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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Exeter Advocate, 1898-6-17, Page 7III3LPFUL. RELIGION Rev, Dr. Talmage Tells His Hearers What the Church Ought to Be. The. Help of Music in the Sanctuary -A Broadside Fire of Song -- More Freshness Needed --Religious Humdrum the Worst of All Humdrums--The Old Style Church. Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year one tbousance eight hundred and ninety-eight, by the Central Press Agency of Canada, (Limited), at the Department of Agriculture. Alt rights reserved, Washington, June 12.—If people un the world. If youcannot sing for your- derstooil religion to be thepractical re• self, sing for others- By trying to give a enforcement that Dr. 'Talmage a ma esays it is others good cheerer you will bring good cheer toyour own heart thissermon, the number of Christian disciples would be greatly multiplied; text, Psalms xs, 2, "Send thee help from the sanctuary." If you should ask 50 men what the ohuroh is, they would give you 50 differ- env answers. One man would say, "It is E convention of hypocrites." Another, It is an assembly of peoplewho fel: themselves a great deal better than others," Another, "It is a place for gos- sip, where wolverine dispositions devour each other." Another, "It is a place for When Londonderry, Ireland, was be- sieged many years ago, the people inside the city were famishiug, and a vessel carne up with provisions, but the vessel ran on the river bank and stuck fast. The enemy went down with laughter and derision to board the vessel, when the vessel gave a broadside fire against tba enemy and by the shock was turned back into the stream, and all was well. Oh, ye 1 who are high and dry on the rocks of melancholy, give a broadside fire of song the cultivation of superstition and cant," against' your spiritual enemies, and by .Another, "It is an arsenal where theolo- holy rebound you will come out into the glans go to got pikos and muskets and calm waters. If we want to make o u r - shat,i Another, It is an art gallery, ia?PY, we mist make others hap w, Mythology1 tellsus i where men go to admire tsrand axahe5 p• of .Amph on, who and exquisite fresco and masaical warble played bis Tyro until the mauntains were and tho Dantesque in gloomy imagery."' mewed and the walls of Thebes arose, but .Another man would say: "It is the best religion has a mightier story to tell of place an earth except my own home, If I bow Christian song may build whole forget thee, 0 Jerusalem, let my right baud forget her cunning." Now, wbetover the chureb is, ray text tells you what it ought to be -'a great, practical, homely, omnipotent help, "Send thea help from the sanctuary." Tbo pew ought to yield restfulness for the body, the color of tlio .upholstery ought to yield pleasure to the eye, the entire service ought to yield strength for the moil and struggle of everyday life, the Sabbath ought to be harnessed to all the six days of the week, drawing them in the right direction; the eburah ought temples of eternal joy and lift the round earth'into sympathy with the skies, I tarried many nights in London, and Need to hear the bells, the small bells of the alts, strike the hour of night --,1, 2,, 8, 4—and among them the great St. Paul's eathedral would come in to mark the boors, making all the other sounds seem utterly insigniileaut as with mighty tongue it announced the hour of the night, every stroke an overmastering boom. My friends, It was intended that all the lesser sounds of the world should be drowned out in the mighty tongue of to be a magnet, visibly and mightily congregationalsong beating against the affecting all the homes of the worshipers, gates of heaven, 1)o you know how they Every man gots roughly jostled, gets mark the hours in heaven? They bavo no abused, gets out, gots insulted, gets clocks, as they have no candles, but a flighted, gets exasperated. By the time . great pendulum of balleluiah swinging the Sabbath Domes be has an aecumula- Ilan of six days of annoyance, and that is a starveling tabard) service which has Bet strength enough to take that acou- mulatod annoyance and hurl it into per- dition. Tho business man sits down in ohuroh heedaohoy from the week's en- gagemonts. Perhaps be wishes ho had tarried at home on the lounge with the newspapers and the slippers. That man wants to be cooled off and graciously diverted. The first wave of the religious serivice ought to dash clear over the bur. ricano deoks and leave him dripping with holy and glad and heavenly emotion. "bend thee help from the sanotuary." The Help of Music. In the first plane, sanctuary help ought to oomo from the music. A woman dying in England persisted in singing to the last moment. Tho attendants tried to persuade her to stop, saying it would ex- that much of the work is done by the haust her and make her disease worse. young? Raphael died at 37, Richelieu at She answered: "I must sing. I am only 31, Gustavus Adolphus died at 33, Inno- practicing for the heavenly