Newspaper Page Text
The Christian Index.
— -■ - ------- - ' .'..1? ■ _ El. / C . ... W ‘
Vol. 57 —No. 11.
Table of Contents.
Fibst Page—Alabama Department: The Re
lationsof Christianity to Sclent*; Our New-
York Letter.
Second Page.—Correspondence: The Dutv
of Christians—A Layro»n; The Baptist
Cause in St. Louis—George A. Lofton;Mass
Meetings at our (inventions ~J. H
Campbell. The Sunday-Soheol: Sancti
fied Affliction—Lesson for Appl $. 1879;
etC ' v-.1 I .111
Titian Paus.—The Household: What is Hea
ven?—Poetry; Seeing Mother; .'Attractive,
Luncheons;'Rules for Home TSdu -Mtion;
Trim Your Lamps; Home —Poetry.
Fourth Page.—Editorials: RmpofiMbilitj- for
Crime; Quere; A College Afloat; A Bereaved-
People; A Shocking Tragedy; Blander Si-!
lenced; The Chinese in California: Home
Mission Board; Georgia Baptist Con ven -
tion; Georgia Baptiet News. 01 -<
Fifth Page—Georgia Baptist Mews; ; ecul*r
Editorials; Flesh or Fruit; Notes on Nbw
Books: Georgia News pdtems of News.
Sixth Page.—Childrens' OirneT: The Road
to Slumber-land—Poetry; A-Corn; Little
Toddles; Reading; .The Original Mother
Goose; etc.
Seventh Page. Farmers' Index: Farm
Work; Borrowed Notes; etc.
Eighth Page—Florida Depart nient: Weekly |
News and Laconics’ The Baptist Columbia
Union; Marriage Notice, etc.
Alabama Department.
UY SAMUKL HENDKRSON.
THE RELA TIONB OF CHRISTIAN
ITY TO SCIENCE.
No sincere believer in the divine in
spiration of the Bible is ever disturbed
in his faith by those periodical on
slaughts which scientists make upon
Christianity. That the volume of in
spiration and the volume of nature are
products of the same Infinite Being, he
never cherishes a doubt. That projier
ly comprehended and interpreted there
is no conflict between them, he has no
question. That in their separate
spheres they are each doing the preach
ing that God bids them, by declaring
“His eternal power and god-head,”.he
joyfully accepts. Any effort, therefore,
which aims to distract this harmony,
to set the one against the other, he must
ever regard as unwarranted, nay, as an
attempt to pervert the testimony of the
one as against the other. Perhaps if
we had sonde clear concoptiAn of the
particular ‘'meets and bounds” of each
of these two grand expositions of the
divine will and character, it would aid
no little in settling their relations to
each other. Let us make a little effort
in that direction.
1. All the sciences, properly so-called,
have existed in the world ever since
God finished it, and placed man in
possession of it. They are co-eval with
nature. Time has neither added to
nor substracted from them. They are
to-day just what they were when the
‘‘sons of God” shouted for joy over the
new-made creation. “Development”
may bring out what is in an object, but
it cannot create an atom. “Evolution,”
as it is called, may modify, change, and
even improve, races of animals or
plants, for instance, but, as Cook some
where says, (for I have seen none of
his books, and can only quote at second
hand,) it never can evolve what was
never involved; it never can, by any
process, extract that from a substance
that is not in it. All we aim to affirm
is, that the sciences are, to say the least
of it, just as old as man. This we sup
pose no one will deny.
Again : We often Use the term “new
science,” not because it is new in the
proper sense of the term, but because it
has just been discovered, (uncovered.)
The very word implies its previous exis
tence. This continent is called the
“New World,” not because it is not as
old as the “Old World,” but because it
was discovered at a comparatively re
cent period. There has not been a
time since God said “Let there be light,”
when the sun would not have painted
the human face upon the plate, had
man known how to adjust the plate to
the face, and in proper relations to the
light. There never was a time when
electricity would not have borne a mes
sage from one part of the globe to an
other, if we had known how to harness
it. So that in all the domain of na
ture, is it literally true as Solomon
says, “There is nothing new under the
sun.”
