The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1888-05-13
DEALING WITH SINNERS.


Jealous preachers have always been in
q difficulty to decide what is the best
way of appealing to the consciences of
their congregations. Should the homi-
list make his denunciations of vice and
their admonitions to virtue TOO general
in their character. there is reason to fear
that his flock will not profit greatly by
counsels which will seem TO have no
direct and personal relations to them
selves. Everybody's sin, like every
body's business, is nobody's. and the
preachers hearers will listen with com
placency to the worst he can say of il.
If, on the other hand, he endeavors to
give touch OF reality to his discourse,
to infuse into il q dash of the concrete
by sketching sinner from some model
within his mental, or possibly his
physical, vision, there is the danger lest
the portrait should be recognized as
that OF some actual or supposed orig
inal, well-knoWn to those present. and
the result will be more productive of
scandal than edi6cation. The exact
course between the Scylla of platitude
and the Charybdis of personality is hard
to discern and navigate; and most
preachers, as we are painfully aware,
avoid it by keeping well on the side of
the former of the two dangers above
mentioned. Still there is not the
least reason-though, of course, there is
for incompetency and incidence
q grave temptation-to keep the SER
mon abstract and unreal. in order
to avoid the risk of appearing to
preach att several members of the
flock. The text may be so handled, the
essen so inculcated, the censure 80
that all present shall feel how
practical is the preachers
treatment of his subject, and every
nearer of the sermon will recognize
how direc', how salutary, how unmis-
taxable is ats application to his neigh
Dor. Smith, the grocer, will lean COM
fertably back in his seat while the
grocer is denouncing commercial fraud,
and will q 1t, almost with feeling
of compassion, How bard this hits |
poor Brown" while Mrs. Camp stems
to his warnings against the vice of IN
with pious hope that
Betsy Prlg will not fail to lay them to |
heart. The pulpit moralist has only to !
avoid those last touches of deliuestion
which fix the original of the portrait,
and his sermon may positively ''pa:pi-
tate with actually" without giving
otfense to any one. 1t is the blessed
privilege of humanity not to recognize
unfavorabe representations of itself ex-
cept under the strongest possible pres
sure; The power to which Burns
surely in irony-Rppealed, and which
was to give US the gift of seeing Guy
selves as others see us, has never vet
hive
among the race of men; and. to Judge
rom the fact that human compIacency |
does not appear to diminish as the age |
If the world increases, it does not seem |
probable that the number of persons
Rho are able to take the detached"
7iew Of themselves is ever likely to be
Tery much larger than it is at present.
London Telegraph.
COLONEL ING ERsoLL ON CHRISTIANITY
Remarks on his reply to Gr. Field
IS a listener from across the broad
At.antic to the clash of arms between
colonel Ingersoll and DR.. Field on the
lost momentOus of all subjects, I
ave not the personal knowledge
'hich assisted these doughty cham
ions in making reciprocal acknowl-
dement's, as broad as could be desired,
18th reference to personal character
nd motive. Such acknowledgements
re OF high value in keeping the issue
ear, if not always of all adventurous,
ct of all venomous, matter. Destitute
{ the experience on which to found
lem as original testimonies, still, in
partially to criticise the
,marksble reply of Colonel Ingersoll, /
IN both accept in good faith what has
, IN said by DR.. Field, and add that