The Emporia news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1859-1881, 1870-02-11
PRAEER-MEETINa RULERS.
! BY Rrv. +. DE wIrr r11srAeE.


+ There is a class of barb4rians who
roam the land, making fearful havoc.
They swing no tomahawk. They sound
no vaThoop. But their track is mark
ed by devastation. l mean that class of
persons who go from church to church,
charged with the mission of talking re-
| ligious meetings to death. They are a
restless tribe, generally disaffected with
their own church, for the reason that
the church can no longer endure them !;
and they go about ike the roar
ing lion, seeking whom they may de-
YOUR
Though never having seen them be-
fore, can tell them as soon as they en-
ter a meeting. They have brassy face,
sanctimonious way of rolling up their
eve, a solemn shuttle, and a pompous
way of sitting down, as much as to say,
Here goes into the seat an awful
amount of religionlo They take off
their -overcoats; pull out the cuffs of
their shirt-sieeves, give an impressive
clearing of the throat, and wait for the
time to seize their prey.
y The meeting is all aglOw. Some old
Christian has related : melting expe-
rience, or young man has asked for
prayers, or a captive of evil habits has
recounted his struggles and cried from
the depth of an agOnized heart, fGod be
'TieTcfful to me sinner!" Orton1iile
has just started heavcnward, taking all
the meeting along with it. The exer-
cises have come to climax, and the
minister sabout to pronounce the Ben
ediction, or invite the serious into an
adjoining room for religious CONVERSE
ton, when the Prayer-meeting Killer
begins slowly to rise, his boots creaking,
the seat in front grooming under the
pressure of his right hand. and every
thing else seeming to give way. He
confesses himself stranger, but he
loves pray He is astonish-
ed that there are not more present. He
does not see how christians can be in
consistent. - He has heard an incident
that he feels called upon to relate He
related it that noon at the Fulton-street
Prayer-meeting. He related il that at
te1nOOn at on old peoples meeting. He
will relate it now in rehearsal for a
meeting tomorrow, at which he expects
to relate it. His voice is wooden. His
eyes are dry as the bottom of kettle
that has been on q stove two hours With
out any water in it. The young people
laugh, and go out one by one. The
aged wipe the sweat from their fore
heads. And the minister begins within
himself to recite an eXtemporized Iita-
ny, From fire, and plague, and tenn
pest, and itinerant bores, good Lord,
deliver us ~ 40 81 S1sgt
The interloper would hardly have
lived through the night if he could rot
have given vent to this utterance. 1t
was impossible for him to sit still.
There was somewhere down in his
clothes a spring which lifted him up in
evitably. AT the close of the meeting
he waited 10 be congratulated on his
happy remarks, and went home feeling
that he had given the world a mighty
push toward the millennium.
{ If such an one is VIGOROUSLY incon-
sistent, he will talk chiefly on personal
holiness. Perhaps he failed rich, so
that, uncncumbered, he might give all
his time to prayer-meetings. We knew
q horse-jockey whose perpetual theme
at such meetings was Sanctification
and he said he was speeding toward
heaven, but on which of his old nags we
had not time to ask him.. - 49,
One of the chiefs of this barbarian
tribe of Prayer-meeting Killers is the
eXpository man. He is very apt to rise
with a New Testament in his hand, or
there had been some passage that du-
ring the day pressed heavily on his
mind. 1t is probably the first chapter
of Romans, or some figurative passage
from the Old Testament. He says, for
instance: 'My brethren, l call your at
tention to Hosea 7th aud 8th. tEph-
rain is a cake not turned You all
know the history of Ephraim. Eph-
rain was-an-welll He was a man
mentioned in the Bible. You all know
who he was. Surely no intelligent au-
dience like this need be told who Eph-
rain was. Now the passage says that
he was not turned. There ARE a good
many kinds of cake, my brethren!
There is the Indian cake, and the fan
mel cake, and the buckwheat cake. Now
Ephraim was a cake not turned. 1t is
an awful thing not to be turned. NV
friends, let us all turn - -ss F-r
1t sometimes happens that this relie-
ious pest confines himself to the meet
ings of his own church. Interesting
takers are sometimes detained at home
by sickness but his health is always
good. Others dare not venture out in
the storm but all the elements combin-
ed could not keep him from his place.
He has the same prayer now that he has
had for the last twenty years, There
is in it an allusion to the death of a
prominent individual. You do not I'M
derstand who he meansS The fact is, he
composed that prayer about the time
that General Jackson died, and he has
never been able to drop the allusion.
He has patronizing way of talking to
as much as TO say: "Ho you
poor, miserable scalawags, just look at
me, and see what you might have BEEN"
Oh! wish some enterprising show
man would gather all these Prayer
meeting Killers from all our churches
into a religious menagerie, and let
them all talk together. It would bring
together more spectators than the Car
diff Giant. We will take five season
tickets for the exhibition, Let these of
tenders be put by themselves, where
day in and day out, night in and night
out, they may talk without Interrupt
ton. Nothing short of an eternity of
CAB would satisfy them. What will
they do in Heaven, with nobody to ex-
hort! We imagine them now rising up
in the angelic assemblage, proEostag to
make a feV remarks. If they get there,
You will never again hear of silence in
Heaven for the space of half an hour.
Alas! the land is strewn with these
carcasses of prayer-meetings slain by
these religious desperadoes. They have
driven the young people from most of
the devotional meetings. How to get
rid OF this affiiction, is the question
with hundreds of churches. We advise
your waiting on such persons and tell
log them that, owing to the DEPRIVED
state of public taste, their efforts are not
appreciated. If they still persist, tell
them they must positively stop or there
will be trouble. If under all this they
arc incorrigible, collar them, and hand
them over to the police as disturbers of
religious assemblages. As you love the
Church of God, put an. end to their raw
ages. 1t is high time that the nuisance
was abated. Among Bornesian canni-
balls and Fejee Islanders l class this
tribe of Experimenting Killers.-Inde-
pendent.
GOD BLESS OUR LOVED ONES.