Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1883-06-02
SUNDAY EASY CHAIR.


Foster all noble tn lights, cast out the base,
Thrust forth the bad and make the good thine own
Who has the courage thus to look within,
Keep faithful watch and ward with inner eyes,
The foe may harrass, but meier surprise,
Or over him ignoble conquest win
Oh doubt it not, il you wouldst wear the crown,
Self baser self, must hrst be trampled down.
John Acklam.
Generally speaking, the more attention
the style of a preacher attracts the less il
deserves.
Music and flowers are evangels of purity
and faith, redolsnt OF God, if we but I'M
lock our hearts to their ministry.
Infinite toll would not enable you tc
sweep away mist, but by ascending lit
tie you may often look over it altogether.
So it is with our moral improvement We
wrestle fiercely with vicious habit, which
could have no hold upon us if we assembled
to higher atmosphere. Helps.
There is an anecdote of Boyle that he
never pronounced the name of God without
perceptible pause and, whatever you
think, recognize in it the dictate of wise
heart. We need this reverence in the air
of our social life, and its neglect will palsy
our piety. -[Rev. DR.. Washburn.
Sin does not produce devils in us all at
once, any more than grace begets angels.
There is an infancy in evil as well as in
good, and it is often hard to tell hesimI
from the cherub. But each surely ma
lures. We must check or cherish it early,
or the demon will grow and the seraph
perish.
The most intelligent hearers are those
who enjoy most heartily the simplest
preaching, 1t is not they who clamor for
superlatively intellectual or esthetic SER
mons. Daniel Webster used to complain
of some of the preaching to which he
listened. elm the house of God be
wanted to mediate upon the simple va,
rieties, and the undoubted facts OF reli-
gion;" not upon mysteries and abstrac.
ton i Austin Phelps.
Joseph Cook states that in the first 500
years of the history of Christianity the
faith gained 100, 900. 600 of adherents in
the next 300 years 100, 000 600 more but
in the last 100 years it has gained 2l0,-
900, 900 more. Such has been the marvel
Gus growth of Christian nations in our GEN.
fury that in the last eighty-three years
Christianity has gained more adherents
than in the previous eighteen centuries.
By adherents he means nominal Christians
that is, all who are not Pagans, Meham-
medans or jews.
The Alleged Indel cacles OF the Bible.
am opposed to the expuIgation of the
Scriptures, says DR.. Talmage, in " Leslie's
Sunday Magazine, because the so. called
indelicacies and cruelties of the Bible have
demonstrated no evil result. A cruel book
will produce cruelty-an unclean book will
produce uncleanness. Fetch me victim.
Out of all Christendom, and out of all the
ages, fetch me victim whose heart has
been hardened to cruelty, or whose life
has been made impure by this book Show
me enc. One of the best families | ever
knew of, for thirty or forty yeara, morning
and evening, had all the members gather
together, and the servants Of the household
and the strangers that happened to be
within the gates, twice day, without
leaving out chapter or verse, they read
this holy book, morning by morning, night
by night. Not only the older children,
but the little child who could
lust spell her way Through the
verse while her mother helped her. The
father beginning and reading one verse,
and then all the members of the family IN
turn reading a verse. The father msin-
tanned his integrity, the mother maintained
her integrity, the sons grew up and entered
professions and commercial life, honoring
every sphere in the life in which they lived,
and the daughters went into families where
Christ was honored, and all that was good
,oura and rprnatIJ-
ally. For thirty years that family endured
the Scriptures. Not one of them ruined
by it. Now, if you will tell me of fam
lily where the Bible has been read twice a
day for thirty years, and the children have
been brought up in that habit, and the
father went TO ruin, and the mother went
to ruin, and the SONS and daughters were
destroyed by tiff you will tell me of one
such incident, | will throw away my Bible,
or / will doubt your veracity.
| tell you if man is shocked with what
he calls the indelicacies of the Word of
God, he is prurient in his taste and imsg
nation. If man cannot read the book of
Solomon's Song without impure suggestion,
he is either in his heart or in his life
libertine. The Old Testament description
of wickedness, uncleanness of all sorts, is
purposely and righteously disgusting &C.
count, instead of the Byronic and the
Partisan vernacular which makes sin at
tractive and appalling. When those old
prophets point you to q lazaretto, you
understand it is lazaretto. When man,
having begun to do right, falls back into
wickedness and gives up his integrity, the
Bible does not say he was overcome by the
Vaccinations of the festal board, or that he
surrendered to convivialities, or that he
became little fast in his habits. I will
tell you what the Bible says "The dog
is turned TO his own vomit again, and
the SOW that was washed to her wallowing IN
the mire." No gliding OF iniquity. No
garlands on deaths. hesd. No pounding
away with silver mallet at iniquity, when
it needs an iron sledge. hammer. can
easily understand bow people brooding
over the description of unclesnness in the
Bible may get morbid in mind until they
are as full of it as the wings and the beak
and the nostril and the claws of q buzzard
are full of the doors of carcass, but what
is wanted is not that the Bible be disin.
fecsed, but that you, the critic, have your
heart and mind washed with carbolic acid !!
i tell yOu, tuhe q WIN QoCS AsOt AAnS
this book, and who is critical as to its con.
tents, and who is shocked and outraged
with its descriptions. has never been
soundly converted. The laying on OF
the hands of Presbytery or EpiscopacY
does not change a mans heart, and
men sometimes get into the pulpit, as
well as into the pew, never having been
changed radically by the sovereign grace
of God. Get your heart right and the
Bible will be right. The trouble is, mems
natures are not brought into harmony with
the Word of God. Expurgstion of the
heart is what is wanted. You cannot make
me believe that the Scriptures, which this
moment lie on the table of the purest and
best men and women of the age, and which
were the dying solsce of your kindred
passed into the skies, have in them faint
which the strongest microscope of honest
criticism could make visible. II men
are uncomfortable in their indig-
nation when the integrity of wife
or child is assaulted, and judges and
jurors as far as possible excuse violence
under such provocation, what ought to be
the overwhelming and long-resouuding
thurders of condemnation for any
man who viii stand in a Christian
pulpit and sssail the more than virgin