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EVERY-DAY RELIGION.

EVERY-DAY RELIGION.

"Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God."-1 Corinthians x., 31.

W

HEN the apostle, in this text, sets forth the idea that

so common an action as the taking of food and drink is to be conducted to the glory of God, he proclaims the importance of religion in the ordinary affairs of our life. In all ages of the world there has been a tendency to set apart certain days, places, and occasions for worship, and to think those were the chief realms in which religion was to act. Now, holy days and holy places have their importance. They give opportunity for especial performance of Christian duty, and for regaling of the religious appetite; but they can not take the place of continuous exercise of faith and prayer. In other words, a man can not be so much of a Christian on Sunday that he can afford to be a worldling all the rest of the week. If a steamer put out for Southampton, and go one day in that direction, and the other six days go in other directions, how long before the steamer will get to Southampton? It will never get there. And though a man may seem to be voyaging heavenward during the holy Sabbath-day, if,

during the following six days of the week, he is going to ward the world, and toward the flesh, and toward the devil, he will never ride up into the peaceful harbor of heaven. You can not eat so much at the Sabbath banquet that you can afford religious abstinence the other six days. Heroism and princely behavior on great occasions are no apology for lack of right demeanor in circumstances insignificant and inconspicuous. The genuine Christian life is not spasmodic; does not go by fits and starts. It toils on through heat and cold, up steep mountains and along dangerous declivities, its eye on the everlasting hills crowned with the castles of the blessed.

I propose, this morning, to make a plea in behalf of what I shall call "every-day religion."

In the first place, we want to bring the religion of Christ into our every day conversation. When a dam breaks, and two or three villages in Massachusetts are overwhelmed, or an earthquake in South America swallows a whole city, then people begin to talk about the uncertainty of life, and they imagine that they are engaged in positively religious conversation. No. You may talk about these things, and have no grace of God at all in your heart. We ought every day to be talking religion. If there is any thing glad about it, any thing beautiful about it, any thing important about it, we ought to be continuously discussing it. I have noticed that men, just in propor tion as their Christian experience is shallow, talk about funerals, and grave-yards, and tombstones, and death-beds. The real, genuine Christian man talks chiefly about this life, and the great eternity beyond, and not so much about the insignificant pass between these two residences. And yet how few circles there are where the religion of Jesus

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