The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1892-05-18


devil If some one should malign your
father 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.
And 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 say;
Il differ, object, am sorry to hear you
say that. There is another side to this"
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 Christianity.
A sCOFFER ROUTED.
A man ninety years old was telling me
few days ago how he put to flight a scott
err My aged friend said to the skeptic,
ibid you ever read the history of Joseph
in the Bible?" Yes" said the man; ''it is
a fine story, and as interesting a story as l
ever read" 'Well, now" said my old
friend, suppose that account of Joseph
stopped half way?" "Oh," said the man,
''then it would not be entertaining"
well. now" said my 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 right"
Oh, friends. better load up with a few in
terrogation points. You cannot afford to
be silent when God and the Bible and the
things of eternity are assaulted Your ST.
leDce gives consent to the bonn 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 back of Jerusalem, you
dared not face sickly joke Better load
up with few questions 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 the United StatesS 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 aud
extensive reading have you come across
lovelier character than Jesus Christi Will
you please TO name the triumphant death
beds of infidels and atheistsi
How dc you account for the fact that
among the out and out believers in Chris
tianity such persons as Benjamin
Franklin, JOHN Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle,
Darlington Mrc@nIey, William Penn, Wal
ter Scott, Charles Kingsley, Horace Bush
nell. James A. Garfield, Robert E. Lee,
Stonewall Jackson, Admiral Foote, Ad-
miral Farragut, Ulysses S. Grant, John
Milton. William Shakespeare, Chief JUS
tice Marshall. John Adams, Daniel Web
ster, George Washington? How do you
account for their fondness for the Chris
tian religion? Among the innumerable
L - z u
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 rap
turous 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
60. You Will put him in 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 your
self, not with arguments but interrogation
points, and promise you victory Shall
such a man rs 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?
PLEA FOR CHURCH SINGING.
But then there are occasions when this
particular spirit that Christ exercised
when he said, Il charge thee to come out
of him, takes people by the wholesale.
In the most responsive religious audience
have you noticed how many people never
sing at allS They have a book, and they
have a voice. and they know how to read.
They know many of the tunes, and vet
are silent while the great raptures of mu-
sic 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 60, but it is inaudible.
With voice strong enough to stop a
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 BASES 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 thousand
fold. But the minister rises and gives out
the hymn; the organ begins; the choir or
precentor 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 the Threats 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, Il 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"
During the cotton famine in Lancashire,
England, when the suffering was some
thing terrific, as the first wagon load of
cotton rolled in the starving people IN
hooked the horses and drew the load them
selves, singing until all Lancashire Joined
in with triumphant voices, their checks
sopping with tears, Praise God, from
whom all blessings flow" When Commo-
dore Perry, with his warship. the Missis-
sippi, lay off the coast of Japan, he bonn
barded the shores with "0ld Hundred"
played by the marine band Glorious ''Old
Hundred" composed by William Franc, of
Germany
In a war prison, at 10 o'clock at night,
the poor fellows far from home and wound
ed and sick and dying, one prisoner started
the "Old Hundred Doxology," and then a
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