to say in
prayer-meeting that is disheartening, may you forget your speech! Tell us
something on the bright side.

I know a Christian man who did something outrageously wrong. Some one said
to me: "Why do you not expose him?" I replied: "That is the devil's work
and it will be thoroughly done. If there is anything good about him, we
would rather speak of that."

Give us no sermons or newspaper articles that are depressing. We know all
that before you start; amid the greatest disheartenments there are hopeful
things that may be said. While the Mediterranean corn-ship was going to
smash, Paul told the crew to "Be of good cheer." We like apple trees
because, though they are not handsome, they have bright blossoms and good
fruit, but we despise weeping willows because they never do anything but
cry.

On a dark day do not go around closing the window-shutters. The world is
dark enough without your making it more so. Is there anybody in the room
who has a match? Please then strike it. There is only one kind of champagne
that we temperance folks can take, and that is encouraging remark. It is a
stimulus, and what makes it better than all other kinds of champagne is it
leaves no headache.

I said to him, I think religious meetings have been improved in the last
few years. One of the grandest results of the Fulton street prayer-meeting
is the fact that all the devotional services of the country have been
revolutionized. The tap of the bell of that historical prayer-meeting has
shortened the prayers and exhortations of the church universal.

But since it has become the custom to throw open the meetings for remark
and exhortation, there has been a jubilee among the religious bores who
wander around pestering the churches. We have two or three outsiders who
come about once in six weeks into our prayer-meeting; and if they can get a
chance to speak, they damage all the interest. They talk long and loud in
proportion as they have nothing to say. They empty on us several bushels of
"ohs" and "ahs." But they seldom get a chance, for we never throw the
meeting open when we see they are there. We make such a close hedge of
hymns and prayers that they cannot break into the garden.

One of them we are free of because, one night, seeing him wiggle-waggle in
his seat as if about to rise, we sent an elder to him to say that his
remarks were not acceptable. The elder blushed and halted a little when we
gave him the mission, but setting