The Dalles daily chronicle. [volume] (The Dalles, Or.) 1890-1948, 1891-05-16

An editor from San Francisco few weeks
ago wrote me saying he was getting up
for his paper symposium from many
clergYmen, discussing among other things
why do not people go to church,
and he wanted my opinion, and 1 gave it
in one sentence, People do not go to church
because they cannot stand the hunrfrurp 8
The fact is that most people nave SO m :h
humdrum in their worldly calling that they
do not want to have added the humdrum
of religion. We need in all our sermons
and exhortations and songs and prayers
more of what Queen Balkis brought 70
Solomon-namely, more spice.
LIFE IS HUMDRUM.
The fact is that the duties and cares of
this life, coming to US from time to time,
are stupid often and inane and intoler-
able. Here are Inen who have been barter
ing and negotiating, climbing, pounding,
hammering for twenty years, forty years,
fifty years. One great long drudgery has
their life been. Their face anxious, their
feelings benumbed, their days monotonous.
What is necessary to brighten up that
mans life, and to sweeten that acid disDo-
sition, and to put sparkle into the man g
spirits? The spicery of our holy religion.
Why, if between the losses of life there
dashed a gleam of an eternal gain; if be-
tween the betrayals of life there came the
gleam of the undying friendship of Christ;
If in dull times in business we found min
istering spirits flying to and fro in our
office and store and shop, everyday life,
instead of being stupid monotone, would
be glorious inspiration, penduluming be-
tween calm satisfaction and high rapture.
How any woman keeps house without
the religion of Christ to help her is mys-
terry to me. To have to spend the greater
part of ones life, as many women do, in
Manning for the meals in StifchinO trar-
ments that will soon be rent again, and de-
ploring breakages and supervising tardy
subordinates and driving off dust that
soon again will settle, and doing the same
thing day in and day out, and year in and
year out, until their hair siIvers, and the
back stoops, and the spectacles crawl to the
eyes, and the grave breaks open under the
thin sole of the shoe-oh. it is long mon
Otonyl But when Christ comes to the
drawing room, and comes to the kitchen,
and comes to the nursery, and comes in
the dwelling, then how CHEEKY becomes all
womanly duties. She is never alone now;
Martha gets through fretting and joins
Mary at the feet of Jesus.
AH day long Deborah is happy because
she can help Lapidoth; Hannah, because
she can make coat for young Samuel;
Miriam, because she can watch her infant
brother; Rachel, because she can help her
repta, because the cruise of oil is being re-
plenished. . woman! having in your
pantry nest of boxes containing all kinds
of condiments, why have you not tried in
your heart and life the spicery of our holy
"Marthal Martial thou art care
full and troubled about many things; but
one thing is needful, and Mary hath chosen
that good part which shall not be taken
away from her."
SOME RELIGION Is INsIPID
l must confess that a great deal of the
religion of this day is utterly insipid
There is nothing piquant or elevating
about it. Men and women go around
humming psalms in a minor key, and
culturing melancholy, and their worship
has in it more signs than rapture. We do
not doubt their piety. Oh, no. But they
are sitting at feast where the cook has
forgotten to season the food. Everything
Is fat in their experience and in their con.
versation. Emancipated from sin and
death and hell, and on their way to mag
nificent heaven, they act as though they
were trudging on toward an everlasting
Botany bay. Religion does not seem to
agree with them. 1t seems to catch in the
windpipe and become tight strangulation
instead of an exhilaration.
All the infdel books that have been writ
ten, from Voltaire down to Herbert Spen-
our Christianity as lugubrious Christians.
Who wants "a religion woven out of the
shadows of the nightS Why go growing
On your way to celestial enthronement?
Come out of that cave and sit down in the
warm light of the Sun of Righteousness.
Away with your odes to melancholy and
dervey's "Meditations Among the Tombs'
Then let our songs abound.
And every tear be dry;
We're marching through Emmanuel's
ground
To fairer worlds on high.
have to say, also, that we need to put
more spice and enlivenment in our relic-
ous teaching, whether it be in the prayer
meeting, or in the Sabbath school, or in
,he church. We ministers need more fresh
air and sunshine in our lungs and our
neart and our head. Do you wonder that
'he world is so far from being converted
when you find so little vivacity in the pull
pit and in the pew? We want, like the Lord,
20 plant in our sermons and exhortations
more lilies of the field. We want fewer
rhetorical Celebrations and fewer sesqui-
)edalian words; and when we talk about |
shadows, we do not want to say adumbra- 1
ion; and when we mean queerness. we do.
lot want to talk about idiosyncracies; or if
| stitch in the back, we do not want to |
ak of lumbago, but in the plain vernacu-
ar preach that gospel which proposes to
make all men happy, honest, victorious
md free.
In other words, we want more cinnamon
md less gristle. Let this be so in all the
liferent departments of work to which the |
1ord calls US. Let us be plain. Let US be
Let us be- common sensical |
When we talk to the people in a vernacu-
ar, they can understand they will be very
,lad to come and receive the truth we pre- |
ent. Would to God that Queen Balkis
would drive her spice laden. dromedaries
nto all our sermons and prayer meeting
LIFE AND SPICE IN CHRISTIAN WORK.
More than that, we want more life and
pice in our Christian work. The poor do |
lot want SO much to be groaned over as