Connecticut western news., 1895-03-07

go. l have here few choice cases, and I am busy keeping off the flies" There are multitudes today who have never had any Christian worker look them in the eye, and with earnestness in the &C., centuatiou say. "Come!" or they would long ago have been in the kingdom. My tremendous reality. If it be a sham, let us cease to have anything to do with Christian association. If it be reality, then great populations are on their way to the bar of God unfitted for the or deal, and what are we doing?
 In order to teach the multitude of out siders wo must drop all technicalities out of our religion. When we talk to people about the hypostatio union and French encyclopedianism and erasti- anism and complutensianism, we are as impolitio and little understood as if physician should talk to an' ordinary patient about the pericardium and in- tercostal muscle and scorbutio symp- toms. Many of us come out of the thco logical seminaries so loaded up that we take the first ten years to show our peo pie how much we know, and the next ten years get our people to know as that neither of us knows anything as we ought to know. Here are hundreds of thousands of shining. struggling and dy- ing people who need to realize just one thing-that Jesus Christ came to save them and will save them now. But we go into profound and elaborate defini- tion of what justification is, and after all the work there are not outside of the learned professions 5, 900 people in the United States who can tell what justifi cation is. Twill read you the definition:
 Justification is purely forensic act, the act of judge sitting in the forum, in which the Supreme Ruler and Judge, who is accountable to none, and who alone knows the manner in which the ends of his universal government can best be attained, reckons that which was done by the substitute, and not on account of anything done by them, but purely upon account of this gracious method of reckoning, grants them the full remission of their sins. !"
 Tho Multitude of skeptics.
 Now, what is justification? will tell you what justification is. When sin ner believes, God let's him off. One sum- mer in Connecticut I went to large factory, and 1 saw over the door writ ten the words, "No admittance. '" entered and saw over the next door, No admittance /" Of course I en- tered. 1 got inside and found it a pin factory, and they were making pins, very serviceable, fine and useful pins. So the spirit of exclusiveness has practically written over the outside door of many church, ''No admittance. 1" And if the stranger enter he finds prac- tically written over the second door, "No admittance, and if he goes in over all the pew doors seems written, "No admittance, while the minister stands in the pulpit, hammering out his little niceties of belief, pounding out the tcchnicalities of religion, making pins. In the most practical, common sense way, and laying aside the nonessentials and the hard definitions of religion, go out on the God given mission, telling the people what they need and when and how they can get it.
 Comparatively little effort as yet has been made to save that large class of persons in our midst called skeptics, and he who goes to work here will not be building upon another mans founda- tion. There is great multitude of them. They are afraid of us and our churches, for the reason we do not know how to treat them. One of this class met Christ, and hear with what tenderness and pathos and beauty and success Christ dealt with him: 9Th ou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. This is the first commandment, and the second is like to this-namely, thou shalt love thy neighbor as myself There is no other commandment greater than this" And the scribe said to him, Well, master, thou hast said the truth, for there is one God, and to love him with all the heart, and all the under standing, and all the soul, and all the strength, is more than whole burnt of- ferings and sacrifices. And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly he said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God" So a skep- tic was saved in one interview. But few Christian people treat the skeptic in that way. Instead of taking hold of him with the gentle hand of love, we arc apt to take him with the iron pinchers of ec- clesiasticism. s# You would not be so rough on that man if you knew by what process he had lost his faish ill Christianity. I have known men skeptical from the fact that they grew up in houses where reli- zion was overdone. Sunday was the most awful day of the week. They had religion driven into them with trip hammer. They were surfeited with prayer meetings. They were stuffed and choked with catechisms. They were often told they were the worst boys the parents ever knew because they liked to ride down hill better than to read Bunyan's Pilgrim s Progress. When ever father and mother talked of reli- zion, they drew down the corners of ! their mouth and rolled up their eyes. If any one thing will send boy or girl to ruin sooner than another, that is it. If had had such father and mother, l fear I should have been all infidel.
 When was boy in Sunday school, at | one time we had teacher who, when we were not attentive, struck us over the head with New Testament, and there is a way of using even the Bible so as to make it offensive.
 Others were tripped up of skepticism from being grievously wronged by some man who professed to be a Christian. They had a partner ill business who turned out to be first class scoundrel,
 though a professed Christian. Many years ago they lost all faith by what
 happened in an oil company which was formed amid the petroleum excitement. The company owned no land, or if they
 did there was no sign of oil produced,
 but the president of the company was a | praShvtariap alder and tba troaauray