Connecticut western news., 1899-06-15

'
 for 40 or 50 years2 A man or 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 I fear never will have
 You are loaded up with what you sup
 pose to be religion, but you are like
 Captain Frobisher who brought back from his voyage of discovery a 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 so stolid, so united, so far gone unto death that there would be any hesitancy in surrendering all pref erences before such an opportunity of salvation and heavenly reunionf 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 neighbcring pews. and go with him to any one of hundred churches till his soul is saved and he joins you in the march to heaven. More important than that ring on the third finger of yonr left hand it is that your heavenly Fa ther command the angel of mercy, con. corning your husband at his conversion, as in the para ble of old, "Put a ring cn his hand"
 The Dearest Sacrifice.
 No letter of more importance ever came to the great city of Corinth, situ ated on what was called the Bridge of the Sea, and glistening with sculp- ture and gated with a style of brass the magnificence of which the following ages have not been able to successfully initiate and overshadowed by the Aero Corinthus. a fortress of rock 3, 900 feet high-I say no letter ever came to that great city of more importance than that letter M which Paul puts the two startling questions "What knowest thou, o wife, whether thou shalt save thy husbandf Or how knowest thou, o man, whether thou shalt save thy wife2 ?" 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 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 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, 1 feel as much at home in one denom- ination of evangelical Christians as an other. and think I must have been born very near the line. I like the 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 tists and like the freedom of the Con- and I like the govern ment and the sublime doctrine of the Presbyterians and 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- of that one. What they were Intended tt 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 bands as a plaything a Westminster 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. It would be torture to such persons to be anywhere outside of that one church.
 Now, let the 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 fiocks of Christian grace, should say to Lot, who is built on a smaller scale: "Let there be no strife, pray thee, between me and thee and between my herdmen and thy herdmen. Is not the whole land before theeI" As you can be edi- fled and happy anywhere. go with your to the church to which he or she must go or be miserable.
 Agree to Differ.
 Remark the third: If both the mar sied couple are very strong in their sec let them attend the different churches preferred. It Is not necessary that you attend the same church. Re ligion is between your conscience and your God. Like Abram and Lot, agree to differ. When on Sabbath morning you come out of your home together and one goes one way and the ether the other, heartily wish each other good sermon and time of profitable devo- tion, and when you meet again at the repast let 1t be evident, each to each, and to your children, and to the hired help, that you have both been on the Mount of Transfguration, al though you went up by different paths, and that you have both been fed by the bread of life, though kneaded by differ ent hands in different trays and baked in different ovens. 'tBut how about the children P'' am often asked by scores of parents. Let them also make their own choice. They will grow up with reverence for both the denominations by father and mother if you, by holy lives, commend those de- If the father lives the better life, they will have the more fa-