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 Presented by 
 
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 BV 637 .T49 1888 
 
 Thwing, Charles Franklin, 
 
 1853-1937. 
 The working church 
 
THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
THE 
 
 orfetng B|I)urcI). 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES F. THWING, D.D., 
 
 AUTHOR OF "AMERICAN COLLEGES: THEIR STUDENTS AND WORK, 
 "the READING OF BOOKS;" AND JOINT AUTHOR OF 
 
 "the family: an historical and 
 social study ; " etc. 
 
 ^ 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 THE BAKER AND TAYLOR CO. 
 
 740 AND 742 Broadway. 
 
Copyright, 1888, 
 By The Baker and Taylor Co. 
 
 Press of J. J. Little & Co., 
 Astor Place, New York. 
 
TO 
 
 Z\)t ^ijjo Cfjurdjes 
 
 I HAVE LOVED AND SERVED AS MINISTER : 
 
 THE NORTH AVENUE CONGREGATIONAL, OF CAMBRIDGE, 
 
 AND 
 
 THE PLYMOUTH, OF MINNEAPOLIS, 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 I. The Church and the Pastor: In- 
 troductory 9 
 
 11. The Character OF Church Work . i6 
 III. The Worth and the Worthlessness 
 
 OF Methods 3' 
 
 IV. Among the Children 37 
 
 V. Among the Young People .... 53 
 
 VI. Among Business Men 62 
 
 VII. From the Business Point of View 70 
 
 VIII. Two Special Agencies 86 
 
 IX. Treatment of Strangers .... 98 
 
 X. The Unchurched 109 
 
 XI. Benevolence 127 
 
 XII. The Rewards of Christian Work . 145 
 
 ^*^ Parts of several of the chapters have been published in 
 such journals as the "Independent," "Christian Union," "Con- 
 gregationalist," and "Advance." 
 
THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 CHURCH AND PASTOR. — INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 HE Church is at once the church of 
 the Son of God and the church of 
 the Son of Man. It is the church 
 of the Son of God. He is its head ; He is its 
 Spirit, and it is His body ; He is its life. Its 
 origin is in the principle of divine love em- 
 bodied in Him. Its history is the history of 
 the unveiling of the principle of human re- 
 demption. The church is the church of the 
 Son of Man. It includes all those who accept 
 the principle of divine love, and endeavor to 
 obey the duties revealed by this love. It in- 
 cludes all those who are " predestinated," says 
 
lO THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 Wycliffe. It embraces all holding the Word 
 and observing the sacraments, says- Luther. 
 It is the visible organization in which pure 
 doctrine is taught, says Melanchthon. It is a 
 society in v^hich every regenerate soul is a 
 component part, says Schleiermacher. It is 
 the religious community into which civil so- 
 ciety grows in its moral development, sug- 
 gests Rothe. The Church, therefore, is at 
 once divine and human, — divine in origin, di- 
 vine in continued dependence on divine grace, 
 divine in the glorious consummation which 
 awaits its development ; human in including 
 mankind, and in having as its sphere of ac- 
 tivity the whole world. Down to the Refor- 
 mation of the sixteenth century the Church 
 was considered primarily as a divine insti- 
 tution ; in the last three hundred years its 
 human relations have, with each passing 
 generation, become more conspicuous. 
 
 It is to the human relations of the Church 
 that this book is devoted. Of these human 
 relations only the more aggressive are in- 
 cluded within its view. 
 
CHURCH AND PASTOR. 1 1 
 
 The work of Christ's redemption is con- 
 tinued by His Church. The labor of the 
 Church, therefore, is primarily the turning of 
 men from sin unto righteousness. Its pur- 
 pose is the incarnation of holiness in the 
 individual and in the community. The field 
 of this labor embraces all classes, ages, and 
 conditions. 
 
 Its prime duty is the conversion to, and 
 edification in, Christ of those who are within 
 its immediate relation ; but it also bears rela- 
 tions to the universal cause of Christ, and 
 owes duties to philanthropy. It is the great 
 missionary power. It is to obey the com- 
 mand of going forth and evangelizing the 
 world. Missionary endeavor — local, national, 
 universal — is its simple duty, and is also its 
 increasing joy. Its members should heed 
 the individual call of the consecration of 
 their lives and of their wealth to this ser- 
 vice. Every form of wise charity it should 
 seek to foster ; it should strive to inspire 
 charity with the spirit of Christ, and to 
 impress it with the methods of Christian self- 
 
12 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 helpfulness. It is itself a temperance organ- 
 ization, and should co-operate with every 
 wise endeavor for ridding the home and the 
 nation of the direful curse of drunkenness. 
 It should strive to teach labor its dignity and 
 duties, and capital its responsibilities and 
 worthy rights. It should seek to dispel pov- 
 erty by removing its causes, giving not alms 
 so much as friendship. It should welcome 
 every wise attempt to construct the social 
 order upon a better basis than the present, 
 yet disavowing all regard for a godless com- 
 munism. It should show to the working-man 
 that every movement toward a free Sunday is 
 a movement toward a working Sunday. It 
 should, in general, prove itself a friend to 
 every man whom it can help to make more 
 worthy of the Christ who died for him. 
 
 The sphere of the Church is as broad as the 
 world : its work is limited only by the needs 
 of sinning, suffering humanity ; its duty is 
 measured only by its power, in the name of 
 Christ, of serving and saving lost men. In 
 its relation to other churches of the same or 
 
CHURCH AND PASTOR. 13 
 
 Other order, the individual church is to be 
 guided by the principles of Christian liberty 
 and courtesy. Laboring for the public weal, 
 it is never to strive to build itself through the 
 decline of other worthy interests. It is to 
 recognize that the prosperity of all churches 
 and the prosperity of common interests and 
 objects are more worthy than its own individ- 
 ual growth. Yet it is always to labor to make 
 itself vigorous, strong, and efficient, for the 
 sake of Him to whom it belongs and whom 
 it serves, and for the sake of the world He 
 would save. 
 
 The pastor of a church holds to it a two- 
 fold relation, — ■ that of preacher and of chief 
 executive officer. The preaching should be 
 devoted to the promotion of Christian char- 
 acter. Its content and burden should be the 
 gospel. Its methods should be adapted to the 
 intellectual and other conditions of those to 
 whom it is addressed. Its tone should be inva- 
 riably warm, earnest, and spiritual. It should 
 embrace the doctrines, and should also be in- 
 tensely practical in aim and application. It 
 
14 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 should be supported by the Bible, and should 
 prove itself true and just to human reason. 
 It should be convincing in argument and per- 
 suasive in appeal. It should be the truth of 
 God known in the life of the preacher, mak- 
 ing itself known to other lives. It should be 
 at once, in the broadest and narrowest sense, 
 Christian. 
 