ohoir." Musio cent III. came to his mightiest influence on earth is a rehearsal for music in at 87. Cortes conquered Mesion at 30, heaven. If you and I are going to take Don John won Lepanto at 25, Grotius part in that great orchestra, it is high was attorney -general at 24 and I have time that we were stringing and thrum• noticed amici all classes of men that some ruing our harps. They tell us that Thal- of the severest battles and the toughest berg and Gottschalk never would go into work comes before 80. Therefore we must a concert until they had first in private have our sermons and our exhortations rehearsed, although they worn such mas- ea prayer meeting all sympathetic with ters of the instrument. And can it be the young. And so with these people fur - that we expect to take part in tho great thor on in life. What do these dootors and oratorio of heaven if we do not rehearse lawyers and merchants and mechanics here? But I am not speaking of the next world. Sabbath song ought to set all the week to music. We want not more har- Ing of legal opponents, the unfairness of many, nor more artistic expression, but customers who have plenty of fault find• more volume in our church music. Tho ing for every imperfection of handiwork, English dissenting churches far surpass our American churches in this respect. An English audience of 1,000 people will give more volume to sacred song than an American audience of 2,000 people. I do not know what the reason is. Oh, you ought to have hoard them sing in Surrey ebapel 1 I bad the opportunity of preach- ing the anniversary—I think the nineti- eth anniversary—sermon in Rowland Bill's old ohapel, and when they lifted their voices in sacred song it was simply overwhelming, and then in the evening of the same day in Agricultural Hall many thousand voices lifted in doxology. It was like the voice of many waters, and like the voice of many thunderings, and like the voice of heaven. The blessing thrilled through all the laboring throng, And heaven was won by violence of song. Now..I am no worshiper of noise, but I believe that if our American churches would with full heartiness of soul and full emphasis of voice sing the songs of Zion this part of sacred worship would have tenfold more power than it has now. Why not take this part of the sacred service and lift it to where it ought to be? All the annoyances of life might be drowned out by that sacred song. Do you tell me that it Is not fashionable to sing very loudly? Then, I say, away with the fashion. We dam back the great Mississ- ippi of congregational singing and let a few -crops of melody trickle through the dam. I say take away the dam and let the billows roar on their way to the oceanic heart of God. Whether it is lash• fonable to sing loudly or not, let us sing with all possible emphasis. We hear a great deal of the art of sing- ing, of music as an entertainment, of music as a recreation. It is high time we beard something of musio as a help, a practical help. In order to do this we must have only a few hymns. New tunes and new hymns every Sunday make poor •ongregational'singing. Fifty hymns are enough for 50 years. The Episcopal ohuroh prays the same prayers every Sab- bath and year after year and century after century. For that reason they have the hearty responses. Let us take a hint from that fact and let us .sing the same songsSabbath after Sabbath. Only in that way can we Dome to the full force of this exercise. Twenty thousand years will not wear out the hymns of William Cow- per, Charles Wesley and Isaac Watts, Suppose, now, each person in an audience has brought all the annoyances of the last 865 days. Fill the room to the ceiling with sacred song, and you would drown out all those annoyances of the last 365 days, and you would drown them out for- ever. ''`Organ and cornet are only to mar- shal the voice. Let the voice fall into line, and in companies and in battalions across heaven from eternity to eternity.. Let those refuse to sing Who never knew our God. But ehildron of the heavenly King Should speak their joys abroad. Again, I remark that sanctuary help ought to come from the sermon. 011,000 people in my audience, how many want sympathetic help? 1)o you guess 100? Do you guess 500? You have guessed wrong. I will tell you just the proportion. Out of 1,000 people In my audience there are just 1,000 who need sympathetic help. Those young people want it just as much as the old. The old people sometimes seem to think they have a monopoly of the rboumatisms, and tbo nouralgias, and the headaohes, and the physical dis- orders of tho world, but I tell you there are no worse heartaches than are felt by some of the young people. Do you ]snow care about the abstractions of religion? What they want is help to bear the whimsicalities of patients, the browbeat - but no praise for 20 excellences, What does the brain -racked, hand -blistered man care for Lwingli's "Doctrine of Original Sin," or Augustine's "Retrac- tions?" You might as well go to a man who has the pleurisy and put on