Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-03-06
KEEPING HOLY LENT.
1t is a Time of Religious Drill to De-
=. velop the Christian.
FASTING has IT'S PURPOSES
Assists the Memory and the Will and
subjugates the Rody.
HOW PRAYER BECOMES PERFUNcroRY
WRITTEN FOR THE DrspArcR.,

WRITTEN FOR THE DISPATCH,
The apostles had been trying to cast out a
devil, and had failed. Jesus was telling
them the reason of their failure. 'This
kind,'' he said, "can come forth by nothing
but by prayer and fasting"
The lesson is that ANYONE who would do
spiritual tasks must have spiritual strength;
| and that spiritual strength, like any other
kind of strength, comes by exercise. The
apostles had been taking too much for
granted. They supposed that their CON-
panionship with Jesus would of itself make
them spiritually. strong. And when the
father came to them while the Master was
up on the mountain, and brought his de-
moniac boy for them to heal, they at once
undertook to heal him. But thev failed.
They failed, as any man who has been liv-
Ing an ordinary, quiet life, without much
experience, will fail to lift heavy weight.
That SORT Of work needs training. Whoever
will do it must give special attention to
himself The apostles had not been taking
enough spiritual exercise. That was what
was the matter with them. As Jesus said,
they had not been praying enough, nor fast
ing enough.
Tho Casting Out of Devils.
1t is the business of every one OF US to
cast out devils. All reform. all betterment,
is an exercising of the devil. In the early
churches they had regular official in every
congregation who was called the exorcist,
and who cast out devils every Sunday morn
ing. But we ought all of us to be exorcists
casting out devils every day in the week
out of ourselves first.
We often wonder, like tine apostles, why
it is that we make so little headwav in this
Christian fight. The world is still a bad
world, in spite of eighteen centuries and
more of Christian preaching. The city di-
rectory is crowded with the names OF heather,
the daily papers arc daily records of the
triumphs of the devil. The devil is not
cast out OF the world of business; the devil
is not cast out Of the world OF society; the
devil is not even cast out of our own Christian
hearts. And we wonder why. We come to
apostles question, Why could not we cast
him out? And the Lords answer is the same
right here between the two rivers as it was
off there 1t the foot of the mountain: ''This
kind can come forth by nothing but by
prayer and fasting"
An Extraordinary Drill Needed.
That is, what we need is more attention
to spiritual exercise. We 90 on like the
apostles, taking things for granic. We
imagine that our common decent living,
daily praying and weekly church-going will
give us all the spiritual training that we
need. But that is mistake. We need
something special We need to put our
selves under some sort of, extraordinary
drill. We need to devote ourselves some
times, in an unusual way, to prayer and
fasting
OF course am thinking about Lent. 1t
seems to me that we have here the real
reason for keeping Lent. If we are no
better than the apostles, if we find it just as
hard to cast out devils as they did, if we
had the same spiritual needs that they had,
then here is our opportunity. For Lent is
Lent is commended to us by it. venerable
antiquity, and by its position in the prayer
book; but we keep it for more practical
and vital reason than either of these-be-
cause it helps us and we need it.
One of the good things about Lent is that
it does not last all the year round. If. it
did it would probably be neglected alto
gether And it would certainly lose large
part of its value. We ought, indeed, to try
every year to lift up our ordinary lives a
little closer to the key of these extraor-
dinary weeks. The Lents ought
To Make Spiritual Ladder,
climbing step by step, and year by year,
toward the better realization of heaven.
But the great thing about Lent is its usual
ness. 1t comes with message, with re-
minder, with a word from God. 1t stops us
as We 60 about our business; it arrests our
attention-it makes us think. And before
it grows to be such familiar presence that
we no longer heed it, it is gone.
The truth is that human nature needs the
unusual. There is no use talking about
keeping Sunday every day in the week.
That WILL indeed, be the arrangement of
the almanac of heaven. But the conditions
will be somewhat different then. Just now,
made as we are, set under Limitations of hu-
manity, we need the interruption of Sun
day. To take out this unusual day in be-
lief that thus we would keep holy week is
to imagine contradiction of experience.
1t is evident in the lives of most people
who are privately leaving Sunday out, who
put away the ancient customs of that relig-
ious festival. who stay away from church,
that the result is spiritual degeneration.
Inevitably, in due course of time, they
leave God and the soul out The cares of
this world and the deceitfulness of riches
crowd in fast enough even upon those who
mites there are
Human life is all the time in peril of
becoming secularized. A thousand infu-
ences are forever tugging at us to pull us
down. All growth is victory over degen-
Grafton, and a victory that is won only by
an effort. The easiest kind of life for
man to live is the life of an animal, to eat
and sleep and play. 1t is good deal hard
er to live in the plane above that-to think,
to cultivate the mind. Every busy man
and woman knows how the daily drudgery
of life makes intellectual existence difficult.
But the hardest kind of life to live is the
spiritual life, in which We learn to listen to
the still voice of conscience. and draw near
to God, and fill our minds with the greatest
thoughts that man can think. and keep our
souls within reach of the influences that
make toward spiritual growth. Every
Christian knows what fight it is to live
that life. The slightest relaxation of effort
lets us down toward one Of the lower
planes When we stop we drop.
And SO we need all the help that we can
get, all the reminding voices, all the days
with messages, all the unusual seasons of
devotion with their salutary interruption
and their blessed inspirations, all the Sun
days and all the saints days and all the
r ~ he n ~ To- - lolv