The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1898-06-17

come to the full force of this ex-
ercise. Twenty thousand years will
not wear out the hymns of Will
liam Cowper, Charles Wesley and
Isaac Watts. Suppose now each per-
son in an audience has brought all the
annoyances of the last 1856 days Fill
the room to the ceiling with sacred
song, and you would drown out all
those annoyances of the last 1865 days,
and you would drown them out for
ever. Organ and cornet are only to
marshal the voice. Let the voice fall
into line, and in companies, and In
battalions, by storm take the obduracy
and sin of the world. If you cannot
sing for yourself, sing for Others. BY
trying to give Others cheer you will
bring good cheer to your own heart.
Again remark that sane tuary help
ought to come from the sermon. of
1000 people in any audience, how
many want sympathetic help? Do you
guess 100? Do you guess 51OP You
have guessed vi ong. will tell you
just the proportion. Out of 1000 peo-
pie in any audience there are just 1000
who need sympathetic help. These
young people want it just as much as
the old. The old people sometimes
seem to think they have a monopoly of
the rheumatisms, and the neuralgias,
and the headaches, and the physical
disorders of the world; but | tell you
there are no worse heartaches than are
felt by some of the young people. Do
you know that much of the work is
hx. hn rhnrnfApa xa
must have our sermons and our eXhor-
tations in prayer meetings all sympa-
thetic with the young. And so with
these people further on in life. What
do these doctors and lawyers and mer-
chants and mechanics care about the
distractions of religion? What they
want is help to bear the whimsicalities
of patients, the brow beating of legal
opponents, the unfairness of customers
who have plenty of fault-fnding for
everp imperfection of handiwork, but
no praise for 20 eXcelleucies.
People will not go to church merely
as a matter of duty. There will not
next sabbath be a hundred people in
this city who will get up in the morn
ing and say: "The Bible says | must
go to church; il is my duty to go to
church" The vast multitude of peo-
pie who so to church, go to church be-
cause they like it, and the multitude
of people who stay away from church,
stay away because the do not like it.
| am not speaking about the way the
world ought to be; | am speaking
about the way the world is. Taking
things as they are, we must make the
centripetal force of the church might
Ter than the centrifugal. We must
make our churches magnets to draw
the people thereunto, so that man
will feel uneasy If he does not go to
church, saying: 81 wish | had gone
this morning. wonder if | can't
dress yet and get there in time. 1t is
IL o'clock; now they are singing. 1t is
1880; now they are preaching.
wonder when the folks will be home
to tell us what was said, what has been
going on?' When the impression is
confirmed that our churches, by archi-
lecture, by music, by sociality, and by
sermon, shall be made the most attract
i've places on earth, then we will
want twice as many churches as we
have now, twice as large, and then
they will not half accommodate the
people. | say to the young men who
are entering the ministry, we must
put on more force, more energy, and
into our religious services more vi
vacity, If we want the people to come.
! say to all Christian workers, to all
Sunday school-teachers, to all evangel-
lists, to all ministers of the gospel, if
we want our Sunday schools, and our
prayer meetings, and our churches to
gather the people, we must fresheu
up, The simple fact is, the peo-
pie are tired of the humdrum
of religionists Religious humdrum
is the worst of all humdrum. You
say over and over again, Come TO
Jesus" until the phrase means abso-
lutely nothing. Why do you not tell
them a story which will make them
come TO Jesus in five minutes? You
say that all Sunday school-teachers
and all evangelists, and all ministers
must bring their illustrations from the
Bible. Christ did not when He
preached. The most of the Bible was
written before Christ's time, but where
did lie get His Illustrations? He drew
them from the lilies, from the ravens,
from salt, from a candle, from "a bushel,
from long-faced hypocrites, from
gnats, from moths, from large gates
and small gates, from a camel, from
the needles eye, from yeast in the
dough of bread, from a mustard seed,
from fishing net, from debtors and
creditors That is the reason multi
tudes followed Christ. His illustra.
tions were 80 easy and so understand
a hla
on, my brother Christian workers.
what is the use of our going away off
in some obscure part of history, or on
the other side the earth, to get an
illustration, when the earth and the
heavens are full of illustrations? Why
should we go away off to get an illus.
tration of the vicarious suffering of
Jesus Christ when as near us as
Bloomfield, n. j., two little children
were walking on the rail track. and a