his side a plaster made out of Dr. Parr's "Treat- ise on Medical Jurisprudence." Help for Every One. While all of a sermon may not be help- ful alike to all, if it be a Christian ser- mon preached by a Christian man there will be help for every one somewhere. We go into an apothecary's store. We see others being waited .on. We do not com- plain because we do not immediately get the medicine. We know our turn will come after awhile. And so while all parts of a sermon may• not be appropriate to our case, if we wait prayerfully before the sermon is through we shall have the divine prescription. I say to young men who are going to preach the gospel, we want In our sermons not more meta- physics, nor more imagination, nor more login, nor more profundity. What we want in our sermons and Christian ex- hortations is more sympathy. When Fa- ther Taylor preached in the Sailors' Bethel at Boston, the Jack Tars felt they had help for their duties among the rat- lines and the forecastles. When Richard Weaver preached to the operatives in Old- ham, England, all the workmen felt they had more grace for the spindles. When Dr. South preached to kings and princes and princesses, all the mighty men and women who heard him felt reparation for their high station. People will not go to ohuroh merely as a matter of duty. There will not next Sab- bath be 100 people in this pity who will get up in the morning and ,say: "The Bible says T must go to ohuroh. It is my duty to go to church, therefore I will go to ohuroh." The vast multitude of people who go to church go to ohuroh because they like it, and the multitude of people who stay away from ohuroh stay away because they do not like it. I am nob speaking about the way the world ..ought to be. I am speaking about the way the world Is. Taking things as they are, we must make the Centripetal force of the ohuroh mightier than the centrifugal. We must make our churches magnets to draw the people thereunto, so that a man will feel uneasy if he does not go to ohuroh, saying: "I wish I: had gone this morning. I wonder if I can't dress yet and get there in time? 1t is 11 o'clock. Now they are singing. It is halt past 11. NOV, they are preaching. I wonder when thefolks will be home totell us what was said, . what has been going en." When the Impression is confirmed that our ahurohe's by architecture, by music, by sooiallty and by sermon, shall be made the most attractive places on earth, b r of . also; woe will want twice as many ohurt°h s y sterna take the obduracy' and sin asiowe haQe Howe Aw]oe ao large, and thea they will not half accommodate the peo- ple. Religious Humdrum. I say to the young men who are enter- ing the ministry, we must put on more. force, more energy and into our religious services more vivacity if we want the people to tomo, You look into a church court of any dcnoinivattbu of Christians. First, you will find the igen of large common sense and earnest look. The edu- cation of their minds, the piety of their lie tots, the holiness of their lives qualify them for their work., Then you will find in every church court of every denomina- tion a group of men who utterly amaze. von with the faot that such semi -imbecil- ity can got any pulpits to preach in! Those are the men who give forlorn sta- tistics about church decadence.. Frogs never croak in running water; always in stagnant. n ret. But Iy a toall Christian s workers, to all Sunday school teachers, to all evangelists, to all ministers of the gospel, if we want our Sunday schools and our prayer meetings and our churches to gather the people we must freshen up, The simple feet is the people are tired of the humdrum of religionists. Religious humdrum is the worst of all humdrum. You say over and over again, "Come to Jesus," until the phrase means absolute- ly nothing, Wby do you not tell them a story which will make them come to. Jesus in five minutes? You say that all Sunday school teachers. and all evangel- ists. and, all ministers must bring their illustrations from the Bible, Christ did net when he preached. The most of the Bible 'was written nbefore G hr a t � time, me but where did he got his illustrations? Iso drew th - em iron ane 111ieS, lron7 tins ravens, from salt, from a candle, from a bushel, from long faced hypocrites, from gnats, from moths, from large gates and small gates, from a camel, from the needle's eye, from yeast in the dough of broad, from a mustard seed, from a fish• lug net, from 001)50rs and creditors, Tbat is the reason multitudes followed Christ. His lllaastrations were so easy and so un-. derstaudable. Therefore, my brother Christian worker, if you and I land two illustrations for a religions subject, and the one is a Bible illustration and the other is outside the Bible, I will take the latter because I want to be like ray Mae - ter. Looking across to a hill, Ohrist saw the city of Jerusalem, Talking to the people about the conspicuity of Christian. example, be said: "The world Is looking at you. Be careful. A city that Is set on a hill cannot he