The southern argus., 1891-07-30

you are necessarily engaged in the earn
ing of 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 is passed in childhood and
sickness, leaving you about one year IN
which to work for God. o, my soul,
wake up! How darest thou sleep in
harvest time and with so few hours in
which to reap? So that / state it as
simple fact that all the time that vast
majority Of you will have for the ex-
elusive service Of God will be less than
one year!
But" says some men, II literally
support the Gospel, and the church is
open and the Gospel is preached, all the
spiritual advantages are spread before
men, and if they want to be saved let
them come to be saved, | have dis
charged all my responsibility" All, is
that the Masters spirit? Is there not
an old book somewhere that commands
US to GO out int 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 the Bethle-
hem caravansary, and if he had not,
with the crushed hand of the crucifix,
knocked at the iron gate of the sepul-
cher Of our spiritual death, crying:
Lazarus, come forth?" o, my
Christian friends. this is no time for
inertia, when all the forces of darkness
seem to be in full blast; when steam
printing presses are publishing ln6del
tracts; when express railroad trains
are carrying messengers of sin; when
fast clippers are laden with opium and
rum: when the night air of our cities is
polluted with the laughter that breaks
up from the ten thousand saloons of
dissipation and abandonment; when the
fires of the second death already are
kindled in the cheeks of some who, only
little while ago. were incorrupt.
Never since the curse fell upon the
earth has there been time when it
was such an unwise, such cruel. such
an awful thing for the church to sleep!
The great audiences are not gathered
in the Christian churches. the great
audiences are gathered in temples of
sin-tears Of unutterable woe their
baptism, the blood of crushed hearts
the awful wine of their sacrament,
blasphemies 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 full of
new plans, new projects, new theories
Of government, new theologies, and |
am amazed to see how so many Chris
tians want only novelty in order to
recommend thing to their confidence,
and SO they vacillate and swing to and
fro. and they are useless, and they are
unhappy. New plans-secular, ethical,
philosophical, religious, cisatlantic,
transatlantic. All, my brother, do not
adopt thing merely because it is new
Try it by the realities of a judgment
day.
to anything merely because it is old.
There is not single enterprise of the
church or the world but has sometimes
been scoffed at. There was a time
when men derided even Bible societies;
and when a few young men met near
hay stack in Massachusetts and or
ganized the first missionary society
ever organized in this country there
went laughing 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: who ever
heard Of such theories of ethics and
government? Who ever noticed such a
style Of preaching as Jesus has?"
Ezekiel had talked of mysterious
wings and wheels. Here came a man
from Capernaum and Gennesaret, and
he drew his illustrations from the sand,
from the ravine, from the cornstalks.
How the Pharisees scoffed! How Herod
derided! How Caiaphas Kissed! And
this Jesus they plucked by 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 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 50 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 every day men
rather than that which makes an excur-
sion on rhetorical stills, o that the
church Of God would wake up to an
adaptability Of work! We must admit
the simple fact that the churches of
Jesus Christ in this day do not reach
the great masses. There are so, 900
people in Edinburgh who never hear
the Gospel There are 1000, 900 people
in London who never hear the Gospel.
There are at least 500, 900 souls in the
city Of Brooklyn who come not under
the immediate ministrations of Christs