2. God endowed man with nil those
capacities which enable him to “re
plenish the earth and subdue it;” to
discover and appropriate all its agen
cies, forces, sciences, everything in
earth,nir and seas, to the practical pur
poses of life. He needs no revelation
to teach that which comes within the
jurisdiction of his senses. It would be
degrading to the divine idea to suppose
Him intercepting in their destination
self-evident truths —revealing that, we
mean, which reveals itself. Did Newton
need a revelation to teach him that the
apple fell in obedience to the law of
gravitation? Did Galileo need a revela
tion to teach him that the earth moved
and the sun was stationary? But why
multiply illustrations? Whatever God
has given man power to do, he may
consider himself as solemnly enjoined
SOUTH-WESTERN BAPTIST.
of Alabama.
to do. Whatever He has revealed in I
the book of nature, He has silently i
committed Himself not to reveal in the
Book of Revelation. Indeed, the prin
ciples of the physical sciences seem to
have existed in nature on purpose to
excite and develop the mind—as educa
tors “pointing through nature up to
nature's God”—declaring as with a
thousand tongues “His eternal power
and god-head.” So that they serve the
double purpose of promoting man’s
comfort and happiness, and reminding
him of his and their divine origin.
3. Revelation, then, proceeds upon
the hyfiothesis, that the nature and
destination of man require certain
truths 'which science cannot teach, and
his intellect cannot evolve—truths
which come from the vast depths of
that eternity to which he is tending,
and which relate to the unseen econ
omy on which he is so soon to enter—
truths which address that moral con
sciousness, that immortal part of his
nature, which the things of sense never
can adequately impress, and the very
existence of which implies the neces
sity of such revelation. If the “Bible
must not teach anything that man can
teach himself,” and if man must know
things that he cannot thus teach him
self, then it follows as a moral necessi
ty that God must teach him. Our
natural senses and mental powers
place us in such relations with earthly
things as to supercede the necessity of
intermediary agencies to solve the
problems of science, whether material
or intellectual. Our moral conscious
ness places us in like relations to re
vealed truth, qualifying us to recog
nize and so far comprehend and ap
ply that truth to ourselves, as to fit us
for “the life that now is, and that
which is to come.” Subjective capaci
ty implies the existence of corresponding
objective truth. The eye implies the
existence of light— the ear implied the
existence of sound, etc. And our'moral
and spiritual consciouensi implies
the existence of moral and spiritual
truth. If the truth exists anywhere,
it exists in the word of God. Is it,
then, too much to say that we have
the same authority to affirm that
the Bible came from God, as that the
sun shines? The only difference is, one
is a natural, the other. a moral,'dem
onstration.
Finally, and to indicate how Chris
tianity and science interpenetrate each
other—how God lias linked them in
perpetual amity—let us observe, that
wherever Christianity is most unfet
tered—wherever the State leaves
it endowed with its own self-existing,
self-conservative, and self-perpetuating
power, there science, arts, everything
that expands the intellect, that purifies
and enables the character, and adds to
the comfort and happiness of man,
flourish with the most princely exu
berance. Those nations that have con
tributed most to science are those on
whom the sun-light of divine revela
tion has poured its unobstructed rays.
It is as if the vast laboratory of nature
had, by the curse of sin, been con
signed to darkness until suddenly illu
minated by the “sun of righteousness,”
it revealed its untold sources of wealth,
of comfort, of happiness, to our race.
Can anything present a sadder sight
—can any thing express a more aban
doned ingratitude—than those scien
tists who assume to pour contempt up
on the very system of truth, the very
source of light, to which they are in
debted for all their achievements!
