GOOD FEELING AND WELL DOING.
By H. W. Beecher
Here is a man who is a roaring good Christian. He goes to meeting. There is a revival, and his religious feelings are all aglow. And it is all right. He does feel just as he says he does. There is no hypocrisy in his profession. He takes his hymn book, and the minister happens to be fortunate, and the hymn comes right home, and circumstances concur, and the electric influences are favorable, and the meeting is a joyful one, and he will not go home until twelve o’clock. He has sung twenty hymns, and he does feel as though he could not keep himself on the ground. “A little more, Lord,” he says, “and I shall fly away.” Now I want to see if to-morrow he will go to his neighbor, with whom he has been at variance, and say: “Look here, my dear fellow, we are wrong; at any rate I am, whether you are or not. I have been ugly. Forgive me. I had such a good time last night, that I must clean my heart. My pride must come down. And I must be reconciled to you.” He did have a good time, and that is the sign that the feeling which he experienced was genuine. That he roared his hymns joyfully was no sign of it; that he had an ecstasy of prayer was no sign of it; but that, having that elevation, he changed it to a moral purpose; that out of that feeling he wrought garments of duty; that out of that experience he came back to his fellow-man more sympathetic, more humble, more Christlike—ah! that was a sign that the feeling was a genuine one. Otherwise it would have been simply a sign of self-indulgence.—H. W. Beecher.