SUGGESTIONS FROM A WEEK’S SERMONS.
Rabbi Nieto, of San Francisco, utters a truth worth heeding in the following: “The faulty training of our girls is perhaps more directly responsible for the frequency of the dissolution of the marriage tie than even the notorious laxity of our divorce laws. Girls nowadays marry to be supported, without the slightest estimation or comprehension of their moral right to assist.” Idleness has ever been a curse of the world. It was a marked characteristic of Sodom. Eze. 16:49. As it was in those days, our Lord tells us, so will it be when His coming is near. Luke 17:28–30. Says the Rev. A. Kittredge, Lutheran, of New York: “The creed is the Christian’s chart. It is a map of the way to the eternal city—that is, so far as it is copied from the Word of God—and as such it is a source of strength and of wisdom to the pilgrims of eternity.” But why not let the “creed” go and take the Word of God? Upon the matter of God’s seal of His servants’ work, Dr. O’Grady, Catholic, of Bellevue, Ky., remarks: “When the President of the United States sends an envoy to a foreign court or a plenipotentiary to negotiate a treaty with a foreign power, he furnishes him with credentials that certify that ambassadorial prerogatives have been conferred on the bearer. When God sends a delegate to speak to the human race, He arms him with credentials, and these credentials must be of such a nature that they can not be counterfeited.” And this is true; but God’s seal is not in human documents, traditions, or succession. See Matt. 3:9; Mark 7:7–9; 2 Cor. 3:1. God’s seal which He places upon His ambassadors is the power of the Holy Spirit manifest in saving souls from sin to obedience to God. See John 8:32, 39; 15:14–16; 1 Cor. 9:2; 2 Cor. 3:2; 1 Thess. 1:9, 10. Here are some thoughts concerning the church worthy of thought by its members:— “I would have the church not a dead sea into which the streams were pouring to become equally dead, but a fountain from which the streams should run out on every side to turn wildernesses into gardens. I would have people join it not to get social recognition or pastoral tea-drinkings, but for the opportunity of service.”—Rev. J. H. Barrows, Presbyterian, Chicago. “What Christ and the church need to-day is workers, not shrinkers; toilers, not talkers; laborers, not loiterers; helpers, not hinderers; pushers, not pleasure-seekers; tools, not toys; benefactors to bless, not malefactors to curse humanity.”—Rev. J. K. Montgomery, Presbyterian, Cincinnati. Rev. Robert McDonald, Baptist, of Brooklyn, N. Y., gives us a good definition of skepticism: “What is skepticism in its many glaring forms, if it is not the human choice supreme and depriving God of His choice concerning us? There would be no such thing as skepticism in all the world if men would only believe that God is interested in them and able to work greater advantages than any puny choice of their own can accomplish.” Another Baptist, Rev. A. J. Rowland, of Philadelphia, presents the world’s need in these words: “We live in an age when there is a clamor for everything new, among these cries being one for a new gospel. Some say education is all that is necessary. The little red schoolhouse in every village and the bigger one in every city is all we want. Others would substitute for the church and the cross a new environment. The old Gospel, ever new, is the need of the hour.” And without the old Gospel all the education of the world is nothing.