Audubon Republican. [volume] (Audubon, Iowa) 1894-1925, 1899-06-15


erences before such an opportunity OF
salvation and heavenly reunion? II
you, Christian wife, are an attendant
upon any church, and your uncon-
verted husband does not go there be-
cause he does not like its preacher or
its music or its architecture or its I'M
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
to-day. Say bood-by to your friends in
the neighboring 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
your left hand it is that your Heavenly
Father command the angel Of mercy,
concerning your husband at his con-
version, as in the parable of old: put
a ring on his hand"
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 glistened with sculp-
ture, and gated with a style of brass
the magnificence of which the follow
ing ages have not been able to success
fully initiate, and overshadowed by the
Acro-Corinthus, fortress of rock 1000
feet high-I say no letter ever came
to that great city of more importance
than that letter in which Paul puts the
| two startling questions: What know
est 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 so to the smallest,
weakest, most Insignificant church on
earth and be co-partners in eternal
bliss, than pass your earthly member
ship in a most gorgeously attractive
church while your companion stays
outside of evangelical privilege. Better
have the drowning saved by scow or
a sloop than let him or her go down
while you sail by in the gilded cabins
of Majestic or Campania.
Second remark: If both of the mar
ried couple 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 denomi-
nation of evangelical Christians as an
other, and l think l must have been
born very near the line. l like the
solemn roll of the Episcopal liturgy,
and like the spontaneity of the Meth
odists, and like the Importance given
to the ordinance of baptism by the
Baptists, and like the freedom of the
ongregationalists, and l like the gov
| eminent and the sublime doctrine of
the Presbyterians, and l like many Of
the others just as much as any l have
mentioned. 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 memorable for some denomination,
that it is positive necessity they have
the advantage 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 into their
hands as a plaything a 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 natural
ly as the James river into the Chesa-
peake. 1t would be a 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 infeXible
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 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 thee?" AS you can
be edited and happy anywhere, go with
your companion to the church to which
he or she must go or be miserable.
|
Take a hint from astronomy. The
| Ptolemaic system made the earth the
center of the solar system, and every
thing was thought to turn round the
earth. But the Copernican system
came and made the sun the center
around which the planets revolved.
The bigot makes his little belief the
center of everything, but the large
souled Christian makes the Sun of
Righteousness the center, and all de-
nominations, without any clashing and
each in it's own sphere, revolving
around it. Over the tomb of Dean
Stanley in Westminster Abbey is the
passage of Scripture: THY command
ments are exceeding broad" Let no
man crowd us on path like the bridge
AL Sirat, which the Mohammedan
thinks leads him from this world over
the abyss of hell into Paradise, the
| breadth of the bridge less than the web
of starved spider. or the edge of a
sword or razor, off the edges of which
many fall. No; while the way is not
wide enough to take with us any of
our sins, it is wide enough for all
Christian believers to pass without per-
il into everlasting safety. But do not
any of you depend upon what you call
"a sound creed" for salvation. A man