembers that he heard three good Scru,ous the day before. So far aS the ser mons themselves are concerned, they are, in hs mind, Il perfect tumble. This is our exre- II, nee, and, Ill the nature of things, it must be the experience of every 1udy. We Say, theu that the delivery of the second and third srr- mons, however powerful, does an actual daln- age to the congregation. But 10 minister is capable of three first riasS s' lnti S III a week, and not one in Eululr,d who does anything for hIs parish du. lag week days can write two. The consequence is, that ln endcayor.ng to to write two or three, he Call give the best ct- forts Of his mind to none of them. Thus the Sabbath is loaded with commonplace strmon>, aud thousands of pastors, in cndeavoriny to satisfy the'r congregations, preach themselves cut of popularity or into the grave. So, by such everlasting preaching, We spol the W hole of 1t and where we do not spoil it, We fail to secure the good effect of it.
 Preaching can do no good, unless it can be carried by it's hearers into the week. Each sermon should be the originator of trains. of thought aud feeling that may flow on into good rrsuts, without interruption. A sermon which costs week of labor III the we-trained mind vl promIScuous congregation. We therefore gve It as our decided opinion that more than one good sermon on the Sabbath day tends 10 de- feat the ends of preaching, and is an absolute damage to a congregation. The ceasing to preach more than one would add to the intel lectual wealth and the practical power of the pulpit, dirt ctly and indirectly, fifty per cent. Thus all this extra labor is a damage to the pastors health, damage te his influence, and damage to his people. Is this econo- my? Is itnot on the contrary, in its kind the very extreme of proAigacy
 But there are other reasons for revolution ln this matter, sufficient to justify it of them selves. The church now is a grand fcedllg house. It is altogether receptive. Churches and congregations go up to ;he Sabbath ser vices to be fed. They swallow sermon after sermon, and are never full They find in the process the grand intellectual excitement of the week. They labor all the week, read hard y anything b,youd the news, aud on Sunday open themselves to be played upon. It is the only process which keeps them from stultifca- ton. They become passive Christians, aud not active ones. They are men and women who always want to be "ted," and never want to do anything and the more they feed aud cram, the lazier they grow. Now if the church be simply feeding place, and not a school of Christian development. they are l right but if the fact is, or should be, the other way, We want less preaching and more work--less reception and more acton-less feed and more exercise-less swelling of the bulk and more development of mental muscle
 To secure this end, the urerabundance o
 D eaching leaves no time. It is all preach
 .reach, preach, and swallow, swallow, swallow | We want our sermon in the morning. and ther
 in the afternoon ]; We want the whole churct and congregation in school, where mind may come in contact with mind where, in adult
 classes, the morning sermon may be discussed, and it's impression uade more secure where thought may become active and the attitude O the mind reversed, so that what it has receiv ed into conscious poss. ssion may be projected
 into life. We want something more than this
 from this exercise--the generation of socia
 feeling and a social power in the church which it does not now possess It is shameful fact
 that, while the church calls itself brother
 hood, the members do not know one another
 They are in the habit of coming up to the
 separate stalls, weekly, and receiving their fod
 der, and going away unknowng and unknown
 We know many congregation where half o
 the members would actually have to be intro
 duced to the other half before they would f c
 at liberty to speak to them. This is brother
 hood with vengeance. If the church fail t' see how much it would gain in power by tn social effect of this scheme, it must be vel, blind. Why, there is so little social familiar