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Hawke's Bay Times, Volume XIII, Issue 546, 27 January 1868, Page 4

Frost Sehmons. —Various reasons are "iron why men do not go to church. The fact is they are not fed when they do go. Human nature is true to itself, and men will not go where they are not fed. If there was a discrhninatiug preacher in the pulpit, and he sent men away with better judgment, and with better moral convictions, and with Letter balanced states of mind; if he sent them away feeling that the sermon went home with them, and that they needed it. the church -would be a place to which people would resort far more than they now do. And never was there a time when men wanted religious truth as much as now. Never was a time when so many were hungry for knowledge of things that pertain to manhood here and hereafter as jut this very day. And when they go to church, and get nothing but cut straw, and straw raised live hundred years ago at that, and will not come again, I honor them. I lay this law as much to myself as to my brethren. I never scolded you for not coming to church, and I never will. Ido not mean here, for you almost, always fill this house ; but if my prayer-meetings and lectures are not well attended, it is my fault and not yours. 1 know it.' Ido not oelieve. as long us human nature remains iruo to what it is, that the herds will refuse to come to the rack when there is juicy fodder there ; and if they do not corns it is because There is nothing to cat. Therefore, when our evening meetings have fallen off, I have always sa.d I o my seif, “You are falling oil, and not the people.” Even when I have not remedi- d the evil I have known Ibc cause of it ull the time. Ami, jon the other hand, the rnomont my own ,soul was full, and my sympathies llowtd iont in overwhelming tides towards my I fellow men, I have noticed that ;ny mcctjiugs have gone up. II a man sleeps under my preaching I do not send a boy to wake him up ; but I feel that a boy had better conic and wake me up. lam not speaking to watchers of the sick, nor to seamen who have just landed, but of those ‘ pillars ol the Church of Gon ” that make sleeping n business I—Rev, 11. W. Beecher.