 The executive work of the pastor is as 
 broad and diverse as the work of the church. 
 But his chief purpose is to develop the activi- 
 ties of his church as a Christian institution. 
 He is, therefore, to plan methods and to sug- 
 gest lines of Christian service ; to stimulate 
 energy ; to adjust work to worker, and worker 
 to work. He is to unite individuals into co- 
 operative labor. He is also to attempt to 
 allot to each member some specific and in- 
 dividual Christian service. He is to work 
 through workers. Yet he should be ashamed 
 to spare himself. In his general bearing he 
 is to be a bishop, overseeing the individual 
 lives of the members ; a shepherd in the older 
 meaning, leading and not driving his flock, 
 
CHURCH AND PASTOR. 1 5 
 
 loving and trying to show himself worthy of 
 being loved, trusting and trusted, as he may 
 merit ; a minister, rejoicing in every oppor- 
 tunity of service for his Master among m,en. 
 In a larger and more public relation he should 
 not fail to conceive and to do his duty to the 
 cause of education, embodied in school and 
 college, endeavoring to make it Christian ; 
 never, moreover, should he forget that he is 
 a citizen of a Commonwealth whose founders 
 regarded the Church and the State as one. 
 
 But if the pastor is a minister of the church, 
 he is also, and more, a minister of, and for, and 
 by Christ. Like the disciples on the Mount 
 of Transfiguration, he is to see no man "save 
 Jesus only." The truth of Christ he is to 
 know, the duty of Christ to do, and the com- 
 mendation of Christ to endeavor to receive. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE CHARACTER OF CHURCH WORK. 
 
 HE course of study in the theological 
 seminaries has been greatly enlarged 
 within a decade. Biblical theology, 
 archaeology, languages cognate to the He- 
 brew, and science in its relation to religion, 
 have found a place in the curriculum. Es- 
 sential as some teachers regard these studies 
 to the complete scholarly equipment of the 
 minister, they are yet not as essential as a 
 subject in which little or no instruction is 
 given. This subject relates to the adminis- 
 trative or executive work of a church. In 
 one sense this department is akin to what is 
 usually called pastoral theology ; in another 
 sense it is quite remote. As pastoral theol-^ 
 ogy has been taught, it consists of the barest 
 commonplaces and insipid platitudes. My 
 
CHARACTER OF CHURCH WORK. \J 
 
 own Studies at a theological school are not 
 so distant that my memory of them is in- 
 distinct ; but the chief fact in the course 
 of lectures on pastoral theology — delivered 
 by a most godly and lovable professor, now of 
 blessed memory — which I yet recall, is that 
 a pastor should not, under ordinary condi- 
 tions, make a call of more than twenty min- 
 utes. Instructions as to the performance of 
 a marriage or the conduct of a funeral service 
 or the leading of a prayer-meeting are not 
 by any manner of means to be despised ; but 
 such instructions are no more adequate to the 
 demands which the young minister is asked 
 to meet, than the old spinning-wheel is capable 
 of furnishing thread for the modern loom. 
 
 The problem which every young minister 
 meets in his installation over a church is this: 
 What car^be done to put this church to work? 
 What can be done to cause it to impress 
 Christian sentiment upon this community ? 
 What can I, its pastor, do to make this 
 church a power ? How shall I work with 
 it ? His sermons may be biblical, eloquent, 
 
1 8 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 instructive, inspiring ; his pastoral visits re- 
 lentless in their systematic thoroughness ; 
 his leadership of the devotional meetings 
 wise : but all this, his work, does not quicken 
 the church to its work. Over and above all 
 this, are several departments or sections of 
 church work which he should organize and 
 formulate, and for the organization and formu- 
 lation of which the training of the theological 
 school should give him aid. 
 
 The training of the baptized children in 
 the truths and duties of the covenant which 
 their parents have made in their behalf ; the 
 training also of all the children in a knowl- 
 edge of the Bible and of Christian doctrine ; 
 the ways and means of conducting classes in 
 some catechism or synopsis of bibhcal truth ; 
 the work with, for, and through the young men 
 and women of the parish, — their.organiza- 
 tion for aggressive hbor, sympathy with them 
 in the difficulties besetting the first years of 
 Christian experience, and the methods of 
 arousing and guiding their enthusiasm ; the 
 ways and means for reaching the unchurched, 
 
CHARACTER OF CHURCH WORK. 1 9 
 
 — the character of the popular Sunday-even- 
 ing service, the neighborhood prayer-meeting, 
 the open-air meeting of the Sabbath afternoon 
 in the city, the reaching the back districts 
 in the country through school-house Sunday- 
 schools, prayer-meetings, and preaching ser- 
 vices ; the work for the intemperate, for the 
 young in reference to temperance, sewing- 
 schools, cooking-schools, and similar philan- 
 thropic agencies ; special endeavors to restore 
 lapsed church-members ; assigning special 
 church work to each new member ; the in- 
 troduction of the new families joining the 
 congregation to the older families; methods 
 of greeting and interesting strangers in the 
 church ; the Sunday-school in all its manifold 
 interests of the instruction of teacher and 
 pupil, of division into departments and classes, 
 of keeping vigorous the spiritual side of the 
 teaching ; the organization of mission schools, 
 
 — all these, and many more features and 
 departments, the young pastor, immediately 
 after his first service on the Sabbath, is 
 called to consider. A minister of large com- 
 
20 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 mon sense, without previous training, will 
 attack the problem and solve it to the best 
 of his ability. But many ministers will be 
 either unconscious that any such problem is 
 before them, or will be inclined to sit down 
 before it with hands folded. 
 
 The solution of the religious problem of 
 the city lies in the administration of the 
 church. So, also, does the solution of the 
 equally important religious problem of the 
 country. No class of professional men is 
 working more hours each week, or working 
 more severely than the clerical. The sur- 
 prise is that their sermons are as good as 
 they are. The seminaries train students well, 
 never better, for doing their individual work 
 of writing helpful sermons. To the sermon 
 I would assign the highest place in Christian 
 instruction and inspiration. But the minister 
 should know that his chief executive work is 
 to make other people work. He can do little, 
 very little himself, to lessen misery, to arouse 
 religious conviction, and to convert the city or 
 the village to sound views or righteous prac- 
 
CHARACTER OF CHURCH WORK. 21 
 
 tice. He should read carefully the lesson 
 of his inability and limitations. But he also 
 should know that through others the little 
 one himself may become a thousand. Let 
 him be the commander-in-chief, not to fight 
 himself, but to train others for fighting, to 
 plan the campaign and put these trained 
 workers into the field of action. The 
 churches — that is, the individual members 
 of the churches — are to do Christ's work. 
 The pastor is the chief of directors. The 
 most useful church is the most laborious 
 church. Not less preaching, but more ; not 
 less learning, but more ; not less eloquence, 
 but more ; but above all present human in- 
 struments, abiUty to put a church to work in 
 its community, is the need. 
 
