The Bossier banner., 1891-10-01

subtract all the time you take for sleep,
and the taking of food and recreation;
that will leave you about sixteen
years. From those sixteen years you
must subtract all the time you are nee
essarily engaged in the earning of a
livelihood; that will leave you about
eight years. From those eight years
you must take all the days and weeks
and mOnths-all the length of time that
leaving you about one year in which to
work for God. Oh, my soul, wake up!
How darest thou sleep in harvest time,
and with so few hours in which to reap?
So that l state it as simple fact that
all the time that the vast majority of
you will have for the exclusive service
of God will be less than one year!
But" says some man, 81 literally
support the Gospel, and the church is
open and the Gospel preached; all the
spiritual advantages are spread before
men, ard if they want to be saved let
them come to be saved; l have dis
charged my responsibility" All. is
that the Masters Spirit? Is there not
an old book somewhere that commands
US to go out into the highways and the
hedges and compel the people to come
in? What would have become of you
and me if Christ had not come down off
the hills of Heaven, and if He had not
come through the door of Bethlehem
caravansary, and if He had not with
the crushed hand of the crucifXion
knocked at the iron gate of the sepul-
cher of our spiritual death, saying:
Lazarus, come forth?" Oh, my
Christian friends, this is no time for
ness seem to be in full blast; when
steam presses are publishing in
fidel tracts; when express railroad
trains are carrying passengers of sin;
when fast clippers are laden 9th opium
and rum; when the night air of our
cities is polluted with the laughter that
breaks up from the ten thousand sa-
looms of dissipation and abandonment;
when the fires of the second death al
ready are kindled in the cheeks of some
who, only little while ago. were in
corrupt. Never since the curse fell
upon the earth has there been time
when it was such an unwise, such an
awful thing for the church to sleep!
The great audiences are not gathered
in the Christian churches, the great au-
diences are gathered in temples of sin
tears of unutterable woe their bap-
tism, the blood of crushed hearts the
awful wine of their sacrament, bias
phemies their litany, and the groans of
the lost world the organ dirge of their
worship.
Again, if you want to be qualified to
meet the duties which this age demands
of you, you must on the one hand avoid
reckless iconoclasm, and on the other
hand not stick too much to things be-
cause they are old. The air is too full
of new plans, new projects, theories of
government, new theologies, and am
amazed to see how so many Christians
want only novelty in order to recon-
mend thing to their confidence; and
SO vacillate and swing to and fro and
they are useless, and they are unhappy.
New plans-secular, ethical, philo-
sOphical, religious, cisatlantic, transat-
lantic All, my brother, do not adopt
a thing merely because it is new. Try
it by the realities of Judgment Day.
But, on the other hand, do not ad-
here to anything merely because it is
old. There is not single enterprise of
the Church or the world but has some
times been scoffed at. There was a
time when men derided even Bible So
cieties; and when afew young men met
near a haystack in Massachusetts and
organized the first missionary society
ever organized in this country, there
went laughter and ridicule all around
the Christian church. They said the
undertaking was preposterous. And so,
also, the work of Jesus Christ was as
sailed. People cried out: "Whoever
heard of such theories and ethics
and government? Who ever noticed
such a style of preaching as Je-
sus has?" Ezekiel had talked
of mysterious wings and wheels. Here
came man from Capernaum and Gem
nesaret, and He drew His illustrations
from the lakes, from the sand, from the
ravine, from the lilies, from the corn
stalks. How the Pharisees scoffed!
How Herod deri6ed! How Caiaphas
hissed! And this Jeans they plucked bv
the beard, and they spat in His face,
and they called Him this fellow!' All
the great enterprises in and out of the
church have at times been scoffed at,
and there have been a great multitude
who have thought that the chariot of
Gods truth would fall to pieces if it
once got out of the old rut.
And so there are those who have no
patience with anything like improve
ment in church architecture, or with
anything like good, hearty, earnest
church singing, and they deride any
form of religious discussion which goes
down walking among everyday men
rather than that which makes an ex-
cursion on rhetorical stills Oh, that
the Church of God would wake I'D to
an adaptability of work! We must ad-
init the simple fact that the churches
of Jesus Christ in this day do not reach
the great masses. There are fifty thou
sand people in Edinburg who never
hear the Gospel. There are one million
people in London who never hear the