Vernon County censor. [volume] (Viroqua, Wis.) 1865-1955, 1901-02-13
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you went through tue uSOules 0l USslS-
sination on the rocky bluff back of Jeru-
salem, 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 scoifer: 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 mount? How do
YOU W. re golden rule laid down in the
Scriptures? Are you in favor of the Ten
Commandments? In yeur large and ex-
tensiye reading have Won come across a
lovelier character than Jesus Christi VIII
YOU please to name the triumphant death
beds of intdels and atheists? How do
you account foe the fact that among the
out and out believers in Chris ianity were
such persons as Benjamin Franklin John
Rnskin, Thomas Carlyle, Darlington Mac
aulay, William Penn, Walter Scott,
Charles Kingsley, Horace Bushnell,
james A. Garfield. Robert +. Lee. Stone
wall Jackson, Admiral Foote. Admiral
Farragut, Ulysses :. Grant, John Milton,
William Shakespeare, Chief Justice Mar
shall. John Adams, Daniel Webster,
George Washington? How do you ae-
count for their fondness for the Christian
religion? Among the innumerable col
leges and universities Of the earth will
you name me three started by infdels and
now supported by inidels? Down in your
heart are you really happy in the posi-
ton yOu occupy antagonistic to the Chris
ton religion? When do you have the
most rapturous views Of the next worldf"
Go at him with few such questions. and
he win get so red in the face as TO sug-
gest apoplexy, 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. a0u will
put him ON 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 woman as you, surrender 10
! one of the meanest spirits that ever
smoked up from the pit-the dumb devil.
| spoken of in the text? v
Duty to Sing Gods Praise asa
| But then there are occasions when this
particular spirit that Christ ex0rcised
when he said. II 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 a voice, and they know how to read.
hey know many of the tunas. and yet
| are silent while the great raptllres of mu-
| sic psss by. Among those who sing not
enc out of hundred sings loud enough
| to hear his own voice. They hum it.
| They give a sort of religious grunt They
make the lips 60 but it is inaudible.
| With a voice strong enough to stop
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 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 multiplied two thousand fold.
| But the minister rises and gives out the
! hymn. the organ begins, the choir or pre-
! centor leads, the audience are standing
! so that the lungs may have full expan-
! sion, and a mighty harmony is aoout to
ascend when the evil spirit spoken of in
my text-the dumb devil--spreads his two
wings, one over the lips of one-llalf the
audience and the other wing over the lips
| of the other half of the audience, and
| the 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 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
| Mason 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 neighborhoods 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.
/ Historic Incidents of Praise.
/ During the cotton famine in Lanca-
| shire England, when the suffering was
something terrific. as the first wagon
load of cotton rolled in the starving peo-
| pie unlocked the horses and drew the
/ load themselves, singing. until all Lam
| cashire joined in with triumphant voices.
! their cheeks sopping with tears, Praise
/ God from whom all blessings dow"
| When Commodore Perry with his war
! ship the Mississippi, lay off the coast of
| Japan. he bombarded the shores, with
! "Old Hundred" played by the marine
7
ed by William Franc Of Germany, In a
| war prison at 10 O'clock at night, the
| poor fellows far from home and wound
! ed and sick and dying, one prisoner start
! ed the "0ld Hundredth Doxology," and
| then score of voices joined; then all the
| prisoners on all the floors took up the ac-
| claim until the building. from foundation
| to top stone, fairly quaked with the
melodious Inscription. A British man-of-
| war lying off a foreign coast heard a
| voice singing that dOxology and inme-
| diately guessed, and guessed Alright. that
| there was an Englshman in captivity to
| the Mohammedans, and in the small
| boats the sailors r0wed to shore and burst
| into guardhouse and set the captive
| free. l do not know what tune the
| trumpets of resurrection shall play. but
| it may be the doxoogy which is .iow
| sounding across Christendom. How much
/ more hearty we would be in our songs
! and how easily we could drive back the
| dumb devil from ali our worsIiping as
| senlblages if we could realize that near
! " all our hymns have a stirring history.
| That glorious hymn, Stand Up for Je-
| sus." was suggested by the last words
! of Dudley Tying, who was dying from
| having his right arm torn off by a thrash
] ing machine That hymn. Whit a
/ Friend We Have in Jesus" heard
| through telephone, converted an OBJ
| durate soul "Shall We Gather ut the
/ Riger?'' was a hymn first sung In Brook
| lyn Prospect Park at the chillrpn's May
| anniversary and then started TO encircle