Akron daily Democrat. [volume] (Akron, Ohio) 1892-1902, 1899-06-16

10 &c any WneIe 10 u CHuICH WueIe the
unconverted companion is willing to 60
if he or she will go to no other. You
of the connubial partnership are a
| Christian. You are safe for the skies
Then it is your first duty to secure the
eternal safety of your lifetime associate
Is not the everlasting welfare of your
wife impenitent, or your husband i'm
penitent, of mere importance than
your church relationship Is not
the condition of your companion for
the next quadrillion of years a
mightier consideration to you than the
qualification of your ecclesiastical taste
for 40 or so years? A man or a woman
that would stop half a minute to weigh
preferences as to whether he or she had
better go with the unconverted com
| panion to this or that church or denom
ination has no religion at all, and never
has had, and l fear never will have.
You are loaded up with what you sup
pose to be religion, hut you are like
Captain Frobisher who brought back
from his voyage of discovery shipload
of what he supposed valuable minerals,
yet, instead of being silver and gold,
were nothing but common stones of the
field, to be hurled out as finally useless.
Mighty God! In all thy realm is
there one man or woman protesting re-
ligion. yet go stolid. SO untitled, so far
gone unto death that there would be
any hesitancy in surrendering all pref
erences before such an opportunity of
salvation and heavenly reunion! If
you, Christian wife, are an attendant
upon any church. and your unconvert-
ed husband does not go there because
he does not like its preacher, or its
music, or its architecture, or its un
comfortable crowding, and goes not to
any house of worship. but would go if
you would accompany him somewhere
else. change your church relations.
Take your hymnbook home with you
today Say goodby to your friends in
the neighboring pews. and go with him
to any one of hundred churches till
his soul issaved and be joins you in the
march to heaven. More important than
that ring ON the third finger of your
left hand it is that your heavenly Fa
ther command the angel of mercy, con-
cerning your husband at his conversion,
as in the parable of old. 'Put ring en-
his hand
The Dearest Sacrifice.
No letter of more Importance ever
came to the great city of Corinth, stu
ated ON what was called the "Bridge of
the Sea" and glistening with 'sculp-
ture and gated with style of brass the
magnificence of which the following
ages have not been able to successfully
initiate and overshadowed by the Aero
Corinthus. fortress of rock 2, 900 feet
high-I say no letter ever came to that
that letter in which Paul puts the two
startling questions: "What knowest
thou, o wife, whether thou shalt save
thy husband? Or how knowest thou,
o man, whether thou shalt save thy
wife?" The dearest sacrifice on the
part of the one is cheap if it rescue the
other. Better go to the smallest. weak
est, most insignificant church on earth
and be copartners in eternal bliss than
pass your earthly membership in most
gorgeously attractive church while your
companion stays outside of evangelical
privilege. Better have the drowning
saved by scow or sloop than let him
or her go down while you sail by in
the gilded cabins of Majestic or Cam
pania.
Second remark: If both of the mar
ried couples be Christians but one is
SO naturally constructed that it is i'm
possible to enjoy the services of a par
ticular denomination, and the other is
not SO sectarian or punctilious, let the
one less particular go with the other
who is very particular. AS for myself,
l feel as much at home in one denom
ination of evangelical Christians as an
other, and l think I must have beer
solemn roll of the Episcopal liturgy,
and | like the spontaneity of the Metho
dists and like the Importance given to
the ordinance of baptism by the Bap-
fists and l like the freedom of the Con-
gregationalists and I like the govern
ment and the sublime doctrine of the
Presbyterians and l like many of the |
others just as much as any have men
toned and l could happily live and
preach and die and be buried from any /
of them. But others are born with a |
liking so stout. SO unbending, so in |
exorable for some denomination that it |
is positive necessity, they have the ad
vantage of that one. What they were
intended to be in ecclesiasticism was
written in the sides of their cradle, if
the father and mother had eyes keen
enough to see it. They would not stop
crying until they. had put in their
hands as plaything Westminster
Catechism or the Thirty nine Articles
The whole current of their tempera-
ment and thought and character runs
into one sect of religionists as naturally
as the James river into the Chesapeake
1t would be a torture to such persons to
be anywhere outside of that one church
Now. let thB wife or husband who is
not so constructed sacrifice the milder
preference for the one more inhexible
and rigorous. Let the grapevine follow
the rugosities and sinuosities of the oak
or hickory. Abram, the richer in focks
of Christian grace. should say to Lot,
who is built on smaller scale; 'sLet
there be no strife, pray thee, between
me and thee and between my herdmeD
and thy herdmen. Is not the whole
and before theef' AS you can be edi-
led and happy anywhere, go with your
to the church to which he
u she must go or De miserable.