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ON THE FENCE.

OW long halt ye between two opinions?" Here is a poor fellow on the fence, sitting puzzled and undecided between hell and heaven, between the angel of mercy and the devil. Like Reuben, he is double minded, unstable as water, and cannot excel. Tossed about by every wind of doctrine and temptation, wanting to do right and afraid of going to hell, yet unable to give up the world, subdue the flesh, and resist the devil. How many just such are all around us! They swear off from the bar-room to-day and go back tomorrow, resolve on Sunday and break their vows on Monday, promise ten thousand things in life and never accomplish any thing of ultimate and permanent good. They are on the fence in every thing, especially religion. No matter what great moral question springs up, they are always undecided if interest, appetite, or pleasure stand in the way. They are "between hawk and buzzard" on prohibition, especially if business or politics are in the way, or if they are unsettled as to whether or not they want to give up a thirst for the bottle. They recognize and feel the great moral and economic principles involved in the contest. They discover that the saloon is the profoundest curse of the country, the producer of crime,

insanity, and pauperism, the debaucher of politics and the corrupter of legislation, the destroyer of youth and the defacer of beauty, the promoter of strife and murder and lust, the degradation of morals, and the subverter of society, the deadly bane of the family, the multitudinous breeder of individual ruin, the open loor to hell from every avenue of social existence, but they cannot be persuaded to act with the reformation of the age in which they live. They will not take sides, but straddle the fence and thus give encouragement to the enemy, fallaciously imagining neutrality, when obligation fixes their duty on the side of right. So of every other question involving a conflict between duty and interest, pain and pleasure, indulgence and self-denial, popularity and criticism, right and wrong.

I have seen the preacher on the fence in things which compromised his bread and butter or his popular standing in the community. On certain subjects he set his sails with the wind, and his theology became like India rubber. Big sinners sat in the pew before himthe wholesale liquor-dealer, the high-toned libertine, the giddy fashionist, the splendid reveler, the dishonest dealer-but these magnificent sinners were rich and influential in position. The faithful and honest men and women of the Church mourned over spiritual dearth and decay; they called for discipline, that now dead sage, but the world in the Church and out of it rallied to "its own." The poor preacher talked of charity and love and sweetness, and he dealt gently with sin, spiritual wickedness in high places, while his conscience urged him to hurl thunderbolts and hold up the high standard of God's law and order. There he sat on the fence, while his Church

died, or until God let the devil in to tear it up and put it in a position to revolutionize, reorganize, and re-establish itself. So in a host of questions to-day, the popular preacher, occupying a popular pulpit, preaching to a popular congregation, is sitting on the fence, while the devil laughs on one side, and the angel of God shrieks out on the other: "Cry aloud, and spare not!" He claims "broad views on all subjects;" and the popular press lauds him as a man of liberal mind and without bigotry. He deals much in the æsthetics of Christianity, dabbles largely in the ethical, and occasionally touches the gospel of salvation or damnation with a "forty-foot" pole. Hell, except in parlor parlance, is quite out of the fashion with him, and the love and mercy of God, without the wrath and justice of God, are invariably held up. Sinners profess without repentance, and join the Church without religion; but all runs well just so the Church flourishes in grand style and the pastor lives on good terms, without friction, with his congregation and with the community. He is on the fence in every thing which would involve dispute or controversy with any thing mortal, and he seeks to reconcile and compromise away every difference as non-essential distinctions, without difference, among men. We live in the age of on-the-fence religion and on-the-fence ecclesiasticism and on-the-fence morality, "neither cold nor hot," ready to be spewed out of the mouth of Almighty God, increased in riches, full and wanting nothing, yet ragged and miserable and wretched in our delusion. This was the Laodicean sin which, figuratively, makes God sick.

I have seen mothers and fathers on the fence with their children. Especially is this so in these "last

days" when children have become universally "disobedient," and when the child, instead of the parent, rules. The day of the rod is gone, it is said, and we have reached the point where intelligence and love prevail. We now persuade and plead and beg, and I have seen a child offended, pout, and sniffle until the mother would go and ask its pardon, or otherwise explain and apologize for hurting the little one's feelings. The whole parental fraternity of this country is now on the fence with reference to child training and culture, with few exceptions; and without a revolution the next generation will find the majority on the side of the devil. Little girls wear bangs and bonnets and dresses like women, have acknowledged beaus, and I have seen them meet on the streets of Nashville and kiss! Young ladies and gentlemen correspond through the telephone, keep late hours in the parlor, stand at the gate in the dark, go upon moonlight excursions, and indiscriminately meet and associate at watering-places among strangers of all classes and characters. The parent is on the fence, not knowing what to do. There is nothing positive, but all seems generally negative, in family training. The child goes to school if it wants to, and but few ever grow up now, especially in our cities, to graduate at a first-class institution, male or female, except from the poorer classes. The boys and girls from the country constitute the main element seeking higher education; and in the matter of intellectual as well as moral culture our city children are left ultimately to do as they please, against the protest of the teacher, parent, and preacher. Never was there, in my humble opinion, an age of greater parental indifference, and never was there a period in which the independence

of children was so absolutely declared. Still the world rolls on, and by other counteracting influences keeps, so far, her level and upward and onward way.

But of all the most pitiable and sorry pictures it is the poor sinner on the fence and unable to decide between God and the devil. He admits himself a sinner, he feels that hell is yawning beneath him and that heaven is wooing him above; he hears the voice of mercy calling him on one side, and sees the devil beckoning him on the other, but he cannot decide. I have talked with scores just in this condition; and sometimes, with tears and trembling, they have admitted just such a state of mind. They want to get to heaven, and they want to escape hell. They acknowledge Christ as the only Redeemer; they confess that they are wavering in the balance between two opposite destinies; but some pet object, some fanciful scheme, some darling temptation, keeps them undecided. Often they are hoping for the future, and at the same time dreading the terrors of procrastination, but they continue to halt between two opinions. So thousands, at last, have gotten down on the devil's side of the fence, or else, at last, the devil caught them on the fence. It is all the same whether a man sits on the fence or gets off voluntarily on the devil's side, the devil gets him in the end. Let no man persuade himself that he is neither for God nor the devil, because he sits on the fence; for the fence of indecision is not the dividing line between God and the devil. The sinner already belongs to the devil, and until he decides for Christ he is on the devil's side.

Jesus says: "He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad." There is no middle, negative, nor neutral ground be

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