The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1899-06-30

for yourself than for your Lord ano
King. Do not live in parlor and put
your Christ in a kitchen.
These seven candlesticks 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 reverential, 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 hearse. Brighten up
and be responsive. If you feel like
weeping, weep. If you feel like smiI-
ing, smile. If you feel indignant at
some wrong assailed from the pulpit,
frown. Do not leave your naturalness
and resiiency home because it is Sun
day morning. If as officers of a church
you meet people at the church door
with black look, and have the music
black and the minister in black preach
black sermon, and from invocation to
benediction have the impression black,
few will come, and those who do come
will wish they had not come at all.
Golden candlesticks! 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 thechurch
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 Constantinople,
built to the 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 height of 1870 feet, the
ceiling one great bewilderment of mo-
sale, galleries supported by eight col
umns of porphyry and 81 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 spendor.
Though labor was cheap, the building
cost $1,500,00O Ecclesiastical structure,
almost supernatural in pomp and majes-
ty. But Mohammedanism 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 candlesick, but no candle!
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 spectacles and read the
Psalms of David in la9ge 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 giveth them light, and they
shall reign forever and ever" Seven
candlesticks 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 a Horace Bushnell or an AL |
bert Barnes, and the stars that were 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 a 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
ness of darkness forever"
The ministers are not all PGcksniffs
and oanting hypocFites, as some would
have you think! Forgive me if, having
at other times glnrified the medical pro-
fession and the legal profession and the
literary profession, l glorify my own.
have seen Them in their homes and
heard them in their pulpits, and a
grandcr array of men never breathed,
md the Bible figure is not strained