Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 August 1896 — Short Sermons. [ARTICLE]

Short Sermons.

Plagiarism.—l have much sympathy with the poor fellow who steals a loaf of bread to keep Ms wife and babies from hunger. But the preposterous individual reputation for learning, piety and honesty, admired by a great congregation, who goos on a false reputation and steals other men’s brainwork -to keep up his humbug, is so detestable an animal that there is no known punishment adequate to Ills case. The ordinry pickpocket is a saint in comparison.—Rev. Dr. Thompson, Episeopalial, Natchez, Miss.

Religion and Science.—Religion is the knowledge of life, science is systematic knowledge. Religion is separated from science only in the sense that you can speak of religion and sculpture or religion and history being distinct. Religion includes ail knowledge in the world, so far as that knowledge is necessary for the worship of God or the betterment of humanity. Religion is not morality, although it includes it. Religion is not science, but it does not deny the usefulness of science.—Rev. A. W. Bostwick, Episcopalian, Dansville, N. Y. Sympathy.—What tens of thousands of our fellow-creatures need is helphelp to fornl new principles; help to extricate themselves from their present environment; help to climb to higher and purer moral altitudes. Sympathy is the great desideratum—not sympathy at arm’s length, but hand to hand sympathy; not sympathy that exhausts Itself in sigh£ and groans and tears, but sympathy that meaus work for the unemployed, medicine for the sick, or places of refuge for the devil-pursued, and lifts In place of knocks for the fallen and the falling.—Rev. William Fielder, Methodist, Minneapolis. . Wealth Our Peril—The peril of America to-day Is its enormous wealth. We are becoming so absorbed in the pursuit after the material prosperity that we are neglecting our inheritance and allowing the country to become a hotbed of secular license and lawlessness. God Is drummed out of politics; the Bibleiis out of the schools from which must come, our fpture citizens. We are so ffl.jhfrpn» beiiig good Christians that we are not even,good Jews. The social and political regulations of to-day are not even an approach, to the Ten Commandments, which are-the fundamental laws of the economy.—Rer. Dr. Magruder, Methodist, Cihcinnati.

'Peace,War.—Our defense as a nation should not be what many think, Strong fortifications and long range guns, but righteousness. We must set the uations of the earth an example worthy of being followed. We must let them see that the true God of heaver, and earth is not a God of war, but of peace. The day for slaughtering men on the field of battle is past among Christian nations. Our differences must be adjusted henceforth by arbitration. We must defend the institutions Inherited from our fathers, not with powdqr end ball, but with the omnipotent weapon, the voice of the people—the American ballot.—Rev. Dr. Haroourt, Methodist, Philadelphia.