Connecticut western news., 1884-04-09
A SERMON WORTH READING ALEssON ON PERSONAL INFLUENCE, MT. Beecher Tells Us from the Pulpit How
 We Can Make Our Lives Sublimet
From the New York Herald.l

kEs bGeCneF
 We Can Make Our Lives sublimeI
 From the New York Herald.l
 There never was 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 50, 900 people here. To-day there are more than 790,- 900, and suppose before the five years census is taken in Brooklyn the city will have very near a million inhabitants. It 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 a 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 it's growth. in the future. New York in 1888 issued 23, 900 permits for building. Brooklyn in 1883 issued 26,086. 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 surpassing New York in the number of factories and in the importance of those that are building. We are surpassing 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 800, 900 people, there are only 265 churches, chapels and houses of worship, which gives one church to every 2,624 inhabitants. In the outlying wards, with population of 45O,000 people, there is church seating for only about 50,0OO, 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 filled it is be- cause there is nothing there that draws or that meets the wants of the great in- austrial populations lying around about them. Under these circumstances what shall we do? I am not going to make 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 8 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.
 HOW MEN AFFECT THEIR FELLOWS.
 The influences that men throw out to those around about them in the world was the subject of Mir. Beecher's sermon, his text being Romans, xv., 1-3. The fol- lowing passages are picked out here and there from the discourse:-
 "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."
 "A person whose fife is just as regular as checker board-oh of all the mel ancholy singing that I ever heard was that of bullfnch in cage that had been taught little operatic air-(and Mir. Beecher showed how the bullfnch whistled) )-and then over and over and over again, until I wanted to wiring its neck"
 "All real education brings men to men, and wherever you see men by the force of education separating themselves from aud living above their fellow men, you may be sure they are uneducatec 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 ver7
 well-among other things; but organiza
 tion is not the sum of religion, nor ever
 the need of religion
 ''I don't object to elective afinities; don't object that men who are alike in
 tellectually should fellow together; bu they must not build up wall between
 themselves and their kind"
 "The sign that man is gentleman is his consideration for those who ar not; the sign that man is educated the largeness of his sympathy; the sig
 that man is truly re fined is not tha there is Desert of Sahara in his sou
 but that he blossoms like prairie"