The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1897-11-26

wheels of the train and lay on the grass
with only strength enough to say, ooh,
what will become of my poor, sick
mother now?"
Hopeful Outlook.
Vicarious suffering? The world is full
of it. An engineer said to me on To-
connective in Dakota: "We men seem to
be coming to better appreciation than
we used to. Did you see that account
the other day of an engineer who, to
save his passengers, stuck to his place,
and when he was found dead in the To-
connective, which was found upside down,
be was found still smiling, his hand on
the airbrake?" And as the engineer said
it to me he put his hand on the airbrake
to illustrate his meaning, and looked
at him and thought, "You would be
Just as much of a hero in the same
crisis.
Oh, in that coming sermon of the
! Christian church there will be living
illustrations taken from everyday life
of vicarious sufferings - illustrations
that will bring to mind the ghastlier
sacrifice of him who, in the high places
of the field and on the cross fought our
battles and wept our griefs and endured
our struggles and died our death.
A German sculptor made an image Of
Christ and he asked his little child, 2
years old, who it was, and she said,
"That must be some very great man. :"
The sculptor was displeased with the
criticism, so he got another block of
marble and chiseled away on it two or
three years, and then he brought in his
little child or years of age, and he
said to her, WHO do you think that
is?" She said "That must be the One
who took little children in his arms and
blessed them. Then the sculptor was
satisfied Oh, my friends, what the
world wants is not cold Christ not an
intellectual Christ, not a severely mag
isterial Christ. but loving Christ,
spreading out his arms of sympathy to
press the whole world to his loving
heart.
But l remark again that the coming
sermon of the Christian church will be
a short sermon. Condensation is de-
manded by the age in which we live.
No more need of long introductions and
long applications and so many divisions
to discourse that it may be said to be
hydra headed. In other days men got all
their information from the pulpit. There
were few books and there were no news
papers, and there was little travel from
place to place, and people would sit and
listen two and a half hours to reli-
gious discourse, and "seventeenthly
would find them fresh and clipper. In
those times there was enough room for
a man to take an hour to warm himself
up to the subject and an hour to cool
off. But what was necessity then is
superfuity now. Congregations are full
of knowledge from books, from newspa-
pers from rapid and continuous inter
communication, and long disquisitions
of what they know already will not be
abided If religious teacher cannot
compress what he wishes to say to the
people in the space of 40 minutes, bet
ter adjourn it to some other day.
The Time to Stop.
The trouble is we preach audiences
into a Christian frame and then we
preach them out of it. We forget that
every auditor has so much capacity of !
and when that is exhausted |
he is restless. That accident on the Long
Island railroad came from the fact that
the brakes were out of order, and when
they wanted to stop the train they could
not stop, hence the casualty was terri
fic. In all religious discourse we want
locomotive power and propulsion; we
want at the same time stout brakes to
let down at the right instant 1t is
dismal thing, after nearer has compre-
hended the whole subject, to hear man
say, Now to recapitulate, " and "a
few words by way of application, and
"once more, and finally, and "now
to conclude.
Paul preached until midnight and
Eutychus got sound asleep and fell out
of window and broke his neck Some
would say, Good for him." would
rather be sympathetic, like Paul, and
quoted now in religious circles as
against somnolence in church
1t is just as much a warning to minis
ters against proliXity. Eutychus was
wrong in his somnolence, but Paul
made a mistake when he kept on until
midnight He ought to have stopped at
IL o'clock, and there would have been
40 accident If Paul might have gone
IN to too great length, let all those of
as who are now preaching the gospel
that there is limit to re-
igious discourse, or ought to be, and
that in our time we have no apostolic
power or miracles. Napoleon, in an ad-
lress of seven minutes, thrilled his army
md thrilled Europe. Christ sermon on
he mount-the model sermon-was less
than Is minutes long at ordinary mode
If delivery 1t is not electricity scatter
ed all over the sky that strikes, but
electricity gathered into a thunderbolt
md hurled, and it is not religious truth
over, spread out over a vast
each of time, but religious truth pro-
ected in compact form that flashes light
lpon the soul and rives it's indifference
When the coming sermon arrives in
his land and in the Christian church
he sermon which is to arouse the world
md startle the nations and usher in the