News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1892-04-07

dates bound what raptureS, what grlefS,
what struggles, what triumphs! l men
ton it as a matter of gratitude to God
that in these twenty-three years | have
missed but one Sabbath through physical
~indisposition, and but three in the thirty
six years of my ministry. And now,
having reached this tw%enty-third mile
stone. | start anew. | have in my mem
orandum books analyses of more ser
mons than | have ever yet preached, and
| have preached, as neal as | can tell,
about 1880.
During these past years | have learned
two or three things. Among others |
have learned that ''all things work to-
gether for good" Ny positive mode of
preaching has sometimes seemed to stir
the hostilities 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, | took with me two elders of my
church and Il New York police commits
tioner and Il policeman, and | explored
and reported the horrors that needed re-
moval, and the allurements 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 OF forty newspaper
correspondents, from north, south, east
and west, which opened for me new
in which to preach the Gospel
that otherwise would never have been
opened.
Years passed on and | preached a series
of sermons on ADJUSTMENTS, and a false
report of what | did say-and one of the
ermon 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 extinguishment, until the
chief of Brooklyn police, without any
suggestion from me, took possession of
the church with twenty-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 l did things,
and although | was acquitted of all the
INA SCSs III 1 III CAL
church. That battle made me more
friends than anything that ever hap
pened and gave me C~hristendom and
more than Christendom for my weekly
audience. On the demolition of each
church we got Il better and a larger
church, and not a disaster, not a carica-
ture, not Il persecution, not an assault,
during all these twenty-three years but
turned out for Il advantage, and ought
[ not to believe that "all things work to-
gether for good!' Hosannah!
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 infidelity, and its disciples will be-
lieve less and less, until many of them
will land in Nowhere, and become the
w~Orshipers of an eternal "What is IL"
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 Paul's 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 IN
of all those who nave 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 glorified 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
stats, and where are YOU gray
locks, and where your STOPPING Shout
1ers, We blessed old folks? ooh" thev
say, 1--WE are all young again, and the
bath in the river from under the throne
has made us agile and bounding. In
he place from which we come they use
40 staffs, but sceptersy" Hail, fathers
mothers in Israel! How glad we
Ire to have you come back to greet us!
But the other audience | see in imagi-
lation is made up of all those to whom
We have had opportunity as a church,
OF indirectly, of presenting the
iospel. Yea, all my parishes seem to
,Ome back today. The people of my
charge in BellevilIe, N. j. The peo-
lie of my second charge in Syracuse,
\. Y. The people of my third charge
n Philadelphia. And the people of all
hese three Brooklyn Tabernacles. Look
them, and all those whom trough
he printing press we have invited to
rod and heaven now seeming to sit in
above galleries-fifty galleries,
hundred galleries, a thousand galleries
Ugh.
| greet them all in your name and in
name, all whom | have con-
from my first sermon in my
rst village charge, where my lips
rembled and my knees knocked to-
ether from alright, speaking from the :
ext, jeremiah i, 6, "Ah, Lord God, be- 4
old | cannot speak, for | am a child"
ntil the sermon | preach today from
luke tx, 80, Let us make three taber-
those of the past and the pres
Mt, all gather in imagination if not in 4
all of us grateful to God for past
l%ercies. all Of us sorry for misimproved /
Dportunities, all hopeful for eternal
and while the visible and the Ii
visible audiences of the present and II
he past commingle, | give out to be
ing by those who are here today, and
be sung by those who shall read Of
us scene of Renaissance and cOngraA51-
ton, that hymn which has been roll.
g on since Isaac Watts started it one
lndred and fifty years ago:
Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast.
And our eternal home.
The metal in a lve cent nickel piece
worth about half a cent. and fftaan