The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1893-09-15
TALMAGE's SERMON.
The Sunday Christian and the
Weekday Sinner.
More Religion Needed I'm Our Everyday
TIfs-ReIigIOn In Our Conversation
and In Our Daily EN-
ployment.

Day Religion. taxing Tor MS text.
In all thy ways acknowledge Him--Proverbs
in.,6
There has been a tendency in all
lands and ages TO set apart certain
days, places and occasions for especial
religious service, and to think that
they formed the realm in which re-
ligion was chiefly TO act. Now, while
holy days and holy places have their
use. they can never be a substitute for
continuous exercise of faith and prayer.
In other words, a man can not be SO
good Christian on Sabbath that he
can afford to be a wording all the
week. If a steamer start for South
ampton, and sail one day in that di-
rection, and the other six days sail in
other directions, how long before the
steamer will get to Southampton?
just as soon as a man will get to
Heaven who sails on the Sabbath day
toward that which is good. and the
other six days of the week sails toward
the world, the flesh and the devil.
You can not eat so much at the Sab
bath banquet that you can afford re-
ligious abstinence the rest of the week.
Genuine religion is not spasmodic,
does not go by fits and starts is not an
attack of chllls and fever-now cold
until your teeth chatter, now hot until
your bones ache. Genuine religion
marches on steadily, up steep hills, and
along dan gerous declivities, its eye
ever on the everlasting hills crowned
with the castles of the blessed.
propose, so far as God may help me,
to show you how we may bring our re-
ligion into life, and practice it in COM
mon things-yesterday, to-day, to-mor-
row.
And in the first place I remark: We
ought to bring religion into our ordi-
nary conversation. A dam breaks and
two or three villages are submerged; a
South American earthquake swallows
city, and people begin to talk about
the uncertainty of human life, and in
that conversation think they are en-
gaging in religious service, when there
may be no religion at all. / have no
ticed that in proportion as Christian
experience is shallow men talk about
funerals, and death-beds, and hearses,
and tombstones, and epitaphs. If a
man have the religion of the Gospel in
it's full power in his soul he will talk
chiefly about this world and the eter-
nal world, and very little comparative
ly about the magnificent pass between
this and that. Yet how seldom it is that
the religion of Christ is a welcome
themel If a man full of the Gospel of
Christ gets into religious circle, and
begins to talk about sacred things, all
the conversation is hushed, and things
become exceedingly awkward. As on
summer day, the forests full of
song, and chirp, and carol, mighty
chorus of bird harmonies, every
byanch an orchestra-if a hawk APP
pears in the sky, all the voices are
hushed. so / have sometimes seen a
social circle that professed to be Chris
tian, silence by the appearance of the
great theme of God and religion. Now,
my friends, if we have the religion of
Christ in our soul, we will talk about it
in an exhilarant mood. 1t is more re-
freshing than the waters, it gives a
man joy here, and prepares him for
everlasting happiness before the throne
of God. And yet, if the theme of re-
ligion be introduced into a circle,
everything is siIenced-silenced unless,
perhaps, an aged Christian man in the
corner of the room, feeling that some
thing ought to be said, puts one foot
over the other and signs heavily and
says: "Oh, yes; that's SOP Ny
friendsl the religion of Jesus Christ is
not something to be groaned about
but something to talk about and sing
about, your face irradiated. The
trouble is that men protesting the
faith of the Gospel are often so incon-
sistent that they are afraid their con-
versation will not harmonic with
their life. We can not talk the Gospel
unless we live the Gospel. You will
often find a man whose entire life is
full of inconsistencies filling his con-
versation with such expressions as, 1--WE
are miserable sinners, 1.-THE Lord help
us. " 1.-The Lord bless you," interlarding
their conversation with such phrases,
which are mere canting, and canting
is the worst kind of hypocrisy. If a
man have the grace of God in his heart
dominant, he can talk religion and it
will seem natural, and men, instead of
being repulsed by it, will be attracted
by it. Do you not know that when two
Christian people talk as they ought
about the things of Christ and Heaven,
God gives special attention, and He
writes it all down. Malachi iii, 16:
"Then they that feared the Lord talked
one to the other, and the Lord heark-
ened and heard, and book of remem-
brance was written"
NV brother, you can not be called to
do anything so insignificant but God
will help you in it. If you are a fish
erman, Christ will stand by you as He
did by Simon when he dragged Gennes-
aret. Are you drawer of water?
He will be with you at the well curb,
when talking with the Samaritan
woman. Are you custom house of
ficer? Christ will call you as He did
Matthew at the receipt of custom. The
man who has only days wages in his
pocket as certainly needs religion as
he who rattles the keys of bank and
could abscond with hundred thou
sand hard dollars. And yet there are
men who profess the religion of Jesus
Christ who do not bring the religion of
the Gospel into their ordinary occupa-
tions and employments. There are in
the churches of this day men who
seem very devout on the Sabbath who
are far from that during the week. A
country merchant arrives in this city,
and he goes into the store to buy goods
of a man who processes religion, but
has no grace in his heart. The coun-
try merchant is swindled. He is too
exhausted to go home that week; he
tarries in town. On Sabbath he goes
n A n