Morning journal and courier., 1880-09-09


 Franklin county has given us Lake Pleas ant and now it gives us Mir. Moody's convo- cation of Christian workers. There was cer- tainly need of some alternative to Lake Pleas ant, although the social and moral atmos- phere of that crowd has been improved with more vigilant policing and it's emersion from the status of huge picnic turned loose, into the responsibilities of summer resort thronged by promiscuous attendance, and bound not to lay snares for the careless, the unguarded and the young.
 Mir. Moody's enterprise does not seem to antagonize the boarder and more-to- be-sus- pected tendencies of Lake Pleasant to free love, irrelgion and general moral collapse. Neither is 1t ventilating shaft sunk into the Shutesbury sink of slime from which an adul- terer and murderer is now awaiting trial at the county seat. It is directed to a want which few healthy people in this age of the world are ever acutely sensible of,-the want of the Holy Ghost. This statement may seem bald, but as 1t is one which is to be verified by one's own consciousness, every reader has in his own soul the datum by which to refute confirm it.
 The Northfield meeting presents the spec tacle of numerous body of people, Christian workers, intelligent and good, assembling for acute self-contemplation and to pray for special ecstatic experience, which they deem essential to the progress of their work. Ecs- tatic experiences are not the common lot of
 
 them, even most men of religious conviction and of fair to middling walk and conversation in life. Most men who have faith in God and immortality in Christ the redeemer of the world, and in the gospel as the con- fort of the afflicted and the hope of the wretched,-the great mass of Christians, in short, do not sympathize with these peniten- tial agonies of Northfield. They seem to spring from craving for soul -deliriun, or soul.intoxication they constitute the very ''hoss-trot" of religion, to which the common life, the common longings and the common religious satisfactions of most of US are mere humdrum and commonplace.
 'If you are full of love-" says Mir. Moody, whose native sense often gets the better of his mysticism, ''you mustn't talk about it." That advice is splendid. It agrees with the self respect of most men and women. Nobody has yet called camp-meeting to advertise he loves his wife and children; nobody mentions that very often to his most intimate friends. There is great deal of talk about the condi- tion of their own souls at Northfeld which seems to the world like the conversation of an old ladies' tea-party when their mutual ail- ments come up for discussion My soul, what ails it ? is the great conundrum. The med ical world was once very much surprised to learn from the case of Alexis St. Martin, who had hole in his side, that the healthy stom- ach had no nerves of sensation, and could at first be held in 8 mans hand without feeling it. It occurs to us that Rev. MT. Pentecosts trauble may be that, with a once healthy soul, he got a hole in his side and handled it and felt of it so much that it begins to develop nerves of sensation and writhe at the stant inspection. Thesecrecy of the soul, mans holy of hohes, was not planted in the inner temple of his being without reason, ana cannot become thoroughfare with impunity.
 The last place perhaps Jesus Christ would have selected in which to set his soul right before God" or to lay open his agony would have been congregation of human beings. He went off into the wilderness, and he never seems to have said much about it. When he got back he dipped right into the needs and shortcomings of the world around about him. ''Blessed are the poor in spirit" he started off, preaching about other people and teach saw great light.'' It is said that our minis ters have not sympathize deeply with the purposes of Mir. Moody's meeting we do not know why but we should hope that it was because they realize the superhuity of so much soul-coddling on the part of those who believe and the need of more practical and genuine work among the rest of the world. There seems an absence of sympathy at North field with the poor, the ignorant, the home less, the orphaned, the gone -astray, the de- graded, with all who sit in darkness, which contrasts strongly with the devotion of some of our New England clergy to their focks. The Republicans news columns bring to our knowledge an illustration in point in the same issue in which we read of MT. Moody's meet ing. There died ths other day the pastor at Three Rivers in this county, manufacturing hamlet-a young man, Rev. Frank W. Cobb who had been at work there for two years as the head af union evangelical church and as ''the common friend and helper among all classes. being especially beloved by the oper- ativesin the mills of whatever nationality" He left to his people this message:
 Tell - to keep on, join the church and all hn Of Three Rivers don't forget the poor; don't forget the French people; don't forget the poor children. Tell them, Don't let seereta- rianism run away with Christianity Tell them, I haven't been very long-faced among them, but have prayed for them good deal in my weak way.
 That man needed no special exercises at Northfeld to fill hin with the Holy Ghost.