News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1892-05-19

y ,
interesting a story as | ever read. "
''Well, now" said my old friend, "sup-
pose that account of Joseph stopped half
way?" "Oh," said the man, ''then it
! would not be entertaining" "Well,
now" said my friend, 1--WE have in this
world only half of everything, and do
you not think that when we hear the
last half things may be consistent, and
that then we may find that God was
right?"
! LOAD UP WITH INTERROGATION POINTS.
Oh, friends, better load up with few
interrogation points. You cannot afford
to be silent when God and the Bible
and the things of eternity are assailed.
Your silence gives consent to the bonn
bardment of your fathers house. You
allow slur to be cast on your mothers
| diving pillow. In behalf of the Christ,
who for you went through the agonies
| of assassination on the rocky bluff hack
of Jerusalem, you dared not face a sick
| ly joke Better load up with few ques-
lions so that next time you will be ready.
Say to the scoffer: my dear sir, will
you tell me what makes the difference
between the condition of woman in
China and the United States? What do
you think of the sermon on the mount?
How do you like the golden rule laid
down in the Scriptures? Are you IL
| favor of the ten commandments? In
your large and extensive reading have
| you come across lovelier character
than Jesus Christ? Will you please to
| name the triumphant deathbeds of in
| fidels and atheists? How do you account
| for the fact that among the out and
out believers in Christianity were such
persons as Benjamin Franklin, John
Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle, Darlington
Macaulay, William Penn, Walter Scott,
Charles Kingsley, Horace Bushnell,
James A. Garfield, Robert E. Lee, Stone
wall Jackson, Admiral Foote, Admiral
Farragut, Ulysses S. Grant, John Mil
| ton, William Shakespeare, Chief Justice
Marshall, John Adams, Daniel Webster,
George Washington? How do you ac-
count for their fondness for the Christian
religion? Among the innumerable col
! leges and universities of the earth will
you name me three started by infdels
and now supported by infidels? Down
in your heart are you really happy in
the position you occupy antagonistic to
the Christian religion? When do you
| have the most rapturous views of the
next world?
Go at him with a few such questions
and he viii get so red in the face as to
suggest apoplexy, and he will look at
his watch and say he has an engagement
and must go. You will put him in
sweat that will beat Turkish bath
You will put him on rout compared
with which our troops at Bull Run made
no time at all. Arm yourself, not with
arguments but interrogation points, and
| promise you victory. Shall such a
man as you, shall such a woman as you
surrender to one of the meanest spirits
that ever smoked up from the pit-the
dumb devil spoken of in the text?
But then there are occasions when
this particular spirit that Christ exer-
cised when he said, 81 charge thee to
come out of him." takes people by the
wholesale. In the most responsive reli-
gious audience have you noticed how
many people never sing at all? They
have a book, and they have voice, and
they know how to read. They know
many of the tunes, and yet are silent
while the great raptures of music pass
by. Among those who sing not one out
of hundred sings loud enough to hear
his own voice. They hum it. They give
a sort of religious grunt. They make
the lips go, but it is inaudible. With a
voice strong enough to stop street car
one block away, all they can afford in
the praise of God is about half a whis-
per. With enough sopranos, enough |
altos, enough bassos to make a small |
heaven between the four walls, they let |
the opportunity go by unimproved
The volume of voice that ascends from
the largest audience that ever assembled |
ought to be multiplied about two thou
sand fold. Bnt the minister rises and
gives out the hymn; the organ begins;
the choir or preeentor leads; the audi
ence are standing so that the lungs may
have full expansion, and a mighty har
mony is about to ascend, when the evil
spirit spoken of in my text-the dunno
devil-spreads his two wings, one over
the lips of one-half the audience and the
other wing over the lips of the other half
of the audience, and the voices roll back
and only here and there anything is heard,
and nine-tenths of the holy power is
destroyed; and the dumb devil, as he
flies away, says, Il could not keep Isaac
Watts from writing that hymn, and L
could not keep Lowell Mason from COM
posing the tune to which it is set, but
smote into silence or half silence the lips
from which it would have spread abroad
to bless neighborhoods and cities, and
then mount the wide open heavens"
Give the long meter doxology the full
support of Christendom, and those four
lines would take the whole earth for God.
THE POWER OF SONG.
During the cotton famine in Lanca-
shire, England, when the suffering was
something terrific, as the first wagon
load of cotton rolled in, the starving
people unlocked the horses and drew
the load themselves, singing, until all
Lancashire joined in with triumphant
voices, their cheeks sopping with tears,
Praise God from whom all blessings
flow" When Commodore Perry, with
his warship, the Mississippi, lay off the
coast of Japan, he bombarded the shores
with "Old Hundred" played by the
marine band Glorious "Old Hundred
composed by William Franc, of Ger
many. In war prison, at ten o'clock
at night, the poor fellows far from home
and wounded and sick and dying, one
prisoner started the 'Old Hundred Dox-
ology," and then a score of voices Joined.
then all the prisoners on all the floors
took up the acclaim until the building.
from foundation to topstone, fairly
quaked with the melodious ascription.
A British msn-of-war, lying off for
eign coast, heard a voice singing that
doxology, and Immediately guessed, and
guessed Alright, that there was an Eng
hshman in captivity to the Mohamme-
dams; and in the small boats the sailors
rowed to shore and burst into a guard
house and set the captive free. | don't
know what tune the trumpets of resur-
rection shall play, but it may be the dox-
ology which is now sounding across
Christendom. How much more hearty
we would be in our songs, and how
easily we could drive back the dumb
devil from az our worshiping assem-
blages, if we could realize that nearly
all our hymns have a stirring history.
That glorious hymn, "Stand Up for
Jesus" was suggested by the last words
of Dudley Tying, who was dying from
having his right arm torn off in a
thrashing machine. That hymn, '"What
a Friend We Have in Jesus" heard
through telephone, converted an OBJ
durate soul. "Shall We Gather at the
River was hymn first sung in our
Brooklyn Prospect park, at the chill