The Portland daily press., 1872-04-22
SUNDAY SERVICES.
Rev. Robert Collyer at the First Parish
Church. "a IN

| Parish church. The presence OF TINS dlstih-
| guished orator drew together large audiences,
and very seldom has this large church been so
densely filled. The morning discourse was
| founded on Actsiv: 49, ''The multitude of them
that believed were of one heart and of one soul,
neither said any of them that the things that
he possessed were his own" We give pref
| ty full abstract of this able sermon, reported
phonographically by Mr. Reuel Small of this
city, the official reporter of the Courts:
1t was in the morning-tide of Christianity
| that this was done, and the first demonstration
of the power of the Christian life in its primitive
! and purest form we observe to be multitude
with one soul, and multitude with one soul
united in one common end, the lowest to reach
up, the lOftiest to reach down, until they stood
on the great common Christian level and be-
| gun in that spirit to transform the world. l
take this to be in these three aspects the mob
lest development of the Christian faith, and SO
want to speak to you about the blessing of
this life of multitude:
First-In its own simple essence. $50
Second-ln its relation to the life in the
churches. lEF1te ,aQftEi.l H-D.JA.
Thrd-In its relation to the life of our own
church.
And to begin by saying that such gather
ing OF life in some form appears to be one OF
the first essentials of civilization and of all true
| goodness. In the nature that is below or be-
side our own, only the most hurtful, and mis-
| chievOus is solitary. 1t was the old belief that
the Upas tree, deadliest of all poisons, was the
| loneliest of all trees. That it stood in its own
| remote valley with flank death, and with no
| tree like it on the planet. We know now that
| the Upas is not so deadly and has no such sim
| gular solitude, but it is still found only here
| and there in Ceylon and Java, falling back be-
! fore the very glance of social beings as if the
| Maker had said must put you somewhere and
l will put you out of the way So it is again
with animals. The elephant, kindliest of all
| great beasts, is the most social, but nature
knows nothing of herd of tigers. The eagles
and vultures come together from the four quar-
tiers of the heavens to the carcass, but they 90
back into their soitudes to live, while the sing
ing birds stay in the same grove and make
concert OF their life as well as their song
The bear has the germ of fine, social quail
ties in his forests, but then he has kind heart
it you use him we'll and you can make worse
bear than he is out of man, as a great many
women know to their sorrow. Indeed, it is a
wonder to me how some bears should be SO good
and some men so bad, considering their oppor-
| tunities.
| There then is the clean fact as nature has
| gwen 1t. Green grass and wholesome flowers
| and grape vines and apple trees stand close
and plenty all about us, but hemlock and night
shade, the poison vine and the Upas tree keep
| to themselves, and savage beasts and birds love
the solitude, but kindly beasts and birds seek
| society. 1t is the law of the whole world be-
low US, that sayagery and treachery and the
| disposition to hurt should growl and scream to
| its own echo but that the kindly nature sbould
rest itself in the presence of hosts of its kind
and nestle and nuzzle in friendly good fellow
ship. 'htt '.-'l '.--' -, - ,i-,,-,t,iE
| And this law of life below is the law of life
within us. Society in all its strata bears away
| towards goodness. You can point me to our
Adam kept his first estate while he was alone,
and the fall came with the beginning of the So
| cial order. But beg you to remember that the
rum III indeed 1T was ruin) came when the wo-
man was alone with the serpent and not when
her husband was with her. 1t was when David
was alone on his housetop that he conceived the
| sin that brought him to the blacklist disgrace
that ever fell on his life, and all the trouble that
came to his old age One would think that
Nazareth was the very place to try the temper
of that new life on which so much of the life of
the world should rest. That the town which
had become proverb of evil, the Five Points,
the Seven Dials, among those mountain villages
was of all places in the world the one to try this
soul that was to be tempted at all points as we
are, yet without SIM But the tempter never
seems to have seen his chance until Jesus was
forty days in the wilderness, alo ie. Then came
the trial of his manhood that stands in the Cos
pels as the temptation. raift rid, -
A good deal has been made of the holiness of
solitary hermits, but if holiness be helpfulness
certainly most of those men were not very help
full. The poor peasants who would lick the
dust on their feet were doing more to help than
they were, and even the power they had at last
to resist the tempter is to be questioned, for it
is clear they only became perfect in their resis-
| tance to temptation when there was nothing
left for the evil one to tempt, and it is no merit
| in white ashes to resist fire. n 70 slaiH2
Whittier, to be sure, a hermit in his way
| 1t would be better for him and for us. no
doubt. II ne would come among us more and be
more intimately of us in the body. But no
man in America is more intimate with us in
the soul than he is No ear more tremulous to
the cry of the whole human family or more
constantly attentive to its meaning And
HaWfhnrna uyas q hnrx. I.