 Various definitions are given of the Church, 
 according as the Church is conceived as local 
 or universal, denominational or catholic, visi- 
 ble or invisible ; but these various defini- 
 tions have one common element, a belief in 
 Christ as the Saviour of the world. It would 
 be well, I think, if our conception of the 
 
22 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 Church could be so formulated as expressly 
 to include, not simply those believing in 
 Christ as the world's Saviour, but also those 
 who are laboring to bring the world unto 
 Christ to be saved. The Church is the col- 
 lective body of those who are endeavoring to 
 serve Christ among men. The idea of the 
 Church as a working force needs reiterated 
 emphasis. For the Church is the incarnate 
 Christ, and is to continue and to complete the 
 work which He came to begin. The Church 
 is the evangelizing, missionary power. The 
 mission of the Holy Ghost we are to honor 
 and to co-operate with ; but with His purpose 
 of leading into all truth and of sanctifying 
 men, we are in closest union when we obey 
 the command of Him who sent the Holy 
 Spirit, the command to " go." The Roman 
 Catholic Church has its order of workers ; 
 but in the Protestant Church each member 
 is supposed to be a worker. Wesley's motto, 
 with slight variations, is right : ** All at it, at 
 all times, in all places, and in all ways." We 
 should not have simply the church of Saint 
 
CHARACTER OF CHURCH WORK. 23 
 
 Paul, the church holding forth the faith ; 
 neither should we have simply the church of 
 Saint James, on whose front works are bla- 
 zoned ; but we should have the Church of 
 Christ, in which neither faith nor works are 
 neglected, but in which both are harmoniously 
 united and effectively adjusted. It is, there- 
 fore, evident that the Church of Christ is the 
 Church at work in Christ's service. 
 
 To the church thus at work the pastor 
 holds the relation of bishop, overseer, presi- 
 dent, director, guide. He is himself to be a 
 laborious worker. He cannot hope to have 
 his church at work, unless he is at once an 
 example and an inspiration. If he be labo- 
 rious ; cordial to strangers and new families ; 
 attentive to the sick, the mourning, and the 
 poor ; wisely regular in his parochial labor ; 
 thoughtful of those requiring special watch 
 and ward, as the new convert and the in- 
 quirer ; strong, vigorous, aggressive, eager to 
 do as much as possible, — his church will 
 catch the enthusiasm of his example, and will 
 be aroused by the inspiration of his work. 
 
24 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 Choose the churches in New York, Chicago, 
 Boston, Philadelphia, which are most active 
 and aggressive, and it will be found, with 
 scarcely an exception, that they are the 
 churches manned by the most active, aggres- 
 sive, and laborious ministers. The old min- 
 ister said to the young minister, " If you are 
 a faithful minister of Jesus Christ, you will 
 have many an aching head, weary back, and 
 heavy heart." Yes ; the minister's head ought 
 to ache, and his back ought to be weary, and 
 his heart ought to be heavy, in the noble 
 and devoted earnestness of his labor. As a 
 class, ministers are more laborious than law- 
 yers or doctors ; but most ministers should 
 be far more devoted to the work. If they 
 cannot be Pauls, they can be Paul-like in the 
 enthusiasm, courage, and persistency of their 
 work. 
 
 In arousing his church to its work and \\\ 
 securing workers, the pastor will receive aid 
 by making the tone of his preaching mis- 
 sionary and evangelizing. The conception of 
 the Church as a collective bodv of Christians 
 
CHARACTER OF CHURCH WORK. 25 
 
 laboring in Christ's cause should be almost 
 as constant an element in each sermon as 
 the statement of the terms of salvation. He 
 should seek to indoctrinate his hearers with 
 the gospel of work. This general character 
 of his preaching will not prevent him from 
 occasionally devoting special sermons to spe- 
 cial departments or demands. But beside this 
 method and principle, each pastor should per- 
 sonally and individually call men to special 
 service. Knowing the work which God seems 
 to ordain his Church to do, alert to discover 
 those who may serve in this divinely appointed 
 mission, he should be as the chaplain of St. 
 Andrews who summoned John Knox into 
 the Christian ministry : ** I charge thee, as 
 thou hast a regard for the glory of God, the 
 salvation of men, and your own eternal well- 
 being, that you neglect not this duty to which 
 God calls." 
 
 The pastor can and may in God's name 
 summon men to service in the Sabbath- 
 school, to service in gathering in the un- 
 churched, to service in establishing missions, 
 
26 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 to service in the cause of charity, to service 
 in any one of the Unes of endeavor by which 
 the Church seeks to mo.ve the world. 
 
 Though no member is to be indifferent to 
 any part of the work of the church, each 
 member has abilities which more efficiently 
 qualify him for service in one part than in 
 another. The dictate of common sense and 
 the dictate of the Scripture is that he de- 
 vote his powers to those lines of work in 
 which they will prove of most worth. One 
 man, with a peculiar readiness of address, may 
 be ordained by the pastor for looking after 
 the unchurched and the new families taking 
 up their residence in the neighborhood of the 
 church. To one woman may be committed 
 the special task of gathering children into 
 the Sunday-school. To another woman may be 
 intrusted the duty of instructing the children 
 in the Bible, in a way more thorough than the 
 hour of the Sabbath-school permits. The 
 charitable work, not in the negative sense of 
 giving away old clothes or sending out dozens 
 of Thanksgiving turkeys, but in the positive 
 
CHARACTER OF CHURCH WORK. 2/ 
 
 sense of showing one's self a genuine friend 
 to those in need, may be commended to the 
 wise diligence of a special board of ladies and 
 gentlemen. The work, too, of instructing the 
 young men and women in the Bible and in 
 Christian doctrine and in matters of church 
 work should be placed in the special charge 
 of those competent for this serious duty. 
 The outlook committee on mission work, 
 local, national, foreign, should not fail of re- 
 ceiving consideration. 
 
 The pastor, seeing the work which his 
 church ought to do, understanding so far as 
 possible the abilities of its members, should 
 seek to set each member to that task to 
 which nature and grace have fitted him. His 
 worthy purpose is to put others to work. 
 He may in the first year of his pastorate 
 work much harder in getting his church to 
 work than he would in doing himself all 
 the work which he gets it to do ; but it is 
 better for the church always, and in the end 
 better for himself, that this division and sub- 
 division of labor be pursued. Let the pas- 
 
28 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 tor himself train special workers for special 
 works. Agassiz was once asked what was 
 his greatest work in Ameriea. His reply 
 was, the training of three men. " One," 
 said the great naturalist, ** has abandoned 
 my theories, and one has become indifferent 
 to me ; but the scientific training of three 
 scholars is my greatest work," — greater 
 than the building of the great museum at 
 Cambridge, greater than all the investiga- 
 tions on two continents which made him 
 one of the first naturalists of the century. 
 Likewise many a pastor finds his greatest 
 work in a ministry, not the building of a 
 splendidly equipped meeting-house, not the 
 receiving even of hundreds into church-fellow- 
 ship, but the conversion to Christ and the 
 training of a few men and women who are 
 thus qualified for eminent service. Let each 
 pastor know the work which his church is 
 evidently by its position ordained of God to 
 do. Let him, with this knowledge, study to 
 allot this work in its diverse forms to those 
 who can and ought to do it. 
 
