The free press. (Poplarville, Miss.) 1890-19??, 1892-06-02

- IN A~v~u-.u-usunnuusf nsAv nh<s..na<-ssnasszs
on your mothers dying pillow. In behalf
of the Christ, who for you went through
| the aeonies of assassination on the rocky
| bluff back of Jerusalem you dared net face
a sickly Joke Better load up with a few
questions 50 that hext time you will be
l ready
| Say to the scoffer; My dear sir will you
| tell me what m axes the difference between
| the condition of woman id China and the
| United Statess What dc you think of the
sermon on the ritount9 How do you like the
golden rule laid down in the SCRIPTURES? Ara
I you in favor of the ten commandments? In
your large and extensive reading have you
| come across lovelier character than Jesus
| Christ? viii you please to name the triuTs
plant deathbeds of infidels 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
Macauiay William Fena, Walter Scott,
Charles Kingsley Horace Bushnell, James
| A, Garfield Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jack
son, Admiral Foote, Admiral Farragut;
Ulysses s Grant John Milton, William
Shakespeare, Chief Justice Marshall, John
Adams, Daniel Webster. George Washing
ton? How do you account for their fondness
for the Christian religion? Among the in
Vulnerable colleges and universities OF the
intidels 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 few such questions and
he will get SO red in the face to suggest
apople1y. and he will look at his watch and
say he has an engagement and must go.
You will put him Ill sweat that will beat d
Turkish bath You will put him
on fout compared with which our
troops at Bull Run made no time
at all. Arm yourself, not with argu-
ments but interrogation points, and promise
you victory. Shall such man as you, shall
such woman as you surrender to one OF tina
meanest spirits that ever smoked up from
the pit--ths dumb devil spoken of in the
text
But then there are occasions when this par
ticular spirit that Christ exercised when He
said, 81 charge thee to come out of him."
takes people by the wholesale. In the most
responsive religious audience have you no.
ticed how many people never sing at all9
They have a book, and they have voice,
and they know how to read They know
many or the times, and yet are silent while
the great faptures 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 sort of religious
audible. With voice strong enough to stop
a street car one block away all they can at
ford in the praise of God is about half a
whisper. With enough sopranos, enough
altos, enough bassos to make small heaven
between the four walls, they let the oppor-
tunity go by unimprovei
The volume of voice that ascends from the
largest audience that ever assembled ought
to be multiplied about two thousand fold
But the minister rises and gives out the
hymn; the organ begins; the choir or pre-
centor leads; the audience are standing so
that the lungs may have full expansion, and
q mighty harmony is about to ascend, when
the evil spirit spoken OF in my stext-the
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 threats from which they started, and
only here all there anything is heard, and
nlne-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 1 could not keep Lowell
Mason from composing the tune to which
it is Set but 1 smote into silence or half
silence the lips from which it would have
spread abroad to bless neighborhoois and
cities, and then mount the wide open heav-
ems" Give the long meter doxology the
full support of Christendom, and those four
lines would take the whole earth for God.
During the cotton famine in Lancashire,
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, sing
ing, until all Lancashire joined in with trl-
unphant 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
Il ha "a shores
Hundred" played by the marine band.
Glorious "Old Hundred" composed by Will
lam Franc, of Germany. In war prison,
at ten o'clock at night, the poor fellows far
from home and wounded and sick and dy.
ing, one prisoner started the "Old Hundres
Doxology," and then score of voices joined,
then all the prisoners on the floors took up
the acclaim until the building, from founda-
ton to topstone, fairly quaked with the
mslodious ascription
A British man.of-war, lying off a foreign
coast, heard voice singing that doxology,
and immediately guessed, and guessed
Alright, that there was an Englishman in
captivity to the Mohammedsns; and in the
small boats the sailors rowed to shore and
burst into gaurd-house and set the captive
free. l don't know what tune the trumpets
of resurrection shall play, but it may be the
doxology 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 all our
worshiping assemblages, if we could realizs
that nearly all our. hymns have a stirring his
tory.
That glorious hymn, stand Up for
Jesus" was suggested by the last words of
Dudley Tying, VINO was dying from having
his right arm torn off in e thrashing ma
chine. That hymn, "What a Friend We
Have in Jesus" heard through telephone,
converted an obdurate soul. ''Shall We
Gather at the River% was hymn first sung
in our Brooklyn Prospect Park, at the chill
dren's May anniversary. and then started
to encirce the world. "Wnere Is My Wan
dering Boy To-nightp Is a song that has
saved hundreds Of dissipated young men.
Tom. the drummer boy in the army, was
found crying, and an officer asked him what
was the matter 'Oh," he said, II had a
dream last night. My sister died ten years
ago. and my mother never was herself again
am she died soon after. Last night dreamt
| was killed in battle. and that mother and
sister came down to meet me-" After
the next battle was over some one crossing
the field heard voice that he recognized as
the voice of Tom, the drummer boy, singing
Jesus, Lover of My Soul" But at the end
of the first verse the voice became very
feeble, and at the end OF the second verse it