The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-01-27
SERMON BY REV. H. E. RAIL
(continued from Second Page.)

licans, that He speaks words of con- demnation to, but rather this class of men, with lives well-ordered, with rooms swept and garnished, but empty
 and useless, the door shut to His mes sage, and, unknown to them, open to
 worse devils than those they kept so
 carefully out Two things He saw. | These were the men that blocked the
 wheels of His work, not the men who opposed Him, but those who stood by
 when they should have aided. And
 these were the men whom He could not help or save, for the first condition
 of salvation, of true life, was a heart that was open to Himself, to the truth, to God.
 But the same hard word of judgment
 we find with other great teachers.
 Curse ye Meroz,' said the angel of the Lord: "curse ye bitterly the inhabitants
 thereof, because they came not to the
 help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty" And the sound moral sense of the old Jewish song, with it's bitter curse against those who stood by when the conflict waged, is echoed in the new: Because thou art lullewarm, and neither hot nor cold, will spew thee out of My mouth" You will find the same if you go to some of 1 the great teachers outside the Scrip lures. It is the moral of Browning S strange tale of "The Statue and the Bust" the tale of the noble lady and her lover, whom the poet censures, not l for the sin that they purposed, but that their life passed in irresolution and cowardly inactivity, when they should have dared and done for some end, good or ill
 And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost
 Is-the unit lamp and the ungirt loin, Though the end in sight was vice, say"
 The one sin he cannot pardon is the sin of the empty room. And no one has scourged the sin with sharper lash than the great teacher Dante. It is one of the awful pictures of that journey of his through the world of the lost Outside of hell itself, in the darkness of an aw- full night pierced by no star, there smites upon his ear lamentations and
 
 anger voices deep and hoarse, that cen I wept at entering" And then he tells us who these souls are that even hell itself will not receive. These are those who lived without praise or blame and with them the angels, who, when the others fell, neither rebelliouS prov ed, nor yet were true to God but for themselves were only" What are they but the sinners of the empty room, those whose lives were not sinful, and yet were not strong for God and the good, who stood by idle before that fight in which the good and evil wage amending warfare the fight in the world and in the soul to which God calls every man. And no lash of scorn in all that great poem is sharper than the word that Dantes guide speaks of them: Flame of them the world hath none, Nor suffers; mercy and justice scorn
 both.
 Speak not of them, but look, and pass
 them by"
 And with one more word the poet leaves them
 These wretches, who neer lived
 Went on in nakedness.
 The devil of the empty room has not vanished yet. He is with us to-day He is still to-day the greatest hindrance in the progress of the Kingdom There is one great conflict that fills this world In forms unnumbered, on every hand, in ceaseess struggle, it is taking place. Sometimes we call it foreign missions, it is civic reform, sometimes 1t is fight for clean streets, and whole some homes, and pure water and hon. est government. Sometimes it is tenn perance reform. Sometimes it is sim ply man struggling with brother man to lead him from sin to God. Always it is the same fight of good with evil, | the question of the kingdom of God. The devil of the empty room is the [ spirit of the man that stands by with folded hands, indifferent, while the fight goes on. It is not merely his sin that he shirks a God-given duty, not | merely that as Dante says, by refusing the fight he fails really to live, but to- lay, as in Christs time, he is the great ast obstacle in the way of the good and ts triumph. It is not the saloonkeeper who is the worst enemy of temperance is the host of the indifferent who say, "Trouble me not; am I my lrother's keeper?" It is not oso much rammany that stands in the way of lean government in New York city. It S the host of the well-bred, the well- behaved the men with the ordered oom, who stand by in idleness and in- difference. The devil of greed is bad, he devil of drunkenness and immoral ty is an awful foe, but there is no en- my so hard to reach, so hard to van luish, no one that so blocks the way, S the respectable, well-behaved devil f the empty roomo. God have pity on these ciphers of life hese men who never have lived. The var of good and evil goes on men are eing helped or harmed, lives saved and yrecked; the forces of evil of darkness nd vice, were never more strong; the hurch never had greater opportunity T foreign field and al home, and these, and proud of their ordered yes stand idly by, neither rebellious ] rove, nor yet are true to God, but for themselves are only.'
 Has not Dante found here the root of { his sin, selfishness? It is not only as agards the service of God, but as. re- ards character and life and self that lese sin; so light the sin seems They eep the house well. The gross devils