Chapter 58

FRIDAY EVENING.

Our friend Churchill was a great man for religious meetings. As he shoved back from our tea-table he said, "I must be off to church."

Then he yawned as though he expected to have a dull time, and asked me why it was that religious meetings were often so very insipid and that many people went to them merely as a matter of duty. Without waiting for me to give my opinion, he said he thought that there was a sombre hue given to such meetings that was killing and in a sort of soliloquy continued:

There is one thing Satan does well. He is good at stating the discouraging side. He knows how to fish for obstacles, and every time brings up his net full. Do not let us help him in his work. If you have anything to say in prayer-meeting that is disheartening, may you forget your speech! Tell us something on the bright side.

I know a Christian man who did something outrageously wrong. Some one said to me: "Why do you not expose him?" I replied: "That is the devil's work and it will be thoroughly done. If there is anything good about him, we would rather speak of that."

Give us no sermons or newspaper articles that are depressing. We know all that before you start; amid the greatest disheartenments there are hopeful things that may be said. While the Mediterranean corn-ship was going to smash, Paul told the crew to "Be of good cheer." We like apple trees because, though they are not handsome, they have bright blossoms and good fruit, but we despise weeping willows because they never do anything but cry.

On a dark day do not go around closing the window-shutters. The world is dark enough without your making it more so. Is there anybody in the room who has a match? Please then strike it. There is only one kind of champagne that we temperance folks can take, and that is encouraging remark. It is a stimulus, and what makes it better than all other kinds of champagne is it leaves no headache.

I said to him, I think religious meetings have been improved in the last few years. One of the grandest results of the Fulton street prayer-meeting is the fact that all the devotional services of the country have been revolutionized. The tap of the bell of that historical prayer-meeting has shortened the prayers and exhortations of the church universal.

But since it has become the custom to throw open the meetings for remark and exhortation, there has been a jubilee among the religious bores who wander around pestering the churches. We have two or three outsiders who come about once in six weeks into our prayer-meeting; and if they can get a chance to speak, they damage all the interest. They talk long and loud in proportion as they have nothing to say. They empty on us several bushels of "ohs" and "ahs." But they seldom get a chance, for we never throw the meeting open when we see they are there. We make such a close hedge of hymns and prayers that they cannot break into the garden.

One of them we are free of because, one night, seeing him wiggle-waggle in his seat as if about to rise, we sent an elder to him to say that his remarks were not acceptable. The elder blushed and halted a little when we gave him the mission, but setting his teeth together he started for the offensive brother, leaned over the back of the pew and discharged the duty. We have never seen that brother since, but once in the street, and then he was looking the other way.

By what right such men go about in ecclesiastical vagabondism to spoil the peace of devotional meetings it is impossible to tell. Either that nuisance must be abated or we must cease to "throw open" our prayer-meetings for exhortation.

A few words about the uses of a week-night service. Many Christians do not appreciate it; indeed, it is a great waste of time, unless there be some positive advantage gained.

The French nation at one time tried having a Sabbath only once in ten days. The intelligent Christian finds he needs a Sabbath every three or four days, and so builds a brief one on the shore of a week-day in the shape of an extra religious service. He gets grace on Sabbath to bridge the chasm of worldliness between that and the next Sabbath, but finds the arch of the bridge very great, and so runs up a pier midway to help sustain the pressure.

There are one hundred and sixty-eight hours in a week, and but two hours of public religious service on Sabbath. What chance have two hours in a battle with one hundred and sixty-eight?

A week-night meeting allows church membership utterance. A minister cannot know how to preach unless in a conference meeting he finds the religious state of the people. He must feel the pulse before giving the medicine, otherwise he will not know whether it ought to be an anodyne or a stimulant. Every Christian ought to have something to say. Every man is a walking eternity. The plainest man has Omnipotence to defend him, Omniscience to watch him, infinite Goodness to provide for him. The tamest religious experience has in it poems, tragedies, histories, Iliads, Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Ought not such a one have something to say?

If you were ever in the army you know what it is to see an officer on horseback dash swiftly past carrying a dispatch. You wondered as he went what the news was. Was the army to advance, or was an enemy coming?

So every Christian carries a dispatch from God to the world. Let him ride swiftly to deliver it. The army is to advance and the enemy is coming. Go out and fulfill your mission. You may have had a letter committed to your care, and after some days you find it in one of your pockets, you forgot to deliver it. Great was your chagrin when you found that it pertained to some sickness or trouble. God gives every man a letter of warning or invitation to carry, and what will be your chagrin in the judgment to find that you nave forgotten it!

A week-night meeting widens the pulpit till all the people can stand on it. Such a service tests one's piety. No credit for going to church on Sabbath. Places of amusement are all closed, and there is no money to be made. But week-nights every kind of temptation and opportunity spreads before a man, and if he goes to the praying circle he must give up these things. The man who goes to the weekly service regularly through moonlight and pitch darkness, through good walking and slush ankle-deep, will in the book of judgment find it set down to his credit. He will have a better seat in heaven than the man who went only when the walking was good, and the weather comfortable, and the services attractive, and his health perfect. That service which costs nothing God accounts as nothing.

A week-night service thrusts religion in the secularities of the week. It is as much as to say, "This is God's Wednesday, or God's Thursday, or God's Friday, or God's week." You would not give much for a property the possession of which you could have only one-seventh of the time, and God does not want that man whose services he can have only on Sabbath. If you paid full wages to a man and found out that six-sevenths of the time he was serving a rival house, you would be indignant; and the man who takes God's goodness and gives six-sevenths of his time to the world, the flesh and the devil is an abomination to the Lord. The whole week ought to be a temple of seven rooms dedicated to God. You may, if you will, make one room the holy of holies, but let all the temple be consecrate.

The week-night service gives additional opportunity of religious culture, and we find it so difficult to do right and be right that we cannot afford to miss any opportunity. Such a service is a lunch between the Sabbath meals, and if we do not take it we get weak and faint. A truth coming to us then ought to be especially effective.

If you are on a railroad train, and stop at the depot, and a boy comes in with a telegram, all the passengers lean forward and wonder if it is for them. It may be news from home. It must be urgent or it would not be brought there. Now, if while we are rushing on in the whirl of every-day excitement, a message of God meets us, it must be an urgent and important message. If God speaks to us in a meeting mid-week, it is because there is something that needs to be said before next Sunday.

SABBATH EVENING

TEA-TABLE.