Norwich bulletin., 1911-05-13
SUNDAY MORNING TALK
MAKING GOODNESS INTERESTING

We are fortunate in living in a day when virtue tends more and more to array itself in beauteous garments. It used to be said concerning New York journalism that a certain morning daily made vice so attractive and a certain evening daily made virtue so re9ellent, that the lot of anyone who would follow the straight path in New York city was indeed a hard one. One has to admit that custodians of good ness throughout the centuries have now and again made it appear before the world in most unattractive guises. Deacons are usually represented in fiction as with long faces and they have often been that in real life. Sun day to many minds is associated chief ly with restrictions; the good boy is thought in many quarters to be a prig, and even a bright college girl once honestly declared that she never knew but one really good fellow that she really liked.
 But change is coming over the situation. We no longer think that hard, uncushioned pews in themselves promote the spirit of reverence, or that it is an inducement for outsiders to attend church when they see the edifice itself in need of paint and re- pairs and the ground about it in an unkempt condition. So multitude of improvements in the way of teaching religion in the home and the Sunday school vast and constantly increas- ing number of beautifully printed and illustrated books relating to the Bible and the religious life, the employment of the stereopticon and even the motion pictures, and numerous other devices make goodness more interesting to people, old and young. They witness also, an altogether desirable change in the attitude of supposed custodians of goodness. The boy scout movement, for example, is only one of several re- gently inaugurated movements design- ed to connect high moral ideals with the everyday interests and pleasures of mankind.
 Rightly conceived, the virtuous life is the most interesting that anyone scan hve, and the agencies that minis ter to 1t can be made attractive. What book, for example, compares with the Bible as an inexhaustfble storehouse Of human interest? It's stories. narra- tions. incidents, poetry, dramatic scenes, sketches all may be made to appeal to and fascinate the mind. Only we must get at the Bible in the right way. Few people realize how really inter- esting 1t is.
 But someone will say: Tt does not pay to make goodness too attractive. It takes all the heroic element out of it, when we sugarcoat every righteous message and allure men into the king dom by offering them free seats in 9 parlor car" But that is by no means what we are doing. On the contrary. the appeal to the heroic is the very thing that interests young men and women with any red blood in their veins. The call to do something for others, to invest their lives in behalf of the things that count and last quickens the pulses and challenges the manly impulses as no tame propo- sition could ever do.
 Anyhow, each one of us has no busi- ness to foster any other than m at tractive type of personal goodness. We ought to be winsome as well as hon. est, gracious and magnetic as we'll as pure and diligent. The next time you hear the minister pronounce the bepe- diction, "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you" think what that means in it's bearing upon your daily behavior.
 THE PARSON