hid." While be was speaking of the divine care of God's children n bird flow past. .He said, "Be hold the ravens." Then, looking down Into the valley, all covered as that season with flowers, he said, "Consider the lilies." Oh, my brother Christian work- ers, what is the use of our going away orf in some obscure part of history or on tbo other side the earth to get an illustration when the earth and the heavens are full of illustrations? Why should we get away off to get au illustration of the vicarious suffering of Jesus Christ when as near us as Bloomfield, N.J„ two little children were walking on the rail track, and a train was coining, but thoy worn on a bridge of trestlework, and the little girl took her brother and lot him down through the trestlework as gently as she could toward the water, very carefully and lovingly and cautious, so that ho might not be hurt In the fall and might be picked up by those who were standing near by? While doing' that the train struck her and hardly enough of her body was left to gather into a funeral casket. What was that? Vicarious suffering. Like Christ. Pang for others. Woo for others. Suffering for others. Death for others. Illustrations Near at Hand. What is the use of our going away off to find an illustration in past age when during the great forest fires in Michigan a mail carrier on horseback, riding on, pursued by those flames which had swept over 100 milds, saw an old man by the roadside, dismounted, helped the old man on the horse, saying, "Now, whip up and get away?" The old man got away, but the mail carrier perished. Just like Christ dismounting front the glories of heaven to put us on the way of deliver• ince, then falling back into the flames of sacriflca for others. Pang for others. Woe for others. Death for others. Vicarious suffering. Again, I remark that sanctuary help ought to come through the prayers of all the people. The door of the eternal store- house- is hung on one hinge, a gold hinge, the hinge of prayer, and when the whole audience lay hold of that door it must come open. There are many people spending their first Sabbath after some great bereavement. What will your prayer do for them? How will it help the tomb in that man's heart? Here are peo- ple who have not been in church before for ton years. What will your prayer do for them by rolling over their soul holy memories' Here aro people in crises of awful temptation. They are on the verge of despair or wild blundering or theft or suicide. What will your prayer do for them in the way of giving them strength to resist? Will you be chiefly anxious 5about the fit of the glove that you put to your forehead while you prayed? Will you be chiefly critical of the rhetoric of the pastor's petition? No. No. A thous- and people will feel, "That prayer is for me," and at every step of the prayer chains ought to drop off, and temples of sin ought to crash into dust, and jubilees of deliveronce ought to brandish their trumpets. In most of our churches we have three prayers—the opening prayer, what is called the "long prayer" and the closing prayer. There are many people who spend their first prayer in arranging their apparel after entrance and spend the seoond prayer, the "long prayer," in wishing it were through and 'spend the last prayer in preparing to start for home. The most ineigniflcant part of every re- ligious service is the sermon. The more important parts are the Scripture lesson and the prayer. The sermon is only a man talking to a man. The Scripture lesson is God talking to man. Prayer is man talking to God. Oh, if we under- stood the grandeur and the pathos of this exercise of prayer, instead of being a dull exercise we would imagine that the room was full of divine and angelic appear- ances. The Old Style of Church. But, my friends, the old style of ohuroh will not do the work.. We might as well now try to take all the passengers from Washington to New York by stagecoach or all the passengers ' from ' Albany to Buffalo by canalboat or do all the battl- ing of the world with bow and arrow as with the old style of "Murcia to meet the exigencies of this day. Unless the church in our day will adapt itself to the time it will become extinct. Thi people read- ing newspapers and books all the week, in alert, picturesque and resounding style, will have no patienoe with Sabbath humdrum. We have no objection to bands and surplice andall the parapher- nalia of clerical life, but these thine make no impression—make no it• pression on the great masses of the pen- ple than the ordinary business suit that you wear on Pennsylvania aveifne, or Wall street. A tailor cannot make a min- ister. Some of the poorest preachers wear the best clothes, and many a backwoods• man has dismounted from the saddlebags, and in his linen duster preached a ser- mon that shook earth and heaven with its Christian eloquence. No new gospel, only the old gospel in a way suited to the time, No new church, but a church to be the asylum, the inspiration, the practical sympathy and the eternal help