But this topic would require volumes
to exhaust, rather than a few para
graphs, and we must desist. We have
only sought to suggest a few general
truths, which, properly carried out to
their legitimate results, would conduct
the reader to that conservative ground
on which all the vast machinery of
God’s works, material and spiritual,
integrate each other, making up the
unity of one vast drama, which, when
completed, will constitute the master
piece of His handiwork. “On His
head are many crowns." The crown of
every science, as well as the crown
of redemption, will yet grace that
head that once bore the crown
of thorns! Creation—providence—re
demption—will each bring its revenue
of glory, and swell the chorus that as
cribes “honor, and might, and dominion
to Him that sitteth on the throne, and
to the Lamb for ever and ever.” O
reader, shall our voices swell that
“seven-fold chorus of hallelujahs and
harping symphonies!" .Shull we be
there to celebrate that coronation, in
which the redeemed of earth mid the
angelic hosts shall unite in that Inst
doxology: “Alleluia, for the Lord God
omnipotent reigneth!”
OUR NEW YORK LETTER.
[Special Correspondence of Tur. CiiniSTtAs
Index.)
SHILOH SHELTER FOR THE POOR.
The night side of the Metropolis has
many phases not yet included in those
wanderings of Rev. DeWitt Talmage,
for which, in part, he has had to an
swer to his Presbytery. In November
Atlanta, Georgia, March 20, 1879.
1875, Mr. Charles H. Dessart was
walking by the corner of Prince and
Marion Streets, and saw that the old
Shiloh church there was for sale. He
was a kind man, and had wanted some
more systematic form of benevolence,
than his former dole to the poor from
his own door. The whole neighbor
hood was in need of some reformatory
influence, for it was famous for its ill
fame, deserted by the gentle folk that
had built mansions there in the day
that our America thought well of a
Prince Regent, and its Italian wine
shops were among its best parts. Even
where it intersected with Broadway,
in the face of lamps and the police,
the most infamous den of the “Pretty
Waiter Girls,” of New York, flared
nightly in palatial gas and gilding.
Therefore, our good man bought the
old church. The old pews yet stood
Chore, and heopened his church on the
most liberal system of “free pews.”
One of the offices of the old time Beadle
in England, was to “paunch ye sleepie
folk,” —as an old canon hath it. But
Mr. Dessart was willing for his congre
gation to sleep. He did not run the
risk that a missionary might by mis
take, preach an “awakening sermon,"
for he employed none. He expected
his whole congregation to sleep, and
put in clean straw and ticking, with
bed clothes, so that they should. Then
he left notices at every police station
in the city, that all shelterless persons,
of seeming decency and not drunk,
might be given a Shiloh card, and sent
to church. There is a clasp that in
our cities is known as “rounders,” with
whom Atlanta probably has some ac
quaintance. They “go round” the circle
of station houses, and by a night in
each, are able, in a city of 1,200,000
inhabitants, to lodge at city cost all
winter. A moral class of them, “go
round” the churches, and will keep
membership just so long as the com
mittee on charities will supply them.
The highest class will “go round” the
houses to rent, paying or promising
the first month’s rent, and staying till
turned out. The new owner of Shiloh
found that a sufficient number of self
called—“single gentlemen”—had turn
ed themselves out, to occupy every
pew he had, every night. It is a well
kncAn fact that an.Y man ' cars cWledl
a city crowd in ten minutes, by staring
intently at nothing, and just as true
that a free charity, in the hands of a
green man, will gather a mob in
amazingly quick time. He stood it
one winter, and then cleared out his
over zealous believers in free grace of
the human sort. Then he adopted
that feature of a modern church most
invariable of all—the collection. Like
some of our Catholic churches, it was
not left to discretion but was fixed, and
was taken at the door, lest some one
dodge the plate. By this time “Shiloh
shelter” was so popular, that its pews
overflowed, and an income was sure.
