Fisherman & farmer. [volume] (Edenton, N.C.) 1887-19??, 1892-05-27

friend said TO the sKeptlc, Diu you ever
read the history of Joseph in the Bibles'
YES. said the man; 1t Is fine story. and
as interesting story as ever read"
well now" said my old friend, sup.
pose that account of Joseph stopped
half wav?"' Oh said the man, then
it would not be entertaining eL;
now" said my friend. 1--WE have IT 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?
Oh, friends better load up with rev In"
terrogation points. You cannot afford to
be silent when God and the Bible and the
things of eternity are ASA lied. Your silence
gives consent to the bombardment or your
Fathers house. You allow slur to be cast
on your mothers dying pillow. In beralf
of the Christ, who for you went thr
the agonies Of assassination on the rocAJ
bluff back Of Jerusalem, you dared not face
a sickly joke. Better load up with few
questions so that next time you will be
ready.
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 in 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 triun-
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.
Macaulay, William Penn, 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
A 10 IL
ton? How do you account for their fondness
for the Christian religion? Among the in
Vulnerable colleges ard universities of the
earth will you name me three started by
infdels and now supported by infdels?
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. and he will look at his watch and
say he has an engagement and must go.
You will put him in a 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 argu-
ments 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
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
ticed how many people never sing at all!
They have a book, and they have g. 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 sort of religious
grunt They make the lips go, but it is in
audible. With a voice strong enough to stop
a street car one block away, all they can af-
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 unimproved
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
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
Iu0 LuFOdGS from WHICH Uuoy SOdTU0O, ana
only here aud 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 I could not keep Lowell
Mason from composing 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 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 tri-
umphant 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 Will
lam Franc, of Germany. In a 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 Hundred
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
melOdlouS ascrlptlOn.
A British man-o war, lying off foreign
coast heard voice singing that doxology,
and Immediately guessed, and guessed
Alright that there was an Englishman in
captivity to the Mohammedans; and in the
small boats the sailors rowed TO shore and
burst into gaurd-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