Yes, dear reader, it was a pity. Pity, when our pulpits are so often filled with those whose only recommendation for their office is a good heart and a black coat. It was a pity that graceful gesticulation, that rare felicity of expression, that keen perception of the beautiful, that ready tact and adaptation to circumstances and individuals, should not have been effective weapons in the gospel armoury. Pity, that voice of music should not have been employed to chain the worldling’s fastidious ear to listen to Calvary’s story.
Yet it was a pity that glorious intellect had been laid at an unholy shrine; pity “he had strayed from the true fold.” How was it?
Ah! the solution is simple. “Line upon line, precept upon precept,” is well—but practice is better! Religion must not be all lip-service; the “fruits of love, meekness, gentleness, forbearance, long-suffering,” must follow. Harry was a keen observer. He had often heard the harsh and angry word from lips upon which the Saviour’s name had just lingered. He had felt the unjust, quick, passionate blow from the hand which a moment before had been raised in supplication to Heaven. He had seen the purse-strings relax at the bidding of worldliness, and tighten at the call of charity. He had seen principle sacrificed to policy, and duty to interest. He had himself been misappreciated. The shrinking sensitiveness which drew a veil over his most sacred feelings had been harshly construed into hard-heartedness and indifference. Every duty to which his attention was called was prefaced with the supposition that he was averse to its performance. He was cut off from the gay pleasures which buoyant spirits and fresh young life so eloquently plead for; and in their stead no innocent enjoyment was substituted. He saw Heaven’s gate shut most unceremoniously upon all who did not subscribe to the parental creed, outraging both his own good sense and the teachings of the Bible; and so religion (which should have been rendered so lovely) put on to him an ascetic form. Oh, what marvel that the flowers in the broad road were so passing fair to see? that the forbidden fruit of the “tree of knowledge” was so tempting to the youthful touch?
Oh, Christian parent! be consistent, be judicious, be cheerful. If, as historians inform us, “no smile ever played” on the lips of Jesus of Nazareth, surely no frown marred the beauty of that holy brow.
Dear reader, true religion is not gloomy. “Her ways are ways of pleasantness, her paths are peace.” No man, no woman, has chart, or compass, or guiding star, without it.
Religion is not a fable. Else why, when our household gods are shivered, do our tearful eyes seek only Heaven?
Why, when disease lays its iron grasp on bounding life, does the startled soul so earnestly, so tearfully, so imploringly, call on its forgotten Saviour?
Ah! the house “built upon the sand” may do for sunny weather; but when the billows roll, and the tempests blow, and lightnings flash, and thunders roar, we need the “Rock of Ages.”
THE FASHIONABLE PREACHER.
Do you call this a church? Well, I heard a prima donna here a few nights ago: and bright eyes sparkled, and waving ringlets kept time to moving fans; and opera glasses and ogling, and fashion and folly reigned for the nonce triumphant. I can’t forget it; I can’t get up any devotion here, under these latticed balconies, with their fashionable freight. If it were a good old country church, with a cracked bell and unhewn rafters, a pine pulpit, with the honest sun staring in through the windows, a pitch-pipe in the gallery, and a few hobnailed rustics scattered round in the uncushioned seats, I should feel all right: but my soul is in fetters here; it won’t soar—its wings are earth-clipped. Things are all too fine! Nobody can come in at that door, whose hat and coat and bonnet are not fashionably cut. The poor man (minus a Sunday suit) might lean on his staff, in the porch, a long while, before he’d dare venture in, to pick up his crumb of the Bread of Life. But, thank God, the unspoken prayer of penitence may wing its way to the Eternal Throne, though our mocking church spires point only with aristocratic fingers to the rich man’s heaven.