News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1884-05-01
A SERMON WORTH READING
A LESSON ON PERSONAL INFLUENCE.
MIR. Beecher Tells Us from the Pulpit How
We Can Make Our Lives Sublime:


IFrom the New York Herald.l
There never was a city since the
world began, said Henry Ward Beecher
in his Sunday sermon, just preceding
the taking up of the collection, that had
more need of Christian sympathy and
succor than this city of Brooklyn. When
I came to Brooklyn, thirty-seven years
ago, there was less than $4,000 people
here. To-day there are more than $780,
900, and suppose before the five years
census is taken in Brooklyn the city will
have very near million inhabitants. 1t
| is the one city of the future on this con-
tinent. Manhattan is bottle island
when it's full, it's full; but Brooklyn
has all Long Island to spread out on.
There are but five cities in all Europe
that are equal in population to Brooklyn
London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna and st.
Petersburg. Besides these, Brooklyn
surpasses every city on the continent of
Europe. We are giving very close
chase to New York itself. We are grow
ing faster than New York-a good deal
faster than New York and for obvious
reasons; and there is no measuring what
will be the rapidity of its growth in the
future. New York in 1883 issued %, 900
permits for building. Brooklyn in 1888
issued 26,O98. The difference is very
great on our side. In that part of the
year that is now elapsed-eight or nine
months-the permits issued are in still
larger proportion of gain over building
in New York. We are SURPRISING New
York in the number of factories and in
the importance of those that are building.
We are surprising New York in all the
industries that require the water edge,
having here shore line of more than
twenty-five miles. Now, while there are
in this great city nearly 5000 people,
there are only 265 churches, chapels and
houses of worship, which gives one
church to every 1924 inhabitants. In
the outlying wards, with population of
1901 people, there is church seating
for only about $4,000, leaving about
400, 900 people in those outlying wards
who have no churches, no Sabbath, no
moral teaching. And yet of the 265
churches that exist in the city on the
average they are not half filed, and
where they are not half filed it is be-
cause there is nothing there that draws
or that meets the wants of the great in
dustrial populations lying around about
them. Under these circumstances what
shall we do? / am not going to make a
plea for church building, although am
glad to see churches going up. But the
churches are not going to educate our
population. We have got to have a
wandering ministry; we have got to have
ministers who go from house to house,
as the apostles did, and that preach to
men in their sorrows, in their sicknesses.
We want missionary men and women
who will go into places of vice. I don't
think we have half proved the power of
the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
The influences that men throw out to
those around about them in the world was
the subject of Mr.. Beecher's sermon, his
text being Romans, xv., 1-3. The fol-
lowing passages are picked out here and
there from the DISCOURSE
1--WE are perpetually acting as if we
were instruments Photographic. We
are throwing pictures; we are throwing
shadows; we are throwing light upon
one, ten, scores, hundreds. Every time
we come into the presence of men
something or other happens to them,
for men are as sensitive to influence as
we are powerful in developing infu-
ence."
ga person whose life is just as regular
as checker board-oh of all the mel
ancholy singing that ever heard was
that of bullfnch in a cage that had
been taught little operatic air-(and
Mr.. Beecher showed how the bullfnch
whistled) and then over and over and
over again, until I wanted to wiring its
neck"
"AIl real education brings men to
men, and wherever you see men by the
1OICO Vi lpiASo eAiNAioSA'So
from and living above their fellow men,
you may be sure they are uneducated
and vulgar just in that degree, for the
essential spirit of evolvement toward
the good in man is the Christianlike
spirit"
"The command to be orthodox is not
to be found anywhere in the New Testa-
ment. Organized beliefs are all very
well-among other things; but organiza-
ton is not the sum of religion, nor even
the need of religion"
81 don't object to elective affinities; /
don't object that men who are alike in
tellectually should fellow together; but
they must not build up a wall between
themselves and their kind"
"The sign that man is a gentleman
is his consideration for those who are
not; the sign that a man is educated is
the largeness of his sympathy; the sign
that man is truly re fined is not that
there is Desert of Sahara in his soul,
but that he blossoms like prairie"