The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1892-05-27

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makes the difference between the cor
dition 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 in favor of the
ten commandments? In your large and
extensive reading have you come across
a lovelier character than Jesus Christ?
Will you please to name the triumphant
| death-beds of infidels and atheists?
How do YOU account for the fact that
among the out and out believers in
Christianity were such persons as BEN
Jamin Franklin, John Rusllin, Thomas
Carlyle, Babington Macaulay, William
Penn, Walter Scott, Charles Einsfey,
Horace Bushnell, james A. Garfield,
Robert +. Lee, Stonewall Jackson,
Admiral Foote, Admiral Farragut,
Ulysses 5. Grant, John Milton, William
Shakespeare, Chief Justice Marshall,
John Adams, Daniel Webster, George
Washington? How do you account for
their fondness for the Christian re-
ligion? Among the innumbcrable col
leges and universities of the earth, will
You name me three, started by infidels
and suppnrted by infitlels? 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 few such
questions and he will get so red in the
face as to suggest apoplexy. 1t......f
But then there are occasions when
this particular spirit that Christ exor-
cised when he said: 81 charge thee to
come out of him." takes people by the
wholesale. In the most responsive re-
igious audience have you noticed how
many people never sing at all? They
have book and they have a voice and
they know how to read. They know
many tunes, and yet are silent while
the great raptures of music pass by.
Among those who sing not one out of a
hundred sings loud enough to hear his
own voice. They hum It. They give a
sort of religious grunt. They make the
lips go bat it is inaudible. With q voice
strong enough to stop a street car ono
block away. all they can afford in the
II.
With enough sopranos, enough altos,
enough bassos to make small heaven
between the four walls they let the op-
portunity go by unimproved The vol
ume of voice that asccnds from the
largest audience that ever assembled
ought to be multiplied about two tnOu-
sand fold. But the minister rises and
gives out the hymn; the organ begins;
the choir or precentor 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-thc dumb
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 into'the throats from which they
started. and only here and there any
thing is heard, and Iiine-tenths of the |
holy power is destroyed; and the dumb |
devil, as he flies away, says: II could |
not keep Isaac Watts from writing |
that hymn, and / could not keep Lowell |
Mason from composing the tune to
which Il is set, but l smote into silence |
Or half silence the lips from which it
would have spread abroad to bless
and cities. and then
mount to the wide open heavens"
During the cotton famine in Lanca-
shire. England, when the suffering was
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 checks sopping with tears:
Praise God from whom all blessings
iow." When Com. Perry, with his war
ship, the Mississippi, lay off the coast
II Japan, he bombarded the shores with
old Hundred" played by the marine
band. Glorious ''Old Hundred" COM
posed by William Franc, of Germany.
IN n war prison, at ten o'clock at night,
.he poor fellows far from home and
and sick and dying, one pris-
,ner started the 'Old Hundred Doxol-
,gy" and then n score of voices Joined,
hen all the prisoners on all the floors
ool up the acclaim until the building,
rom foundation to topstone, fairly :
lual;ed with the melodious ascription.
British man of war, living off for
ign coast, heard voice sing !
ng that doxology and immedi-
.teiy guessed, and guessd Alright, ,
hat there was an Englishman in cap
ivity to the Mohammedans; and in the {
mall boats the sailors rowed TO shore {
nd burst into n guard-house and set
he captive free. l don't know what ;
une the trumpets of resurrection shall
'lay, but it may be the doXology which
5 now sounding across ChriStendom. J
low much more hearty we would be in ]
ur songs, and how easy we could drive
'ack the dumb devil from all our
vorshiping assemblages, if we could re !
lie that nearly all our hymns have a
tirring history. That glorious hymn, I
Stand Up for Jesus" was suggested
" the last words of Dudley Tyeng, who
ras dying from having his right arm '
orn off by threshing machine. That
yrn, what Friend We Have in
esus." heard through a telephone con- i
erted an obduratc soul. ''We Shall {
Iather at the River?' was hymn first I
ung at our Brooklyn Prospect park, ,
t the children's May anniversity, I
I'd then started 20 encircle The c
-orld. Where is Ny Wondering !
10Y To-night?'' is n song that has saved
OF dissipated young men. :
ON, the drummer boy in the army, /
-as found crying, and an Office asked {
i'm what was the matterl ''O," he i
aid, Il had 4 dream last night My $
ster died ten years ago, and my moth 4
r never was herself again. and she died =
oon after. Last night dreamed was 7
illed in hlttlc and that rnnther and .