The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1893-10-27
If eternal ioy. and lift the round earth

the great St Paul's Cathedral would
come IN to mark the hours, making all
the other sounds seem utterly insigniti-
cant as with mighty tongue it an
nounced the hour of the night, every
stroke an overmastering boom. My
friends, it was intended that all the
lesser sounds of the world should be
drowned out in the mighty tongue of
congregational song beating against
the gates of Heaven. Do you know
how they mark the hours in Heaven?
They have no clocks, as they have no
candles. but a great pendulum of halle
lujah swinging across Heaven from
eternity to eternity.
Let those refuse TO sing
Who never knew our God:
But children OF the Heavenly King
Should speak their joys abaoad-
Again remark, that sanctuary help
ought to come from the sermon. Of
thousand people in this or any other
audience, how many want sympathetic
help? Do you guess a hundred? Do
you guess five hundred? You have
guessed wrong. will tell you just the
proportion. Out of a thousand people
in this audience there are just one
thousand who need sympathetic help.
These young people want it just as
much as the old. The old people some
times seem to think that they have a
monopoly of the rheumatisms and the
neuralgias, ard the headaches, and the
physical disorders of the world; but |
tell you there arc no worse heartaches
than are felt by some of these young
people. Do you know that much of
the work is done by the young? Raphael
died at 81; Gustavus Adolphus died
at IS: Innocent III. came to his might
lest influence at 81: Cortes conquered
Mexico at 80: Don John won Lepanto
at %; Grotius was Encouragement at
"a: and have noticed amid all classes
of men that some of the severest bat
ties and the toughest work comes be-
fore 80. Therefore we must have our
sermons and our exhortation in prayer
meeting all sympathetic with the
young. And so with these people
further on in life. What do these doc
tors and lawyers and merchants and
mechanics care about the distractions
to bear the whimsicalities of patients
the browbeating of legal opponents,
the unfairness of customers, who have
plenty of fault-finding for every imper-
lection of handiwork, but no praise for
twenty excellences. What does that
brain-racked, hand blistered man care
for Zwingle's Doctrine of Original
SIM" or Augustine's "Anthropology?'
You might as well go to a man who
has the pleurisy and put on his side a
plaster made out of DIR. PARIS Treatise
on Medical Jurisprudence"
While all of sermon may not be
helpful alike to all, if it be a Christian
sermon preached by a Christian man,
there will be help for every one some
where. We go into an apothecary
store. We see others being waited on;
we do not complain because we do not
Immediately get the medicine; we know
our turn will come after awhile And
so while all parts of a sermon may not
be appropriate to our case, if we wait
prayerfully before the sermon is
through we shall have the divine pre-
scription. | say to these young men
who come here Sabbath by Sabbath,
and who are going to preach the
gospel, these theological students
| say to them, we want in our
sermons not more metaphysics, nor
more imagination, nor more logic, nor
more profundity. What we want in
our sermons and Christian exhOrtations
is more sympathy. When Father Tay-
lor preached in the Sailors Bethel at
Boston, the jack-tars felt that they had
help for their duties among the ratlines
and the forecastles. When Richard
Weaver preached to the operatives in
Oldham, England, all the workingmen
felt they had more grace for the
spindles. When DIR. South preached to
kings and princes and princesses all
the mighty men and women who heard
him felt preparation for their high sta
ton.
Again l remark, that sanctuary help
ought to come through the prayers of
all the people. The door of the eter-
nal storehouse is hung on one hinge, a
gold hinge, the hinge of prayer, and
when the whole audience lay hold of
that door it must come open. There
are here many people spending their
first Sabbath after some great bereave-
ment. What will your prayer do for
them? How will it help the tomb in
that mans heart? Here are people who
have not been in church before for ten
years; what will your prayer do
for them by rolling over their
| L 10
in crises of awful temptation. They
are on the verge of despair, or wild
laundering, or theft, or suicide. What
will your prayer do for them this
morning in the way of giving them
strength to resist? Will you be chiefly
anxious about the fit of the glove that
you put to your forehead while you
prayed? Will you be chiefly critical of
the rhetoric of the pastors petition?
No. No. A thousand people will feel
that prayer is for me-" and at every
step of the prayer chains ought to drop
off, and temples of sin ought to crush
into dust, and jubilees of deliverance
ought to brandish their trumpets- In
most of our churches we have three
prayers-the opening prayer, what is
called the long prayer, and the closing
prayer. There are many people who
spend the first prayer in arranging their
apparel after entrance, and spend the
second prayer, the long prayer" in
wishing it were though, and spend the
last prayer in preparing to start for
home The most insignificant part of
every religious service is the sermon.
The most important parts are the
Scripture lesson and the prayer. The
sermon is only man talking to man.
The Scripture lesson is God talking to
man. Prayer is man talking to God.
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