The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1892-05-16

There Is another side to this You Chris
Gian people ought in such times as these
60 go armed, not with earthly weapons
but with the sword of the spirit. You
ought to have four or five questions
with which you could confound any man
who attacks Christianity. man ninety
years old was telling me few days ago
how he put to flight a scoffer. My aged
friend said to the skeptio: Did you ever
read the history of Joseph in the Bible?'
''Yes," said the man. "it is a fine story,
and as interesting story as | ever read.
"Well, now" said my old friend, sup
pose that account of Joseph stopped half
wayp 80" said the man, then it would
not be entertaining" "Well, now" said
nv friend, I'VE 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 rightF' Q, friends, better
load I'D with a few Interrogation points.
You cannot afford to be silent when God
and the Bible and the things Of eternity are
assailed. Your silence gives con-
sent TO the bombardment of your
fathers house. You allow a slur
60 be cast on your mothers dying pillow.
In behalf OF the Christ, who for you went
through the agonies of assassination on the
rocky bluff back of Jerusalem, you dared
not face a sickly joke. Better load up with
q few questions so that next time you will
be ready. Say to the scoffer: My dear
sir, will you tell me what makes the differ
ence 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 scripUuresl Are you in favor of the
ten command nents9 In your large and
extensive reading have you come across
Q lovelier character than Jesus Christi
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 Benjamin Franklin.
John Ruskin. Thomas Carlyle, Darlington
Macaulsy, William Penn, Walter Scott.
Charles Kingsley, Horace Bushnell, James
A. Garfield, Robert Z. Lee, Stonewall
Jackson. Admiral Foote, Admiral Farra-
gut, Ulysses S. Grant, John Milton, William
Shakespeare, Chief Justice Marshall, John
Adams. Daniel Webster, George Washing
toni How do you account for their fond
ness for the Christian religion! Among the
innumerable colleges and universities of the
earth, will you name me three, started
by infldels and now supported by
infdelsa Down in your heart are
you really happy in the posi-
tion you occupy antagonistic to the
Christian religions When do you have the
most rapturous views Of the next world@
Go at him with a few such questions and he
will get SO red in the face as to suggest apo
plexy, and he will look at his watch snd say
he has an engagement and must go. You
will put him in sweat that will beat
Turkish bath. You will put him on a 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 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 texta
But then there are occasions when this
particular spirit that Christ exercised when
he said: 81 charge thee to come out of him."
takes people by the wholesale. In the most
religious audience have you
noticed how many people never sing at all7
They have book and they have a 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 a hundred
sings loud enough TO hear his own voice.
They hum it. They give sort of religious
grunt. They make the lips go but it is In-
audible. With voice strong enough to
stop street car one block away, all they
can afford in the praise of God is about half
a whisper. With enough sopranos, enough
altos, enough bassos to make a small heaven
between the four walls they let the oppor-
tunity go by unimproved. The volume of
voice that ascends from the largest audience
that ever assembled ought to be multi
piled about two thousand-fold. But
the minister rises and gives out
the HYMN; the organ begins;
are standing so that the lungs may have
full expansion, and a mighty harmony is
about to ascend, when the evil spirit spoken
of in my text-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, aud only here and there any
thing is heard, and nine-tenths of the holy
power is destroyed; and the dumb devil, as
no flies away, says: II could not keep
Isaac Watts from writing that hymn, and
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 1t 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
ami those four lines would
lake the whole earth for God.
During the cotton famine in Lancashire.
England, when the suffering was some
thing terrific, as the first wagonload of
cotton rolled in, the starr ing people I'M
hooked the horses aud drew the load them
selves. singing, until all Lancashire Joined
In with triumphant voices, their cheeks
sopping with tears: Praise God from
whom all blessings flow" When Com
modore Perry, with his warship, the Mis-
sissippi, lay off the coast Of Japan, he bonn
oarded the shores with "Old Hundred"
playedby the marine band. Glorious "Old
Hundred" composed by William Franc of
Germany. 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 Doxol-
ogy," and then score of voices Joined.
then all the prisoners on all the floors took
up the acclaim until the build
ing, from foundation to top
stone, fairly .vuaked with the melodi-
GUS ascription. A British mau-of-war,
lying off a foreign coast, heard a voice
singing that doxology, and Immediately
guessed, and guessed Alright, that there was
an Englishman in captivity to the
medans; and In the small boats
the sailors rowed TO the shore and
burst into the guard house and set the
captive free. / 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, il we
could realize that nearly all our hymns have
a stirring history. That GLORIOUS hymn,
" Stand Up for Jesus,n was suggested by the
last words of Dudley Tying, who was dying
from having his right arm torn off by a