CHARACTER OF CHURCH WORK. 29 
 
 Having secured his co-workers, the pastor 
 is to train them for effective labor. In most 
 instances these whom he thus invites are in 
 greater or less need of instruction and disci- 
 pline in church work. The work itself is the 
 best training-school, but he may himself give 
 them aid. The more than four hundred mis- 
 sionaries of the London City Mission receive 
 a training more or less peculiarly fitted to 
 their peculiar duties. The instruction which 
 a pastor gives may be special and individual; 
 but the main purpose which qualifies all his 
 teaching is to teach the use of the Bible in 
 bringing the unconverted to Christ. In fol- 
 ' lowing this aim he will give instruction in 
 the Scriptures, and in particular in the fun- 
 damental truths of the Scriptures. He will 
 illustrate and emphasize his meanings by the 
 use of actual instances of conversion. God 
 the Father, God the Saviour, God the Holy 
 Ghost, grace, repentance, forgiveness, confes- 
 sion, faith,' regeneration, conversion, justifica- 
 tion, are subjects which he considers in the 
 light of the Bible. In the study of individual 
 
30 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 cases he will seek to show how the Word, 
 " fitly spoken " and " in season," has proved 
 to be the " sword of the Spirit," sharper than a 
 " two edged-sword, piercing even to the divid- 
 ing asunder of soul and spirit . . . and a dis- 
 cerner of the thoughts and intents of the 
 heart." He will endeavor to give sugges- 
 tions as to dealing with the doubter, the igno- 
 rant, the fearful, the discouraged, the wilful, 
 the complaining, the proud, those lacking con- 
 viction, those lacking decision, those weak in 
 the faith, backsliders, and new converts. 
 Thus, month by month, year by year, train- 
 ing his associates to service, he tries to equip 
 them for the general or particular duties to 
 which nature and grace seem to call them. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE WORTH AND THE WORTHLESSNESS 
 OF METHODS. 
 
 VERY pastor has his methods in 
 working with and for his church, 
 and in getting his church to work. 
 The exact nature of these methods is of less 
 importance than the fact that the methods 
 are his own, — methods with which he is ac- 
 quainted and which he can handle. Eccle- 
 siastical methods, like personal habits, are 
 constitutional. If they are not his own, if 
 he fails to understand them, he is quite as 
 helpless as David in Goliath's armor, or as 
 Goliath with David's sling and stones. In 
 his use of methods of work the pastor is 
 exposed to perils. 
 
 Among these perils is the danger of believ- 
 ing that methods which are successful in one 
 
32 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 church will prove successful in another, or 
 •that methods which succeed in a church at 
 one time will always succeed. Methods should 
 be very elastic. They should be capable of 
 great adaptiveness. They should be adjusted 
 to the peculiar needs of each church. For 
 instance, the prayer-meeting should be a 
 meeting for, and of, and by the people. But 
 a church may for generations have been ac- 
 custome'd to regard this meeting as a lecture 
 by the minister. The newly installed pastor, 
 with memories of the pleasant conferences of 
 his former charge, cannot transform the hour 
 of a lecture given by one into an hour of 
 religious conversation shared in by a score. 
 Moreover, the type of the prayer-meeting in 
 which religious conversation prevails may in 
 time become vapid and inconsequential. The 
 pastor should endeavor to throw greater in- 
 tellectual vigor into its exercises without dim- 
 inishing their heartiness. In every respect a 
 pastor should hold himself ready to surrender 
 or to alter his methods according to the de- 
 mands of the place or the time. 
 
WORTH OF METHODS. 33 
 
 In thus doing, the pastor is guarded from 
 a not uncommon peril, — namely, of believing 
 that methods have intrinsic worth. Of course 
 we all know that they are good only so far 
 forth as they do good ; yet long associations 
 with methods may result in transferring our 
 regard for the end to the means by which the 
 end is gained. Systematic pastoral visitation 
 is an idol with not a few ministers ; but the 
 annual or biennial call on each family is not 
 an ideal which is to be followed inflexibly 
 without reference to the real needs of any 
 family, or to the good which a pastor may 
 do by special attention to certain households. 
 Each minister is to put his pastoral or his 
 other work in that place where it will effect 
 the richest results. 
 
 In subordinating methods to ends, aid may 
 be drawn from keeping constantly before the 
 mind and heart the supreme aim of all church 
 work, — the development of Christian char- 
 acter. If any method fails to achieve this 
 purpose, it is useless ; if it succeeds in achiev- 
 ing this purpose, it has value. Every method 
 3 
 
34 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 should be brought to this ultimate test of 
 conversion and edification. No matter how 
 perfect the machinery of a church, or how 
 admirably and noiselessly or boisterously it 
 moves, if it fails here it is a complete failure. 
 We must maintain this aim as ultimate and 
 supreme, and cause methods to adjust them- 
 selves to this ideal. This most worthy pur- 
 pose elevates toil, ennobles self-sacrifice, 
 adjusts difficulties, eliminates selfishness, 
 strengthens patience, gives to work enthu- 
 siasm and enlargement, and crowns it with 
 increasing success. 
 
 A pastor should also guard himself from 
 the danger of imposing his methods on 
 churches unwilUng or indifferent to receive 
 them. We ministers are not to have pet 
 hobbies to impose on anybody, least of all 
 on those whose servants we are. We are to 
 justify the wisdom of what we propose to do 
 in a church, and of the ways in which we 
 hope to win our aim. This justification it is 
 not necessary to herald in advance, if our 
 purposes are right and our methods wise. 
 
WORTH OF METHODS. 35 
 
 They will prove to be their own justification. 
 It may be that a church to whose pastorate a 
 minister is called, has methods and practices 
 which are superior to any he may himself 
 possess. In this case he should be more than 
 willing to adopt these methods, and to work 
 them to the best of his ability. Along this 
 same line it is to be still further said that 
 abrupt changes of method are usually evil. 
 Churches, no more than children, like to be 
 jerked. It is also worthy of remark that we 
 young ministers in particular are in danger, 
 in an adoption of church methods, of not 
 showing sufficient deference to elders and to 
 those who have special interest in the church. 
 It may also be true that we are in peril of 
 paying too much deference to the wealthy 
 and scholarly classes. To avoid this peril of 
 pastoral autocracy, the pastor shouM hold full 
 and frequent conferences with the officers, 
 and should not adopt important measures 
 except with their approval and the promise 
 of their hearty co-operation. For he is not 
 lord or autocrat, but overseer, president, nay, 
 
36 THE WORKING CHUBCH. 
 
 the servant, of his church, and of him whom 
 he calls Master. 
 
 It is further to be borne in mind that no 
 method, however perfect, is a substitute for 
 power. The method is only the way in 
 which the intellectual, emotional, volitional, 
 spiritual power is manifest. Method without 
 power is a locomotive on the track without 
 steam. Power without method is the loco- 
 motive with steam in the boiler and pipe, but 
 derailed and ploughing its path to its own de- 
 struction. Power manifests itself in method, 
 but method is no substitute for power. Noth- 
 ing takes the place of a real love on the part 
 of the pastor for his people. If he fails to 
 love them, the wisest of methods will succeed 
 in winning only a partial success. If he loves 
 them, his best methods will succeed more 
 thoroughly by reason of his love ; and his 
 indifferent methods will prove of some worth. 
 '* My little children, I write unto you that ye 
 love one another." 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 AMONG THE CHILDREN. 
 
