The Newtown bee., 1895-03-08

deacon, with great deal of care and slow pulling, and twisting and turning.
 To give jerk breaks the line as 1t
 breaks things up in the church. If the
 fish do not always bite, as they will not
 always do, the patient man studies the
 moss on the rocks and the flowers on the
 bank, seeing sermons in sheltered rocks and babbling brooks and fickle currents of the stream. Then, too, if you
 would be successful in the fishing line, you must cast more than once into the same pool. It takes patience to discover whether the fish are under the bank or in the ripples or in the middle of the stream.
 You must try, and try with patience in fl h pole becomes means of grace in
 teaching minister to rival and surpass the troubled Job in the exercise of pa tience. am not aware that Peter emu
 merates sunshine as in the catalogue Of
 Christian graces. It is, however. among the necessary qualifications and equip ments for successful fisherman. I here
 record my belief that raving misan- thrope will have poor luck in pond or stream. In fact there is a certain vein of jollitysin the camaraderie ofssfishermen.
 When we get to grumbling that we have
 toiled all night and caught nothing, the
 very fish seem to hear the growl and re-
 fuse to bite. I suppose that we are
 ministers of hope. As such we need to
 exercise it all the time we have the fish down.
 BUT LET ME REEL OFF TO YOU
 the second spindle which is marked
 "Bait." Allow me to quote at the be- ginning of this line of thought little ad-
 vice from Dr Gray of the .'Interior" in
 his book on ''Camp-fire musings" He says "As for bait it does not make
 much difference what you use. The philosophy of school of fish is the same
 as the philosophy of schools of men or
 women, that blessings brighten as they
 take their flight" You must make fish
 believe that you do not want him to get your bait, that it is trying to get away from him. Then he will chase it and
 catch it for the fun of the thing though he may be already too full to eat it. My experience is that the doctors advice
 must be taken ''cum grano sails" or per haps with tea-cup of salt. Bait, like sermons, must be fresh to catch fish. It | ha fn ifo l- inl dnr
 catch bullheads ordinarily with the | royal coachman. You might as well
 expect to save souls by preaching on | the nebular hypothesis or to attract
 Sunday afternoon street crowd | by talking about the folly of foreordina- I tion as to catch fish with kind of bait | they never eat. It is often to a would | be. fisherman means of grace to find the | bait which he would or could use. As | difficult perhaps as to hunt up text for | a new sermon on Monday morning. It | certainly calls for the practice of the afore- mentioned patience to grub in che garden for an hour in search of earth ! worms or to get down on your knees and chase crickets around an old hay | stack. That is sort of knee drill which
 Gen Booth has probably never thought
 of, but the practice may be of service to
 us in case in the fulness of time we come
 to church union by being swallowed up
 by the historic episcopate and kneel for half an hour for the beEediction of the bishops ordainibg hand. Then too in the matter of bait a man does well, if he is pond fishing especially, to have variety.
 A minister will not gain the highest sue
 cess who always ends up his sermon by.a
 few reflections on baptism and so Q. E. D ! A fisherman must not always depend or
 the worm. Like good bread and butter. 1 however, the worm Is the standard bait
 But if you arc going for bass let me ad. wise you to take along some live bait some crickets and some helgrammites,
 and if you