Savannah courier. (Savannah, Tenn.) 1885-1979, 1899-08-04

King. DO not live in parlor and put
your Christ in kitchen.
These seven candesticks of which
speak were not made of pewter or iron.
they were golden candlesticks, and
gold is not only valuable, but bright
metal. Have everything about your
church bright-your ushers with smil-
ing faces, your music jubilant, your
handshaking cordial, your entire serv-
ice attractive. Many people feel that
in church they must look dull, in or
der to be reyerential, and many whose
faces in other kinds of assemblage show
all the different phases of emotion have
in church no more expression than the
back wheel of n hearse. Brighten up
and be responsive. If you feel Like
weeping, weep If you feel like smil-
ing, smile. If you feel indignant at
some wrong assailed from The pulpit,
frown. Do not leave your naturalness
and resiliency home because it is Sun
day morning. If as officers of church
you meet people at the church door
with black look, and have the music
black and the minister in black preach
a black sermon, and from invocation to
benediotion have the impression black,
few will come, and those who do come
will wish they had not come at all.
Golden candesticks! Scour up the
six'lilies on each branch and known that
the more lovely and bright they are the
more fit they are to hold the light. But
Christless light is damage to the
world rather than a good. Cromwell
stabbed his cavalry horses in st. Paul's
cathedral, and many now use tbechurch
in which to stable vanities and worldli-
ness. A worldly church is candlestick
without the candle, and it had its proto-
type in st. Sophia, in Constantinoplc,
builtto he glory of God by Constantine,
but transformed to base uses by Mo-
manned The second. Built out of col
ored marble, cupola with "a win
dows soaring to Il height of $50 feet, the
ceiling one great bewiderment of mo-
sale, galleries supported by eight col
umns of porphyry and 67 columns of
green jasper, nine bronze doors with
alto relieve work fascinating to the eye
of any artist, vases and vestments in
crusted with all manner of precious
stones. Four walls on fire with indie
scribable splendor.
Though labor was cheap, the building
cost $500, 900. Ecclesiastical structure,
almost supernatural in pomp and majes-
ty. But Northumberland tore down
from the walls of that building all the
sanity and Christly images, and high
up in the dome the figure of the cross
was rubbed out that the crescent of the
barbarous Turk might be substituted.
a great church, but no Christ! A
gorgeous candlestick, but no candlel
Ten thousand such churches would not
give the world as much light as one
homemade tallow candle by which last
night some grandmother in the eighties
put on her spcctaces and read the
Psalms of David in large type. Up with
the churches by all means! Hundreds
of them, thousands of them, and the
more the better. But let each one be a
blaze of heavenly light, making the
world brighter and brighter, till the
last shadow has disappeared and the
last of the suffering children of God
shall have reached the land where they
have no need of candlestick or 'of can
die, neither light of the sun, for the
Lord God giyeth them light, and they
shall reign forever and ever" Seven
candlcsticks the complete number Of
lights! Let your light shine before
men, that they, seeing your good works,
may glorify your Father which is in
Heaven.
Turn now in your Bible TO the seven
stars. We are distinctly told that they
are the ministers of religion. Some are
large stars, some of them small stars,
some of them sweep wide circuit and
some OF them small circuit, but so far
as they are genuine they get their light
| from the great central sun around
whom they make revolution. Let each
one keep in his own sphere. The solar
system would be soon wrecked if the
stars, instead of keeping their own or
bits, should go to hunting down other
stars. Ministers of religion should
never clash. But in all the centuries of
the Christian church some of these
stars have been hunting an Edward
Irving or Horace Bushnell or an Al
hprt and fha gt hnf IN
pursuit Of the other stars lost their own
orbit, and some of them could never
again find it. Alas for the heresy hunt
ers! The best way to destroy error is
to preach the truth. The best way TO
scatter darkness is to strike light.
There is in immensely room enough for
all the stars and in the church room
enough for all the ministers. The min
listers who give up righteousness and
the truth will get punishment enough
anyhow, for they are "the wandering
stars for whom is reserved the black
I ness of darkness forever"
The ministers are not all Pscksniffs
and eantng hypocritcs, as some would
have you think! Forgive me if, having
at other times glorified the medical pro-
fcssion and the legal profession and the
literary profession, glorify my own.
| have seen Them in their homes and
heard them in their pulpits, and n
graudcr array Of men never breathed,
and the Bible figure is not strained
when it calls them stars. And whole
consultations of glorious ministers
have already taken their places on high,
where they shine even brighter than
they shone on earth. Edward N. Kirk
OF the Congregational church, Stephen
II, Tying of the Episcopal church, Mat
thew Simpson Of the Methodist church,
John Bowling Of the Baptist church,
4 . t. ~. r a.. l. 49,.