of the people. But while half of the doors of the church are to be set open toward this world. the other half of the doors of the church must be set open toward the next, You and I tarry here only a brief space. We want somebody= to teach us howto gat out of this life at the right time anti in the right way. Some fall out of life, some go stumbling out of life, sonic go groaning out of life, some go cursing out of lite. We want to go sing- ing rising, rejoicing, triumphing. We want half the doors of the chureb set in that direction. We wane half the prayers that way, half the sermons that way. We want to know how to get ashore from the tumult of this world into the land of everlasting peace. We do not want to stand doubting and shivering when we go away from this world. We want to have the exhilaration of a dying child in England, the father telling me she story, When he said to her, Is the path nar- row:" she answered. "Tho path is Par- rot' k is so 11 x otic , ,a x t1aaGI cannot1. w a k arm in arm with Christ, so &sus goes ahead. and lie says, 'Mary, follow.' " ' "lent i n� I a gl the church gates sat beacon» ward how many of your friends and mine have genes The last time they were out of the house they came to ohuroh. The earthly pilgrimage ended at the pillar of 'public worship, Arid then they anarched out to a bigger and brighter assemblage. Sonia of them were so old they could not walk without a cane or two crutches, Now they have eternal juvenescence. Or they were so young they could not walk except as the maternal baud guided theui, Now they tamed with the hilarities celestial, The last time we saw them they were wasted with malarial or pulnianle ordgr, lift naw they Dave no fatigue and no difficulty of reepiretlon in the pure air of heaven. How I wonder when you and 1 will cross over! Some of you have had about enough of the thumping and iluillna of this life. A draft frons rho fountains of heaven would do you good. Compete release you could stand very well. If you got on the other side and had permission to come back, you would i not tome. Though you were invited to come back and join your friends on earth, you would say: "No, let me tarry here until they eume. I shall not risk going back. If a man reaches beacon, ho had better stay here." Oh, I join hands with you in that up- lifted splendor: When the shore is won at last, Who will count tine billows past? In Froyburg, Switzerland, there is the trunk of a tree 400 years old. That tree was planted to commemorate an event. About ton miles from the city the Swiss conquered the Burgundians, and a young man wanted to take the tidings to the city, He took a true branch and ran with such speed the ton miles that when he reached the pity waving the tree branch he had only strength to ory "Victory!" and dropped dead. Tle treo branch that he carried was planted, and it grew to bo a great tree 20 feet in circumference, and the remains of it aro there to this clay. My hearer, when you bavo fought your last battle with sin and death and hell and they have been routed in the conflict, it will be a joy worthy of cele- bration. You will fly to the city and any "Victory!" and drop at the feet of the great King. Then the palm branch of the earthly race will bo planted, to be- come the outbranching tree of everlasting rejoicing. When shall these eyes thy heaven built walls And pearly gates behold, Thy bulwarks with salvation strong .And streets of shining gold? THE BICYCLE HEART. Interesting Comment Offered by the British Medical Journal. Several wall -known French cyolists have lately, the British Medical Journal points out, been rejected as unlit for military service by reason of hypertrophy and other diseases of the heart. "A con- temporary, representing no doubt lay opinion, professes astonishment at this result. But medical men will be rather surprised that the numbers are so small. There must De few of us who have not seen the i11 effects of over exertion on a bicycle. The commonest is palpitation and temporary dilation; but even this is sometimes very difficult to cure. In a case which occurred recently, a lady, ordered for a fortnight's change of air after influenza, chose to spend it in bicycling about fifty miles a day. As a result, she has had ever since that time— now nine months ago—a pulse which on the least exertion rises to 120, though she has not ridden again. That temporary dilation occurs is enough to show the great strain put upon the heart, and it is an added danger that the sense of fatigue in the limbs is so slight. The rider is thus robbed of the warning to which he is accustomed to attend, and repeats or continues the strain upon his heart. .As in other similar oases, the effect is to render that dilation perman- ent which was at first but temporary, and to cause an increase in the muscle of tho heart by repeated exertion. The heart produced is of large dimensions and of think walls—a condition which may, perhaps, give little uneasiness to its own- er. but which a medical man will view with considerable