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The Golden Age for January 6, 1910. f
A CUFF FOR THAU TIFF'D TFFh.'
Tabernacle Sermon by Reb. Len G Broughton, D. D.
Stenographically reported for The Golden Age.—Copyright applied for.
Fifth sermon in series on "Apostasy,” based on
the book of Malachi.
TEXT, Mai. 1:13: “Ye also said, Behold what wea
riness is it, and ye have snuffed at it, saith the
Lord.”
E have thus far considered four separate
and distinct and burning items in the
bill of indictment that the prophet
brought against Israel for her apostasy,
in this book of Malachi. The first was
doubting the love of God; second, pre
tense and profanity; third, useless sac
rifice; fourth, demanding pay for serv
ice. We have for consideration the fifth
c
item, the item contained in this thirteenth verse —
we may call it looking upon service, the service of
God, as a hardship; and groaning, and growling, and
whining in the performance of religious duty. Israel
at one time delighted in the service of God; it was
her meat and her drink to serve God. She realized
the goodness of God. He had led Israel from a life
of slavery into a life of liberty and blessing, and
she was very grateful to God for His goodness, for
His kindness, His indescribable mercy, and she de
lighted to serve Him, and to worship Him. She lov
ed the time when she entered the temple to worship,
but after God had given her glory and honor among
the nations, she got conceited; sat down, folded her
arms and felt that no longer could she render to God
this ordinary service and worship that she had ren
dered to Him. She felt that she had served long
enough; that she was tired and needed a rest. I
have known people in our day just like that; I have
Mgipwn people actually to come to me and tell,
WHWiisOgy needed a vacation from service,
and that theywm^going to visit around and see how
other folks were doing; it practically meant take
a rest, a vacation from serving -God. At any rate,
Israel had a change in her heart and in her life.
Some sort of change came over her that made her
feel the grinding of service; and while she contin
ued in away to serve and to -worship, she did it in
an entirely different spirit, and it is the spirit with
which we do a thing that counts. Men are not al
ways able to read the spirit that lies back of the
deed, but God is, and God was, watching Israel’s
spirit, and He knew that there had come a change
over the spirit of this people; that instead of her
service *b’eing free and hearty and loving, it was a
service of hardship, of weariness, of groaning, of anx
iety, of dread, and hence the rebuke that the prophet
brings against Israel for her groaning in service.
“Ye say also, behold what weariness is it; how it
tires me, and wearies me; I wish I did not have to
render this service. Wish there would come a new
regime that would give me an excuse to slip out and
Jftet somebody else come in and have part of the bur
den that I have been carrying so long; how tired I
am of it all!”
THE TEST OF FRIENDSHIP.
What I want us to do now is not to follow any
longer the history of Israel, her mistakes and blun
ders and sins, but to turn from Israel to ourselves
and see if we can see wherein this indictment of
Israel is applicable to us today as a church and as a
people. Is it applicable to us? Let me first of all
restate our position of last week. In considering
4he charge of demanding pay for service of God, we
stated that the ethic of the world and the ethic of
the Christian life is very different; that the ethic
of the world is this, no pay, no service. The ethic
of the Christian life is expressed in one word —love.
Where that word love reigns there are no books
kept; no debit and credit account. It is all credit
with love; love never charges anything; keeps no
account of that which is due; it reckons that nothing
is due it; the moment that love begins to keep books
of a debit and credit character, that moment the
essence of love is destroyed. Obligation comes in,
takes its place and destroys its sweetness, its very
essence. It is not only true that love admits of no
bookkeeping, but it is also true that love admits of
no hardships.
There is no such thing as a conscious
hardship where love reigns. There can not be. The
moment that the. service is looked upon as hardship
that moment you may rest assured love has taken
its flight. It is no longer there. It is true with the
love that exists from friend to friend. I think the
most abused word in the English language is the
word friend; we speak it so lightly, including so
many people that do not deserve to be included.
If we come to sit down and porperly analyze friend
ship we could count all the friends that we have
on the fingers of our two hands, if not of one. Dr.