 IIILDREN should be constantly 
 trained to love Jesus and to feel His 
 love. Character sets early. Life- 
 long tendencies are indicated in the first 
 years. In his autobiography Darwin says 
 that in his early boyhood he had a passion 
 for collecting all sorts of things. Shells, 
 seals, francs, coins, and minerals were among 
 the objects he gathered. We have now fewer 
 juvenile prodigies than formerly; but on the 
 whole, character is fixed at an earlier age. 
 The boy is not only the father of the man; 
 the boy is the man. Evil begins to train its 
 children early for its service. A boy of four- 
 teen was lately hanged in Texas for murder. 
 A lad whom I knew was accused of an infa- 
 mous crime. When his mother was told of it 
 
38 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 she said, " Why, it is not possible ! Arthur is 
 only a little baby." Children grow old in 
 wickedness before they reach their teens, and 
 while their mothers think they are as inno- 
 cent as infants. Heathendom trains its chil- 
 dren early. As soon as a pagan boy is strong 
 enough to hold a flower in his hand, he is 
 taught to lay that flower at the feet of an 
 idol. The Roman Catholic Church trains its 
 children early. Every mother entering the 
 church with her baby in her arms puts the 
 holy water upon the baby's forehead. 
 
 From the earliest years children should be 
 trained to love Jesus and to feel His love. 
 Thomas Chalmers was so thoroughly trained 
 in this respect, that from his first years he de- 
 clared his purpose to become a minister. It 
 is told that Edward Payson, when he was not 
 more than three years old, would often weep 
 under the preaching of the gospel, and would 
 sometimes call his mother to his bedside to 
 talk with him as to his soul's salvation. Such 
 an experience is abnormal : it ought to be 
 discouraged ; it is neither healthy nor health- 
 
AMONG THE CHILDREN. 39 
 
 ful. But it is normal for the boy of ten, 
 like Leonard Woods, — the first Professor of 
 Theology at Andover, where he continued 
 for a quarter of a century, — to desire to be 
 educated for Christian service. 
 
 Tertullian made a remark which has be- 
 come famous : " Man is naturally Christian." 
 In one respect the remark is false ; in another 
 it is true. The remark is true, in that the 
 child heart loves Jesus. The child " takes to " 
 Christ. The story of Christ's love awakens 
 the child's loyalty ; and the story of Christ's 
 death, the child's indignation. Next to the 
 love for father and mother, nay, beyond, be- 
 neath, and around the love for mother and 
 for father, the child from the first should be 
 taught to love Jesus. There should be no 
 need of conversion and turning about. The 
 curve in an ascending spiral, not a right 
 angle, should represent the Christian's devel- 
 opment. Children should never know the 
 time when they did not love Jesus. The 
 saintly Baxter was at one period greatly 
 troubled because he could not recollect the 
 
40 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 hour when there was a gracious change in 
 his character; but at last he discovered that 
 education is as properly the means of grace 
 as preaching. Thus he found comfort sweeter 
 in his love for Christ, because he could not 
 remember the time when he did not love 
 Him. 
 
 A distinguished clergyman now living 
 writes in charming style of his early Chris- 
 tian life. Such a story as he tells should be 
 far more common than it is : — 
 
 *' My earliest memory is a religious memory. In 
 my home the entire atmosphere was persistently 
 religious. I learned to read so young that I have 
 no recollection whatever of the process, and the 
 daily reading of the Bible was as much a part of my 
 young life as the daily breakfast. With sweet and 
 steady pressure, and at the same time with a pres- 
 sure wonderfully wise, my mother was always lead- 
 ing, referring, forcing me to Jesus. I can think of 
 no time when, because of her enwrapping teaching, 
 I did not recognize myself a sinner, and did not, in 
 a boyish way at least, look to Christ as Saviour. 
 Her steady test for things by which she taught me 
 to decide concerning this or that was. Would it 
 
AMONG THE CHILDREN. 4 1 
 
 please Jesus ? When I had done wrong, — and I 
 did wrong by no means infrequently, — though I 
 might repent toward her and ask her forgiveness, 
 I was always taught that the finishing of the matter 
 had never come until I had personally sorrowed 
 toward and asked forgiveness of the Lord. So 
 Christ hung as a sun steadily and consciously to 
 myself in all my childish horizon. To please my 
 parents was a sweet thing, I was taught; but to 
 please Christ and my parents for His sake, a 
 sweeter thing. Yet there was no cant in all this, 
 nor the least sanctimoniousness. It seemed to be 
 all as natural and right to me as breathing. So, 
 really, I cannot remember the time when I did not 
 look upon the Lord Jesus as my personal Saviour, 
 did not trust Him, did not recognize and accept 
 it as the task of life to serve Him." 
 
 The proposition, therefore, is evident that 
 children should be constantly trained to love 
 Jesus and to feel His love, for them. 
 
 If any period of half a dozen years in the 
 life of a child be more critical, religiously, 
 than any other, it is the six years follow- 
 ing the age of ten. At this age the boys 
 and girls usually are graduated from the 
 primary department of the Sunday-school 
 
42 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 into its intermediate or higher department. 
 If they have received proper instruction, 
 many of them are at this time Christians. 
 If I need not seek evidence beyond my own 
 early boyhood to prove the doctrine of total 
 depravity, I also need not seek evidence 
 beyond the limits of my first pastorate, to 
 prove that the hearts of many young children 
 are inclined to accept Jesus as their guide, 
 helper. Saviour. They, at an early age, know- 
 somewhat of the evil of sin. They appreci- 
 ate, even more than many who are their 
 seniors, the tenderness of the love of Christ. 
 They affirm their love of Jesus. They are 
 willing to promise to try to be and to do as 
 they believe He desires. Their homes and 
 school-rooms and play-grounds bear witness 
 to the reality of their endeavor. Their wills 
 are moved, their intellects are also enlight- 
 ened, and their feelings touched. " Except 
 ye become as little children : " they have 
 no need of becoming ; they are little chil- 
 dren. They are essential Christians. They 
 have not an ''experience" such as their elders 
 
AMONG THE CHILDREN. 43 
 
 have. They ought not to have ; they can- 
 not have it. But they are able to endure 
 the test which our Lord appHed to Peter at 
 the close of His divine mission, "Lovest thou 
 me .'' " They are in kind as truly Christians 
 at the age of ten, after a few years of proper 
 instruction, as they are at the age of seventy; 
 as the child who is studying his " first 
 reader" is as really reading as the scholar 
 who is perusing Gibbon's poUshed and well- 
 rounded sentences. 
 
 But with children thus circumstanced and 
 -inclined at the age of ten, the following 
 four or five years work tremendous changes. 
 They have fallen from grace. They have be- 
 come, if not hard and hardened, indifferent 
 and careless. Their attention to Christian 
 truth is not easily secured. The heart is not 
 quite so soft as before. They reason, inquire, 
 in a way doubt. The fact is, their suscepti- 
 bility to spiritual impressions has diminished. 
 They feel the downward gravitation of the 
 world, the flesh, and the devil. Their love 
 for Christ is either dying or dead. 
 
44 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 In this common condition the problem 
 which the church has set before it is this : 
 to keep these child-Christians from falling 
 from their first love between the critical 
 years of ten and sixteen ; to foster the 
 spirit of Christian character; to strengthen 
 the weak hope ; to educate and discipline 
 the imperfect faith. For the solution of 
 this serious problem we may look for aid 
 to the Sunday-school teacher. If he is 
 wise, faithful, earnest, we do not look to 
 him in vain. But in too many instances he 
 fails to have the power or the time essential 
 for this work. It is a surprise, in view of 
 the lack of proper method in the choice 
 of teachers in the Sunday-school, that the 
 Sunday-school accomplishes so great results. 
 As now constituted, however, the Sunday- 
 school in its main department is seldom nur- 
 turing to a natural maturity the Christian 
 character which is born before the child 
 reaches the age of ten. 
 
