The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1893-10-16


audience there are Just one thousand who
need sympathetic help. These young
/ people want it Just as much as the old.
/ The old people sometimes seem 10 Jhlnh
they have a monopoly of the rheumauSms,
and the neuralgias. and the headaches
and the physical disorders Of the world :;
! but tell YOU there are no worse heart
aches 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 thirty-seven; RiChelieu at thirty
one; Gustavus AdOlphus died at
thirty-eight; Innocent Ill came TO ms
mightiest influence at thirty-seven; Cor
tez conquered Mexico at thirty; Don
| John won LepantO at twenty-five; Gro
/ thus was attorney-general at twenty-lour;
| and have noticed amid all classes OF
/ men that some of the Seycrest battles
! and the toughest work comes before
/ thirty. Therefore we must have our ser
mons and our eXhOrtatiOn In prayer-meet-
| ing 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 religions What they
| want is to help to bear the whimsical
| tiles of patients, the browbeating OF legal
| opponents the unfairneSs Of custO merS,
! who have plenty Of fault-hndlng Tor
! every imperfection of handiwork, but no
]
! that brain-racked, hand-blistered man
care for Zwingle's Doctrine of Original
SIM or Augustines 'AnthrOpOlogyI
You might as well 90 to man who has
the pleurisy and put on his side plaster
made out of DR.. PARIS Treatise on
Medical Jurisprudence.
While all of a sermon may not be he p
full alike to all, if it be Christian ser
mon, preached by a 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 com
plain 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 prayerfulIy before
the sermon is through, we shall have the
divine prescription. | 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 meta
physics, nor more imagination, nor more
logic, nor more prOfundity. what we
want in our sermons and Christian eX-
hOrtatiOns is more sympathy Nhen
Father Taylor preached in the Sailors
Bethel at Boston, the jack tars felt that
they had help for their duties among the
ratlnes and the forecastles. When Rlch-
ard Weaver preached to the operatives in
Oldham, 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 pre-
paration for their high station.
Again | remark, that sanctuary help
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, it must
come open There are here many people
spending their first Sabbath after some
great bereavement. What will your prayer
do for theml How will 1t 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 soul holy memories
Here are people in crises of awful tempta-
ton 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 resist2 VIII you be chiefly
anxious about the fit of the glove that you
| put to your forehead while you prayed
! viii you be chiefly critical of the rhetoric
| of the pastors petitions No. No. a
| thousand people viii 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 trum-
pets. In most of our Oh urches we have
three prayers-the opening prayer, what
is called the long prayer" and the clos
ing prayer, There are many people who
spend the first prayer In arranging their
apparel after entrance, and spend the sec
ond prayer the "lOng prayer" in wishing
it were through, and spend the last
prayer in preparing to start for home.
| The most insignificant part of every re-
| ligious ServiceSis the sermon. The more
| important parts are the Scripture lesson
| and the prayer. The sermon is only a
man talking to man. The Scripture les
| son is God talking to man. Prayer is
! man talking to God Oh, if we under
| stood the grandeur and the pathos of this
! exercise of prayer, instead of being a
| dull exercise, we would imagine that the
room was full of divine and angelic APP
! pearances.
But, my friends, the old style of church
| will not do the work We might as well
now try to take all the passengers from
! New York to Buffalo by stage-cOach, or
/ all the passengers from Albany to Buff
! falo by Canal-boat, or do all the battling
| of the world with bow and arrow, as with
| the old style of church TO meet the ext n
| cies of this day. Unless the church in
our day will adapt itself to the time, it
will become extinct. The people reading
| newspapers and books all the week, in
| alert, picturesque, and resounding style,
will have no patience with Sabbath hum
drum. We have no objections to bands
| and surplice, and all the paraphernalia of
clerical life; but these things make no
| impressiOn-make no more impression on
the great masses of the people than the
| ordinary business suit that you wear in
| Wall street. A tailor cannot make a
| minister. Some of the poorest preachers
| wear the best clothes; and many back
/ woodsman has dismOunted from the sad
| dle-bags, and in his linen buster preached
a sermon that shook earth and heaven
with its Christian eloquence. No new
gospel, only the old gospel in a way suited
TO the time. No new church, but church
to be the asylum, the inspiration, the
practical sympathy, and the eternal help
of the people.
But while half of the doors of the
church are to be set open towards this
world. the other half of the doors of the
church must be set open toward the next
You and tarry here only a brief space
We want somebody to teach US how tC
get out of this life at the right time and
in the right way. Some tall out OF life
some go stumbling out of life, some &c
groaniug out OF life, some go curslug out
of life. We want TO go singing, rising. re
joicing, triumphing. We want half the
doors of the church set in that direction
We want half the prayers that way, hall
| the sermons that way. We want TO know