HOBBIES by J. Clarke

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 26, 1860

HOBBIES.

By J. Clarke

A wooden horse upon rockers is called a hobbie-horse, and they are intended for an indoor amusement for children. There the hobbie stands lifeless and inane, unless some youth bestrides the image, when a motion is produced, forward and backward, forward and backward, day after day, the same unvarying motion.

So when we hear a man always harping upon some particular point, we say he is "riding a hobbie." In religion, people very often take up some particular point in morals, to the neglect of other points, and dwell upon this until it becomes quite disgusting. Thus, H., when you talk with him, always falls to lamenting the faults of the brethren; this one is so and so, such a one is thus and so, and another is thus and thus; no one right but himself. H. rides a hobby, and that hobby is the faults of his brethren.

M. nominally keeps the Sabbath, talks much about it, but it has no hold of his heart and life; he is just as careless as ever. The Sabbath is only kept in name by him. You would not suspect he was a Christian, until you hear him descant upon the Sabbath. Alas, M. only makes the Sabbath a "hobby."

O. is a Bible reader, never read much in other books, has the Bible by heart, is full of curious ideas on the Scriptures, asks many questions of you on the Scriptures, but when you have answered him, he has some quirk of his own, so smart and ingenious that he fairly nonplusses you out of your own common sense ideas; and if you attempt to substantiate your own position, you soon find that you are in the shade; O. fattens up on the mortifications he thus produces upon those he so seriously questions, and then surprises with his own Biblical knowledge. O. is not much different from the world around; in fact, the Bible is to him only a sort of "hobby."

Z. talks vain-gloriously of himself, his experiences, his illuminations, what he has done, what he has said, what he has thought, where he has been; in fact, Z. talks more of himself than any one else; self is the subject of thought and conversation; in prayer, he prays mostly for himself, exhorts about himself, and would sing about himself, only there are no hymns of that description; to be plain, Z. makes himself, dear self, a "hobby."

K. descents much upon baptism; it is baptism first, and last, and in the middle, and all over. It is the grand desideratum, the marrow, the pith, the sum, of sincere piety with him; only agree with him on this point, and all is right. Baptism is K.'s "hobby."

Another makes a hobby of election, another of something else. Men of the world have their hobbies, some this, and some that; but the religion of Christ has no hobbies. Its principles are ever consistent and true. They rise in grand and symmetric beauty, like the architecture of heaven, expansive, regular, noble. The more they are studied in the light of present truth, the more they seem to expand, stretching away in loveliness and beauty, like the domes and turrets of the celestial city, glistening in the dazzling light of heaven. This system of weighty truths, so simple, yet so deep, so grand and sublime, they show nothing narrow or contracted, and he who truly drinks into the spirit of this glorious message, cannot long ride upon a hobby. J. CLARKE.