 In this failure, what can be done .-* I write 
 out of my own experience when I say that 
 
AA/OA'G THE CHILDREN. 45 
 
 a special class should be formed of those 
 young Christians, and that special instruc- 
 tion and guidance should be given them. 
 This instruction and guidance should be com- 
 mitted to one most able to give it. This one 
 may be the pastor, or it may not be. If it is 
 not he, he should discover some other person 
 qualified to perform this duty. I think I may 
 say that the pastor will usually find that it is 
 wise to intrust this labor to other hands ; and 
 yet these other hands he may think it well 
 specially to train for this important service. 
 This instruction should consist of a sys- 
 tematic presentation of the great truths of 
 Christ. It should be systematic, taking up 
 in order the central doctrines and themes 
 of the Bible. It should be, it must be, to se- 
 cure favorable results, attractive, — attractive 
 in the person of the teacher and attractive 
 in its methods. It should be thorough ; for 
 children will receive and appreciate, be it 
 properly illustrated, Christian teaching far 
 more profound than is commonly credited to 
 them. Such a class should meet on some 
 
46 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 week-day, after the close of the exercises 
 of the public school, and should be held each 
 week for certain periods of each year. 
 
 With the methods and the results of such 
 teaching, I am already somewhat acquainted. 
 Year by year I have seen a class of boys 
 and girls grow from a membership of forty 
 to a membership of three hundred. I have 
 seen these boys and girls listening intently 
 to the presentation of the historic facts and 
 truths of the Bible. I have seen this class 
 made so attractive that scores of children 
 would run from the pubUc school- room to 
 the church school-room in order to lose no 
 moment of the short hour. I have seen 
 this interest aroused and maintained by the 
 power of a strong and living personality 
 rather than by extraneous aids. I know this 
 teaching to be systematic and thorough. I 
 have seen examination papers in writing of 
 these boys and girls that were a wonder in 
 their revelation of the appreciation of the na- 
 ture and duties of the Christian life. I have 
 been made glad in receiving many of those 
 
AMONG THE CHILDREN. 47 
 
 thus trained into the membership of the 
 church, and have daily rejoiced in beholding 
 the good confessions they witnessed at home 
 and school. The church may aid in such 
 training of children by receiving them into 
 its membership. I know of no help so great 
 which the home may receive, I know of no 
 help so great which the child may receive 
 beyond the walls of the home, as the help 
 which the church may thus give. Such a 
 confession in the church of Christ brings to 
 the surface and crystallizes all the child's love 
 for his Saviour. It furnishes him with a high 
 exterior standard of conduct ; it puts him in 
 that direct line of which the end, as is also 
 the beginning, is life eternal. 
 
 The Christian child needs the church to 
 make his Christian love vivid, positive, ag- 
 gressive. The Christian parent needs the 
 church to aid in the Christian training of 
 his Christian child. The church needs the 
 Christian child, that its altars may never lack 
 for Samuels, as its ministering priests. If 
 the church is a family, it must specially care 
 
48 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 for its children. If the church is Christ's 
 church, it must specially seek to bless those 
 whom He blessed. If the church is ever to 
 rejoice in its millennial triumph, it will in- 
 clude children, even little children, among 
 its disciples and apostles. 
 
 Various objections are urged to children 
 becoming members of a church. These 
 objections, however, are in large measure 
 founded upon misconceptions of the need 
 of the child or of the duty of the church. 
 One of the more common of these objections 
 is that the child does not fully understand 
 the meaning of a public confession. It is true 
 that a child does not fully understand this 
 step ; but who of us, of whatever age, does 
 fully understand? Are we not often asking 
 our children to take important steps, the 
 meaning of which is not fully understood? 
 How much does a child need to understand 
 to join the church ? How much does an 
 adult need to understand ? Has the reader 
 fathomed more than a small part of the doc- 
 trines of the creed ? Who has reached final 
 
AMONG THE CHILDREN. 49 
 
 conclusions in all his thinking ? Has God's 
 Word ceased to break forth with new light ? 
 What did Philip require of the eunuch as a 
 condition of baptism ? " And the eunuch 
 said, See, here is water ; what doth hinder 
 me to be baptized ? and Philip saith, If thou 
 believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. 
 And he answered and said, I believe that 
 Jesus Christ is the Son of God." Philip 
 baptized him. 
 
 A class of girls in the church was re- 
 cently asked to write out their answers to 
 the question, " What is it to be a Christian 1 " 
 Among the answers were these : A girl of 
 fifteen said, " It is to believe that the Saviour 
 is able to save us, that He will forgive us ; 
 it is to love the Saviour and try to do His 
 will." A girl of thirteen replied, "To be a 
 Christian is to love and serve the Lord, and 
 try to do as much as you can, and live as 
 near Him as you can." A girl also of thirteen 
 said, " It is to try to be good and do good, 
 and to love Jesus Christ." A girl of fifteen 
 answered, '* To be a Christian is to love Jesus 
 
 4 
 
50 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 Christ with your whole heart, and to yield 
 your will to Him completely." One of thir- 
 teen gave this answer, which is remarkable 
 as a philosophical definition of what it is to 
 be a Christian : " To give one's whole being 
 to the will of God." 
 
 It is not to be said that children do not 
 understand more of wickedness than their 
 parents desire. Children do understand more 
 of goodness and more of Christian truth 
 than their parents give them credit for. 
 
 It is also urged as an objection to children 
 joining the church, that they may not hold 
 out. A little girl said to me recently, " Why, 
 if I join the church, I may go back." " Yes," 
 I replied, *' and you may go back if you 
 don't join the church ; the church should be 
 a help to keep you from going back." Do all 
 those who are not children hold out t I might 
 select fifty boys and girls from the Sunday- 
 school whom I thought suitable candidates 
 for church-membership ; I might select fifty 
 men and women from the congregation 
 whom I thought also suitable candidates. 
 
AMONG THE CHILDREN. 5 I 
 
 After five years I am confident I should find 
 a larger proportion of the children than of 
 the adults maintaining their Christian faith. 
 
 Two or three principles or methods under- 
 lie the Christian character and the church- 
 membership of children. One is that the 
 Christian life is of the individual charac- 
 ter: being of the individual character, it is 
 chiefly concerned with the feelings and the 
 will : in children the feelings are strong and 
 the will easily influenced : therefore, without 
 full intellectual apprehension, the Christian 
 life may begin in children. 
 
 The second principle is that the Christian 
 life is a growth, not a manufactured product ; 
 a flower, not a machine: therefore, for its 
 purest and noblest development, it must 
 begin early. 
 
 It is also evident that for the Christian 
 life of children parents are in a large measure 
 responsible. The method, as some one has 
 said, is to " make a young person love you, 
 and then simply being in his presence will 
 make him what you want him to be." The 
 
52 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 *' experience " of the child so far as he is 
 concerned is slight, but it is important 
 so far as the mother or the father is con- 
 cerned. As one has said, writing of his 
 mother : " She put my little hand in the 
 hand of the Lord Jesus. I did not know 
 what else to do, and so I clasped His hand, — 
 that was all. But if I ever stand yonder in 
 the great shining, about the sole reason, on 
 the human side, will be — my mother, God 
 bless her!" • 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 AMONG THE YOUNG PEOPLE. 
 
