There is a constant sympathy expressed by robust people for those of slight physical const.i.tution. I think the sympathy ought to turn in the opposite direction. It is the delicate people who escape the most fearful disorders, and in three cases out of four live the longest. These gigantic structures are almost always reckless of health. They say, "Nothing hurts me," and so they stand in draughts, and go out into the night air to cool off, and eat crabs at midnight, and doff their flannels in April, and carelessly get their feet wet.
But the delicate people are shy of peril. They know that disease has been fishing for them for twenty years, and they keep away from the hook. No trout can be caught if he sees the shadow of the sportsman on the brook.
These people whom everybody expects to die, live on most tenaciously.
I know of a young lady who evidently married a very wealthy man of eighty-five years on the ground he was very delicate, and with reference to her one-third. But the aged invalid is so careful of his health, and the young wife so reckless of hers, that it is now uncertain whether she will inherit his store-houses or he inherit her wedding-rings.
Health and longevity depend more upon caution and intelligent management of one"s self than upon original physical outfit. Paul"s advice to the sheriff is appropriate to people in all occupations: "Do thyself no harm!"
Besides that, said the governor, I have moved and settled in very comfortable quarters since I was at this table before. The house I have moved in is not a better house, but somehow I feel more contented.
Most of our households are quieted after the great annual upsetting. The last carpet is tacked down. The strings that were scattered along the floor have been rolled up in a ball. We begin to know the turns in the stairway. Things are settling down, and we shall soon feel at home in our new residence. If it is a better house than we had, do not let us be too proud of the door-plate, nor worship too ardently the fine cornice, nor have any idea that superb surroundings are going to make us any happier than we were in the old house.
Set not your affections on luxurious upholstery and s.p.a.cious drawing-room.
Be grateful and be humble.
If the house is not as large nor in as good neighborhood as the one you formerly occupied, make the best of it. It is astonishing what a good time you may have in a small room. Your present neighbors are just as kind as those you left, if you only knew them. Do not go around your house sticking up your nose at the small pantry, and the ugly mantel-pieces, and the low ceiling. It is a better place than your divine Master occupied, and to say the least you are no better than He. If you are a Christian, you are on your way to a King"s mansion, and you are now only stopping a little in the porter"s lodge at the gate. Go down in the dark lanes of the city and see how much poorer off many of your fellow-citizens are. If the heart be right, the home will be right.
CHAPTER LVI.
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 sh.o.r.e 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 G.o.d 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. G.o.d 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 G.o.d accounts as nothing.
A week-night service thrusts religion in the secularities of the week. It is as much as to say, "This is G.o.d"s Wednesday, or G.o.d"s Thursday, or G.o.d"s Friday, or G.o.d"s week." You would not give much for a property the possession of which you could have only one-seventh of the time, and G.o.d 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 G.o.d"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 G.o.d. 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 pa.s.sengers 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 G.o.d meets us, it must be an urgent and important message. If G.o.d 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.
CHAPTER LVII.
THE SABBATH EVENING TEA-TABLE.
When this evening comes we do not have any less on our table because it is a sacred day, but a little more. On other evenings we have in our dining-hall three of the gas-burners lighted, but on Sabbath evening we have four. We try to have the conversation cheerfully religious.
After the children are sleepy we do not keep them up to recite the "Larger Catechism." During summer vacation, when we have no evening service to attend at church, we sometimes have a few chapters of a Christian book read or a column of a Christian newspaper, or if any one has an essay on any religious theme, we hear that.
We tarry long after the tea has got cold. We do not care if the things are not cleared off till next morning. If any one has a perplexing pa.s.sage of Scripture to explain, we gather all the lights possible on that subject. We send up stairs for concordance and Bible dictionary. It may be ten o"clock at night before the group is dispersed from the Sabbath evening tea-table.
Some of the chapters following may be considered as conversations condensed or as paragraphs read. You will sometimes ascribe them to the host, at other times to the hostess, at other times to the strangers within the gates.
Old Dominie Scattergood often came in on Sabbath evenings. He was too old to preach, and so had much leisure. Now, an old minister is a great joy to us, especially if life has put sugar rather than vinegar in his disposition. Dominie Scattergood had in his face and temper the smiles of all the weddings he had ever solemnized, and in his hand-shaking all the hearty congratulations that had ever been offered him.
His hair was as white as any snow-bank through which he had waded to meet his appointments. He sympathized with every one, could swing from mood to mood very easily, and found the bridge between laughter and tears a short one and soon crossed. He was like an orchard in October after some of the frosts, the fruit so ripe and mellow that the least breeze would fill the laps of the children. He ate scarcely anything at the tea-table, for you do not want to put much fuel in an engine when it has nearly reached the depot. Old Dominie Scattergood gave his entire time to religious discourse when he sat with us at the close of the Lord"s day.
How calm and bright and restful the light that falls on the Sabbath evening tea-table! Blessed be its memories for ever and ever! and Jessie, and De Witt, and May, and Edith, and Frank, and the baby, and all the visitors, old and young, thick-haired and bald-headed, say Amen!