The Camden chronicle. (Camden, Tenn.) 1890-current, 1903-06-05
A SERMON FOR SUNDAY
AN ELOQUENT DISCOURSE ENTITLED
"PLEAsURE AND co.,"
The Rev. A. p. Kinsolvins shows That
When the Soul Has Found Its True
Life the simplest Things wan Serve
Then Mans Heart Laughs.

Lie the simplest Things Will Serve
Then Mans Heart Laughs.
NEW YoRK CITY.-The Rev. Dr. A. h.
kinsolving, rector OF Christ Church,
Brooklyn, preached Sunday morning on
Pleasure and Cod" His text was taken
from III Timothy iii: 4: Lovers Of pleasure
rather than lovers of Cod" Mr.. Kinsoly-
ing said:
This is one Of those biting sentences Of
which st. Paul's letters are full II occurs
m hurrylng 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
q: life, and yet it has ever been difficult
Tor men to harmonic them and keep them
on friendly terms. Religious people have
often committed the blunder OF locking
askance at amusement. Indeed, some of
the best and most earnest among them
have conceived of piety as scarcely less
than killloy. They have represented
God as intensely jealous of life's innocent
as well as its forbidden pleasures, until
their systems have gotten to be so one
sided, and eXtravagant, and oyer-wrought,
and one.ideaed and melancholy as to cast
an awful gloom upon communities for con.
siderable periods. Such men have missed
altogether the cosmic note of gladness
which summers 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, lis so inwrought
into the worlds constitution that we can
not put n spade into the ground anywhere
without turning it uD. BY travel, by stay
fnv ak homo hsr H. L..
strain of the muscles or strain Of the mind /;
by speech, by silence; by solitude, by so.
ciety; by helping, by being helped; by re-
ceiving, by giying-by all these different
roads do men reach jOy."
And yet with our eye uDon 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 slain by its sensual pleasures? Run
through the list of them-Babylon, Me
dea, Persia, the Egyptian monarchy,
Greece, Carthage, Rome-did not the pas.
sion for licentious pleasure and the effem-
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
and His religion? What made it cruelty
Him out of its sight and fling His follow
ers to the beasts in the great amphthea re
at Rome? Why, more than aught else the
unbridled love of sinful pleasures. With
fierce flashes of anger these heather liber
ais refused to have their indulgences inter
fered with. They would not suffer faith
to be taught in their midst which they
astuteiy 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 anc
Gibbon something Of the excuses of the
Greek and Roman national games and fes
| tivals. That which began with some show
of decency degenerated often into the ex
IRENE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS and ministered t.
the basest passions. Frequently for dayi
and weeks together they absorbed the pub
! lie mind. making men oblivious to every
moral obligation and deaf to the claims o
! humanity" Gibbon says that Rome haC
at one time 1000 female dancers and al
many singers, and that when seasons o
famine came, while all strangers aud ever
| professors of the liberal arts were ban
ished from the city, the dancers were al
! lowed to remain. Their performance
were characterized by everything that wa
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. tn,
! Borgias and the later Louis of France Their
was only too much to remind men of tn,
| blacklist moral chapters in past history
| Men "lived in pleasure on the earth anC
were wanton; they nourished their heart
in day of slaughter" No wonder, breth
rem, with such spectacles before them, tina
serious Christian people, realizing the dead
! ~ peril from this quarter, should in thei
moral earnestness often have gone too ia
and failed to recognize that the thirst fo
pleasure and amusement is human thirst
and must be provided for and Guided am
sympathized with or else it will becom
religions rival and antagonist
Again, when men have tried to solve tn
mystery of laughter they have advances
very diverse opinions. Pascal thought tina
the passion for amusement was an illus
tration of the real unhappiness Of most hu
man lives 1t is because they want to re
out of themselves that they flock so +
spectacles of every kind, or gather i
crowds to laugh and talk--it is diversion
they seek. that is anything to escane fror
the somber ordeal of solitary thought
Doubtless his explanation fits many cases
but it hardly covers all. Play ard JOYOUS
ness are among the primitive gifts of Ut
man nature. The beginning Of comradt
snip between the mother and child is tn
hour when, as she bangles some plavthin
before it, "the little, solemn face break
out into a dimpled smile" Humor is on
Of the closest bonds Of sympathy bctwee
us. The contaRion of hearty. genial mcrr
ment is notorious, and the world has ger
orally rightly loved the people who mad
it laugh
Mr.. James Sully, an Engishman Of Ie
tiers, has Just published n book. which is
sort Of philosophc study of laughter.
which ne deplores any wane OF this grei
human resource, and says that 1T looks
if now only the more sordid material int
ests moved the mind. IS il snort had
have its substantial bait in the shape
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