Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1884-06-19
&eadiua fpr the Sabbath.
CONDUCTED BY
REV. ROBERT LATHAM.
tOrigInal.1 [
RELIGIOUS TRAINING.

The present is an age of marvellous i'm
provements in many things. Its education,
al advantages are such as perhaps the world
never before witnessed. The school books
in the various departments of an education,
especially in the primary branches are un-
equaled by those of any past age. There IS,
however, beyond all dispute, an obvious
neglect of the moral and religious training
of the youth of our country. The morals
which are taught in many of our schools
and colleges are a kind of negative thing
which scarcely attains dignity emitting it
to be called good behavior. Parents and
teachers impress it upon the minds of
their children and pupils to treat with
becoming respect their fellows, but suffer
them to treat God and his worship with
either neglect or contempt. This seems
to be popularity of a people enjoying
the privileges Of the religion of the Bible.
The heather were careful, to teach their
children to respect the gods. Socrates was
put to death because he was supposed to
be wanting in proper respect for the gods
of Greece. This was part of the charge
brought against him. The other part was
that he corrupted the youth of the country
and the corruption consisted in, as was
supposed, teaching the youth to neglect
the gods. The gods Of Greece were no gods.
They were dumb idols or their beings which
had an existence only in the minds of their
deluded worshipers. The God of Chris
tendon is the maker of all things. He
lives and reigns in and over all things; still
the larger number of those who live in
Christian lands either treat God with neg
lect or openly contemn him.
This may sound strange at first, but it is
capable of demonstration. Only few per-
sons in Christian lands have any decent re-
spect for the Sabbath. 1t is observed, but
not as God requires it to be observed. In
the majority of professedly Christian fami-
lies the Sabbath is nothing but a kind of
holiday. The idea of remembering the
Sabbath day to keep it holy to the Lord"
never enters their minds. In addition to
this, it may be stated that the house of God
and the worship of God command but little
respect. Multitudes 60 to church for no other
purpose than that they may waste the day
in idle gossip. Many deport themselves in
the house of God, on the Sabbath, with no
more reverence than they do in the court
house on a week day. The very language
of the multitude is the gibberish of the
heather, and not the dialect of the Christian
religion. This is a prominent feature of the
most popular pulpit exercises of the day. 1t
is called preaching, but it is not proclaiming
Christ and him crucified, to sinners. This
religiousdec evidently on the increase
The origin of all this evil or rather of all
these evils, is found mainly in the prevail
ing tendency Of the age to neglect the re-
ligious training of the youth. Education,
to be of a high order, must be commenced
at home. Those who do not learn to speak
correctly their vernacular language at home,
around the fireside, in their childhood, never
make the attainment. Their Galilean brogue
betrays them at all times, and reveals the
fact that slang was the dialect of the home
of their youth.
1t is remarkable that none of the heathen
nations changed their gods or suffered the
standard of their religion to be lowered,
while the Children of Israel were constantly
forsaking the true God and degrading his
worship. The same tendency exists among
Christians that prevailed among the Jews.
God commanded the Israelites, when he
brought them over Jordan, to teach their
children and to command their children to
teach their children forever what God had
done for them. This command they neg
lected to obey, and the result was the mass
of the Israelites, in few generations, sunk
into the most degraded form of barbarism.
They mingled with the heather and learned
of them their ways. The true religion and
the false religion of the heather round
about them were combined. The mixture
thus formed was hideous and vile in the ex-
Creme. Inc SdlIle CeuuellCS W lila llc laioc
and the true exists to-day, and in Christian
lands by Christian people. Modern heathen-
ism is more refined thing than was ancient
heathenism, but it is no less diabolical in its
origin and monstrous in its tendencies. 1t
is more to be dreaded than the worship of
stocks and stones, because more cOrruptlng
to the soul. The inhabitants of Christian
lands shrink back with horror at the thought
of bowling down to billets of wood, but they
view with indifference the tendency of the
age to sink into state of lawless irreligion
without the curb of even superstition.
The way, and the only way, that this ire
ligious tendency of the age can be counter
acted is by training up the youth of the
country in the nurture and admonition of
the Lord. Teach the children to speak the
language of Heaven and not the dialect of
this modern heathenism.