The age-herald., 1898-10-11
Birmingham Needs Shaking

DAThiuBuhH lSeeub SnaktuS
 Birmingham needs shaking, and you must help shake it. A man in Atlanta told me that Atlanta was tough, but Birmingham was tougher. That doesn't matter. The spirit of God can enter here just as well as it can enter anywhere else.
 ''The churches of Christendom are just now waking to the fact that to be mem- Der of the church means something; that he must be worker for good and a drone. The church that is not keeping up with this movement as an evangelistic agency is going to be left behind.
 Tn the opening of these services we must have business understanding. am going to say and do things which you are not going to like. You must be limbered up. Many of you did not like my making you take the front seats Some of you are going away and say, he is church boss, but remember I am speaking the word of God in my way.
 "You must not think that I am mean be- cause I talk mean, or mad because I talk mad. You have opinions of your own and I hope that I shall run across somebody who differs with me. I would hate to think I had to talk to congregation that had no opinions of its own.
 "We must have our hearts straight if this revival is to be a successful one. The work is to be done by prayer and if the Lord will not hear you, the meeting is a failure. He will not hear one with iniuuity in his thoughts. If you wait for the meet ing to warm up before wou become inter- ested, it will never warm up.
 T am not talking of the great sins of adultery, murder, stealing and lying, though it is exceptional to find them in church members, which keep us from God. but largely the little sins. These do more than anything else to mar the success of a revival or of church. s.e #
 Dancing, Theater and Cards
 Do you know of men and women who are drinking, playing cards going to thea ters, dancing and who are engaging in other such things? If so, you must have the backbone to go to them and tell them to give 1t up or get out of the church You are going to say of me that he started a tirade on dancing and theater-going the first thing. Yes, and it will be the last thing shall speak to you of before I leave Birmingham. Paul says that a worldly minded man cannot be church man; and it is certain that no church can be a truly religious church with a lot of worldly minded members.
 "Unforgiveness" aa
 "The sin of unforgiveness is one of the most .insidious.> In every church I ever preached in I find members who won't speak to each other Perhaps the coldest revival ever saw was in Richmond. found out that they were 'incurables,' who were always mad with each other. preached the most intense sermon I could on unforgiveness, and at the close one of the deacons arose and said he shad not spoken to another deacon for three years and he would ask his pardon. The two came down in front of the 1ftarsan shook hands. Others followed, and hefore, they finished forty-two of the .incurables' had asked each others pardon. I found that the whole trouble had grown out of a little kitten crawling through a hole fin the fence and scratching a baby. These two neighbors began to fuss until the whole church almost was drawn into 1t. ss3
 "'Forgive us our trespasses as we for give those who trespass against us,, Ii. one of the hardest prayers in the Christian religion to pray. s.-eeaaa-- -ssoa3 :
 "One thing want to impress on you is that you must have a burden on your souls-that of saving souls. You don't realize the responsibility resting on you If one of you should realize that one of your sons or daughters were irrevocably r-- |