I do not know of any other church in
New York, which did not in like case,
at once run in debt all they could for a
brown stone church. In this case,
there was no young graduate unable to
preach without testhctic surroundings
and a quartette. Therefore, the air
space was occupied by stout scantlings
erected at short intervals, and filled
in with hammocks of stout cloth.
These were at a premium as soon as
tried, showing that the poor are fond
of “the highest (beds) in the Syna
gogue”—as well as some other people.
The collection now recognized an aris
tocratic membership, and pews were
“let” at three cents, and hammocks
were taken at five cents. There never
was an auction for “best pews” as at
Plymouth, which may be one reason
that Shiloh is not a paying investment.
It soon became more than a “shelter,”
for the demand, for, “just a dime if ye
please stir this mornin,’ to step round
i the corner an’ git a bit o’ grub,” was
I found very good for the nearest
; rum-mill, but bad for the Shiloh con
i gregation and the owner. He then be
gan the “boiled mush” institution,
; this also for a consideration. It was
■ two cents. But for that sum, the
! pew holder or his higher brother,
could get all he could contain at once,
I with the wide variety in courses, of
mush flavored with sugar, mush Ila
j vored with pork, and a lottery in the
| chance that a scrap of pork might get
l in his bowl. The poor members, able
- to pass the door on a three or five
I cent ticket, might saw and split wood,
’ sweep, scrub, wait (on the others I
; mean) and, in case of old and good
i standing, get in on w irking out his
pew rent. The most remarkable
; feature in the Shelter is the devermin
| ating room. It is six feet square, and
can be steam-heated from 140 to 160
degrees. The use is very simple. Our
i soldier readers will remember the very
| common sight in Confederate camps on
siinnny days, of the private and officer
’ intently examining the seams of his
| shirt, and now anil then extracting a
small insect. What could not be done
j for 50,000 men, can be done for 450 to
475, and the man observed to “scratch,”
1 is promptly required to hang his gar-
ments over night in the steam room.
At dawn, the most lively flea (or oth
erwise) will be dead. Towels, soap,
buttons and needles, are free. There is
a doctor for those who need one.. No
drunken man can get in. Mr. Dessart,
superintends in person, from 8 to 10
p. m. The pew holders have their
rights, and by due notice, can occupy
the Bam'? beds every night. It is the
only c aggregation in New York that
contains no dead-heads. Mostly they
“labor Ijvitn their hands,” finding wit
work reliable, and slowly but sure
ly the Aielter educates men to be so
ber, industrious, fond of the water
room which at first they dread, clean
ly, and now and then it has a graduate,
who emerges into the exalted rank of
human beings, able to take a wife and
eariv tb/> “dollar a day,” which Mr.
Beeoticw thinks is enough.
HOMES FOR THE POOR.
The next step above some -sort of
“shelter,” of which our metropolis can
give some fifty varying specimens, is
the grade of life where “the free and
independent citizen of the United
States,” has a sanctuary guarded by a
a door, .which he calls his home. We
have recently had a model-cottage
competition, and the end is not yet.
The only feature in it worthy of men
tion is, that the idea held by architect
and capitalist, of the queer and useful
article known as “the poor man,”; is an
idea of multitude. Not of multitude
of the poor, for those who see them
most, have an inadequate idea of what
a million is, but of variety in treat
ment. One mart will propose a little
palace, on the order of A. T. Stewart’s
“garden city,” in which fine art would
not be out of place, the next one
sees no trouble in herding a family
of growing sons and daughters into the
space of one room. The two essential
things for health, air and water, are
either super or non-abundant, and light
varies in the designs, from the hot
house idea of all sun, to the building
covering all of its one hundred feet of
depth, and more tljan cathedral dim
ness, achieved by a sky-light. The
moral itmosphere is not thought of in
any ct'l e, and the sad thought of the
poor Ld gentle Christian, forced to
P’lWtit recent Children and cultufed
>tv> thehikst persons
who are seeking low rent, and saying,
“How can I save my babes from sight
and hearing of sin?” meets an impa
tient —“I don’t know.” Our prisons
breed sin, by throwing the offender in
his first stage, into the line of the ex
pert tuition. Our reformatives breed
sin, from casting of the lad or girl just
beginning wrong, with the children of
thieves and roughs, educated to evil.
