The Camden chronicle. (Camden, Tenn.) 1890-current, 1901-08-23


same thing day In and day out and year
N and year out until the hair mlYora, and
the back stOops, and the speotaeles crawl
e the eyes, and the grave breaks open
under the thin sole of the ahOe-oh, II ia
q long mOnotonyl But when Christ comes
, the drawing room, and comes 10 the
kitchen, and comes TO the nursery and
comes 70 the dwelling, then how CHEEKY
becomes all womanly dutiesl She is never
alone now. Martha gets through fretting
and joins Mary az the feet OF Jesus An
day long Deborah is happy because she can
help Lapidoth; Hannah, because she can
make coat for young Samuel; Miriam
because che can watch her infant brother;
Rachel because she can help her father
water the stock; the widow OF Sarepta, be
cause the cruise Of oil Is being replenished
] must confess that q great deal Of the
religion Of this day Is utterly insipid.
There is nothing piquant or elevating
about It. Men and women 60 around
humming psalms in q minor key and cub
tivating melancholy, and their worship
has in i more sighs than raptures5' we
do not doubt their piety. Oh, mol But
they are sitting at feast where the cook
has forgotten TO season the food. Every
thing Il fiat In their experience and in
their conversation. Emancipated from nn
and death and hell and on their way to
magnificent heaven, they act as though
they were trudging on toward an everlast-
ing Botany Bay. Religion does not seem
TO agree with them. II seems to catch in
the windpipe and become a tight strangi-
lation instead of an exhilaration. All the
inhdel books that have been written, from
Voltaire down to Herbert Spencer, have
not done 80 much damage to our Chris
tianity as lugubrious Christians.
FNhs. - yo1.Us.v, 81 Aho
shadows of the night? Why 60 growing
on your way to celestial enthronementg
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' /" Meditations Among the Tombs!"
have to say also that we need to put
more spice and enliYenment in our telig-
ious 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 head. Do you wonder that
the world is so far from being converted
when you find so little vivacity in the pull
pit and in the pew? We want, like the
Lord, to plant in our sermons and exhor-
tations more lilies of the field we want
fewer rhetorical Celebrations and fewer
sesquipedaliah words, and when we talk
about shadows we do not want to say
adumbration, and when we mean queer
ness we do not want to talk about idiosyn-
crasies, or if a stitch in the back we do
not want to talk about lumbago, but, IN
the plain vernacular of the great masses,
preach that gospel which proposes to
make all men happy, honest, victorious and
free, In other words, we want more Gin
namon and less gristle. Let this be so in
all the different departments of work to
HHyhF oh hn awH col lie yFe
l promise o high spiritual blessing to
any one who will sing in church and who
viii sing so heartily that the people all
around cannot help but sing. Wake up,
all the churches from Bangor to San
Francisco and across Christendom! It
is not a matter of preference; it is a mat
ter of religious duty. Oh, for fifty times
more volume of sound than has yet rolled
up from our churches! German chorals
in German cathedrals surpass US, and yet
Germany has received nothing at the hands
of God compared with America And ought
the acclaim in Germany be louder than
that of America? Soft, long drawn out
music is appropriate for the drawing
room and appropriate for the concert,
but st. John gives an idea of the sonorous
and resonant congregational singing APP
propriate for churches when in listening
to the temple service of heaven he says:
Il heard a great voice, as the voice of q
great multitude and as the voice of many
waters and as the voice Of mighty thun-
behring's. Hallelujah, for the EoFd God
omnipotent reignethl"
Join with me in a crusade, giving me not
only your hearts, but the mighty uplifting
of your voices, and believe we can,
through Christ's grace, sing 5000 souls
into the kingdom Of Christ. An argument
Ahnyg - ali
down, but a 5000 voiced utterance of praise
! to God Is resistible. Would that Queen
Balkis would drive ell her spice laden
dromedNries into our church music. 'Nei
ther was any such spice as the Queen Of
! Sheba gave King Solomon"
Now, want to impress you with the
! fact that religion is sweetness and per.
fume and spikenard and saffron and Gin
namon and cassia and frankincense and al
! sweet spices together. "Oh," you say, 81
have not looked at it as such l thought
1t was a nuisance. It had for me a re-
! pulsion. / held my breath as though il
were mnlodor. / have been appalled, al
its advance. | have said, if I have any re
ligion at all, want to have just as little
of it as is possible to get through with.
Oh, what a mistake you have made, my
brother! The religion of Christ is pres
ent and everlasting Uedolence. 1t coun
teracts all trouble. just put it on the
stand beside the pillow of sickness. II
catches in the curtains and perfumes the
sitting air 1t sweetens the cup of bitter
medicine and throws a glow on the gloon
of the turned lattice. 1t is a balm for the
aching side and a soft bandage for The
temple stung with pain. 1t lifted Samue
Rutherford into revelry of spiritual de
light while he was in physical agonies. Il
helped Richard Baxter until, in the midst
of such a complication of diseases as per
haps no other man ever suffered he wrote
"The Saints Everlasting Rest" And il
poured light upon John Bunyan's dungeon
the light of the shining gate of the shin
ing city. And it is good for rheumatism
and for neuralgia and for low spirits anC
for consumption. 1t is the cathohcon fol-
Ill L.. 4 L II