Connecticut western news., 1899-11-23
' For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth. But has trouble enough of it's own

| to frown upon the fresh young pulpits
 of America to try to awe them down, | to cry out: Tut, tut, tu! Sensation | alp They stand today preaching in | churches that hold a thousand people, | and there are hundred persons pres | ent, and if they cannot have the world | saved in their way 1t seems as if they
 do not want it saved at all.
 I do not know but the old way of ! making ministers of the gospel Is bet | ter-a collegiate education and an ap- premiership under the care and home I attention of some earnest, aged Chris
 tian minister, the young man getting | the patriarch's spirit and assisting him | in his religious service. Young law yers study with old lawyers, young physicians with old physicians, and I believe it would be a great help if ev- | cry young man studying for the gospel | ministry could put himself in the home | and heart and sympathy and under the benediction and perpetual presence of | Christian minister.
 | Religious Awakening.
 But I remark again, the religious | discourse of the future will be an awakening sermon. From altar rail to | the front doorstep, under that sermon, an audience will get up and start for | heaven. There will be in it many a | staccato passage. It will not be lul- | laby It will be a battle charge. Men will drop their sins, for they will feel the hot breath of pursuing retribution | m thu hoah nf thafr paakc If will ho sympathtic with all the physical dis | tresses as well as the spiritual dis | tresses of the world. Christ not only preached, but he healed paralysis, and
 he healed epilepsy, and he healed the
 dumb and the blind and the lepers. That religious discourse of the future will be an everyday sermon, going right down into every mans life, and 1t will teach him how to vote, how to bar gain, how to blow, how to do any work he is called to do. how to wield trowel
 and pen and pencil and yardstick and plane, and it will teach women how to preside over their households and how to educate their children and how to initiate Miriam and Esther and Vashti
 and Eunice, the mother of Timothy, and Mary, the mother of Christ, and those women who on northern and southern battlefields were mistaken by the wounded for angels of mercy, fresh from the throne of God. Yes, l have to tell you, the religious discourse of the future will be a re- ported sermon. If you have any idea that printing was invented simply. to
 print secular books, and stenography and photography were contrived mere ly to set forth secular ideas, you are mistaken. The printing press Is to be
 the great agency of gospel proclama- ton. It is high time that good men, instead of denouncing the press, em- ploy it to scatter forth the gospel of Jesus Christ. The vast majority of people in our cities do not come to church, and nothing but the printed sermon can reach them and call them to pardon and life and peace and heaven.
 So cannot understand the nervous uess of some of my brethren of the
 ministry. When they see a newspaper
 man coming in, they say, Alas, there is a reporterw Every added reporter is 10000, 50,O0O, 100000 immortal souls added to the auditory. The time will come when all the village, town and city newspapers will reproduce the gospel of Jesus Christ, and sermons preached on the Sabbath will rever- berate all around the world, and, some
 by type and some by voice, all nations
 will be evangelized.
 nfin hno pin of iS those who are engaged in Christian
 work, not only upon theological stu dents and young ministers, but upon all who preach the gospel and all who
 exhort in meetings and all of you If
 you are doing your duty. Do you ex-
 hort in prayer meeting? Be short and spirited. Do you teach in Bible classi
 Though you have to study every night,
 be interesting. Do you accost people
 on the subject of religion in their
 homes or in public places? Study adroitness and use common sense. The
 most graceful and most beautiful thing on earth is the religion of Jesus Christ,
 and if you awkwardly present 1t it is defamation. We must do our work
 rapidly, and we must do it effectively. Soon our time for work will be gone. Now Is the Time.
 A dying Christian took out his watch and gave 1t to a friend and said: Take
 that watch. I have no more use for 1t. Time is at an end for me, and eternity begins" Oh, my friends, when our
 watch has ticked away for us the last moment, and our clock has struck for ha loC hn ha did our work well, that we did it in the very best way, and, whether we
 preached the gospel in pulpits, or taught Sabbath classes, or administer ed to the sick as physicians, or bar gained as merchants, or pleaded the
 law as attorneys, or were busy as arti- sans or husbandmen or as mechanics, or were, like Martha, called to give
 meal to a hungry Christ, or like Han nah, to make coat for prophet, or
 like Deborah, to rouse the courage of some timid Barak in the Lords con- fict, we did our work In such a way
 that 1t will stand the test of the judg-
 ment! And in the long procession of
 the redeemed that march around the
 throne may it be found that there are
 many there brought to God through
 our instrumentality and in whose res
 cue we exult. But let none of us who
 are still unsaved wait for that religious
 discourse of the future. It may come
 after our obsequies. It may come after the stonecutter has chiseled our name
 on the slab 50 years before. Do not
 wait for great steamer of the Cunard
 or White Star line to take you off the
 wreck, but hail the first craft. with
 however low a mast and however
 small a hulk and however poor a rud-
 der and however weak captain. Bet
 ter a disabled schooner that comes up
 in time than full rigged brig that
 comes up after you have sunk.
 Instead of waiting for that religious