Our asylums breed sin, from the fact
that the orphan of decent parentage,
may be put to bed, and is put to play,
with those to whom at ten years of
age, no sin is new save murder, and
some of them have seen. that. Our
crowded homes for the poor, breed sin,
from the fact that the hall-ways, back
yards and jiavements, are the sole pla
ces where a child can play—or some
times breathe— and to which an over
worked woman can banish noise.
Our public schools breed sin, for the
child of the vilest, is ordered by the
inspector to take its place with the
children of the godly and the honest,
and no teacher dares make a distinction,
lest the little swearer or brute or un
clean one, turn out to be the heir of
the most influential beer-seller and pol
itician in the ward. Thus the leverage
of evil takes poverty for its fulcrum,
and moves the world.
EDUCATED IMPIETY.
The most of us remember how re
cent was the cry of the secular press,—
Educate, — Educate, — Educate, — and
jails may be sold, the constable sent to
the plow, and the judges may play
whist in term time. All men would
know how to make honest livings ; all
children would grow up informed and
wise; the old criminals would grow
ashamed to do evil in so holy an asso
ciation, and we might dispense with
'the Second Advent, as the world would
need no Saviour save the common
school. Sadly as the toll of a funeral
bell, rang on the old truth of the
world’s Christ—“Ye must be born
again,” and it seemed to come from
‘‘harsh bells, jangled and out of tune.”
No one thought that the bad man
might get a sharper tool, that the keen
rascal might arise to the very culture
of sin, that the vile might so gild vice
mid hallow impurity with elegance,
that, as in Rome in her decay, and
Corinth in her splendor, to strike the
sin was to strike the fine arts, the re
finement and the education of the land.
In the old Know Nothing day, it was
the herding here of Europe’s outcasts,
that was feared us some fear the “heath
en Chinee" now. But n Judge of the
Tombs Police Court told me yesterday,
“1 am every day called upon to judge
well dressed and educated scoundrels."
The man who advertises for country
shop-girls, and treats the selected pret
ty victim to ices, wine and theatre,
in ak”R no mistakes in spelling nor
grammar. The bank cashier or presi-
THE CHRISTIAN HERALD,
of Tennessee.
dent, who borrows “for a day or two”
on the collateral securities of its patrons,
and who spends the deposits, does.it in
such 'elegant villas, such intellectual
gatherings of the gentle and the good,
and is so liberal with his stealings, that
pity goes with and breaks his fall, or
wins his pardon, or acquits him at the
bar. It is a daily wonder to me, as I'
visit the poor, to hear the plaint, “We
are very poor, sir; times is very hard,
but it wasn’t so in the times of the
Boss.” The “Boss” is Tweed, and Judge
Westbrook’s judgment of $6,537,117.-
38, due from him to the plundered city,
still stands unpaid. Tweed, Miller,
Garvey, Connally, Keyser and the New
York Printing Company, were royal
souls, who stole as Frederick the Great,
the First Napoleon, the English in
India, and B. F. Butler, have done.
Therefore, the day of Tweed is mourned
over by his old henchmen, and by the
city working men, who could get $3 a
day, and vote. The skill of the cracks
man, as the burglar is politely called,
commands the most unbounded respect
of the police, and it was with almost
awe and reverence, that a sergeant in
blue said to me last week: “That’s her;
ain’t she a fine one?” It was the wife
of the . head of a gang, beautifully
dressed, and on her way to his cell.
