The Manning times. [volume] (Manning, Clarendon County, S.C.) 1884-current, 1896-09-23

license taxes, manufacturing taxes
taxes, taxes, taxes! Our business
men have to make small fortune
every year to pay their taxes. What
fastens on our great industries this
awful load2 Crime, individual and
official: We have to pay the board Of
the villains who are incarcerated in
our prisons We have to take care of
the orphans OF those who plunged into
their graves through sensual indul-
gences. We have to support the
municipal governments, which are
vast and expensive just in proportion
as the criminal proclivities are vast
and tremendous. Who support the
almshoGses and police stations, and all
the machinery of municipal govern
ment? The taxpayers.
But III the glorious time OF which |
speak grieyous taxation will all have
ceased. There will be no need of sup
porting criminals; there will be no
criminals. Virtue will have taken the
place of vice. There will be no or
phan asylums, for parents will be able
TO leave a comp potency to their chill
dren. There will be no voting of large
sums Of money for some municipal
improvement, which money, before
they get to the improvements, drops
into the pockets Of those who voted it.
No over and terminer kept up at vast
expense to the people. No empanel-
ing of juries to try theft and arson and
murder and SANDER and blackmail.
Better factories. Grander architecture.
Finer equipage. Larger fortunes.
Richer opulence. Better churches.
In that better time, also, coming 20
those cities, Christ's churches will be
more numerous, and they will be larg-
er, and they will be more devoted to
the gospel of Jesus Christ, they will
accomplish greater influences for good.
Now, it is often the case that churches
are envious of each other, and denomi-
nations collide with each other, and
even ministers of Christ sometimes
forget the bond of brotherhood. But
in the time of which I speak. while
there will be just as many di &erences
of opinion as there are now, There will
be no acerbity, no hypercriticism, no
exclusiveness.
In our great cities the churches are
not today large enough to hold more
than fourth of the population. The
churches that are buiit-comparatively
few of them are fully occupied. The
average attendance iR the churches of
the United States today IS not 400.
Now, in the glorious time of which l
speak there are going to be vast
churches. and they are going 10 be
all thronged With worshipers. Oh,
what rousing songs they will sing!
Oh, what earnest sermons they will
preach, Oh, what fervent prayers
they will offer! Now, in our time,
whatsis called fashionable church is
place Fhere few people, having
attended, very carefully to their toilet,
come and sit down--they do not want
to bs crowded; they ike whole seat
to ,themselves-and then, if they have
a1y time left from thinking of their
Lstore, and from examining the style of
1 the hat in front of them, they sit and
listen to a sermon warranted to hit no
mans sins, and listen to music which
is rendered by a choir warranted to
sing tunes that nobody knows. And
then after an hour and half Of indo-
lent yawning they 60 home refreshed.
Every man feels better after he has
had sleep.
In many of the churches of Christ
in our day the music is simply a mock
cry. have not a cultivated ear, nor
a cultivated voice, yet no man can do
my singing for me. I have nothing
to say against artistic music. The 50
or SIS I pay to hear any OF the great
queens Of song is good investment.
But when the people assemble in religi-
Gus convocation, and the hymn is read,
and the angels of God step from their
throne to catch the music on their
wings, do not let us drive them away
by our Indifference. have preached
| in churches where vast sums of money
were employed to keep up the music,
and it was as exquisite as any heard
on earth, but I thought at the same
time that for ali matters practical I
would prefer the hearty, outbreaking
song of a backWoods Methodist camp
meeting.
Let one Of these starveling fancy
songs sung in church got up before
the throne of God-how would it seem
standing amid the great doxologies OF
the redeemed? Let the finest operate
air that ever went up from the church
of Christ get many hours the start; it
will be caught and passed by the hos
anna of the Sabbath school children.
I know a church where the choir did
all the singing, save one Christian
man, who, though perseverance of
the saints" went right on, and after
ward committee was appointed to
wait on him aud ask him if he would
not please stop singing, as he bothered
the choir.
Let those refuse to sing
Who never knew our God,
But children of the heavenly King
Should speak their joys abroad.
PRAISE ye the Lord. Let everything
| with breath praise the Lord" In the
glorious time coming in our cities and
in the world hosanna will meet hos.
anna and hallelujah, hallelujah.
In that time also of which l speak
all the haunts of inlquity and crime
and squalor will be cleansed and will
be Illuminated How is it to be done2
You say perhaps by one influence.
Perhaps say BY another. will tell
you what is my idea, and I know | am
right in it. The gosepel of the Son Of
God is the only agency that will ever
accomplish this.
A gentlman in England had theory
that if the natural forces of wind and
tide and sunshine and wave were right
lv applied and rightly developed it
would make this whole earth para
disc. In a book of great genius and
which rushed from edition to edition
be said: Fellow men, promise to
shnpr the means of creating naradiSe