The Wellington enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 1899-1900, 1899-06-28


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 1t is Sun
day morning. If as officers of church
you meet people at the church door
with black look, and have the music
black and the minister in black preach
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.
Golden candlesticks! Scour up the
six Niles on each branch and known that
the more lovely and bright they are the
more fit they are to hold the light. But
Christless light is damage to the
world rather than a good. Cromwell
stabbed his cavalry horses in st. Paul's
cathedral, and many now use thechurch
in which to stable vanities and worldli-
ness. A worldly church is a candlestick
without the candle, and it had its proto-
type in st. Sophia, in Constantinople,
built to the glory of God by Constantine,
but transformed to base uses by Mo-
manned the second. Built out of col
ored marble, cupola with "a win
dows soaring to height of 1s0 feet, the
ceiling one great bewilderment of mo-
sale, galleries supported by eight col
rmns of porphyry and 67 columns of
green jasper, nine bronze doors with
alto relieve work fascinating to the eye
of any artist, vases and vestments in
crusted with all manner of precious
stones. Four walls on fire with indie
scribable splendor.
Though labor was cheap, the building
cost $1,000, 900. Ecclesiastical structure,
almost supernatural in pomp and majes-
ty. But Mohammedanism tore down
from the walls of that building all the
sanity and Christly images, and high
up in the dome the figure of the cross
was rubbed out that the crescent of the
barbarous Turk might be substituted.
A great church, but no Christ! A
gorgeous candlestick, but no candle!
Ten thousand such churches would not
give the world as much light as one
homemade tallow candle by which last
night some grandmother in the eighties
put on her spectacles and read the
Psalms of David in large type. Upwith
the churches by all means! Hundreds
of them, thousands of them, and the
more the better. But let each one be a
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 no need of candlestick or "of can
die, neither light of the sun, for the
Lord God giveth them light, and they
shall reign forever and ever" Seven
candlesticks 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 wide circuit and
some of them small circuit, but so far
as they are genuine they get their light
| from the great central sun around
whom 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 or
bits, 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 hunting an Edward
Irving or 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 hunt
ers! The best way to destory error is
to preach the truth. The best way to
scatter darkness is to strike a light.
There is in immensity room enough for
all the stars and in the church room
enough for all the ministers. The min
isters 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"
/ should like, as a minister, when ]
am dying to be able truthfully to say
what captain of the English army,
fallen at the head of his column and
dying on the Egyptian battlefield, said
to Gen. Wolseley, who came to condole
with him: 81 led them straight.
Didn't ] lead them straight, general?"
God has put us ministers as captains in
this battlefield of truth against error.
Great at last will be our chagrin II we
fall leading the people the wrong way,
but great will be our gladness if, when
the battle is over we can hand our sword
back to our great commander, saying:
Lord Jesus! We led the people
straight. Didn't we lead them
straight?" Those ministers who go off
at tangent and preach some other
gospels are not stars, but comets, and
they fash across the heavens a little
while and make people stare and throw
down few meteoric stones, and then
go out of sight if not out of existence.
Brethren in the ministry, let us remem-
ber that God calls us stars, and our
business is to shine and to keep our own
sphere, and then when we get done try
ing to light up the darkness of this
world we win wheelinto higher spheres,
and in us shall be fulfilled the promise:
"They that turn many to righteousness
shall shine as the stars forever and
ever"
The ministers are not all Pecksniffs
and canting hypocrites, as some would
have you think! Forgive me if, having
at other times glorified the medical pro-
fession and the legal profession and the
literary profession, l glorify my own.
l have seen them in their homes and
| lao,d tha,,, L., 1ba;r r,,lr;t, ooJ o