Orange County observer. [volume] (Hillsborough, N.C.) 1880-1918, 1903-05-21
A SERMON FOR SUNDAY
AN ELOQUENT DISCOURSE ENTITLED
""PLEASURE AND COD"

The Rev. A. B. Kinsolvins Shows THAT
When the Soul Has Found Its True
Life the Simplest Things VIII Serve
Then Mans Heart Laushs.
New York CIrY.-The Rev. DR.. A. B.
Kinsolving, rector OF Christ Church.
Brooklyn, preached Sunday morning on
Pleasure and God" His text was taken
from II Timothy iii: 4: Lovers of pleasure
rather than lovers of God" Mr. Kinsolv
ing said:
This is one of those biting sentences Of |
which St. Paufs letters are full. 1t occurs |
in hurrying category and arrests our |
thoughts at once.
These two things, religion and pleasure,
have always been here on Gods fair earth.
They are undoubtedly primal constituents
of life, and yet it has ever been difficult
on friendly terms. Religious people have
often committed the blunder Of looking
askance at amusement. Indeed, some Of
the best and most earnest among them
have conceived of piety as scarcely less
than kill-joy. They have represented
as well as its forbidden pleasures, until
their systems have gotten to be SO one
sided, and extravagant, and over-wrought.
and one-ideaed and melancholy as to cast
an awful gloom upon communities for con-
siderable periods. Such men have missed
which shimmers in the sunlight. dances in
the laughing waters, which ripples and
murmurs IN the brooks and streams, which
smiles from the blue dome above and
thrills us in the spring bird notes and the
| summer flowers. The material for enjoy
| ment,. says some one, is SO 1nwrought
| into the worlds constitution that we can
| not put spade into the ground anywhere
| without turning it UP. By travel, by stay
| ing at home, by working, by resting, by
| strain of the muscles or strain Of the mind;
by speech. by silence; by solitude, by So
| ciety; bye helping, by being helped; by re-
relGs eeyng f. by rencS al these different
| And yet with our eye upon the history
| of mankind is there not abundant reason
for RELIGIONS suspicion of the riot of pleas
ure? What nation of antiquity has not
been s,ain by its sensual pleasures? Run
through the list of them-Babylon, Me
Greece, Carthage, Rome not the pas
sion for licentious pleasure and the effem-
macy which in consequence came every
where in the place where manly virtue and
stole self-control and splendid discipline Of
body and mind had been; did not these
undermine the mighty fabric Of Rome it.
self?
Look at the world that Christianity en-
tered. What made it so hostile to Christ
Him out of its sight and fling His follow
ers to the beasts in the great amphitheatre
at Rome? Why, more than aught else the
unbridled love Of sinful pleasures. With
fierce flashes of anger these heather hber-
ais refused to have their indu]gences inter.
to be taught in their midst which they
astutely saw would have the moral effect
of stopping their games, and SO they cried
with hellish hate: "The Christians to the
lions and to the lions they were thrown
We know from the pages of Grote. and
Gibbon something OF the excesses of the
tivals. ''That which began with some show
of decency degenerated often into the ex
treme of RIGHTEOUSNESS and ministered te
the basest passions. Frequently for days
and weeks together they absorbed the pub
lie mind. ma king men Obvious to every
% Gbbon a aes aya Z That i Rome eab hsf
at one time 5000 female dancers and al
many singers, and that when seasons O.
famine came. while all strangers and ever
, professors of the liberal arts were ban
| ished from the city, the dancers were al
lowed to remain. Their performances
morally degrading, and the orgies which
took place around the temples of the God
dess Flora and Voluptas, the Goddess O
Pleasure, descended into the depths O
prohigacy. in the times of Charles VI. o
France, in the times of the Georges, th'
Borgias and the later Louis Of France there
was only too much to remind men of thu
blackest moral chapters in past history
{ Men "lived in pleasure On the earth ane
; were waaton; they nourished their heart
in a day of Slaughter No wonder, breth
? re1, with such spectacies before them: tina
serious Christian people, realizing the dead
]y peril from this quarter, should in thei
moral earnestness often have gone too ia
and failed to recognize that the thirst TO
pleasure and amusement is human thirst
and must be provided for and guided ant
! sympathized with. or else it viii becom
, religions rival and antagonist.
: Again, when men have tried to solve tn
! mystery of laughter they have advance,
: very diverse opinions. Pascal thought tha
> the passion for amusement was an illus
tration Of the real unhappiness of most hu
. man lives. It is because they want to ge
out of themselves that they flock SO t
eppeWds o ae Gi agd ta is
they seek that is, anything to escape fron
; the somber ordeal Of solitary thought
g Doubtless. his explanation fits many cases
:. but it hardly covers all. Play and joyous
:, ness are among the primitive gifts of hr
man nature The beginning Of comrade
S ship between the mother and child is tn
y hour when, as she bangles some playthin
before it. "the little, solemn face break
:, out into a dimpled SMILE Humor IS on
of the closest bonds of sympathy betwee
Y us. The contagion of hearty. genial merr
o ment is notorious, and the world has ger
: orally rightly loved the people who mad
. it laugh.
= Mr.. James Sully, an Englishman Of le
1t ters, has Just published book. which is
it sort Of philosophic study Of laughter,
# which he deplores any wane Of this gres
- human resource, and says that 1'it looks .
u if now only tie more sordid material inte
b ests moved the mind, as if sport had
o. have its substantial bait in the shape {
,f stakes while comedy must angie for popl
= larity with scenic sp.endors which are see
to cost money" However this may be-.
is perfectly certain that the pleasure Il
stinct is a true note of our human natu1
:, and that no life is whole without it. It
g the lighter torch Of this charming gayet
g which gives that large freedom and mobi
} ity to life which it needs for its compie1
expression Amusement, relaxation an
. happiness are certainly part of the cosm
+ scheme If at any period God should loo
l. down upon His world and see only soien
! ), faces and hear no notes of rlppling laug
:, ter, think it would grieve Him at H
II heart But here they are ever side.
l. side: life's laughter and tears. and whe
n ever innocent, we can only imagine Il
y great and kind Father looking down beni