News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1891-05-07

| time are stupid often and inane and
| intolerable. Here are men who have
been bartering and negotiating, climb
ing pounding hammering for twenty
years, forty years, fifty years. One
great long drudgery has their life been.
| Their face anxious, their feelings be-
numbed, their days monotonous.
What is necessary to brighten up that
mans life, and to sweeten that acid dis
| position, and to put sparkle into the
mans spirits? The spicery Of our holy
religion. Why, if between the losses
of life there dashed CLEAN of an eter-
nal gain; if between the betrayals of
life there came the CLEAN of the INDY
ing friendship of Christ; if in dull times
in business we found ministering spirits
flying to and fro in our Office and store
and shop, everyday life, instead of be-
ing a stupid monotone, would be a
glorious inspiration, penduluming be-
| tween calm satisfaction and high rapt-
ure.
AN INEXPLICABLE MYSTERY.
How any woman keeps house with
out the religion of Christ to help her is
a mystery to me- To have to spend
the greater part of ones life, as many
women do in planning for the meals,
in stitching garments that will soon be
rent again, and deploring 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 silvers, 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 monotonyl But when
| Christ comes to the drawing room, and
comes to the kitchen, and comes to the
nursery, and comes to the dwelling,
then how CHEEKY become all womanly
duties. She is never alone now. Mar
tina gets through fretting and joins
Mary at the feet of Jesus.
All day long Deborah is happy be-
cause she can help Lapidoth; Hannah,
because she can make a coat for young
Samuel; Miriam, because she can watch
her infant brother; Rachel, because she
can help her father water the stock;
the widow of Sarepta. because the
cruise of oil is being replenished o
woman! having in your pantry q nest of
boxes containing all kinds of condi-
ments, why have you not tried in your
heart and life the spicery of our holy
religion? Martha! Martha! thou art
careful 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."
must confess that a great deal of
the religion of this day is utterly in
sipid. There is nothing piquant or ele-
waiting 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 flat in their
! experience and in their conversation
Emancipated from sin and death and
hell and on their way to a magnificent
heaven, they act as though they were
trudsi3g on toward an everlasting
Botany bay. Religion does not seem
to agree with them. 1t seems to catch
in the windpipe and become tight
stranguIation instead of an exhilara-
ton.
All the infdel books that have been
written, from Voltaire down to Herbert
Spencer, have not done so much dam
age to our Christianity as lugubrious
Christians. Who wants religion
woven out of the shadows of the night2
Why go growing on your way to celes-
tial 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
Hervey's 'Meditations Among the
Tombsr'
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
religious teaching, whether it be in the
prayer meeting or in the Sabbath
school or in the church. We ministers
need more fresh air and sunshine in our
lungs and our hearts and our head
Do you wonder that the world is so far
from being converted when you find SO
little vivacity in the pulpit and in the
pew? We want, like the Lord, to plant
in our sermons and exhortations more
of haA
rhetorical Celebrations and fewer SEES
quipedalian words; and when we talk
about shadows we do not want to say
adumbration and when we mean |
queerness we do not want to talk about |
idiosyncrasies; or if a stitch in the back, |
we do not want to talk of Iumbago, |
but in the plain vernacular preach that |
gospel which proposes to make all men
happy, honest, victorious and free.
In other words, we want more CHINA
mon and less gristIe. Let this be so in |
all the different departments of work
to which the Lord calls u.s. Let us be
plain Let us be earnest. Let us be |
common-sensical. When we talk TO the
people in a vernacular they can under
stand they will be very glad to come
and receive the truth we present.
Would to God that Queen Ball1is would
drive her spice laden dromedaries into
all our sermons and prayer meeting ex-
hortations.
More than that we want more lie
and spice in our Christian work. The
poor do not want so much to be groan-
ed over as sung to. With the bread
and medicines and garments you give
them let there be an accompaniment
of smiles and brisk announcement. Do
not stand and talk to them about the
wretchedness of their abode and the
hunger of their looks and the hardness
of their lot. All! they know it better
than you can tell them Show them
the bright side of the thing, if there be
any bright side. Tell them good times
will come. Tell them that for the chill
dren of God there is immortal rescue.
Wake them up out of their stolidity by
an inspiring laugh, and while you send
in help, like the queen of Sheba also
send in spices.
There are two ways of meeting the
poor One is to come into their house
with nose elevated in disgust, as
much as to say: Il don't see how you
live here in this neighborhood. 1t act
ually makes me sick. There is that
it, you poor, miserable
wretch, and make the most of it," An
other way is to go into the abode of the
poor in manner which seems to saw: