Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1899-11-20

TO me he Ills uduU Oh Tic
to illustrate his meaning, and looked
at him and thought: you would be
just as much a hero in the same crisis"
oh, in that religious discourse of the
future there will be living illustra-
tions taken out from everyday life of
vicarious suffering = illustrations that
will bring to mind the ghastlier sacri-
fee of him, who in the high places of
the field, on the cross, fought our bat
ties, and endured our struggle and
died our death. A German sculptor
made an image of Christ, and he asked
his little child, years old, who it was,
and she said, "That must be some very
great man. Th:> sculptor was dis
pleased with the criticism, SO he got
another block of marble and chiseled
away on it two or three years, and
then he brought in his little child,
or years of age, and said to her,
"Who do you think that is?' She said,
''That must be the one who took little
children in his arms and blessed
Them Then the sculptor was salts
fed. Oh, 10Y friends, what the world
wants is not a cold Christ, not an in
tellectual Christ not a severely mag1s-
terial Christ, but a loving Christ,
spreading out his arms of sympathy to
press the whole world to his loving
heart.
Short Sermons.
But 1 remark again that the religious
discourse of the future will have to be
short. Condensation is demanded by
the age in which we live. No more
need of long introductions and long ap-
plications and so many divisions to a
discourse that it may be said to be
hydra headed. In other days men got
all their information from the pulpit
There were few books, and there were
no newspapers, and there was little
travel from place to place, and people
would sit and listen two and a half
hours to a religious discourse, and
"seventeenthly' would find them fresh
and clipper. In those days there was
enough time for a man to take an hour
to warm himself up to the subject and
an hour to cool off. But what was a
necessity then is a superfuity now.
Congregations are full of knowledge
from books. from newspapers, from
rapid and continuous intercOmmunica-
ton and long disquisitions of what
they know already will not be abided.
If a religious teacher cannot compress
what he wishes to say to the people in
the space of 40 minutes, better adjourn
it to some other day.
The trouble is we preach audiences
into 4 Christian frame, and then we
preach them out of it. We forget that
every auditor has so much capacity of
OF nd WIN iC
he is restless. That accident on the
Long Island railroad years ago came
from the fact that the brakes were out
of order. and when they wanted to stop
the train they could not stop, and
hence the casualty was terrific. In all
religious discourse we want locomotive
power and propulsion. We want at the
same time stout brakes to let down at
the right instant. 1t is a dismal thing,
after a nearer has comprehended the
whole subject, to hear a man say,
''Now to recapitulate," and "a few
words by way of application and
"Once more' and "Finally," and "NOw
to conclude"
Paul preached until midnight, and
Eutychus got sound asleep and fell out
of a window and broke his neck. Some
would say, Good for him." l would
rather be sympathetic, like Paul, and
resuscitate him. That accident is often
quoted now in religious circles as a
warning against somnolence in church.
1t is just as much warning to minis
ters against proliXity. Eutychus was
wrong in his SOmnOlence, but Paul
made a mistake when he kept on until
midnight. He ought to have stopped at
II o'clock, and there would have been
no accident. If Paul might have gone
on to too great length, let all those Of
Us who are now preaching the gospel
remember that there is limit to re-
ligious discourse, or ought to be, and
that in our time we have no apostolic
power of miracles. Napoleon in an ad-
dress of seven minutes thrilled his
army and thrilled Europe. Christs
sermon on the mount, the model SER
mon, was less than Is minutes long at
ordinary mode of delivery. 1t is not
electricity scattered all over the sky
that strikes, but electricity gathered
into a thunderbolt and hurled and it is
not religious truth scattered over and
spread out over a vast reach Of time,
but religious truth projected in COM
pact form that flashes light upon the
soul and rives it's Indifference.
Popular Discourses.
When the religious discourse of the
future arrives in this land and in the
Christian church, the discourse which
is to arouse the world and startle the
nations and usher in the kingdom, it
will be a brief discourse. Hear it, all
theological students, all We just enter
ing upon religious work, all We men
and women who in Sabbath schools