Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1893-10-19

NrcA1lluuMl HuuN utAlluA atIa4L1l Inc kAN<- Il
OF heaven Do you know how they mark /
the hours in heaveni They have no clocks, |
as they have no candles. but great PEN /
dulum Of hallelulsh swinging ncrcss heaE-
en- from etenlit5 TO eternity.
Let those refuse 10 sing
Who never knew our God,
But Children Of the heavenly king
Should speak their Joys abroad
A sKRMoSIzKR on sERMoEs.
Again, Iremark that sanctuary help ought
to come fro1i the sermon. OF 1000 people
In this or any other audience how many
want sympathetic helpi Do you guess 1oos
Do you guess 500i You have guessed wrong.
l will tell you Just the proportion. Out Of
1000 people in this audience there are just
1000 who need sympathetic help. These
young people want Il just as much as the
old. The old people sometimes seem to
think they have monopoly Of the rheu-
matisms, and the neuralgias, and the head
aches, and the physical disorders Of the
world, but tell You there are no worse
heartaches than are felt by some Of these
young people.
Do You know that much Of the work is
done by the youngi Raphael died at 81;
Richard III at S9; Gustavus Adolphus died
at sS; Innocent III came to his mightiest
influence at 81; Cortez conquered Mexico at
80; Don John won Lepanto at 25; Grotius
was attorney general at -, and have mo-
tlced amid all classes Of men that some Of
| the severest battles and the toughest work
| comes before 90. 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 doctors and lawyers
and merchants and mechanics care about
| the distractions Of religioni What they
| want ishelp to bear the whimsicalities of pa
| tients, the browbeating Of legal opponents,
the unfairness Of customers, who have
plenty of fault finding for every imperfec-
| tion Of handiwork, but no praise for 20 ex-
| cellencies. What does that brain racked,
| hand blistered man care for Zwingle's
Doctrine of Original Sin" or Augustine's
"Anthropologyf You might as well go
to man who has the pleurisy and put on
his side a plaster made out Of Dr.. PARIS
Treatise on Medical Jurisprudence"
While all of sermon may not be help
| full alike to all, II 1t be a Christian sermon
| preached by Christian man, there will be
help for every one somewhere. 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 sermon may not
be appropriate to our case II we wait pray
| erfully before the sermon Is through we
shall have the divine prescription. / say
to these young men who come here Sab
bath by Sabbath and who are going to
preach the gospel, these theological stu
dents-I say to them, we want in our ser
mons not more metaphysics, nor more
Imagination, nor more logic, nor more pro-
fundity.
What we want in our sermons and Chris
tian exhortations is more sympathy. When
Father Taylor 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 Old
ham, England, all the workingmen felt
they had more grace for the spindles When
DR.. South preached to kings and princes
and princesses, all the mighty men and
women who heard him felt preparation for
their high station.
THE HELP OF PRAYER
L He
ought to come through the prayers Of all
the people The door of the eternal store.
house is hung on one hinge, gold hinge,
the hinge of prayer-and when the whole
audience lay hold Of that door 1t must come
open. There are here many people spend.
ing their first Sabbath after some great be
reavement. What will your prayer do fol
themf How will it help the tomb in that
mans hearth Here are people who have
not been in church before for 10 years; what
will your prayer do for them by rolling
over their soul holy memoriesi Here are
people 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 oi
the glove that you put to your forehead
while you prayed? viii you be chiefly
critical of the rhetoric of the PASTORS peti
tione No. No. A thousand people will
feel ''that prayer Is for me-" and at every
step of the prayer chains ought to drop of
and temples of sin ought to crush into dust
and iubilees of deliverance ought to bran
dish their trumpets. In most of oul
churches we have three prayers-the open
/ ing prayer, what is called the "long prayer, ,
and the closing prayer.
There are many people who spend thu
first prayer in arranging their apparel after
entrance and spend the second prayer, th.
, ''long prayer" In wishing it were through
. and spend the last prayer in preparing tt
start for home The most insignificant
part of every religious service is the ser
| | ,.ka ~ ka h.
Scripture lesson and the prayer. The ser
mon is only a man talking to a man. TIL,
Scripture lesson Is God talking to man
! Prayer is man talking to God. Oh, ifw
] understood the grandeur and the pathos O.
this exercise Of prayer. instead Of being
, dull exercise, we would imagine that th,
room was full Of divine and angelic appear
i ances
| But, my friends, the old style of churcl
i will not do the work. We might as vel
, now try to take all the passengers from
New York to Buffalo by stage coach, or al
: the passengers from Albany to Buffalo b,
. canalboat, or do all the battling of tn,
: world with bow and arrow, as with the ole
, style of church to meet the exigencies O
! this day. Unless the church IL our dal
will adapt itself to the time 1t will becom,
extinct. The people reading newspaper
3 and books all the week, in alert, pictur
3 esque and resounding style, will have n,
, patience with Sabbath humdrum.
= We have no objections to bands and sur
) plice and all the paraphernalia Of clerica
! life, but these things make no impression
' makeno more impressionon the great mass
es of the people than the ordinary bushes
arit that Won wear in Wall street tailo