Connecticut western news., 1891-07-30

A recent statistician says that human life now has an average of only thirty two years. From these thirty-two years you must 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 necessarily engaged in the earning of livelihood; that will leave you about eight years. From those eight years you must take all the days and weeks and months-alf the length of time that is passed in childhood and sickness, 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 I 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!
 THE EXCUSES OF LAzINEss. -
 ''But," says some man, ''I literally support the Gospel, and the church is open and the Gospel is preached; all the spiritual advantages are spread be- fore men, and if they want to be saved let them come to be saved; have dis charged all my responsibility. An! 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 the Beth lehem caravansary, and if he had .noy with the crushed hand of the crucifix- ion knocked at the iron gate of the sepulcher of our spiritual death, crying, Lazarus, come forth?"
 Oh, 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 infidel 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 OACclNo up u iOlAl tAlC SCL OllOuSc1l1o 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 a time when it was such an unwise, such a 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 bap- tisn, 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 1 meet the duties which this age de- mands of you. you must on the one hand avoid reckless iconoclasm, and on the other hand not stick too much to things because they are old. The air is full of new plans, new projects, new theories of government, new the OHOSlCS, cll0 tliL IILflLCu OO oCO AO" so many Christians want only novelty in order to recommend a 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. An, my broth CT, do not adopt thing merely because it is new. Try it by the realities of a judgment day. ...r.. E
 PROGRESS THl LAW OF LIFE.
 But, on the other hand, do not ad- here to anything merely because it is old. There is not a single enterprise of the church or the world but has some times been scoffed at There was time when men derided even Bible so cieties; and when a few young men met near a haystack ill Massachusetts and organized the first missionary so- ciety 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 assailed. People cried out, Who ever heard Of such theories of ethics and government? Whoever noticed such a style of preaching as Jesus has?" Ezekiel had talked of mysterious wings and wheels. Here came a man from Ca pernauni and Gennesaret, and he drew his illustrations from the lakes, from the lilies, from the sand, from the ravipe, from the cornstaIks sHow the Pharisees scoffed! How Herod derided! How Caiaphas hissed, And this Jesus they 'pluckad by the beard, and they spat ill his face, and they called him this fel low' All the great enterprises in and out of the church have at times been scoffed at and there have been great 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 stilts. Oh, that the Church of God would wake up to an adaptability of work. We must at! 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 Edinburgh who never hear the Gospel. There are one mil lion people in London who never hear the Gospel. There are at least three hundred thousand souls in the city Of Brooklyn who come not under the i'm