The Yale expositor. (Yale, St. Clair County, Mich.) 1894-current, 1899-06-16

lHdI ROUTE anu all the employees are
familiar. So far as our engagement to
meet is concerned, it makes no differ
ence IL We only get there. Now, any
one of the innumerable evangelical de-
nominations, If you practice its teach
ing-although some of their trains run
on broad gauge and some on a mar
row gauge-will bring you out at the
city of the New Jerusalem.
Mighty God! In all Thy realm is
there one man or woman protesting re-
ligion, yet so stolid, so unified, so far
gone unto death that there would be
any hesitancy in surrendering all pref
erences before such an opportunity OF
salvation and heavenly reunion? II
you, a Christian wife, are an attendant
upon any church, and your uncon-
verted husband does not go there be-
cause he does not like it's preacher or
its music or its architecture or its un-
comfortable crowdlng, 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 a 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 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 high7I 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 go 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 a 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 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,
| feel as much at home in one denomi-
hbNAOl Vi NN StllNai SAll SNletAAS 90 an
other, and / 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
Congregationalists and / like the gov
eminent and the sublime doctrine Of
the Presbyterians, and | like many cf
the others just as much as any | have
mentioned. and l could happily live,
and preach, and die, and be buried
from any of them. But others are born
with liking so stout, so unbending,
so memorable for some denomination,
that it is a 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 he 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 inflexible
and rigorous. Let the grapevine follow
the rugosities and sinuostes of the
oak or hickory. Abram, the richer in
flocks of Christian grace, should say
to Lot, who is built on a 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
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