distrust and apprehen-, sion. Weakly and elderly people cannot be too often told that no exercise is more easily abused, though, if taken in sensi- ble measures, few are more healthful or enjoyable," Delicious Lemon Tapioca. Two tablespoonfuls tapioca soaked over night in half cupful water. Add half oupful cold water in the morning, the peeled rind of a lemon, and boil until clear. Then take out the rind, add the juice of the lemon, teaspoonful lemon ex- tract, half cupful each of sugar and boil- ing water, a riinrh of salt and boil. Mold and serve with sugar and cream. Fried Sweetbreads. Cut a sufficiency of ± sweetbreads into long Slices and paint thein over with beaten -up yolks of eggs. Strew each slice with a seasoning of pepper, salt and bread crumbs, and fry in butter. Garnish with crisped butter and thin rolls of toasted bacon.' A FAMILY FAILING. The struggle with Heredity.. The Right Side of the Color Line. }To heredity, to the transmission of traits from, sire to son, we owe most of the possibilities of growth and development. If each newly born being started outa'ew, 'without the force of heredity the level of life might be expected to be that of the digger Dollen or Bushman. Naturallybadtraits descend likethegood. Peculiarities of feature, excentricities of speech amd manner, birth marks, etc., are handed down just as surely as manual dexterity, physical beauty, mathematical ability, and the mental. and moral qualities in eu 1 s era -+. ct raou example xar-x ie of B tills de- scent C II e 3 se t f family m .s is furnished u x bed byMrs. Magggie Pickett, Canton, Ga., in hose family ,Crap hair was hereditary, She writes: "Graybair is hereditary in our family, As long as I can recoil^ct,my mothers bait has , bs,ha wys , my hairbeen begangraytoAshowtsignselve ofearformingage. I resolved to try Ayer's Bair vigor, and after using it only a few times my hair was restored to its nataral color. a stili use this dressing occasional) a bottle lasting me quite a while; and though over forty years of a,•r, env hair retains its voethful eolor a..1 frliness. To all who Lave faded and gray hal r.I would heartily recommend lir. Ayr'.4liair Vigor."—airs. MAGGIE is iCia'rr, 1 .30tG-i, Ga. There, is no shame FT. g.,,,fx!L•hair, butthere may be some sadness, because it is u;, timely, and out of season. Gray hairs are a crown of honor to the aged, but to the young they are a stigma. There is no need. to be gray in youth. "Grayness comes froze. a dedcieacy of the coloring matter which, gives the hair its natural tint. Th]s coloX ing matter can be supplied artificially and is so supplied by Dr. j. C. A.yer's Hair Vigor.. It is by supplying the lacking pigment that 10. Ayer's flair Tigerre- stores gray or faded hair to its original color, Ieyoad hisit m akes the ha r grow, gives itgloss and softness, stop. at from falling, removas dandruff, ant cleanses the scalp. Mrs, C. M. Ayres, )Mount Airy, Ga., writes: "About three years ago, my head became full of dandruff, which caused great an, noyance; after a time the hair began falling out, The use of Dr., C. Ayer's Hair vigor stopped the hair from falling out, and made the scalp clean and h eaiti� y —Mrs,. C. M. Axa, Mount. Airy, Ga. Dr. Ayer's Hair Vigor is noted a3 a dressing. It is used every day by thou. sands whose chief claim to beauty rests on beautiful hair. Send for Dr. Ayer's. Curebook, a story of cures told by the cured. Free. Address the j. C. Ayer Co. Lowell. Mass. A Perfect1. Wood . dFurnace ...OUR.... "FAMOUS MAGNET" Made in S s zi s, using 3,4 and 5 feet wood. Wil. neat from I0,000 to 100,000 cubic feet. Heavy fire -box, with corrugations.. increasing the heating surface. Extra large firing door and ash pit. Heavy steel fines with cast beads that will expand without cracking. Bolts on outside away from action of the firs. Instant direct or indirect draft. Firing, regular leg end eleaatng all dgno ire:u the front. Dampers can be operated from monis above. Made for brick or g: iveeized easings, You Can keep your house Warns from cellar to garret and Do it Cheaply. Lt. DEALERS AND USERS. ! 20 HIGHEST TESTIMONIALS FROM A i The McC!ary Mfg. Co. Y ] o( load oeal deei cannot nnot euPP lY, 7.1424)111 LONDON, MONTREAL, TORONTO WINNIPEUand VANCOUVER. writes our nearest house, NOT AN UNMIXED BLESSING. New Baby in a Grocery Strop Delays a Boarding House Dinner. "Of Course no ono Can object to a dear, sweet, new baby," said tho land- lady to hor boarders on Stuyvesant square, "but there are times -when I wish my grocer had never married. It --that new baby at the grocery store—is the primary cause of all the fuss you aro snaking about the lateness of the dinner. Dear me, I shall bavo to change grocers until that baby becomes an old story with its doting father." Then the landlady explained that, since the arrival of an infant son and boir at the little German grocery, the father has been a ahan ;ed man, "Ho used to bo all attention to business," she said, "but now, when I go into his store and try to give my order for a day's supplies, he