 DEPARTMENT of the administra- 
 tion of the church in which the 
 pastor finds it well to have peculiar 
 interest, is the work among those who are 
 universally known as the "young people." 
 The " young people " have within a genera- 
 tion come to occupy a most important place 
 in the church. To work among them for 
 their conversion and edification, to work for 
 them fitting them for Christian service, and to 
 work through them in the manifold endeavor 
 of the church, no one is better qualified than 
 the pastor. The systematic organization of 
 this body for work in the church is to be 
 greatly desired. These young men and 
 women usually lend themselves ^more easily 
 than their elders to organization and to organ- 
 
54 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 ized effort. Many of them desire Christian 
 work. They have fewer prejudices and less 
 individuality. They are not heavily laden 
 with the cares of business or of home. They 
 are less conservative, more progressive. They 
 also need the Christian training of systematic 
 planning for, and systematic doing of, service. 
 For the good of the church as well as their 
 own good, this organization is to be fostered. 
 Many a pastor finds that the most prompt, 
 the most thorough, the most earnest, the 
 most persistent, and the most satisfactory 
 work of his church is done through the young 
 people. They are his aids quite as truly as 
 the members of the church committee. 
 
 This general movement among and for 
 young people has taken positive shape in the 
 Young People's Society of Christian En- 
 deavor. Its great growth justifies its wisdom 
 of administration, as well as proves its need. 
 In seven years it has increased to include 
 more than five thousand organizations, em- 
 bracing some two hundred and fifty thousand 
 members. It is simply the young people of 
 
AMONG THE YOUNG PEOPLE. 55 
 
 the individual church associated for the pur- 
 pose of promoting their Christian growth and 
 of bringing those not Christians to Christ. 
 Its methods are simple. Frequent testimony 
 in the weekly meeting is emphasized. At- 
 tendance at this service is obligatory. Social, 
 literary, and musical interests are grouped 
 about the central principles of Christian 
 growth and Christian service. Committees on 
 various departments — such as the Sunday- 
 school, the visiting of the sick and the crirni- 
 nal, the introduction of strangers, the care for 
 the prayer-meetings — are selected. A full 
 corps of the other customary officers forms a 
 part of the society. Membership is of two 
 classes, — the active, embracing those who 
 believe themselves to be Christians ; and the 
 associate, including those who may wish to 
 enjoy certain privileges of the Society but are 
 not prepared to be known as Christians. 
 
 So familiar are the general principles and 
 methods of this movement, that it is unneces- 
 sary for me to say more in exposition. But it 
 may be fitting to add that in every church in 
 
56 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 which the Society of Christian Endeavor has 
 been established, it has proved to be the 
 most satisfactory way for organizing its 
 young people for Christian work. In not a 
 few churches it has given birth to a prayer- 
 meeting for young people ; in others it has 
 quadrupled the attendance and increased the 
 interest of this meeting ; in others it has 
 proved to be the most laborious and the most 
 effective of all the means and methods of 
 church administration. In churches in which 
 this general form of work among the young 
 people is well planned and executed, it may 
 or may not be wise at once to transfer a 
 prosperous young people's organization into 
 a society of this distinctive name ; but it is 
 certainly true that God has not in this gen- 
 eration in America given a wiser method for 
 the doing of Christian work for and through 
 young people. Every church which is not 
 thus organized among its younger members 
 is neither availing itself of its strength nor 
 entering into its waiting opportunities. 
 For the Young People's Society of Chris- 
 
AMONG THE YOUNG PEOPLE. 57 
 
 tian Endeavor, or any organization of young 
 people, is not an association outside of the 
 church. Undoubtedly any such alliance may 
 be so formed or conducted as to give the 
 impression of either rivalry or antagonism to 
 the church. But it ought never to be so 
 formed or conducted. It is simply the church 
 at work among, and for, and through its 
 younger members. It is not to be doubted 
 that this peril exists. It is the peril of clique 
 and faction. It is a peril which may result 
 in direct opposition to the church. The 
 younger members, feeling that the older have 
 little interest in their work, go by them- 
 selves ; the older members, thinking that 
 their juniors prefer to be by themselves, do 
 not frequent their devotional or social meet- 
 ings. Such a division is lamentable. It 
 should always be avoided; it should, when 
 existing, be healed. The younger members 
 should know that the church is more than 
 their society, and that of the church their 
 society is a part or function. The older 
 members, by sympathy most cordial and by 
 
58 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 endeavors for co-operative service, should 
 prove that they rejoice in the activity and 
 aggressiveness of their junior brethren. 
 
 In the organization of young people for 
 church work, the religious basis must invari- 
 ably be strongly maintained. No foundation, 
 social, literary, musical, aesthetic, is either 
 worthy or enduring. The young people 
 themselves will accept of a constitution and 
 method which are .profoundly religious. Many 
 of them even demand that a pre-eminently 
 Christian character prevail in all their or- 
 ganized efforts. There is no need of hiding 
 the Dover's powder of Christian service in 
 the raspberry jam of " socials" or debates. 
 Many of them find that Christian service is 
 not a bitter thing, but very sweetness itself. 
 Therefore let the centre and circumference 
 of all organizing and of every organization 
 be devoutly Christian ; and on the radius 
 may be put whatever of social enjoyment and 
 of literary culture may seem fitting. 
 
 The church is a spiritual institution. Its 
 means and methods, therefore, are determined 
 
AMONG THE YOUNG PEOPLE. 59 
 
 by its character as a spiritual institution. 
 Yet, though spiritual, it should be free to use 
 such indirect as well as direct agencies as 
 may contribute to the salvation of men from 
 sin. Some indirect agencies may be included 
 in the work of young people. 
 
 Among these agencies may be placed 
 popular amusements. Shall the church pro- 
 vide amusements for its young people ? Shall 
 it countenance and nourish amusements which 
 it would not be expedient to admit into any 
 part of the church edifice ? Is it wise for it 
 to erect a building in which games, such as 
 for example billiards, may be played ? The 
 answer to these and allied questions depends 
 upon the influence of these diversions upon 
 the moral character of the young people. It 
 is the business of the church to minister to 
 this moral character. If the church is so 
 placed that it is necessary in order to catch 
 young people to use a billiard cue as a fishing- 
 rod, no hesitation should be felt in employ- 
 ing such an instrument. Churches situated 
 down town, and obliged to contend with 
 
60 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 saloons as rallying-places for young men, may 
 at times find it wise to use these measures. 
 The church should be willing to adopt any 
 method which will keep the young people 
 away from evil associations. If it cannot 
 secure the whole loaf of Christian char- 
 acter, let it secure the half-loaf of moral 
 character ; if it cannot secure the half-loaf, 
 let it endeavor to secure as large an absti- 
 nence from evil as may be possible. The 
 churches which bear the name of " People's 
 Churches," and are attended by those less 
 well-to-do, usually can minister in more ways 
 to their members than churches composed of 
 the wealthier classes. Such churches fre- 
 quently find it advantageous to establish 
 reading-rooms and parlors for the use of their 
 members. Classes, too, for the instruction 
 of the young people in stenography, needle- 
 work, and telegraphy prove of much worth. 
 The church should have as one of its impor- 
 tant aims the service of the young people of 
 the church. This service should be as broad 
 as the condition of the church and the need 
 
AMONG THE YOUNG PEOPLE. 6 1 
 
 of the people allow. But in all service thus 
 broad and sufficient, the highest aim should 
 control the development of Christian man- 
 hood and womanhood. 
 