"French Louis, the fitter,” “Miller, of
Hes'ter street,” “Scotch Chris, who has
turned out some good work,” and “Ma
culloiigh, of Eldridge street, who has
made .some of the finest tools as I ever
set my peepers on,” are some of the
terms of laudation one hears of the
kings of house-breaking. Said one of
these Birds of the Tomb : “Them nig
gers that broke Macy’s house, do you
call them burglars? Why, as clumsy
tools as them ought to be hung. Do
ye think I wouldn’t have been sent by
the maker of their burglar-alarm to
‘test the circuit,’ and have cut the floor
wire, and then gone in as a gentleman
should?” Many a thief could make
his $3 a day now, as a skilled mechan
ic, and the array of criminals who could
teach Algebra, of sots who can quote
Latin, of “suspecteds,” who can give
the liighest testimonials in the land,
and not' always forge them, is-terrible
to contemplate. Education without
Christianity, indeed, abolish# the old
'.Jun witl.f cov-ho'm ••and
cloven hoof, but it gives in by place a
very tasteful and soft-spoken toeing in
polished boots and genteel business
suit, who can show so many reasons
for making him your confidential clerk,
that he is himself surprised, when you
resent the loss of a few bonds, or the
collection of a few of your accounts.
THE SOURCES OF VICE.
These springs are, in truth, fed from
the reservoirs of a culture that omits
God. But in a secondary way, the
sources are innumerable. A religious
paper had very lately a glowing edito
rial about “More Good Reading than
Bad.” The writer had read through
the catalogues of half a dozen great
publishers, and was very happy over
the noble array of fine books. He did
not seem to know that the publishers
of the New York Weekly had been able
to pay SSOO to SI,OOO for a story, while
Harpers, for the same quantity of MS.,
could only offer $l5O to S2OO. That
when a standard house could only put
out a few boards, bearing modest bills
two feet square, the vendor of sensation
could put up his sign-boards forty feet
long, and letters that could be read
from the cars half a mile away, with
their undisputed claim of 350,000 ac
tual circulation. In the very week of
the jubilant article, a big show-bill
could be seen for three hundred miles
of streets and roads, picturing a bully
drawing a knife over a Celestial, with
| the quotation from the serial it illus-
I trated : “I say, I’ard, just let me at that
I heathen Chinee. Oh, just,let me chaw
j his ear!” What wonder that the son
I of a dear lady friend of mine, by acci
dent beat out the eye of the'coachman,
nearly, with the slung-shot he had
I bought under the excitement of a “nice
| story/’ The Hoys and Girls of Leslie,
j it is said, is to be made a “little strong
! er and more exciting,” to eonqiete with
: its more openly vile rivals; and the
Day’s Doings, that was no more issued
after the Rev. Dr. Charles Force Deems
consented to run a Sunday magazine
for him, has a dozen worse followers,
that give no address of publication. It
is said that a dog must have some taste
for the game, to have a good nose for
it, but Mr. Comstock has almost made
it possible for a Northern female school
I to publish a catalogue, and not know
| that a list of vile and cheap books
1 would be sent to every name in it. The
convictions are few, but there is a
wholesome terror. Usually uncounted
us a source of crime and vice, but very
real, is the sale of all sorts of poison, from
swill-milk to alcohol-wines made with
drugs. How a pure and sound mind
can exist in a body fed in the n esses
and compounds of New York, 1 can’t
understand. Pork, to which the dead
rat is occasionally thrown, is no more
offensive than the swill; the Blissvillc
cow-sheds that have defied Bergh for
four yours, and where now the "milk-
Whole No. 2361.
maids,” with big whiskers and German
oaths, stone the reporters ; drinks that
would make a satan of the mildest
tempered working man, and do; cheap
meat that no man can eat who sees
the suffering and injured catttle that
furnish it; butter that is made by acid
and the refuse fat from which smell
and flavor is taken ; strangled poultry
kept with the entrails in, on ice, for
weeks until sale is made; water that
holds the washing of fifty miles of un
clean country—why a man who has
only a peck of dirt to eat in a life-time,
can get his full allowance in a week,
and die happy!
CHEAP CRIMINAL LABOR..