listens, perhaps for a minute, pencil in hand, and suddenly, diverted by a wailing sound from the apartments back of his store, be rushes away, forgetful of his customer, and on his return I have to go all over my order again. "This morning I had got as far as canned corn in my list of table delicacies for you folks when that new baby cried. Papa, the grocer, dropped his order book and fled to his.living moms. Baby had the collo, I guess, for -when the grocer returned he said to me: 'Pardon, ma'am, but did you say ten drops of gin in the corn—I mean in the peppermint—' "Then he excused himself, and told me for the twentieth time all about his wife, Mina, and their dear little baby, and of course I had to listen. I especially cautioner him to deliver my order early, as I pride myself on having dinner hot on the table at 6 o'clock sharp, as all you folks know. I went over to Sixth avenue to a bargain sale of table linen, and, bless my soul, when I got home the cook told me the groceries hadn't come, and it was then after 5 o'clock. You see, between business and a colicky baby and. his first one at that, the young grocer bad absolutely forgotten business," concluded the landlady, and the boarders accepted her explanation—that is, all except the old maid who keeps a dog and a parrot in the third floor front. She can't endure babies, she says.—New York Sun. Not as of Old. Captain (to young cadet just arrived on board)—Well, youngster, the old, story, 1 suppose --the fool of the familysent to sea? Young Cadet—Oh, no, sirs That's` all been altered since your day.—Boston Globe. Danger Ahead. "I paid the paper hangers and the interior decorators this morning," announced' Mrs. Bumply just as the head of the household: was carving the roast. "Low socia?" ' "Eight seventy -live,," "Dirt Cheap. wasn't it?" "That's just what:; I told thele, In fact, I insisted that there must be a mistake, but the bine were there, and they gave Ino a receipt in full." "Well, Mrs. Bumpiy, you'd make a sbining—yes, a bright and shining -- light in the business world! Told them it -vas too cheap, did yon? Made thane tbink that you were anxious to pap more; caused them to feel sure and to, think that they were chumps because they hadn't hit us for about twice what they did. Do you -cant to go to the poorhouse? Are you anxious to get rid of what little we have saved by hard knocks and close economy? You're a daisy!" "What do you 10030, la*slab Buinply?" "What do I mean? I mean that if that same firm ever gots another crack at us - it won't leave enough of our bank accofint for a nest egg. Strike them off the list and then have some sensel"—+ Detroit Free Pross. Hints About Gas Tips. The relation of the gas burner to the gas bill is much greater than many people suppose. If a flame is of improper shape the result is often broken globes, poor illumination, large gas bills, and a complaint of poor gas. Many bel -leve theft by using a sinal] tip they are practicing, economy. This Is an error. One of these tips is capable of consuming a large amount of gas while producing a smalls flame, unless the supply is checked by not turning on full. A small consump- tion of gas does not necessarily follow the use of small tips. A smooth, even flame, without points, gives the best result in both light and economy, Setting the World Right. Holiness is the supreme attribute of deity. Justice and judgment are the foundations of Gocl's throne, His love and mercy cannot be exercised at the expense of His holiness and justice. Holiness is also the supreme element in human character, for without holiness no man shall see the Lord. The noblest faculty of the human soul is the faculty which discriminates between right and wrong, indignantly disapproving the wrong and fervently approving the right. The man whose indignation does not burn aeainst wrong -doing and whose admiration is not kindled by the courageous defense of right has lost his manhood. Growth of English Novels. At the time of Sir Walter Scott's death the number of novels published in the British islands did not exceed 100 a year. Five novels at least are now issued every day in the British islands, Sundays not excepted. Truth. Truth at all costs should be the watch- word of every honest soul. The bond at society is confidence whose basis is truth, —Rev. J. Q. A.' Henry. Tenement House Humor. Jimmy --Say, pa, they won't be no more plaster failing on the hallway ceiling. Pa—Why, Jimmy? Jimmy—'Cause they ain't no more left` The Billville Banner. The army ranks in this neighborhood are filling up fast. Ten barrels of "moon- shine" arrived yesterday. The government will furnish the uni- forms. All it asks of us is to furnish the men to die in 'em. The health of this community was never better than at present. All onr dootors have gone and joined the army. A cable dispatch front the Ogeeohee riv- er informs us that the vessel we fitted out for war duty has ;just caught a crowd of contraband 'catfish. Wo have ordered five cooks to her assistance, --Atlanta Consti- tution.