The Brookhaven leader., 1891-05-14

there be change. An editor from San
Francisco, few weeks ago, wrote me
saying he was getting up for his paper
a symposium from many clergymen dis
cussing, among other things, "Why do
not people go to church," and he
wanted my opinion, and l gave it in
one sentence: people do not go to
church because they can not stand the
humdrum. The fact is that most peo-
pie have SO much humdrum in their
worldly calling that they do not want
to have added the humdrum of religion.
We need in all our sermons and exhor-
tations and songs and prayers more Of
what Queen Balkis brought to Solomon,
namely, more spice.
The fact is that the duties and cares
of this life, coming to us from time to
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 disposi-
ton, and to put sparkle into the mans
spirits? The spicery of our holy re-
ligion. Why, if between the losses of
life there dashed CLEAN of an eternal
gain; if between the betrayals of life
there came the CLEAN of the undying
friendship of Christ; if in dull times in
business we found ministering spirits
flying to and fro in our Office, and store,
and shop, every y-day life, instead of be-
ing stupid monotone, would be a
glorious inspiration, penduluming be-
tween calm satisfaction and high rap
ture.
How any woman keeps house without
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 monotony! 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 because she can
help Lapidoth; Hannah, because she can
make a coat for young Samuel; Miriam,
because she can watch her infant broth
er; Rachael, because she can help her
father water the stock; the widow of
Sarepta, because the cruise of oil is be-
ing replenished. o woman, having in
your pantry a nest of boxes containing
all kinds of condiments, 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."
l 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 minor
key, and culturing melancholy, and
their worship has in it more sighs 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 fiat 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
trudging on toward an everlast-
ing 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 infidel books
that have been written, from Voltaire
down to Herbert Spencer, have not
done so much damage to our Christian
ity as lugubrious Christians. Who
wants a religion woven out of the shad-
ows of tine night? 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 Righteous
ness. Away with your odes to melan-
choly and Hervey's 'Meditations Among
the Tombs."
Then let our songs abound,
And every tear be dry;
We're marching through EmmanuaPs
ground
To fair 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 heart and our head. Do
you wonder that the world is so far
fl iom 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
lilies of the field. We want fewer rhet-
orical Celebrations, and fewer sesqui-
pedalian words; and when we talk about
shadows we do not want TO say adum-
bration; and when we mean queerness,
we do not want to talk about idiosyn-
crasies; or II a stitch in the back, we do
not want to talk of lumbago; 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 cinnamon and less
gristle. Let this be so in all the differ
,,rt departments of work to which the