Evening capital journal. (Salem, Or.) 1888-1893, 1892-04-04


about 5..50
During these past years have learned
two or three things Among others
have learned that "all things work to
gether for good" My positive mode OF
preaching has sometimes seemed to stir
the hostlities of all earth and hell. Feel
ing called upon fifteen years ago to ex-
plore underground New York city life
that might report the evils TO be com
batted. tOo4 with me two elders of my
church and a New York police commits
sioner AID a policeman, and ! explored
and reported the horrors that needed re-
moval, and the alluremedts that en-
dangered our young men. There came
upon me an outburst of assumed indig-
nation that frightened almost everybody
but myself. That exploration put into
my church thirty or forty newspaper
correspondents, from north, south, east
and west. which opened for me new
avenues in which to preach the Gospel
that otherwise would never have been
opened.
Years passed on and preached a series
of sermons on AInusements, and a false
report of what did say-and one of the
sermons said to have been preached by
me was not mine in a single word
reused a violence that threatened me
with poison and dirk and pistol and
other forms of extingrlishment, until the
chief of BroOklyn police, without any
suggestion from me, took possession of
the church with twen5y-four policemen
to see that no harm was done. That
excitement opened many doors, which
entered for preaching the Gospel.
After awhile came an ecclesiastical
trial in which was arraigned by people
who did not like the way | did things,
and although | was acquitted of all the
charges, the contest shook the American
church. That battle made me more
friends than anything that ever hap
pened and gave me Christendom and
more than Christendom for my weekly
audience. On the demolition of each
church we got a better and a larger
church, and not disaster, not carica-
ture, not persecution, not an assault,
during all these twenty-three years but
turned out for our advantage, and ought
| not to believe that ''all things work to-
gether for goodY Hosannahl
Another lesson have learned during
these twenty-three years is that it is not
necessary To preach error or pick flaws in
the old Bible in order to get an audience;
the old Book without any fixing up is
good enough for me, and higher criti-
cism, as it is called, means lower reli-
gion. Higher criticism is another form
of infdelity, and its disciples will be-
lieve less and less, until many of them
will land III Nowhere, and become the
worshipers of an eternal what is it?''
The most of these higher critics seem
to be seeking notoriety by pitching into
the Bible 1t is such a brave thing to
strike your grandmother. The old Cos
pei put in modern phrase and without
any Of the conventionalities and adapted
to all the wants and woes of humanity,
have found the mightiest magnet, and
we have never lacked an audience
Next to the blessing of my own family
account the blessing that | have al
ways had a great multitude of people to
preach to. That old Gospel | have
preached to You these twenty-three
years Of my Brooklyn pastorate, and
that old Gospel will preach till die,
and charge my son, who is on the way
to the ministry, to preach it after me,
for remember Pauls thunderbolt, IF
any man preach any other Gospel, let
him be accursed." And now, as stand
here on my twenty-third anniversary,
see two audiences. The one is made up
of all those who have worshiped with
us in the past, but have been translated
to higher realms.
What groups of children-too fair and
too sweet and too lovely for earth, and
the Lord took them, but they seem pres
ent today. The Group has gone out of
the swollen throat. and the pallor from
the cheek and they have ON them the
health and radiance of heaven. Hail,
groups of gloritied children! How glad
| am to have you come back TO us today!
And here sit those aged ones who de-
parted this life leaving an awful va
cancy in home and church. Where are
your staffs, and where are your gray
locks, and where your stopping shoul-
ders, ye blessed old folliss "Oh," they
say, 1--WE are all young again, and the
bath in the river from under the throne
has made us agile and bounding. In
the place from which we cone they use
no staffs, but sceptersr Hail, fathers
and mothers in Israeli How glad we
are to have You come back to greet usl
But the other audience see in imagi-
nation is made up of all those to whom
we have had opportunity as church,
directly or indirectly, of presenting the
Gospel. Yea, all my parishes seem to
come back today. The people of my
first charge in Belleville, N. j. The peo
Pile of my second charge in Syracuse,
N. Y. The people of my third charge
in Philadelphia. And the people of all
these three Brooklyn Tabernaoles. Look
at them, and all those whom through
the printing press we have invited to
God and heaven now seeming to sit in
galleries above galleries-fifty galleries,
hundred galleries, a thousand galleries
high
greet them all in your name and in
Christs name, all whom | have con-
fronted from my first sermon in my
first village charge, where my lips
trembled and my knees knocked to-
gether from alright, speaking from the
text, jeremiah /, 6, "Ah. Lord God, be-
hold cannot speak, for am a childw
until the sermon | preach today from
Luke tx, 80, Let us make three taber-
nacles, those Of the past and the pres
ent. all gather in imagination if not in
reality, all of us grateful 10 God for past
mercies, all of us sorry for misimproved
opportunities, all hopeful for eternal
rnrntllr.As md Nn.hiln Ah.. ,.isil,ln aud IL,