News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1892-05-26

the suffering of the poor could not touch
one like that little drama of accident
and suffering.
Oh, we want in all our different de-
partments of usefullness-and l address
hundreds of people who are trying to do
good-we want more of the dramatic
element and less of the didactic. The
tendency in this day is to drone religion,
to whine religion, to cant religion, t.
moan religion, to croak religion, to Sc
pulchrize religion, when we ought to
present it in animated and spectacular
manner.
Sabbath morning by Sabbath morning
| address many theological students who
are preparing for the ministry. They
come in here from the different institu-
tions. | say to them this morning: Ii
you will go home and look over the his
tory of the church you will find that
those men have brought most souls to
Christ who have been dramatic-Row-
land Hill, dramatic; Thomas Chalmers,
dramatic; Thomas Guthrie, dramatic;
John Knox, dramatic; Robert McCheyne,
dramatic; Christmas Evans, dramatic;
George Whitefield, dramatic; Robert
Hall, dramatic; Robert South, dramatic;
Fenelon, dramatic; John Mason, dra-
matte; DR.. Mott, dramatic. When you
get into the ministry, if you attempt to
culture that element and try to WELD it
for God you will meet with mighty re-
buff and caricature, and ecclesiastical
council will take your case in charge,
and they will try to put you down, but
the God who starts you will help you
through, and great will be the eternal
rewards for the assiduous and the
plucky.
GET OUT OF THE RUT.
What we want, ministers and laymen,
is to get our sermons, and our exhorta-
tions, and our prayers out of the old rut.
see a great deal of discussion in the re-
ligious papers about why people do not
anSpe ,tsnas -. They do not come be-
&c 81 s-sSsy1ot interested. The old
hackneyed religious phrases that come
moving down through the centuries will
never arrest the masses. What we want
today, you in your sphere and in my
sphere, is to freshen up. People do not
want in their sermons the sham flowers
bought at the millinery shop, but the
iaponicas wet with the morning dew;
nor the heavy bones of extinct megathe
rum of past ages, but the living rein
deer caught last August at the edge of
Schroon lake.
We want to drive out the drowsy, and
the prosaic. and the tedious, and the hum
lrum, and introduce the brightness and
vivacity, and the holy sarcasm, and the
sanctitied wit. and the epigrammatic
power, and the blood red earnestness, and
the fire of religious zeal, and | do not
know of any way of doing it as well as
through the dramatic. Attention. Be
holdl Hark! Selah!
Next | speak of the Selah of perpetr-
ity. The Targum, which is the Bible in
Chaldee, renders this word of my text
forever" Many writers agree in be-
lieving and stating that one meaning of
this word is forever" In this very
verse from which l take my text Selah
means not only poetic significance and
internission and emphasis, but it means
eternal Observation-Disclosures G DDS
government forever, Gods goodness for
ever, the gladness of the righteous for
ever. Of course you and | have not
surveyors chain with enough links to
measure that domain of meaning. In
this world we must build everything ON
small scale. A hundred years are a
great while. a tower five hundred feet
is great height A journey of four
thousand miles is very long. But eter-
nifty! If the archangel has not strength
of wing to fly across it, but futters and
drops like wounded seagull, there is
no need OF our trying in the small
shallow of human thought to voyage
across it.