Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1899-06-26


in palaces. Do not have better place
for yourself than for your Lord and
King Do not live in a parlor and put
your Christ in kitchen. These seven
candlesticks of which 1 speak were not
made of pewter or iron; they were gold
en- candlesticks, and gold is not only
a valuable but bright metal. Have
everything about your church bright
your ushers with smiling faces, your
music jubilant, your handshaking cor
dial, your entire service attractive.
Many people feel that in church they
must look dull, in order to look rever
entail, and many whose faces in other
kinds of assemblage show all the diff
ferent phases of emotion have in
church no more expression than the
back wheel of q 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 a black look, and have the music
a 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.
The Seven CandIesticks.
Golden candlestickS! Scour up the
six lilies on each branch, and know
that the more lovely and bright they
are the more fit they are to hold the
light. But a Christless light is dam
age to the world rather than good
Cromwell stabbed his cavalry horses in
st. PauPs cathedral, and many now
use the church in which to stable vani-
ties and wOrldlineSs. A worldly church
is a candlestick without the candle,
and it had it's prototype in st. Sophia.
in Constantinople, built to the glory Of
God by Constantine, but transformed
to base uses by Mohammed the Second
Built out of colored marble; a cupola
with "a windows soaring to a height Of
$50 feet; the ceiling one great bewilder
ment of mosaic; galleries supported by
eight columns of porphyry and 81 col
umns of green jasper; nine bronze
doors with altO-relievO work, fascinat-
ing to the eye of any artist; vases and
vestments incruSted with all manner
of precious stones. Four walls on fire
with indescribable splendOr. Though
labor was cheap, the building cost ST.
100000. Ecclesiastical structure, al
most supernatural in pomp and maj
esty. But MOhammedanism tore down
from the walls of that building all the
sanity and Christly images, and high
4J>o 81 1,o
was rubbed out that the crescent of the
barbarous Turk might be substituted.
A great church, but no Christ! A gor-
geouS candlestick, but no candle! Ten
thousand such churches would not give
the world as much light as one home
made tallow candle by which last night
some grandmother in the eighties put
on her spectacles and read the Psalms
of David in larger type. Up with the
churches, by all means! Hundreds Of
them, thousands of them, and the more
the better But let each one be 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
neither light of the sun, for the Lord
God giveth them light, and they shall
reign forever and ever" Seven candle
sticks 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 a wide circuit ana
some of them a small circuit, but so
far as they are genuine they get their
light from the great central sun around
which 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
orbits, 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 bunting 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
hunters! 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 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"
1 should like, as a minister, when I
am dying, to be able truthfully to say
what a captain Of the English army,
fallen at the head Of his column and
dying on the Egyptian battlefield, said
to General Wolseley, who came to con-