Connecticut western news., 1890-08-27
CANAAN CONN, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST

buzzed around his head, and buzzed around his hands, and buzzed around his feet If he had killed one of them they would have stung him to death. But he moved in their midst in perfect placidity until he had capt ured the swarm of wandering bees. And so have seen men moving amid the annoyances, and the vexations, and the assaults of life in such calm, Chris tian deliberation that all the buzzing around about their soul amounted tc nothing They conquered them, and above all they conquered themselves. "Oh," you say, that's very good theory to preach on a hot day, but il won't work It will work. It has tian grace we win. You know there are fruits which we gather in June, and others in July, and others ia August, and others in September, and still others in October; and I have to admit that this grace of Christian forgiveness soul
 s THE SOFT TONGUE.
 We hear a. great deal about the bit ter tongue, and the sarcastic tongue, and the quick tongue, and the stinging tongue, but we know very little about s'the soft tongue that breaketh the bone. We. read Hudibras and Sterne and Dean Swift and the other apostles of acrimony, but give little time to studying the example of him who was reviled, and yet reviled not again. Oh, that the Lord, by his spirit, would en- dow us all with ssthe soft tongue that breaketh the bone"
 I pass now to the other thought that I desire to present, and that is, kind ness as means of usefulness. In all communities you find skeptical men. Through early education, or through the maltreatment of professed Christian people. or through prying curiosity about the future world, there are great many people who become skep- tical in religious things. How shall you capture them for God2 Sharp ar gument and sarcastic retort never won a single soul from skepticism to the Christian religion While powerful books on the Evidences of Christiani- ty'' have their mission in confirming Christian people in the faith they have already adopted, I have noticed that when skeptical people are brought into the kingdom of Christ it is through the charm of some genial soul, and not by argument at all.
 Men are not saved through the head i; they are saved through the heart. A storm comes out of its hiding place. It says, ''Now we'll just rouse up all this sea-" and it makes great bluster, but it does not succeed. Part of the sea is reused up-perhaps one-half of it or one-fourth of it. After while the calm moon, placid and beautiful, looks down, and the ocean begins to rise. It comes up to high-water mark. It em- braces the great headlands It sub merges the beaches of all the conti- nents. It is the heart throb of one world against the heart throb of an other world. And have to tell you that while all your storms of ridicule and storms of sarcasm may rouse up the passion of an immortal nature, nothing less than the attractive power of Chris tian kindness can ever raise the death less, spirit to happiness and to God. l have more faith in the prayer of a child five years old, in the way of bringing an infldel back to Christ and to heaven, than have in all the hissing thunder bolts of ecclesiastical controversy.
 You cannot overcome men with re- igious augmentation If you come at skeptical man with an argument on behalf of the Christian religion you put the man on his mettle. He says: ''I see that man has a carbine. I'll use my carbine. I'll answer his argument with my argument" But if you come to that man persuading him that you desire his happiness on earth and his eternal welfare in the world to come he cannot answer it.
 MIM1CRY WILL NOT SAVE THEM.
 What have said is just as true in the reclamation of the openly vicious. Did you eyer know drunkard to be saved through the caricature of a drunkard9 Your mimicry of the stag gering step, and the thick tongue, and the disgusting hiccough, only worse maddens his brain. But if you come to him in kindness and sympathy; if you show him that you appreciate the awful grip of a depraved appetite; if you persuade him of the fact that thou sands who had the grapplng hooks of evil inclination clutched in their soul as firmly as in his have been delivered, then ray of light will flash across his vision, and it will seem as if supernat- ural hand were steadying his staggering gait.
 A good many years ago there lay in the streets man dead drunk, his face exposed to the blistering monday sun. A Christian woman passed along, looked at him, and said, ''Poor fellow" She took her handkerchief and spread it over his face and passed on. The man reused himself up from his debauch, aud began to look at the handker- cl.ief, and To! on it was the name of a highly respectable Christian woman of 1. the city. He went to her; he thanked her for her kindness; and that one little deed saved him for this life, and saved him for the life that is to come. He was afterward attorney general o1 the United States; but, higher than all he became the censecrated disciple o1 Jesus Christ
 Kind words are so cheap it is won der we do not use them oftener. There are tens Of thousands of people who are dying for the lack of one kind