One of the most important acts be
fore the present New York Legislature
is the bill asking Congress to devote our
territory of Alaska, to the purposes qf
an American Botany Bay. The syq
cess of England in filling her Austrar
lian provinces with ex-Newgate gentry
who make such valient law-defying
Bushmen, as recent reports inform us#fe
has stimulated one of our legislators to
propose that the bit of practical Mon
roe Doctrine, for which we paid Russia
$7,000,000, will make a capital place in
which to freeze convicts to death. He
also seems to have a spite against the
army, as its officers are to,cease Indian
hunting, and go to Alaska with the
convicts, (he does not say under what
conviction, but we will kindly think it
is for certain acts at Southern state
houses. ) The convict labor question
is no small one here, for the
bootmaker, or other manufacturer, who
can get his labor at 50 cents a day, and
have it fed and clothed by the State, is
able seriously to compete with the ones
who pay $2.50 and $3.00 a day for a
better grade. The purchasers, who are
tired of paying now, with gold at par
only, the same prices as when it stood
at 2.60 above paper, stand this com pc-,
tition very well. But the workingmen
being voters, sometimes make warm
work for the candidates. It is an im
portant thing that our convicts should
have trades by which to honestly live,
if they will. And to send them to Alas
ka for life, as the bill proposes, with
their wives and children, will necessitate
the crqel laws of Europe, hanging all
convicts/n b,reach of ban.
oVK own missions.
The inos! inf people think that w.q
Christian fields of hardships, are now
the heathen ones, and that a metropo
litan preacher must roll in his carriage
and live in clover (metaphorically.)
But glance, for instance at the north
shore of Staten Island, where land is
still low by the acre, (not sold by the
oot as elsewhere) and yet is in sight
of the city, and situated at the foot of
its magnificcent bay. Factories, dye
ing establishments, yards of all sorts,
there do the dirty work that the Board
of Health drives out of the city, and
many thousands of poor people settle
in reach of such employment. Then
the hard time cuts them down to half
or quarter time, and sometimes the
factory only gets up steam once a
week. The people have souls and want
to be saved, and call for the gospel.
You leave the city on the 6 p. m. boat,
and get to the landing under the early
dark of the North, and find two miles
of slush and strange roads between you
and your place. You get there, and
are put in a room where your beard
freezes in the water you wash in,’ and
the ice sometimes does not split its
pitcher. It is well to have a portable
spirit lamp to warm fingers over, or
the shirt-button and collar will nev
er meet under the numb fingers. With
no bell, there is a nice walk of two
miles in any direction you like, to tell
the people you are going to preach.
The people being half Irish, the boots
of the Catholic laborer are ready to
“to speed the parting guest” who don’t
i belong to“Howly Mither Church.” You
| are at last in the pulpit, with yourpeo
; pie thick as bees about two stoves, and
the shawls about the ears and coat-col
lars turned up, suggest they will try to
stand it as long as you can. As the
glass is smashed by sportive boys out
of the window next you, it looks prob
j able that they will, and you try to get
I the fire in the heart that the distant
stove don’t give you. Yon are rather
I prqud of that dyspepsia of yours, but
the dinner of cabbage and pork when
' you call, is as alarming as you are hun
gry. But you go on in the work, and
the shawls and collars begin to drop.
I and the mud freezes so that more peo
ple come in. The knot at the ladies’
: stove is the first to break, and then the
iniile one, mid you see eager and loving
faces, lit by the old truth that warmed
I the fisher-folk of Galilee. You feel
j that Christ is master of even u Staten
1 Island ice-corner, and are surprised at
i the next dinner with the opening of
: such old stores of sweets mid good
things, as noble-hearted women love to
give to one they like. The sun breaks
out, and the Sun of Righteousness out
i shines his pule winter fire, and you are
astonished to find that you are more hap
| py than in that rather stiff city church.
| It is n grand gospel that will warm you
1 up in this climate. H. W. C.
J •