The enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 188?-1899, 1898-02-02


gagged in the earning of livelihood;
that will leave you about eight years.
From these eight years you must take
all the days and weeks and mouths
all the length of time that is passed in
sickness-leaving you about one year
in which to work for God. o my soul!
wake up! How darest thou sleep in
harvest time, and with so few hours in
which to reap? So that l state it as
q simple fact tnat all the time for the
exclusive service of God will be less
than one year.
But" says some man, 81 literally
support the gospel, and the church is
open, and the gospel is preached; all
the spiritual advantages are spread be-
fore men, and if they want to be saved
let them come and be saved-I have dis
charged all my responsibility" All! is
that my Masters spirit? Is there not
an old book somewhere that commands
us to go out into the highways and the
hedges and compel the people to come
in? What would become of you and me
If Christ had not come down off the
hills of Heaven; and if He had not come
through the door of the Bethlehem
caravansary; and if He had not with
the crushed hand of the crucifxion
knocked at the iron gate of the sepul-
cher of our spiritual death, crying
Lazarus, come forth?' 0 my Chris
tian friend! this is no time for inertia
when all the forces of darkness seem
to be in full blast-when steam print
ingpresses are publishing infidel tracts,
when express trains are carrying mes
sengers of sin, when fast clippers are
laden with opium and strong drink,
when the night air of our cities is pol
luted with the laughter that breaks up
from the 10000 saloons of dissipation
and abandonment, when the fires of
the second death already are kindled
in the cheeks of some who, only lit
tie while ago, were incorrupt.
Oh, never since the curse fell upon
the earth has there been time when
1T was such an unwise such cruel,
such an awful thing for the church to
sleep. The great audiences are not
gathered in Christian churches; the
great audiences are gathered in
temples of sin-tears of unutterable
woe their baptism, the blood of crushed
hearts the awful wine of their sacra-
ment, blasphemies their litany, and the
groans of the lost world the organ
dirpe of their yyOrshin
Again, if you want to be qualified to
meet the. duties which this age de-
mands of you, you must on the one
hand, avoid reckless iconoclasm, and,
on the other hand, not stick too much
to things because they are old. The
air is full of new plans, new projects,
new theories of government, new the
ologies, and l am amazed to see how so
many Christians want only novelty in
order to recommend thing to their
confidence; and SO they vacillate and
swing too and fro, and they are useless
and they are unhappy. New plans
secular, ethical, philosophical, religi-
ops, cis-Atlantic, trans-Atlantic-long
enough to make line reaching from
the German universities to Great Salt
Lake City. All, my brother, do not
take hold of thing merely because it
is new. Try it by the realities of the
Judgment day. But, on the other
hand, do not adhere to anything sim
ply because it is old.
There is not a single enterprise of
the church or the world but has some
time been scoffed at. There was time
when men derided even Bible societies,
and when a few young men met in
Massachusetts, and organized the first
missionary society ever organized in
this country there went laughter and
ridicule all around the Christian
church. They said the undertaking
was preposterous. And so all the work
of Jesus Christ was assailed. People
cried out: "Who ever heard of such
theories of ethics and government?
Who ever noticed such style of
preaching as Jesus has?" Ezekiel had
talked of mysterious wings and wheels.
Here came a man from Caper-
naum and Gennessaret, and he
drew his illustrations from the
lakes, from the sand, from the
mountain, from the lilies, from the
cornstalks. How the Pharisees scoffed!
How Herod derided! And this Jesus
they plucked by the beard, and they
spat in his face, and they called him
this fellow" All the great enterprises
in and out of the church have at times
been scoffed at, and there have been
great multitude who have thought
that the chariot of Gods truth would
fall to pieces if it once got out of the
old .rut. And so there are those who
have no patience with anything like
improvement in church architecture, or
with anything like good, hearty, earn
est church singing, and they deride any
form of religious discussion which goes
down walking among everyday men,
rather than that which makes an ex-
cursion on rhetorical stills. Oh, that |
the church of God would wake up to /
an adaptability of work. We must ad-
NIT the simple fact that the churches
of Jesus Christ in this day do not reach
the great masses. There are $1,000 peo-
pie in Edinburg who never hear the
gospel There are 100000 people in
London who never hear the gospel.
The great majority of the inhabitants
of this capital come not under the i'm
mediate ministrations of Christs truth,
and the church of God is this day, in
stead of being place full of living
epistles known and read of all men, is
more like dead letter post office.
'But," say the people, 'the world is
going to be converted; you must be
patient: the KINGDOMS of this would ora