Ashtabula weekly telegraph. [volume] (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1853-1873, 1859-09-24

lug ouuCl6ub W supply Jue Nlbdi expenditure
and the vital expenditure being sufficient
to exhaust the supply furnished by the
food. BY this balance, the digestive func-
tions are kept sharp and healthy, and the
muscular organs are developed to the meas
ure of their power. The man who eats
much and works little is necessarily a stupid
man but the man who expends in labor
what he has received in food, in legiti-
mate way, finds himself under favorable
conditions, the possessor Of happy and a
healthy life.
We can have no better ilIustrat tiou than
this of the necessity to healthy men
tai life Of the preservation of proper
balance between the active and receptive at
titudes and habitudes of the mind. The
mind that imagines that its grand good is
to be achieved while in its respective atti-
tude-that is bent on receiving and acquir-
ing-will find itself greatly mistaken yet
the theory of education is mainly the theo-
ry of acquiring, and contemplates almost
entirely a respective habit. The honors
paid to simple learning are tributes to the
faculty and fact of mental stuf1ing. A large
proportion of the very learned men of the
themselves or their race-who are not rec
ognized as powers in society, whose simpli-
city, lack of common sense, and inability to
take care of themselves make them the
laughing-stock of boys who have ciphered
through the Rule of Three, and learned to
look out for number one. There is a curse
on all the gormandizing-a reception of
mental food that is not made tributary to
mental power. An individual who is sim
ply man of learning-whose life has been
expended in acquisitions no man at all.
A man of science who does not go out from
books into discovery, or that does not aim
to supply his knowledge to practical life, or
who does not become active in organizing
and imparting the knowledge he has ac-
quired, must become intellectually an inva-
lid, or an imbecle
This is an age of reading, and l am glad
that it is but there is great deal of read
ing that is as much mental dissipation as
there is eating that is waste of bodily
power. Newspapers, books and magazines
are devoured by the cargo, for which the
devourers render no return, and from which
they gain no strength. A great reader-a
constant and universal reader-is rarely
good worker. A receptive habit of mind.
that can only find satisfaction in devouring,
without digesting, illimitable print, is men,
tai death to a man. 1t is essential dissipa-
tion, opposed alike to healthy mental life
and development, and positive usefulness in
the world. This perfect balance between
reception and action-between acquiring
and doing-cannot be disturbed in the men
tai any more than in the muscular world,
without bringing with it disease and imbe-
cility.
The facts that have stated with regard
to the body and the mind are important
enough in themselves to call for exhibition,
but they serve to illustrate, with peculiar
force, the dangers of the receptive habit
that prevails in the realm of spiritual things.
1t is no less an age of preaching than of
reading. All over this land congregations
Of uncounted thousands go up every Sun
day to be played upon by sermons-to
have their intelects quickened, their SYM
pathies excited, their imaginations inspired,
and their whole spiritual natures acted up
on by their preacher. They want a morn
ing sermon, and an afternoon sermon, and
many of them would be glad to have an
evening sermon. They go to their weekly
prayer meeting, and would always be glad
to have sermon there. They love to have
their heart raked open and stirred up by
an eloquent exhortation, or melted by the
pathoS of touching prayer. Their hearts
are not only open and crying for more from
the preacher, but they are open toward
God and crying to Him for more. They
thirst for the influx of divine influences that
shall elevate their spiritual frame Recep-
tive always, thirsting and hungering always,
always eating and drinking they become
thoroughly dissipated in religion, their spir-
itual life degenerates into an emotional
form, and so they become untitled for Chris
tian action.
l have known multitudes of good and
pure people who were almost utterly useless
in the world, and powerless in themselves,
by remaining for years in this strictly re-
ceptive attitude. have known multitudes
who go to prayer-meeting to have good
time, precisely the same as Others would go
to a ball to have a good time. Their rei-
gious exercises have become sort of holy
amusement. They go to be stirred and re-
freshed, to have their motions excited, and
to receive something which shall make them
feel. They have not so much to learn how
to do better as to be made to feel better
Exaltation of emotion-spritual intoxica-
tion-is the object mainly sought for. Wo
be to the preacher if he fail so to act upon
them as to procure the fulfllment of this
object. 1t will not be enough that he lay
down the law and line Of duty with faithful
pess, and spend his days in visits and labors
of sympathy and love. He must preach
with power /; he must pour forth with abun-
dance he mnst bring stimulating draughts
to the greedy lips of decaying emotions, or
he will be prescribed.
1t is precisely thus with the music of the
sanctuary. The number of hearts that go
up actively in a song of praise, in con-
gregation of five hundred persons, is very
small. Hearts and ears are thrown open
to drink in the influence of the music, as
if the congregation, and not God, were ad-
dressed by the hymn. In the minds of too
many ministers prayer itself is something
TO be addressed in about equal parts to the
congregation aud to the Most High. 1t
is regarded not altogether as the vehicle
for aspiration and petition, but as portion