St. Tammany farmer., 1901-08-31

lily suggestive OF the sweet spices OF
our holy religion. Christianity is not
a collection of sharp technicalities
and angular facts and chronological
tables and dry statistics. Our reli-
to cassia, but never to nightshade.
It is bundle of myrrh. It is dash
of holy light. It is a sparkle of cool
fountains. 1t is an opening of opal
inc gates. It is collection of spices.
Would God that we were as wise in
taking spices to our Divine King as
Queen Balkis was wise in taking the
spices to the earthly Solomon.
The fact is that the duties and
cares of this life, coming to us from
time to time, are stupid often and
inane and intolerable. Here are men
who have been battering, climbing,
pounding, hammering, for 20 years,
40 years, so years. One great, long
drudgery has their life been, their
faces anxious, their feelings be-
numbed, their days monotonous.
What is necessary to brighten up
that mans life and to sweeten that
acid disposition and to put sparkle
into the mans spirits? The spicery
of our holy religion. Why, if between
the losses of life there dashed the
CLEAN of an eternal gain, it between
the betrayals of life there came the
CLEAN of the undying friendship OF
Christ, if in dull times in business we
found ministering spirits flying to
and fro in our Office and store and
shop, everyday life instead of being
a stupid monotone would be a glor-
ious inspiration, penduluming be-
tween calm satisfaction and high rap
ture.
How any woman keeps house with
out the religion of Christ to help her
is mystery to me. To have to spend
the greater part of ones life, as many
women do, in planning for the meals
and stitching garments that will soon
be rent again and deploring breakages
ard supervising tardy subordinates
and driving off dust that soon again
will settle and doing the same thing
day in and day out and year in and
year out until the hair silvers and the
back stoops and the spectacles crawl
to the eyes and the grave breaks open
under the thin sole of the shoe-oh,
it is a long monotony! But when
Christ comes to the drawing-room and
comes to the kitchen and comes to the
nursery and comes to the dwelling,
then how CHEEKY become all womanly
duties! She is never alone now.
Martha gets through fretting and
joins Mary at the feet of Jesus. All
day long Deborah is happy because she
can help Lapidoth, Hannah because
she can make coat for young Sam
uel, Miriam because she can watch
her infant brother, Rachel because
she can help her father water the
stock, the widow of Sarepta because
the cruise of oil is being replenished.
o woman, having in your pantry
nest of boxes containing all kinds OF
condiments, why have you not tried
in your heart and life the spicery OF
our holy religion? "Martha, Martha,
thou art careful and troubled about
many things, but one thing is needful,
and Mary hath chosen that good part
which shall not be taken away from
her"
I must confess that great deal OF
the religion Of this day is utterly in
sipid. There is nothing piquant or
elevating about it. Men and women
go around humming psalms in minor
key and cultiyating melancholy, and
their worship has in it more sighs
than raptures. We do not doubt their
piety. Oh, no! But they are sitting
at feast where the cook has for
gotten to season the food. Everything
is fat in their experience and in their
conversation. Emancipated from sin
and death and hell and on their way
to magnificent Heaven, they act as
though they were trudging on toward
an everlasting Botany Bay. Religion
does not seem to agree with them. It
seems to catch in the windpipe and
become a tight strangulation instead
of an exhilaration. All the infidel
books that have been written, from
Voltaire down to Herbert Spencer,
have not done SO much damage to our
Christianity as lugubrious Christians.
Who wants a religion woven out of
the shadows of the night? Why go
growing on your way to celestial en-
thronement? Come out of that cave
and sit down in the warm light of the
Sun of Righteousness. Away with
your odes to melancholy and Hervey's
"Meditations Among the Tombs."
Then let our songs abound
And every tear be dry;
We're marching through Emmanueys
ground
To fairer worlds on high.
I have to say also that we need to
put more spice and enlivenment in our
religious teaching, whether it be in
the prayer-meeting or in the Sunday
school or in the church. We ministers
need more fresh air and sunshine in
our lungs and our heart and our hea6.
Do you wonder that the world is so
far from being converted when you
find so little vivacity in the pulpit and
in the pew? We want, like the Lord,
to plant in our sermons and exhorta-
tions more lilies of the field. We want
fewer rhetorical Celebrations and
fauor susnnineda1ian words and when