The Penn's Grove record., 1903-05-15
SERMON FOR SUNDAY
AN ELOQUENT DISCOURSE ENTITLED
"PLEASuRE AND COD"

sPLEAsuRE AND COD"
The Rev. A. b. Kinsolving Shows That
When the Soul Has Found Its True
Life the Simplest Things VIII Serve
Then q Man Heart Laughs.
NEW YORK CITY.-The Rev. DR.. A. B.
Kinsolving, rector of Christ Church,
pleasure and God" His text was taken
from Ii Timothy iii: A: Lovers of pleasure
rather than lovers of God" Mr.. Kinsolv-
ing said:
This is one of those biting sentences of
which st. Paups letters are full. 1t occurs
in a hurrying category and arrests our
thoughts at once.
These two things, religion and pleasure,
have always been here on Gods fair earth.
of life, and yet it has ever been difficult
for men to harmonic them and keep them
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 a kill-joy. They have represented
God as intensely, jealous of lfe's innocent
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
altogether the cosmic note of gladness
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 ~inwrought
into the worlds constitution that we can
not put a 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;
ciety; by helping, by being helped; by re-
ceiving, by giving-by all these different
roads do men reach jov."
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 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 efem-
macy which in consequence came every
where in the place where manly virtue and
stole s~elf-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 amphitheatre
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 a faith
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 excuses of the
Greek and Roman national games and fes-
rivals. "That which began with some show
OF decency degenerated often into the ex-
IRENE of RIGHTEOUSNESS and ministered to
the basest passions. Frequently for days
and weeks together they absorbed the pub
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humanity" Gibbon saws that Rome had
at one time 5000 female dancers and as
many singers, and that when seasons Of
famine came, while all strangers and even
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
profigacy. 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,
hIno1orf -n1ro aho.<a~n ~ nn1f htzfapv,
Men "lived in pleasure on the earth ant
were wanton; they nourished their heart
in a dey 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
n failed to recognize that the thirst TO
pleasure and amusement is a 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 tired to solve tn
mystery of laughter they have advance,
very diverse opinions. Pascal thought tina
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
spectacles of every kind, or gather il
crowds to laugh and talk-it is diversion
they seek, that is, anything to escape from
the somber ordeal of solitary thought
Doubtless, his explanation fits many. cases
but it hardly covers all. Play and JOYOUS
ness are among the primitive gifts Of hu
man nature. The beginning of comrade
ship between the mother and child is tn
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 betweeI
us. The contagion of hearty, genial merri
ment is notorious, and the world has ger
orally rightly loved the people who mad
it laugh.
Mr.. James Sully, an Englishman Of lei
tiers, has just published a book, which is
sort of philosophic study of laughter, i
which he deplores any wane of this grea
human resource, and says hat sit looks a
if now only the more sordid material inter
ests moved the mind, as if snort had t
have its substantial bait in the shape G
stakes, while comedy must angle for popl
larity with scenic splendors 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 natuT
and that no life is whole without it. 1t
the lighter torch of this charming gayet
which gives that large freedom and mobi
ity to life which it needs for its complet
expression. Amusement, relaxation an
happiness are certainly part OF the cosmi
scheme. If at any period God should loo
down upon His world and see only solem
faces and hear no notes of ripDling laugl
ter, / think it would grieve Him at III
heart. But here they are ever side b
side; ife's laughter and tears. and whel
ever innocent. we can only imagine tn
great and kind Father looking down benis
nantly upon all. Nothing is more conspit
nous in the character of the Lord jesus
with all His intense moral earnestnes:
than the beautiful simplicity of His syn
pathy with what we may call the loyou
background of life. He begins His woI
der-worklng at a marriage feast at Cana
to which He had been invited as a matte
of course. The prodigal in his story come
home to music and dancing. The klngdoI
of heaven is itself lke-not a funeral-hu
a feast. He was the enemy of every bul
den which CALLED the necks of men and d.
frauded them of their rightful happinas;
Doubtless many an hour in the interva!
of work His soul was soothed by the iyr1
JOY of nature-by the gentle starlight, 3
the sons of birds, by those Syrian HELD
carpeted with unrivaled flowers, by tn
choral glee of young children on the hi
sides and around their homes,
But. nv brethren, what, think yo,