Connecticut western news., 1900-02-08

Jesus Christ, 1t would Tn a rev years persuade this whole earth to surrender to God. There Is enough undeyeloped energy in this city to bring all the United States to Christ, enough of un- developed Christian energy in the Unit ed States to bring the whole world to Christ, but it Is buried under strata of indifference and under whole noun tains of sloth. Now, is It not time for the mining to begin and the pickaxes to plunge and for this buried metal to be brought out and put into the furnaces and turned into howitzers and carbines for the Lords host?
 The vast majority of Christians in this day are useless. The most of the Lords battalion belong to the reserve corps. The most of the crew are asleep in the hammocks The most of the metal is under the hills. Oh, Is it not time for the church of God to rouse up and understand that we want all the energies, all the talent and all the wealth enlisted for Christ's sake? l like the nickname that the English sol iiers gave to Butcher, the commander They called him "Old Forwards We have had enough retreats in the church of Christ; let us have glorious ad vance. And I say to you as the gen eral said when his troops were alright ed-rising up in his stirrups, his hair | flying in the wind, he lifted up his voice until 10000 troops heard him cry ing out, Forward, the whole liner We want all the laymen enlisted. Min isters are numerically too small. They l do the best they can. They are the most oyerworked class on earth. Many of them die of dyspepsia because they cannot get the right kind of food to eat or, getting the right kind, are so l worried that they take it down in chunks. They die from consumption coming from early and late exposure. If novelist or historian publishes one book a year, he is considered in- | dustrious. But every faithful pastor | must originate enough thought for three or four volumes a year. Minis | ters receive enough calls in a year | from men who have maps and medi- cines and lightning rods and pictures to sell to exhaust their vitality. They are bored with agents of all sorts. | They are set in drafts at funerals and poisoned by the unyentilated rooms of invalids and waited upon by commit | tees who want addresses made until life becomes a burden to bear. It is not hard study that makes ministers | look pale. It Is the infinity of inter ruptions and botherations to which | they are subjected. Numerically too small. It is no more the work of the pulpit to convert and save the world than 1t is the work of the pew. If men go to ruin. there will be as much blood on your skirts as on mine.
 | A Grand Farce.
 l Let us quit this grand farce of trying to save the world by few clergymen. and let all hands lay hold of the work. Give us in all our churches two or three aroused and qualified men and women to help. In most churches to- day five or ten men are compelled to do all the work. A vast majority of churches are at their wits end how | to carry on a prayer meeting if the minister Is not there, when there ought to be enough pent up energy and re- | with such power that the minister would never be missed. The church stands working the pumps of few ministerial cisterns until the buckets are dry and choked. while there are thousands of fountains from which might be dipped up the waters of eter nal life. Before you and 1 have the sod pressing our eyelids we will under God decide whether our children shall grow up amid the accursed surround I ings of vice and shame or come to an inheritance of righteousness. Long. loud, bitter, will be the curse that scorches our grave if, holding within the church today enough men and wo- men to save the city, we act the cow ard or the drone I wish I could put enough moral explosives under the conyentionalities and majestic stupidi- ties of the day to blow them to atoms and that then, with 50,0O0 men and
 women from all the churches know Ing nothing but Christ and a desire to bring all the world to him, we might
 move upon the enemy's works. For little while heaven would not have trumpets enough to celebrate the vic | tories.
 Again, 1 learn from this subject that
 we sometimes do we'll to take advan- tage of the worlds grindstones. These
 Israelites were reduced to a file, and so they went over to the garrison of the Philistines to get their axes and
 their goads and their blows sharpened.
 The Bible distinctly states 1.-the text
 which I read at the beginning of the | service-that they had no other inStru-
 ments now with which to do this work
 and the Israelites did right when they
 went over to the Philistines to use
 their grtndstones. My friends, Is 1t not right for us to employ the world s
 grindstones? If there be art, if there
 be logic, if there be business faculty on
 the other side, let us go over and em-
 ploy 1t for Christ's sake. The fact Is
 we fight with too dull implements.
 We hack and we maui when we ought
 to make a clean stroke. Let us go
 over among sharp business men and
 among sharp literary men and find out
 what their tact is and then transfer it
 to the cause of Christ If they have
 science and art, 1t will do us good to
 rub against 1t.
 Sharpen the Swords.
 In other words, let us employ the
 worlds grindstones. We will listen to
 their music, and we will watch their
 acumen, and we will use their grind.
 stones, and will borrow their philo.
 sophical apparatus to make our ex-
 periments, and we will borrow their
 printing presses to publish our Bibles
 and we will borrow their rail trains to
 carry our Christian literature, and we
 will borrow their ships to transport our
 missionaries. That was what made
 Paul such a master in his day. He not nnlv pot All tho laa arnino ha cnnld