STONES FOR BREAD.
Some of our papers publish, the latter part of every week—and a very good custom it is—a list of different preachers, their places of worship, and the topics selected for the ensuing Sunday. We often read over this list with curiosity and interest, and lay it down with a sad wonder at some of the topics selected for the sermons. We sometimes say, why don't they preach about something that will come home to the worn, weary, tried heart—vexed enough already with its life-burthens—instead of entangling it in theological nets, till the blessed voice that says so sweetly, "Come unto Me," never reaches the perplexed ear? We say this in no spirit of fault-finding, or dictation, but because we are sure that hungry souls, who every Sunday beg for bread, receive only a stone; and go away to take up their daily burden again on Monday, with faltering, hopeless step, when they might and should march—singing the song of triumph!
If a mother weeps over her lost babe, if a wife mourns her husband, or a father bends over a dead son, whom he thought would live to close his aged eyes, do you choose that time to distress them with abstract questions and transcendental theories? "No—you see before you an aching, tried heart; and you yearn with all your sympathetic nature to comfort it. Your words are few but earnest, and full of love. You go softly with them and look at the dear, dead face, which perhaps you never saw living, and say with quivering lips, "God help you, my friend." Just so, we long sometimes to have clergymen look at the dead faces of men's lost joys and hopes, and pity the bereaved, lonely hearts that want something to lean upon besides cold, dull abstractions; that yearn for the warm, beating, pulsating heart of Infinite Love, and yet cannot find it. Oh! what mission on earth as blessed as to teach them where and how?"
"Come unto Me." These words, thousands of years old, and yet never worn out! "Come unto Me." Oh, shake off the dust of your libraries, and say, as He said it, "Come unto Me!"