THE WAY TO KEEP FRESH.
How to get out of the old rut without twisting off the wheel, or snapping
the shafts, or breaking the horse's leg, is a question not more appropriate
to every teamster than to every Christian worker. Having once got out of
the old rut, the next thing is to keep out. There is nothing more killing
than ecclesiastical humdrum. Some persons do not like the Episcopal Church
because they have the same prayers every Sabbath, but have we not for the
last ten years been hearing the same prayers over and over again, the
product of a self-manufactured liturgy that has not the thousandth part of
the excellency of those petitions that we hear in the Episcopal Church?
In many of our churches sinners hear the same exhortations that they have
been hearing for the last fifteen years, so that the impenitent man knows,
the moment the exhorter clears his throat, just what is going to be said;
and the hearer himself is able to recite the exhortation as we teach our
children the multiplication table forward or backward. We could not
understand the doleful strain of a certain brother's prayer till we found
out that he composed it on a fast day during the yellow fever in 1821, and
has been using it ever since.
There are laymen who do not like to hear a sermon preached the second time
who yet give their pastors the same prayer every week at the devotional
meeting--that is, fifty-two times the year, with occasional slices of it
between meals. If they made any spiritual advancement, they would have new
wants to express and new thanksgivings to offer. But they have been for a
decade of years stuck fast in the mud, and they splash the same thing on
you every week. We need a universal church cleaning by which all canting
and humdrum shall be scrubbed out.
If we would keep fresh, let us make occasional excursions into other
circles than our own. Artists generally go with artists, farmers with
farmers, mechanics with mechanics, clergymen with clergymen, Christian
workers with Christian workers. But there is nothing that sooner freshens
one up than to get in a new group, mingling with people whose thought and
work run in different channels. For a change put the minister on the hay
rack and the farmer in the clergyman's study.
Let us read books not in our own line. After a man has been delving in
nothing but theological works for three months, a few pages in the
Patent-office Report will do him more good than Doctor Dick on "The
Perseverance of the Saints." Better than this, as a diversion, is it to
have some department of natural history or art to which you may turn, a
case of shells or birds, or a season ticket to some picture gallery. If you
do nothing but play on one string of the bass viol, you will wear it out
and get no healthy tune. Better take the bow and sweep it clear across in
one grand swirl, bringing all four strings and all eight stops into
requisition.
Let us go much into the presence of the natural world if we can get at it.
Especially if we live in great thoroughfares let us make occasional flight
to the woods and the mountains. Even the trees in town seem artificial.
They dare not speak where there are so many to listen, and the hyacinth
and geranium in flower pots in the window seem to know they are on
exhibition. If we would once in a while romp the fields, we would not have
so many last year's rose leaves in our sermons, but those just plucked,
dewy and redolent.
We cannot see the natural world through the books or the eyes of others.
All this talk about "babbling brooks" is a stereotyped humbug. Brooks never
"babble." To babble is to be unintelligent and imperfect of tongue. But
when the brooks speak, they utter lessons of beauty that the dullest ear
can understand. We have wandered from the Androscoggin in Maine to the
Tombigbee in Alabama, and we never found a brook, that "babbled." The
people babble who talk about them, not knowing what a brook is. We have
heard about the nightingale and the morning lark till we tire of them.
Catch for your next prayer meeting talk a chewink or a brown thresher. It
is high time that we hoist our church windows, especially those over the
pulpit, and let in some fresh air from the fields and mountains.