News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1893-04-27

luS SOSpel HOW lIedCulIlS5 mere WHO " SI'
preaching when | came to Brooklyn
Most of the pulpits around me hav,
c.:lged seven or eight times since M
arrival.
Sometimes the pastorate has been brie
for one reason and sometimes for an
other reason. Sometimes the minister
of the gospel have been too good for thi
world, and heaven has transplanted them
Sometimes they changed places by tn,
| decree of their denomination. Some
| times they came with great blare o
| trumpets, proposing to carry everything
before them, and got extinguished befor
they were distinguished. Some go
preached out in two or three years anC
told the people all they knew. Som,
with holy speed did in short time worl
which it takes great many years to do
Whether for good or bad reasons {
Brooklyn pastorate is characterized b,
brevity, not much of the old plan b,
which minister of the gospel baptized
an infant, then received him into tn,
church, after he had become an adul
married him, baptized his children, mar
ried them and lived on long enough t.
bury almost everybody but himself
Glorious old pastorates they were. Som,
| of us remember them-Dr. Spring, Pete
Labaugh, Dominic Zabriskie, DAME
Waldo, Abram Halscy.
When the snow melted from theil
foreheads, it revealed the flowers of al
unfading coronal. sPastorates of 80, 40
so, 55 years continuance. Some of then
| had to be helped into the pulpit or into
| the carriage they were SO old and de
crepit, but when the Lords chariots halt
ed one day in front of the old parsonage
they stepped in vigorous as an athlete,
and as we saw the wheels of fire whirling
through the gates of the sunset we all
cried out, My father, my father, the
chariots of Israel and the horsemen there
Off
remark again, a Brooklyn pastorate is
characterized by its happiness.
No city under the sun where people
take such good care of their ministers. In
proportion as the world outside may
curse a congregation stands close up by
the man whom they believe in. Brooklyn
society has for its foundation two ele-
ments-the Puritanic, which always
means quiet Sabbath, and the Holland
ish, which means worshipful people
On the top of this an admixture of all ma
tionalities-the brawny Scot, the solid
English, the vivacious Irish, the polite
French, the philosophic German-and in
all this intermingling of population the
universal dominant theory that a man
can do as he pleases provided he doesn't
disturb anybody else.
BRACING CLIMATE.
A delightful climate. While it is hard
on weak Threats, for the most of us it is
bracing. Not an atmosphere made up
of the discharged gases of chemical fac
tories or the miasms of swamps, but
coming painting right off 5000 miles of
Atlantic ocean before anybody else has
had chance to breathe i'll All through
the city society of kind, genial, gener.
Gus, sympathetic people. How they fly
to you when you are in trouble! How
they watch over you when you are sick!
How tender they are with you when you
have buried your dead! Brooklyn is a
good place to live in, good place to die
in, good place to be buried in. good
place from which to rise in the beautiful
resurrection.
In such city l have been permitted
to have "a years of pastorate. During
these years how many heartbreaks, how
many losses, how many bereavements!
Hardly family of the church that has
lot been struck with sorrow. But God
has sustained you in the past, and he will
sustain you in the future. / exhort you
to be of good cheer, o thou of the broken
heart. 'Weeping may endure for night,
but Joy cometh in the morning." I wish
over every door of this church we might
have written the word Sympathy
sympathy for all the young.
We must crowd them in here by thou
sands and propose radiant gospel that
they will take on the spot. We must
make this place so attractive for the
young that young man will come here
on Sabbath morning, put down his hat,
| brush his hair back from his forehead,
inhibition his overcoat and look around
wondering if he has not by mistake got
into heaven. He will see in the faces OF
the old people not the gloom which some
people take for religion, but the sunshine
of celestial peace, and he will say, "Why,
| wonder if that isn't the same peace that
shone out on the face of my father and
mother when they lay dying?
And then there will come a dampness
in his eyes through which he can hardly
see, and he will close his eyes to imprison
the emotion, but the hot tear will break
through the fringes of eyelashes and drop
! upon the coat sleeve. He will put his
head on the back of the pew in front and
cob, 'Lord God of the old people, help
mew We ought to lay plot here for
the religious capture of all the young
people in Brooklyn.
A CITY OF DEEP SYMPATHIES.
Yes, sympathy for the old. They have
their aches and pains and distresses.
They cannot hear or walk or see as well
as they used to. We must be reverential
in their presence. On dark days we
must help them through the aisle and
help them find the place in the hymn
book. Some Sabbath morning we shall
miss them from their place, and we shall
gay, 'fWhere is Father So-and-so todayT'
and the answer will be: "What, haven't
you heard? The Kings wagons have
taken Jacob up to the palace where his
Joseph is yet alive"
Sympathy for business men. Twenty
four years of commercial life in New
York and Brooklyn are enough to tear
ones nerves to pieces. We want to make
our Sabbath service here a rescue for all
these martyrs of traffic, foretaste of
that land where they have no rents to
pay, and there are no business rivalries,
and where riches, instead of taking wings
to fly away, brood over other riches.
Sympathy for the fallen, remembering
that they ought to be pitied as much as
man run over with rail train. The
fact is that in the temptations and mis-
fortunes of life they get run over. You
and in the same circumstances would
have done as badly. We should have
done worse perhaps. If you and l had
the same evil surroundings and the same
evil parentage thu they had and the
same native born proclivities to evil that
they had, you and | should have been in
the penitentiary or outcasts of society.
mo" says some self righteous man, 81
couldn't have been overthrown in that
way" You old hypocrite, you would
have been the first to fall
We want in this church to have SYM
pathy for the worst man, remembering
he is brother; sympathy for the worst
woman, remembering she is a sister. If
that is not the gospel, do not know
what the gospel is. All, yes, sympathy
for all the troubled, for the orphans in
their exposure, for widowhood with its
weak arm fighting for bread, for the
household which erst resounded with
merry voices and pattering feet now aw-
G .I.l Il