Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1901-08-05

tables and dry statistics. Our religion
Is compared to frankincense and to
rasSia, but never to nightShade. 1t is
q bundle of myrrh. 1t is a dash Of
holy light. It is a sparkle Of cool foun-
tairs. 1t is an opening of opaline gates.
It is q collection 81 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 benumbed, 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, if be-
tween the betrayaIs 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 glorious inspira-
ton, penduluming between calm salts
faction and high rapture.
How any woman keeps house with
out the religion of Christ to help her is
a mystery to me. To have to spend the
greater part of ones life, as many Wo-
men do, in planning for the meals, and
stitching garments that will soon be
rent again, and deploring breakages,
and 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 nurs-
cry, and comes to the dwelling, then
how CHEEKY becomes 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 a coat
for young Samuel; Miriam, because she
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 replen-
n no in
Try 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"
joyful Christianity.
l must confess that a great deal of
the religion of this day is utterly in
sipid. There is nothing piquant or ele-
waiting about it. Men and women so
around humming psalms in a minor
key and cultivating melancholy, and
their worship has in it more signs than
raptures. We do not doubt their piety.
Oh, no! But they are sitting at feast
where the cook has forgotten to season
the food. Everything is fat in their
and in their conversation.
from sin and death and
hell and on their way to a magnificent
heaven, they act as though they were
on toward an everlasting Bot
any Bay. Religion does not seem to
agree with them. 1t seems to catch in
the Windpipe and become tight stran-
gulatiOn instead of an eXhilaration.
All the infdel books that have been
written, from Voltaire down to Her
bert Spencer, have not done so much
damage to our Christianity as lugubri-
Gus Christians. Who wants a religion
woven out of the shadows of the night?
Why go growing on your way to celes-
tial enhancement? Come out of that
cave and sit down in the warm light
Of the Sun Of Righteousness. Away
with your odes to melancholy and Her
vey's fluctuations Among the Tombs!'
Then let our songs abound
And every tear be dry;
We're marching through Emmanuel's ground
To fairer worlds on high.
l 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 head. 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 eyhOrtatiOnS more
lilies Of the field. We want fewer
rhetorical Celebrations and fewer ses-
words, and when we talk
about shadows we do not want to say
adumbration, and when we mean