Campbell Morgan says that he doubts if any man
had more than one real friend at a time. Some of
us will remember a sermon he preached here on
friendship in which he laid down this as the supreme
test of friendship; that two people could sit together
on a railroad car and never speak a word one to the
other for hours at a time. That to him is the test
of friendship; there being such distinct, clear under
standing between them, such consciousness of the
fact of what they were to each other, that they need
not even talk. If you will apply that you will see that
there is something in it. The moment I feel I have
got to entertain you, that moment friendship has
taken flight. There is no friendship there. The mo
ment that you feel that you have got to entertain me
or else I will feel hurt or uncomfortable, that mo
ment you may know there is no friendship there;
there is not that understanding that exists between
friend and friend. Friendship lays no burdens and
demands no obligations. Where there is friendship
there is no hardship. In the first place, the friend
-would not demand of his friend a thing that would
be a pain to his friend to give. An old pagan philos
opher addressing a man whom he regarded as his
friend, said: “If you would have a test of my friend- j
ship, command that I give you my entire posses-J
sion”; and his friend replied, “It would not be friendJ
ship in me if I were to demand of thee that whi«S|
would impoverish thee.” There is the principal
There can be no hardship between friend and frufl
because a friend can not demand of a friendX
which would impoverish or cause him pajffi
that beautiful, sweet understanding of friendship^- 2
Again, it is true of the love of business. How do
you explain the business thrift and progress of the
world today? You explain it upon the principle of
love. Men are not so anxious to make money as it
appears. I was recently talking with a rich business
man who gets up early in the morning and is at his
place of business by eight o’clock, oftentimes open
ing the doors himself, and yet he is one of the lead
ings business men of this southern country; he does
not have to do it, and does not care so much for
making money. I said, “Why do "you give yourself
with such anxious toil to the grind of business?” He
said, “There is no grind about it; it is the delight
of. my life just to stand around and see the work as
it proceeds from early morning until night; you have
no idea what a charm there is about it. If it were
simply a question of dollars and cents I would re
tire from business; but I can not retire from busi
ness; I love it”; and it is his love for his business
that does away with the grind. It would be a terrific
grind to me. Nothing could grind me any more than
to sit in a dry goods store and see the women pull
hair and tear down all the goods in the house and
walk out and buy nothing; not even working on the
chaingang would compare to it. It isn’t so with him;
he loves his business and it is his love for the busi
ness that takes the grind out of it. There is no
hardship about it.
WHERE LOVE REIGNS SUPREME.
The same thing is true about the love of pleasure.
I was in Boston some years ago on Thanksgiving
day when the Yale-Harvard football game came off,
and there were thousands upon top of thousands
of people from the sections around about, one of
the largest crowds that Boston ever had, and it was
one of the coldest days that I ever felt I thought
I would literally freeze over the radiator, and I had
on all my clothes and had a blanket around me. I
could look out through my window and see young
college boys and girls with their college colors on,
the wind howling and cutting and biting, and they
were having the biggest time you ever saw. If it
had been a religious occasion, there would have been
five thousand frozen people in Boston that day, but
there was an engine that pumped in their breasts
that was like a great steam engine, their blood went
bounding through their bodies and kept them from
getting cold. The love that they had for that sport
kept the cold out; it destroyed the hardship.
It is true of every kind of love. There is the young
man who works hard every day, all day long, at
hard labor, and yet every night in the week, just as
long as the old man will let him, he will sit up with
the girl that he loves, and never say anything about it
the next morning; and if he had to go to meeting
every night for a week, he would talk and complain
about the hardship of it all day long. This is a fact,
and the explanation is thoroughly logical and phil
osophical. Where love reigns there is no hardship.
The young woman that he calls upon can work hard
all the week, and every night in the week she will
spend two hours and a half before a looking glass
and sit up five hours talking to him, and the next
day her eyes look like saucers; like they never could
shut and never could sleep, and yet she will go to
church and want to yawn while the sermon is being
preached. Why? We all know why.
The same thing is seen in the love of parent for
the child. I remember a mother that for four months
walked up and down with a little twelve
months old girl in b''
every day, and r
Ul >- For fhr«J
off; she nev»
up; she k#«
looked
■ ■ ■> ■ 1 • . ■■■
haV De~err ....
I have looked in
women have to live, and have
do it. I wonder that they do not go to pieces. Why
aren’t they in nervous prostration half of their time?
It is the wonder of my life as I look upon the great
world, why it is that about half the folks are not
down on beds of sickness or in the lunatic asylums.
The only thing that explains it is what I am trying to
impress this morning—it is love that enables them
to stand it all, and I tell you this morning, if you are
in a business where the love of it doesn’t nerve you
up to the day’s discharge of your duty, then you
had better exchange your business. If you are con
templating a relationship that is not a relationship
of real downright lctve, you had better break off, for
it won’t be long before you feel the grind, and it is
the grind that breaks you down. It is the grind that
breaks; it is the worry that causes gray hairs to
come prematurely. Work does not kill, but worry
does. It is a wonder how much work a man can do,
a woman can do, if only we can have the grind taken
out —the hardship, which is the lack of love.
“SHE I -OVE D Ml Ir. .
Just is true in our relationship to tbjngffl
it is true in our relationship to our Lord
Church. One of the prettiest pictures drawl
gospels is. the picture drawn of Jesus wb/
there in the home of Simon the
strange thing that Jesus is invited
a Pharisee, a religious sect of men wh* V
are better than others; a proud, disdain*|
men, exactly opposite to the teaching </
rene; a man who thinks he is better
else, but he has invited Him and he K
' J ISii
they are at meat, and a thing
be explained by the Lord, Himse»
she enters without asking pe*
very rude thing. She enters wit
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