Connecticut western news. [volume] (Salisbury, Litchfield Co., Conn.) 1871-1970, 1901-02-14

dumb devil. If some one should malign
your father or mother or wife or hus-
band or child, you would flush up
quick and either with an indignant
word or doubled up fist make response.
And yet here Is our Christian religion,
which has done so much for you and
SO much for the world that 1t will take
all eternity to celebrate 1t, and yet
when 1t was attacked you did not so
much as say: II differ. l object. am
sorry to hear you say that There
is another side to this" You Christian
people ought In such times as these
go armed, not with earthly weapons,
but with the sword Of the Spirit. You
ought to have four or five questions
with which you could confound any
man who attacks Christianity. A man
30 years old was telling me how he put
to flight a scoffer. My aged friend
said to the skeptic, did you ever read
the history of Joseph In the Bible|
Yes" said the man, at Is a fine story
and as interesting story as l ever
read" well, now" said my old friend,
suppose that account of Joseph stop
ped half way?" "Oh," said the man,
"then it would not be entertaining"
"Well, now," said my friend, 1--WE have
in this world only half of everything.
and do you not think that when we
hear the last half things may be cons
sistent and that then we may find that
God was rightT
Interrogation Points.
oh. friends. better load up with few
Interrogation points. You cannot afford
to be silent when God and the Bible
and the things of eternity are assailed.
Your silence gives consent to the bonn
bardment Of your Fathers house. You
allow slur to be cast on your mothers
dying pillow. In behalf Of the Christ,
who for you went through the agonies
of assassination on the rocky bluff
back of Jerusalem, you dared not face
sickly joke. Better load up with a
few questions. so that next time you
will be ready. Say to the scoffer: my
dear sir, will you tell me what makes
the difference between the condition Of
woman in China and the United States
What do you think Of the sermon on
the mount2 How do you like the gold
en- rule laid down In the Scriptures?
Are you In favor of the Ten Command
ments? In your large and extensive
reading have you come across love
Ter character than Jesus Christ? win
you please to name the triumphant
deathbeds of infidels and atheists?
How do you account for the fact that
among the out and out believers In
Christianity were such persons as
Benjamin Franklin, John Ruskin,
Thomas Carlyle, Darlington Macaulay,
william Penn, Walter Scott, Charles
Kingsley, Horace Bushnell. James A.
Garfield, Robert e. Lee. Stonewall
Jackson, Admiral Foote, Admiral Far
ragut, Ulysses S. Grant, John Milton.
William Shakespeare, Chief Justice
Marshall, John Adams. Daniel Web
ster, George Washington? How do you
account for their fondness for the
Christian religion2 Among the innu-
merable colleges and universities of the
earth will you name me three started
by infidels and now supported by inf
dels? Down in your heart are you real
ly happy in the position you occupy an
tagonistic to the Christian religion
When do you have the most rapturous
views of the next worldp Go at him
with a few such questions, and he will
get so red in the face as to suggest apo
plexy, and he will look at his watch
and say he has an engagement and
must go. You will put him In sweat
that will beat a Turkish bath. You
will put him on rout compared with
which our troops at Bull Run made no
time at all. Arm yourself not with ar
guments. but Interrogation points. and
l promise you victory. Shall such a
man as you, shall such a woman as
you, surrender to one of the meanest
spirits that ever smoked up from the
pit--the dumb devil spoken Of in the
text?
Lift Up the Voice.
But then there are occasions when
this particular spirit that Christ ex.
orcised when he said 81 charge thee
to come out of him" takes people by
the wholesale. In the most responsive
religious audience have you noticed
how many people never sing at ALI
They have a book, and they have q
voice, and they know how to read.
They know many of the tunes and yet
are silent while the great raptures OF
sing not one out Of a hundred sings
loud enough to hear his own voice
They hum 1t. They give a sort Of re-
ligious grunt. They make the lips go
but 1t Is inaudible. With voice strong
enough to stop a street car one block
away, all they can afford In the praise
of God is about half whisper. With
enough sopranos, enough altos, enough
bassos to make a small heaven be-
tween the four walls, they let the op-
portunity go by unimproved. The vol
ume of voice that ascends from the
largest audience that ever assembled
ought to be multiplied about two thou
sandfold. But the minister rises and
gives out the hymn, the organ begins,
the choir or precentor leads, the audi
ence are standing so that the lungs
may have full expansion, and a mighty
harmony is about to ascend when the
evil spirit spoken of In my textile
dumb devilspreads his two wings,
one over the lips of one-half the audi
ence and the other wing over the lips
of the other half of the audience, and
Che voices roll back into the Threats
from which they started, and only
here and there anything is heard, and
nine-tenths of the holy power is &c,
stroyed, and the dumb devil, as he
flies away, says, 81 co-ld not keep
Isaac Watts from writing that hymn,
and 1 could not keep Lowell Mason
from composing the tune to which it is
set. but | smote into silence or half
silence the lips from which 1t would
have spread abroad to bless neighbor-
hoods and cities and then mount the
wide open heavens" Give the long
meter doxology the full support of
Christendom and those four lines
would take the whole earth for God.