and we get out again as soon as the depot of the Doxology is reached.  We protest against this business way of doing things.  Shake hands when the benediction is pronounced with those who sat before and those who sat behind you.  Meet the people in the aisle, and give them Christian salutation.  Postponement of the dining hour for fifteen minutes will damage neither you nor the dinner.  That is the moment to say a comforting word to the man or woman in trouble.  The sermon was preached to the people in general; it is your place to apply it to the individual heart.

The church aisle may be made the road to heaven.  Many a man who was unaffected by what the minister said has been captured for God by the Christian word of an unpretending layman on the way out.

You may call it personal magnetism, or natural cordiality, but there are some Christians who have such an ardent way of shaking hands after meeting that it amounts to a benediction.  Such greeting is not made with the left hand.  The left hand is good for a great many things, for instance to hold a fork or twist a curl, but it was never made to shake hands with, unless you have lost the use of the right.  Nor is it done by the tips of the fingers laid loosely in the palm of another.  Nor is it done with a glove on.  Gloves are good to keep out the cold and make one look well, but have them so they can easily be removed, as they should be, for they are non-conductors of Christian magnetism.  Make bare the hand.  Place it in the palm of your friend.  Clench the fingers across the back part of the hand you grip.  Then let all the animation of your heart rush to the shoulder, and from there to the elbow, and then through the fore arm and through the wrist, till your friend gets the whole charge of gospel electricity.

In Paul’s time he told the Christians to greet each other with a holy kiss.  We are glad the custom has been dropped, for there are many good people who would not want to kiss us, as we would not want to kiss them.  Very attractive persons would find the supply greater than the demand.  But let us have a substitute suited to our age and land.  Let it be good, hearty, enthusiastic, Christian hand-shaking.

Governor Wiseman, our grave friend at tea, broke in upon us at this moment and said:  I am not fond of indiscriminate hand-shaking, and so am not especially troubled by the lack of cordiality on the part of church-goers.  But I am sometimes very much annoyed on Sabbaths with the habit of some good people in church.  It may be foolish in me; but when the wind blows from the east, it takes but little to disturb me.

There are some of the best Christian people who do not know how to carry themselves in religious assemblage.  They never laugh.  They never applaud.  They never hiss.  Yet, notwithstanding, are disturbers of public worship.