The Yale expositor. (Yale, St. Clair County, Mich.) 1894-current, 1898-06-17

each person In an audience has brought
all the annoyances of the last three
hundred and sixty-five days. Fill the
room to the ceiling with sacred song
and you would drown out all those
annoyances of the last three hundred
and sixty-fve days, and you would
drown them out forever. 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.
II you can not sing for yourself, sing
for others. BY trying to give others
good cheer, you will bring good cheer
to your own heart
When Londonderry, Ireland, was be-
| sieged many years ago, the people in
side the city were furnishing, and a
vessel came up with provisions, but
the vessel ran on the river bank and
stuck fast. The enemy went down with
laughter and derision to board the
vessel, when the vessel gave a broad
side fire against the enemy, and by the
shock was turned back into the stream
and all was well. Oh, We who are high
and dry on the rocks of melancholy,
give a broadside fire of song against
your spiritual enemies, and by holy
rebound you will come out into the
calm waters.
l tarried many nights in London,
and l used to hear the bells, the small
bells of the city, strike the hour of
night-one, two, three, four, and among
them the great st. Paul's cathedral
would come in to mark the hours, max
ing all the other sounds seem utterly
Insignificant, as with mighty tongue
1t announced the hour of the night,
every stroke an overmastering boom.
My friends, it was intended that all the
lesser sounds Of the world should be
drowned out in the mighty tongue OF
congregational song beating against
the gates of heaven. Do you know
how they mark the hours in heaven?
They have no clocks. as they have no
candles, but a great pendulum of halle
lujah swinging across heaven from
eternity to eternity.
Let those refuse to sing
Who never knew our God;
But children of the Heavenly King
Should speak their joys abroad.
What is the use of our going away
off to find an illustration in past age,
when during the great forest fires in
Michigan a mail carrier on horseback,
riding on, pursued by those flames
which had swept over hundred miles,
saw an old man by the roadside, dis
mounted, helped the old man on the
horse, saying: Now whip up and get
away" The old man got away, but
the mail-carrier persisted. Just like
Christ dismounting from the glories Of
heaven TO put us on the way of deliv-
erance, then falling back into the
flames of sacrifice for others. Pang for
others. Woe for others. Death for
others. Vicarious suffering.
Again l remark, that sanctuary help
ought to come through the prayers of
all the people. The door of the eternal
store-house is hung on one hinge, a
gold hinge, the hinge of prayer, and
when the whole audience lay hold OF
that door, it must come open. There
are many people spending their first
Sabbath after some great bereavement.
What will your prayer do for them?
How will II help the tomb in that mans
heart? Here are people who have not
been in church before for ten years;
what will your prayer do for them by
rolling over their soul holy memories?
Here are people in crises of awful temp
tation. They are on the verge of de-
spair, or wild laundering, or theft, or
suicide. What will your prayer do for
them in the way Of giving them
strength to resist? Will you be chiefly
anxious about the fit of the glove that
you put to your forehead while you
prayed? Will you be chiefly critical of
the rhetoric of the pastors petition?
No. No. thousand people will feel,
that prayer is for me-" and at every
step of the prayer chains ought to drop
off. and temples of sin ought to crash
into dust, and jubilees of deliverance
ought to brandish their trumpets. In
most of our churches we have three
prayers-the opening prayer, what is
called the long prayer" and the clos
ing prayer. There are many people
who spend their first prayer in arrang-
ing their apparel after entrance, and
spend the second prayer, the long
prayer" in wishing it were through.
and spend the last prayer in preparing
to start for home. The most insignifi-
cant part of every religious service is
the sermon. The more important parts
are the Scripture lesson and the pray
er. The sermon is only man talking
to a man. The Scripture lesson is God
talking to man. Prayer is man talking
to God. Oh, IL we understood the
grandeur and the pathos of this exer-
else of prayer, instead of being a dull
exercise, we would imagine that the
room was full of divine and angelic ap-
pearances.
But. my friends, the old style of
church will not do the work We might
as well now try to take all the pas
sengers from Washington to New York
by stage-coach, or all the passengers