How to get out of the old rut without twisting off the wheel, or snapping the shafts, or breaking the horse’s leg, is a question not more appropriate to every teamster than to every Christian worker.  Having once got out of the old rut, the next thing is to keep out.  There is nothing more killing than ecclesiastical humdrum.  Some persons do not like the Episcopal Church because they have the same prayers every Sabbath, but have we not for the last ten years been hearing the same prayers over and over again, the product of a self-manufactured liturgy that has not the thousandth part of the excellency of those petitions that we hear in the Episcopal Church?

In many of our churches sinners hear the same exhortations that they have been hearing for the last fifteen years, so that the impenitent man knows, the moment the exhorter clears his throat, just what is going to be said; and the hearer himself is able to recite the exhortation as we teach our children the multiplication table forward or backward.  We could not understand the doleful strain of a certain brother’s prayer till we found out that he composed it on a fast day during the yellow fever in 1821, and has been using it ever since.

There are laymen who do not like to hear a sermon preached the second time who yet give their pastors the same prayer every week at the devotional meeting—­that is, fifty-two times the year, with occasional slices of it between meals.  If they made any spiritual advancement, they would have new wants to express and new thanksgivings to offer.  But they have been for a decade of years stuck fast in the mud, and they splash the same thing on you every week.  We need a universal church cleaning by which all canting and humdrum shall be scrubbed out.

If we would keep fresh, let us make occasional excursions into other circles than our own.  Artists generally go with artists, farmers with farmers, mechanics with mechanics, clergymen with clergymen, Christian workers with Christian workers.  But there is nothing that sooner freshens one up than to get in a new group, mingling with people whose thought and work run in different channels.  For a change put the minister on the hay rack and the farmer in the clergyman’s study.

Let us read books not in our own line.  After a man has been delving in nothing but theological works for three months, a few pages in the Patent-office Report will do him more good than Doctor Dick on “The Perseverance of the Saints.”  Better than this, as a diversion, is it to have some department of natural history or art to which you may turn, a case of shells or birds, or a season ticket to some picture gallery.  If you do nothing but play on one string of the bass viol, you will wear it out and get no healthy tune.  Better take the bow and sweep it clear across in one grand swirl, bringing all four strings and all eight stops into requisition.