The Iola register., 1901-02-15


sailed. Your silence gives consent to
the bombardment of your Fathers
house. You allow a slur to be east 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 a 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 in the
United States? What DO you think of
the sermon on the mount? How do
you like the golden rule laid down in
the Scriptures? Are you in favor of the
Ten Commandments? In your large
and extensive reading have you come
across a lovelier character than Jesus
Christ? Will you please to name the
triumphant deathbeds of infides and
atheists? How do you account for the
fact that among the out and out be-
levers in Christianity were such per-
sons as Benjamin Franklin; John Rus
kin, Thomas Carlyle, Darlington, Mac
aulay, William Penn, Walter Scott,
Charles Kingsley, Horace Bushnell
James A. Garfield, Robert f. Lee Stone
wall Jackson, Admiral Foote. Admiral
Farragut, Ulysses S. Grant, John Mil
ton, William Shakespeare, Chief JUS
tice Marshall, John Adams, Daniel Web
ster, George Washington? How do you
account for their fondness for the
Christian religion? Among the in
Vulnerable colleges and universities
of the earth will you name me three
started by infidels and now supported
by infidels? Down in your heart are
you really happy in the position you
occupy antagonistic to the Christian
religionP When do you have the most
rapturous views Of the next world ?"
Go at him with few such questions,
and he will get so red in the face as to
suggest apopleXy, and he will look at
his watch and say he has an engage
ment and must go. You will put him in
sweat that will beat Turkish bath.
You will put him on a rout compared
with which our troops at Bull Run
made no time at all. Arm yourself, not
with arguments, but interrogation
points, and promise you victory. Shall
such a man as you, shall such a woman
as you. surrender to one of the mean
est spirits that ever smoked up from
the pit-the dumb devil spoken of in the
text?
But then there are occasions when
this particular spirit that Christ exor-
cised 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 all?
They have book, and they have
voice. and they know how to read.
| They know many of the tunes, and yet
are silent while the great raptures Of
music pass by. Among those who sing
not one out of a hundred sings loud
! enough to hear his own voice. They
/ hum it. They give a sort of religious
! grunt. They make the lips go, but it is
| inaudible With a voice strong enough
| to stop a street car one block away all
| they can afford in the praise of God is
about half a whisper. With enough
sopranos, enough altos, enough bassos
TO make a small heaven between the
| four walls they let the opportunity go
| by unimproved. The volume of voice
that ascends from the largest audience
that ever assembled ought to be multi
! piled two thousandfold. But the min
ister rises and gives out the hymn. the
organ begins, the choir or precentor
leads, the audience are standing so
that the lungs may have full expan-
sion, and a mighty harmony is about to
ascend when the evil spirit spoken of
| in my teXt-the dumb devil-spreads
his two wings, one over the lips of one
half the audience and the other wing
over the lips of the other half of the
audience, and the voices roll back into
the throats from which they started,
and only here and there anything is
heard, and nine-tenths of the holy
! power is destroyed, and the dumb devil,
as he flies away. says: 81 could not
! keep Isaac Watts from writing that
! hymn, and | could not keep Lowell Ma
son from composing the tune to which
it is set, but / smote-into silence or half
silence the lips from which it 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.
That hymn, "Oh, For Thousand
Tongues to Sing, was suggested to
Charles Wesley by Peter Boiler, who,
after his conversion, said: 81 had
better keep silent about it," NO"
said Wesley, "if you had 10000
tongues, you had better use them for
Christ" And then that angel of
hymnology penned the words:
oh for a thousand tongues to sing
My dear Redeemer's praise.
The glories Of my God and King,
The triumphs of His grace!
Jesus, the name that calms our fears.
That bids our SORROWS cease;
'Tls music In the sinners ears;
'Tis life and health and peace.
While much of the modern music
is religious doggerel, consecrated