Connecticut western news., 1892-05-19

and carlcatured the profession Of re- hgion as hypocrisy, or made pun out of something that Christ said. The laugh started and you joined in, and not one word of protest did you utter. What kept you silent? Modesty? No. h. capacity to answer? No. Lack of op- portunity? No. It was blow on both your lips by the wing of the dumb devil. or mother or wife or husband or child you would flush up quick, and either with an indignant word or doubled up fist make response. An yet here is our Christian religion, which has done so much for you and so much for the world that it will take all eternity to celebrate it, and yet when it was attacked you did not so much as say: Il differ, ob- ject, l am sorry to hear you say that. There is another side to this.n
 You Christian people ought in such times as these to 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 Chris tianity. A man ninety years old was telling me few days ago how he put to flight sccffer. My aged friend said to the skeptic, Did you ever read the his tory of Joseph ill the BibleT' "Yes," said the man; ''it is a fine story, and as interesting a story as l ever read" "Well, now" said my old friend, "sup- pose that account of Joseph stopped half wayg" "Oh," said the man, "then it would not be entertaining" "Well, now," said my friend, "we 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 right?"
 LOAD UP WITH INTERROGATION POINTS.
 Oh, friends, better load up with few interrogation points. You cannot afford to be silent when God and the Bible and the things of eternity are assailed. Your silence gives consent to the bom- bardment of your fathers house. You allow a slur to 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 hack of Jerusalem, you dared not face sick ly joke. Better load up with few ques- tions so that next time you will be ready.
 Say to the scoffer: My dear sir, will you tell me what makes the difference between the condition of woman in China and tho 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 triumphant deathbeds of in- fidels 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, Babington Macaulay. William Penn, Walter Scott, Charles Kingsley, Horace Bushnell, James A. Garfield, Robert E. Lee, Stone wall Jackson, Admiral Foote, Admiral Farragut, Ulysses s. Grant, John Mil ton, William Shakespeare, Chief Justice Marshall, John Adams, Daniel Webster, George Washington How do you ac- count for their fondness for the Christian religion? Among the innumerable col leges and universities of the earth will you name me three started by infidels and now supported by infdels? Down in your heart are you really happy in the position you occupy antagonistic to the Christian religion2 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 te 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 rout compared with which our troops at Bull Run made no time at all. Arm yourself, not with arguments but interrogation points, and l promise you victory. Shall such a 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 particular spirit that Christ exer- cised when he said, Il charge thee to come out of him." takes people by the wholesale. In the most responsive reli- gious audience have you noticed how many people never sing at all? They have book, and they have 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 inaudible. With d voice strong enough to stop street car one block away, all they can afford in the praise of God is about half whis- per. With enough sopranos, enough altos, enough bassos to make a small heaven between the four walls, they let the opportunity go by unimproved.
 The volume of voice that ascends from the largest audience that ever assembled ought to be multiplied about two thou sand fold. But the minister rises and gives out the hymn; the organ begins; the choir or precentor leads; the audi ence are standing so that the lungs may have full expansion, and a mighty har- mony 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 throats from which they started, and only here and there anything is heard, and nine-tenths of the holy power is destroyed; and the dumb devil, as he flies away, says, "I 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 it would have spread abroad to bless neighborhoods and cities, and then mount the wide open heavens" Give the long meter doxology the full