The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1912-03-16
EVENING CHAT
BY RUTH CAMERON.

The very sweetest lady 1 know. that
dear, unselfish saint, in fact, on whose
prayers place my best hopes of Heaven
i don't suppose I need to identify her
1arther to anyone who has mother-Ias
a regular habit of saying at Sunday din
ner, This morning in church l thought
what she thought may have been the
adV1Sability of dyeing my light blue house
gown dark blue next winter or if NAV
have been recollection that we had for
gotten to call up Aunt Maria to ask her
about Wednesday, or it may have been
a wondering if the cat were shut up
where she couldn't get at our Sunday
dinner, but it is always at astonishinE
variance with the subject of the sermon.
And yet the author of these heresies Is,
as said before, the very sweetest lady
know Now if she thus betrays the
presence of secular thoughts at a time
when one should be thinking only OF SER
mons and devotions, what about the rest
of us? Truly it is an appalling thought.
How often do you listen straight
IN length, and not go off a single ir-
relevant train of thought? Perhaps I'm
more inattentive or rattIed-brained than
most people, but as for myself / will
frankly admit that 1 could scarcely claim
half dozen such occasions in lifetime.
Some years ago, used to attend a fine
old church which was quantity and beau
TRULY finished In natural beams. Said
the minister's wife one day to a group Of
us, Il think the architecture OF this
church is beautiful. When 1 am not espe-
L
love to sit and look up at those great
beams
And she was the minister's wife the
first lady of the church., with a con-
vincing reason, nay two or three of them.
if anyone ever had for listening to every
word of the sermoni
Another dear, good woman admits
frankly that she plans all the chiIdren's
clothes in church.
What. are you going to do about it?
May offer two or three little sugges-
tons?
My first is not to have any sermons
over half an hour long, preferably nearer
the fifteen minutes mark. A wicked
shortening of ones devotfons, you say?
don't see it that way. L think we could
listen to q fifteen minutes sermon
and surely that's better than
hearing few words of a longer dis
course.
Another is for ministers to talk instead
of preach. AS I say, there have been
few occasions when I listened to the
under a minister who seldom raises his
voice; never gets oratorical or AUDIENCE,
but just talks as if he were talking RICH:
to me, whereupon 1 feel in courtesy
bound to listen to him just as L would to
anyone who was taking to me. Whereas,
with a minister who is preaching, 1 feel
that he is addressing an Audience with a
capital A, and it doesn't really matter
whether I listen not
My third suggestion is for the audience
for you and me. in other words. And |
1t is for US to realize that we don't honor |
God and worship Him, and do our duty |
by sitting in a pew thinking of clothes |
and pleasure and business any more than |
BY sitting at home and thinking of those |
things.
Presumably when we go to church we
are dedicating a certain amount of time |
% honoring and worshipping God and 1
lime spent in selfish secular thoughts is |
stolen from this dedicated time. Perhaps |
f we bolstered up our resolutions to |
-eaIly listen, by that point of view we |
night do a bit better
Here's good luck to you-and me.