reveal him as watching us with the wsest ewes.
and gathering us into the largest heart So
there may be an isolation like that of these
men, that shall bring them nearer to us all the
The Iliads were sung fand the grand Old
dramas rose to the music of the multitudes
The great statues were cast and chiseled for
the public squares and temples. The noblest of
the old pictures were painted, not to the order
of millionaires to be hidden in their parlors for
the envy of their friends, as they are now, but
to be the altar pieces of great Cathedrals, the
glory OF City Halls, and the common prop
erty of all who had eyes to see.
Physical science says that there has never
| been a new planet discovered, that was worth
preserving, in the solitudes and among the saw
ages. We all bourgeon and rpen in the same
sun. Isolated men are of no more use, gen
orally, for the good purposes of God, than iso-
lated sticks for fire. 1t is the fire that warns
and quickens the fire, and the man the man
II the young man in this place, away from
| Ills LOut, llVluR III u room 10 nlnSe1f, VIII set
outof a Sunday morning to find church in
stead of smoking and brooding over his loneli-
ness, he will be vastly better, because he has
plunged into company of his own kind, GER
| ta1nly, on the average, as bright and human as
he is himself, and some of them intent on the
| noblest aspirations that can touch the human
| soul My own experience is that to be With
my own kind, and with plenty of my kind, in
| all healthy and innocent ways, is as good
thing for my SOULS health as t can do. Nv
memory OF my life as a young man is, that
there is vastly m"re temptation of every sort,
alone, than IN companies, and that one or two
OF your own sort does not help you very much.
They will only catch the contagion and you
VIII all get the black spot in your eyes togeth-
er But to plunge into, and to be of the null
t!tudes OF men is like plunging into the null
htudlnoqs waves OF the strong salt sea. There
are wrecks below the surface in the one as in
the other, and evil things and creeping things
sharks and all the rest in both but YOU do not
go into the sea to find these things, and they
are not there for you, while the sadness, and
strength, and vigor are there for you. '-.r..I
believe that in the simple essence of things
as they touch the human soul the man who
dlslikes to be with men will not like to be with
the angels, or with God, and will be hermit
In eaven without hermitage. A few lofty
souls may be called to the soltudes like those
have mentioned, it is their fate more than
their privilege, and we are not great souls in
that sense, and so, thank Goo, we are not bound
| to take their path. For doubt not it is true
| that 4 Il gI4FF
son solitary souls, the Universe
LOOKS down lnhospitable; and the human heart
Finds nowhere shelter, but in human kind''
Now it is the calling of the Christian church,
II understand Christianity, to gather men and
| women as much as possible into masses and
multitudes to pervade them in that way by its
spirit. and quicken them to higher life by
teaching them to make the best of this. The
| common and, as think, very erroneous idea of
a christian church is that it is something pecu-
- i =
| common multitudes, and mighty social orders
of men at all, but sifted from them as the wheat
| is from the weevil and dust; or to change the
| figure, that Christian churches are so many
forts and stockhouses in an enemy's country,
and Christians are the garrisons to hold them,
to persuade as many of the eneiny's people as
they can to come over to their side, and soon
as they win them snatch them in behind the
walls and keep them there IN safety.
SO there has been no fellowship but only con-
| domination on the one side and scorn and con
tempt on the other. The world to-day no more
believes in the church than the church believes
in the world. The church is not humanized or
the world made much more divine after all
these ages. Infidel, we shout from this side
blgot, they reply from that
When Norman Mcleod two or three years
ago tried to get his countrymen to look at
piece OF Sunday sunshine as frankly as at
piece OF Saturday sunshine, he got SO handled
1or ms temerlty that man of less courage and
conscience would have backed down and said
he was wrong, and that Sunday sunshine is too
sacred to walk in except to church. And when
one of the leaders of this exclusive Christianity
in my own city, a very good man, went to ask
for one of our theatres for Sunday NIGHT M