The Brandon news. (Brandon, Miss.) 1892-1961, 1903-05-21
A SERMON FOR SUNDAY
AN ELOQUENT DISCOURSE ENTITLED
"PLEASURE AND GOD"
The Rev. A. b. Kinsolvine Shows That
When the Soul Has Found Its True
Life the Simplest Things win Serve
Then n Mans Heart Laughs

When the Soul Has Found Its True
Life the Simplest Things win Serve
Then Mans Heart Laughs.
NEW YORK CITY.-The Rev. DIR. A. B.
Ainsolving, rector of Christ Church,
Brooklyn, preached Sunday morning on
Pleasure and God" His text was taken
from III Timothy iii: 4: Lovers of pleasure
rather than lovers of God" Mr.. Kinsolv-
ing, said
which st. PauPs letters are full. It occurs
IN nurrylng category and arrests our
thoughts at once.
These two things, religion and pleasure,
ia have always been here on Gods fair earth.
They. are undoubtedly primal constituents
OF 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 looking
askance at amusement Indeed, some of
the best and most earnest among them
nave conceived OF piety as scarcely less
than a kill-joy. 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 over-wrought,
and one-ldeaed 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. 1.-The material for enjoy
ment, says some one, lis so lnwrought
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; by helping, by being helped; by re-
ceiving, by giving-oy 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
through the list of then-Babylon, Me
dea, Persia, the Egyptian monarchy,
Greece, Carthage, Rome-did 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
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 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 minstered to
the basest passions. Frequently for DAYS
and weeks together they absorbed the pub
lie mind. making men obiivious to every
moral obligation and deaf to the claims of
humanity. Gibbon says 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 performances
were characterized by everything that was
| morally degrading, and the orgies which
| took place around the temples of the God
dess Flora and Voluptas, the Goddess of
Pleasure, descended into the depths of
profigacy. In the times of Charles VI. of
France, in the times of the Georges. the
Bolgias and the later Louis of France there
] was only too much to remind men of the
blacklist moral chapters in past history.
| Men "hved in pleasure on the earth and
were wanton; they nourished their hearts
in day of slaughter" No wonder, breth-
rem, with such spectacles before them, that
serious Christian people. realizing the dead
ly peril from this quarter, should in their
moral earnestness often have gone too far
and failed to recognize that the thirst for
pleasure and amusement is human thirst.
/ and must be provided for and guided and
sympathized with. or else it will become
religions rival and antagonist
Again, when men have tried to solve the
mystery of laughter they have advanced
very diverse opinions. Pascal thought that
! the passion tor amusement was an illus
tration of the real unhappiness of most hui.
man lives. 1t is because they want to get
out of themselves that they flock so to
| spectacles of every kind, or gather in
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 hui
man nature. The beginning of comrade-
ship between the mother and child is the
hour when. as she bangles some playth;ng
before it, "the little, solemn face breaks
out into dimpled smile" Humor is one
of the closest bonds of sympathy between
us. The contagion of hearty genial merri-
ment is notorious, and the world has gen.
orally rightly loved the people who made
it laugh.
Mr.. James Sully, an Englishman of let
tiers, has Just published book. which is a
sort of phiiosophic study of laughter. in
which ne deplores any wane of this great
human resource, and says that cit looks as
if now only the more sordid material inter
ests moved the mind, as if sport had to
have its substantial bait in the shape of
stakes, while comedy must angle for popu-
larity with scenic splendors which are seen
to cost money" However this may be, it
is perfectly certain that the pleasure in
stinct is true note of our human nature
and that no life is whole without it. It is
the lighter torch of this charming gayety
which gives that large freedom and mobil-
ity to life which it needs for it's complete
expression. Amusement, relaxation and
happiness are certainly part of the cosmic
scheme. If at any period God should look
down upon His world and see only solemn
faces and hear no notes of ripping laugh
ter, I think it would grieve Him at His
heart But here they are ever side bv
side: life'S laughter and tears and wher