1880 



GLEA:t^iN6S IN fiEE CULTURE. 



59l 



Qun p0j)iEg. 



What cloth the Loi'd I'cquire of thee, but to do 

 justly, and to love mercy, and to walk hiiinhly with 

 tiiy tiody— MiCAH 0: 8. 



tA^^E you ever \vontlered, dear friends, 

 why it was necessary lo liave so mucli 

 discussion in regard to tlie way a 

 Cliristian ouglit to live? If all these 

 things are really important, it would 

 seem that one almost "needs to have a theo- 

 logical education in order to be able to live 

 a Cliristian life. Yet we know this isnot so; 

 for Jesus ;;cceptedand pardoned the lowliest 

 and the humblest, and many of the most il- 

 literate. 1)0 we not sometirnes make a mis- 

 take in encouraging the idea that it is a very 

 hard thing, or a very dillicult thing, to un- 

 derstand just how we should behave and act, 

 to be followers of ' -hrist? Is it not possible 

 that we are troubling or worrying our- 

 selves over things that are, after all, of no 

 very great importance? In the verse just 

 before the one containing our text the pro- 

 phet asks, ■•' W^ill the Lord be i)leased with 

 thousands of rams, or with ten thousand 

 rivers of oil?"' The answer is given in our 

 text. The words before the text are these: 

 " lie hath showed thee, O man, what is 

 good;'' and then follow these simple little 

 directions — " Do justly, love mercy, and 

 walk humbly before (iod." Surely the veriest 

 child among us knows how to do this ; but 

 suppose, for instance, he does not. Suppose 

 the one who wants to be a Christian is so 

 young or so ignorant, or that his former ed- 

 ucational surroundings have been so faulty, 

 that he has false ideas of justice— what 

 then? Well, my opinion is that the v:ill will 

 be accepted in that great day for the deed. 

 1 am sure that no honest, penitent child will 

 ever be cast out when he was doing the best 

 he knew how. Perhaps no one will dispute 

 this. If so, then the question comes up to 

 all of us, Are we doing the best we know 

 how? Did you ever think of the readiness 

 with which the world in general answers 

 this question? The inmates of our prisons 

 almost invariably say, when you sit down 

 beside them, and have a frank, friendly talk, 

 that they have been doing the best they 

 knew how. If they told the honest truth, it 

 seems to me they ought to say. " I meant to 

 do right, but I allowed myself to be preju- 

 diced;" or, " My mind was so much taken 

 up with something else that 1 did not give 

 the matter the attention that 1 ought to 

 have done." If he has the real genuine 

 spirit of Christ in him, I should like to hear 

 him add, ''1 have done wrong; and if you 

 will tell me how 1 can right the wrong, 1 am 

 ready to do it." 



In our recent Sabbath-school lesson 1 have 

 l)een greatly interested, or, rather, I have 

 made it a point of study, to see if there is 

 any chance for those who refused to accept 

 Jesus, to make the plea that they were 

 '^ honest doul)ters." When he oi)eried the 

 eyes of him that was blind from birth, the 

 Pharisees were displeased. Instead of re- 

 joicing that a prophet, or even a i)hysiciaii, 

 was among them, with power to perform 

 such cures as this, they objected and found 



fault. First, they refused to believe that he 

 was the man who sat and begged ; and wheii 

 he himself declared, " I am he," they were 

 not satished. They sent for the parents and 

 questioned them about it. lUit even the 

 poor parents were so blinded and bigoted, or 

 cowardly (I can not make out which), they 

 were l)ackward, and evaded the question by 

 saying the young man was of age, and that 

 he could answer for himself. Finally they 

 began to lind fault, and to say that tliis pro- 

 phet was not of (Jod, because he healed the 

 man on the Sabbath day. The observance 

 of the Sabbath day, according to their form- 

 ula, was a matter of so much greater im- 

 portance than giving sight to the blind that 

 they ignored the miracle, and said, '' This 

 man is not of C^od, because he keepeth not 

 the Sabbath day." Does it seem possible 

 that men could l)ecome so bigoted and con- 

 trary as to use such reasoning as this? Long 

 before this they complained that he did not 

 observe the Sabbath day according to their 

 code ; but he answered them, "■ The Sabbath 

 was made for man, and not man for the 

 Sabbath." At that same time he healed the 

 man with the withered hand ; and we are 

 told they were watching him, ready to take 

 it up against him in case he should perform 

 a miracle on the Sabbath day. lie silenced 

 them, however, by propounding a question 

 which their own consciences would not per- 

 mit them to answer untruthfully — " Is it 

 not lawful to do good on the Sabbath days?" 

 Geike, in his Life of Christ, tells us they 

 had a law forbidding work on the Sabbath, 

 unless it was to save life. According to 

 such a code, suppose that a man had a tooth- 

 ache on Sunday, he must grin and bear it, 

 for it would be breaking the Sabbath to go 

 for a doctor or a dentist. And while we are 

 on this matter of the Sabbath, are we not 

 some of tis in this nineteenth century in 

 danger of making an idol of the Sabbath 

 day, and bowing down to it as did the heath- 

 en in olden time to their senseless idols? 



The question is before our nation just now 

 — What shall we do on Sunday? 1 believe 

 pretty nearly all agree that it should be a 

 day of rest for man and beast. Many would 

 go still further and add the word '' recrea- 

 tion," making it a day of rest and recreation. 

 If farmers who live in the country go to church 

 on Sunday, they must use their horses ; and 

 there are some who say that, after their 

 horses have worked hard during the week 

 in plowing, or in haying and harvesting, 

 they, too, ouglit to rest on the Sabbath. I 

 am afraid that just a little of the leaven of 

 the Pharisees is getting in here. Usuajly 

 there are horses enough on the farm to take 

 all the family to church, without being very 

 heavily burdened ; that is, where chui-ches . 

 are at a moderate distance from our homes, 

 as they always should be. If the horses are 

 properly cared for during church tiinc — put 

 in comfortable sheds, for instance — I do 

 not see why they can not rest as well as if 

 left standing all day in the stables at home. 

 In connection with this event Christ gave us 

 a little text that has always been a comfort- 

 ing one to me. lie said, " Wherefore it is 

 lawful to do well on the Sabbath days." lie 

 .said this in connection with the question 



