The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1870-02-12
PrGyer-Meeti1lg KILLERS.
BY REV. t. DE WITT TALMAGE.

There is class of barbarians who roam the
land, making fearful havoc. They swing no
tomahawk. They sound no warhoop But their
track is marked by devastation / mean that
class of persons who 60 from church to church,
charged with the mission of talking religious
meeting to death. They are restless tribe, gen.
orally disaffected with their own church, for the
reason that the church can no longer endure
them and then they go about, like the roaring
lion, seeking whom they may devour.
Though never having seen them before, | can
tell them as soon they enter meeting. They
have brassy face, sanctimonious way of roll
ing up their eye, solemn shuttle, and pomp-
Gus way of sitting down, as much as to say,
'Here goes into the seat an awful amount of re-
igion l'' They take off their overcoats, pull out
the cuffs off OF their shirt-seeves give an impress
sive clearing of the throat and wait for the time
to seize their prey.
The meeting is all aglow. Some old Christian
has related melting experience, or a young man
has asked for prayers, or captive of evil habits
has recounted his struggles and cried from the
depth of an agonized heart, "God be merciful to
me sinner P' Ortonvlle has just started heav-
onward, taking all the meeting along with it.
The exercises have come to climax, and the
minister is about to pronounce the henedction,
or invite the serious into an adjoining room for
religious conversation, when the Prayer-meeling
Killer begins slowly to rise his boots creaking,
the scat in front groanng under the pressure of
his right hand, and every thing else seeming to
give way. He confesses himself stranger, but
he loves prayer meetings. He is astonished that
there are not more present. He does not see how
Christians can be so inconsistent. He has heard
an incident that he feels called upon to relate
He related it that noon at the Fnton-sreet Pray
er-meeting. He related it that afternoon al an
old peoples meeting. He will relate it now in
rehearsal for a meeting tomorrow, at which he
expects to relate it, His eyes are dry as the bottom
of kettle that has been on a stove two 10 Irs
without any water in ii. The young people
laugh, and go out one by one. The aged wipe
the sweat from their ioreheads. And the minis
ter begins within himself to recite an extempori-
zed litany, "From fire. and plague, and tempest,
and itinerant bores, good Lord, deliver us y
The interloper would hardly have lived through
the night il he could not have given vent to this
utterance. 1t was impossible for him to sit sill.
There was somewhere down in his clothes a
spring which lifted him up inevitably. At The
close of the meeting he waited to be congralula-
ted on bis happy remarks, and went home feel
ing that he had given the world mighty push
toward the millennium.
If such an one is notorously inconsistent, he
will talk chiefly on personal holiness. Perhaps
be failed rich, so that, unencumbered, he mgh
give all his time to prayer-meetngs. We knew
a horse-jockey whose perpetual theme at such
meetings was Sanctifcation and he said he was
speeding toward Heaven, but on which of his old
nags we had not time to ask him.
One of the chiefs of this barbarian tribe of
Prayer-meeting Killers is the exposiory man.
He is very apt TO rise with a New Testament in
his hand, or there has been some passage
that during the day has pressed heavily on
his mind. 1t is probably the first chapter of
Romans, or some fguratve passage from the Old
Testament. He says, for instance "My breth-
ren, call your attention to Hosea, 7th and Sth.
'Ephraim is a cake not turned.' You all know
the history of Ephraim. Ephraim was-ah-
well He was a man mentioned in the Bible
You all know who he was. Surely no inte-
gent audience like this need to be told who
Ephraim was Now the passage says that he
was cake not turned. There are good many
kinds of cake, my brethren There is the Indian
cake, and the flannel cake and the buckw wheat
cake. Now Ephraim was cake not turned. 1t
is an awful thing not 10 be turned. Ny friends
let US all turn ~
1t sometimes happens that this religious pest
confines himself to the meetings of his own
church. Interesting takers are sometimes de-
tanned at home by sickness; but his health is al
ways good. Others dare not venture out in the
storm ; but all the elements combined could not
keep him from his place. He has the same pray
er now that be has had for the last twenty years
There is in il an allusion to the death of prom
neat individual. You do not understand who
he means The fact is he composed that PRAYER !
about the time that General Jackson died, and /
he has never been able to drop the allusion lie |
has patronizing way of talking to Sinners as
much as 10 say "Ho you poor, miserable |
scalawags, just look at me, and see what you
might have been ~
Oh | wish some enterprising Snowman would
gather all these Prayer-meeting Killers from all
our churches into religious menagerie, and let
them all talk together. 1t would bring together
more spectators than the Cardiff Giant We will
take five season tickets for the exhibition. Let
these offenders be put by themselves where day
in and day out, might in and night out, they
may talk without interruption. Nothing short
of an eternity of CAB would satisfy them. What
will they do in Heaven, with nobody TO exhort
We imagine them now rising up in the angelic
assemblage, proposing to make a few 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 the carcases of
prayermeetings slain by these religious despera-
does. They have driven the young people from
most of the devotional meetings. How to get
rid of this affcton is the question with hun
dreds of churches. We advise your waiting on
such persons, and telling them that, owing to the
depraved 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 are incorrigibe, 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 ravages. 1t is high
time that the nuisance was abated. Among
Bornesian cannibals and Fejee Islanders class
this tribe of Prayer-meeting Killers.-N Y. In
dependent.