The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1891-04-23

law, and it will keep him from charg-
ing for briefs he never wrote. and fol
pleas he never made, and for percent.
| ages he never earned, and from robbiug
widow and orphan because they are de-
fenseless. Yes, this practical religion
| will come into the physicians life and
he will feel his responsibility as the
| conservator of the public health, pro-
fession honored by the fact that Christ
Himself was physician. And it will
make him honest, and when he does not
understand a case he will say so, not
| trying to cover up lack of diagnosis
with ponderous technicalities or send
the patient to a reckless drugstore be-
cause the apothecary happens to pay
percentage on the prescriptions sent.
And this practical religion will come to
the school teacher, making her feel her
responsibility in preparing our youth
for usefulness and for happiness and
for honor, and will keep her from Civ,
ing sly box to dull head, chastisine
him for what he can nothelp, and send.
ing Encouragement all through the
after years of a lifetime. This prac-
tical religion will also come to the news
paper IN n, and it will help them in the
! gathering of the news, and it will help
them in setting forth the best interests
of society, and it will keep them from
putting the sins of the world in larger
| type than its virtues, and its mistakes
than its achievements.
Yes, this religion-this practical re.
| ligion-wilI come and put its hand on
what is called good society, elevated
society, successful society, SO that peo-
pie will have their expenditures within
their income, and they will exchange
| the hypocritical mot at home" for the
| honest explanation, too tired" or ''too
busy to see you" and will keep inno-
cent reception from becoming intoxi-
Gated conviyiality.
Yea, there is great opportunity for
missionary work in what are called the
successful classes of society. 1t is no
rare thing now to see a fashionable
woman intoxicated in the street, or the
rail-car, or the restaurant. The num-
Der of fine ladies who drink too much
is increasing. Perhaps you may find
her at the reception in most exalted
company, but she has made too
many visits to the wine-room, and
now her eye is CLASSY, and after
awhile her cheek is unnaturally
flushed, and then she falls into
fits of excruciating laughter about
nothing, and then she offers sickening
batteries, telling some homely man
how well he looks, and then she is
helped into the carriage, and by the
time the carriage gets to her home it
takes the husband and the coachman
to get her upstairs, The report is, she
was taken suddenly i'll at German.
All! no. She took too much cham
payne and mixed liquors and got drunk.
That was all.
Yea, this practical religion will have
to come in and fix up the marriage re-
lation in America. There are members
of churches who have too many wives
and too many husbands. Society needs
to be expurgated and washed, and fumi-
| gated and Christianized. We have mis-
sionary societies to reform Mulberry
street, New York, and Bedford street,
|
and the Brooklyn docks. but there is
need of an organization to reform much
that is going on in Beacon street,
and Madison square and Ritten-
house square, and West End, and
Brooklyn Heights, and Brooklyn Hill.
We want this practicalreligion not only
to take hold of what are called the low
er classes, but to take hold of what are
called the higher classes. The trouble
is that people have an idea they can do
all their religion on Sunday with hymn
book and prayer book and liturgy, and
some of them sit in church rolling up
their eyes as though they were ready
for translation, when their Sabbath / s
bounded on all sides by an inconsistent
life, and while you are expecting to
come out from under their arms the
wings of an angel, there come out from
their forehead the horns of beast.
There has got to be a new depart ure
in religion. do not say a new religion.
Oh, no; but the old religion brought to
new appliances. In our time we have
had the daguerreotype and the ambro-
type and the photograph; but it is the
same old sun, and these arts are only
new appliances of the old sunlight. SO
this glorious Gospel is just what we
want to photograph the image OF God
on one soul and daguerreotype it
on another soul. Not a new Cos
pei, but the old Gospel put to
new work. In our time we have had
the telegraphic invention and the
telephone invention and the electric
light invention; but they are all the
children of old electricity, an element
that the philosophers have a long while
known much about. So this electric
Gospel needs to flash its light on the
/ eyes and ears and souls of men, and be-
come a telephone medium to make the
deaf hear; telegraphic medium to
dart invitation and warning to all ma.
tions; an electric light to illuminate the
Eastern and Western hemispheres.
Not anew Gospel but the old Gospel
| doing a new work
Now you say: '.That is a very beau
tiful theory, but is it possible to take