 The church working for its young folks 
 should also put them to work. The older 
 young people should give their hands and 
 hearts and brains to philanthropic efforts, such 
 as the distribution of books and newspapers 
 in hospitals and jails, the holding of services 
 of song in the wards of hospitals, the estab- 
 lishment and carrying on of Sunday-schools 
 and gospel services in the mission stations of 
 cities and in the schoolhouses in the country 
 towns, and the holding of temperance meet- 
 ings such as belong to the Bands of Hope for 
 children. In all these and similar services 
 the young people of the church may be 
 made most efficient members of the working 
 church. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 AMONG BUSINESS MEN. 
 
 VENTURE to recall a bit of per- 
 sonal experience. I was calling on 
 my parishioners who do business in 
 the Chamber of Commerce. Among those to 
 whom I paid my respects was Mr. A. Mr. A. 
 is still under forty; he is reputed to have 
 large wealth, and to be making large additions 
 to it. His commercial interests are various. 
 His mind is keen, alert, vigorous ; his heart 
 is tender. He has all the best qualities of the 
 best business man. As soon as I entered his 
 office I saw that he was busy ; I also saw, I 
 was assured, that he was glad to see me. 
 Presently he said, " You do not know how 
 much good just your coming to see us does." 
 I ventured to suggest that his sense of cour- 
 tesy was getting the better of his sense of 
 truthfulness. But he replied : " No ; we men 
 
AMONG BUSINESS MEN. 63 
 
 are from morning to night engaged in a hard 
 struggle. I know that every man who enters 
 that doorway comes to make some money out 
 of me ; and every man who enters that door- 
 way I intend to make some money out of. 
 It is more pleasant than I can tell you to see 
 a man who you feel has some personal care 
 for you, to see a man who looks upon you as 
 something besides a mere money-maker, to 
 see a man who represents something besides 
 banks, real-estate syndicates, and elevator 
 companies." 
 
 The earnestness of my friend's words and 
 my knowledge of his character lead me to be- 
 lieve in their sincerity. They suggest the 
 need of a Christian mission and the need of 
 special spiritual endeavor for business men. 
 The working church has been doing much for 
 various classes, — for the children, for the 
 young men, for the young women, for the out- 
 cast and wandering of every sort. It has 
 not, however, made a solemn and aggressive 
 attempt to reach the business men of middle 
 age and of absorbing interests. The fact is. 
 
64 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 these men are in greater need of the help of 
 the church than any other class in the com- 
 munity. They are in peril of the most prac- 
 tical and personal materialism. They are ab- 
 sorbed in business. Their business demands 
 the best energies of brain, heart, body. They 
 are laboring for the visible and the tangible. 
 The unseen and the eternal are not naturally 
 and immediately present. Wealth flows in 
 upon them ; and they are in danger of either 
 that avarice or that unwise prodigaHty which 
 increasing riches may develop. Wealth flies 
 from them ; and they are in danger of either 
 that hard and rebellious or that despairing 
 mood which misfortune may create. The 
 constant attrition with human life may wear 
 them into cold and polished hardness of char- 
 acter. The knowledge of cunning rascali- 
 ties may make them pessimists. They began 
 business, intending to be masters of business ; 
 they retire from business as its slaves. They 
 are inclined to know nothing, to do nothing, 
 but business. The commercial success which 
 at first they regarded as a means to some 
 
AMONG BUSINESS MEN. 65 
 
 noble purpose, they have come to consider 
 as an ultimate aim in itself. 
 
 Such is the condition of thousands of men 
 in the offices and stores of the cities. What 
 can the church do for them ? They are not 
 remote from, or alien to, the church. Not a 
 few are members of the church ; many occu- 
 py their pews, with their families, on the Sab- 
 bath. They are not specially troubled with 
 difficulties as to doctrine. They believe the 
 Bible, respect the church, and keep the Sab- 
 bath. In answer to the question of the duty 
 of the church, I say : — 
 
 The church should not denounce money or 
 money-making. The church should rejoice 
 in all the money which its members either 
 have or gain. The church wants money, 
 must have it. The great need of the church 
 is men who will make money for its mission- 
 ary work. The church and the ministry 
 should discriminate, as did Christ and Paul, 
 between money and the love of money, be- 
 tween riches and the trust in riches. It is 
 not money, but the love of money, which is 
 
66 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 the root of all evil; it is not the riches, but 
 the trust in them, which keeps us from enter- 
 ing heaven. Let the minister pray that his 
 parishioners may make money; let him also 
 pray that they may be kept from the love of 
 money. 
 
 It is also evident that neither the church 
 nor the ministry can serve business men by 
 courses of sermons or addresses upon methods 
 of business. The counting-room can teach 
 the pulpit far better upon this theme than the 
 pulpit the counting-room. Sermons on spec- 
 ulation — speculation in stocks or wheat or 
 pork, speculations of any kind — are as valua- 
 ble, and only as valuable, as Saint Anthony's 
 sermon to the fishes. In many cases, too, 
 they are contrary to that wise remark which 
 Dr. Bellamy used to make to his students as 
 to preaching : " Don't raise the Devil, young 
 gentlemen, unless you can lay him." Many 
 ministers cannot lay the devils which their 
 sermons on speculation are liable to raise. 
 
 Turning to the positive side, I venture to 
 suggest three methods that may he of worth : 
 
AMONG BUSINESS MEN. 6/ 
 
 Spiritual preaching. The most worldly 
 man prefers spiritual preaching to worldly 
 preaching. The merchant absorbed in busi- 
 ness is sick at heart Sunday morning when 
 his business, to which he thought he bade 
 good-by at five o'clock the night before, again 
 appeals to his ears in his pastor's sermon. 
 He may rightfully claim in such an instance 
 that his minister is robbing him of a part of 
 his Sabbath rest. Ministers labor under a 
 lamentable error when they think that college 
 professors of natural history or of geology or 
 of political economy want to hear sermons on 
 Darwinism, or on the consistency of Evolution 
 with the first chapters of Genesis, or on anar- 
 chism. The error is no less lamentable when 
 ministers think that manufacturers and mer- 
 chants, bankers and lawyers, want to be 
 preached to as manufacturers and as mer- 
 chants, as bankers and as lawyers. They 
 want to be treated as men, — as men who 
 have souls, as men who are tempted, as men 
 who want all the help possible to resist temp- 
 tation and to win noblest characters. 
 
6S THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 Preaching, therefore, being spiritual, should 
 follow the fundamental lines of thought, doc- 
 trine, teaching. It should embrace the great 
 themes : sin in all forms — the self-deception 
 of the sinner, its self-perpetuating power, the 
 moral disintegration of the soul — in which 
 it has special allurement or power over the 
 business man ; God in all those qualities 
 and elements in which He is made known ; 
 human responsibility, for one's self and for 
 one's fellows. But I know whereof I speak 
 when I affirm that the more closely the min- 
 ister can centre his preaching in Christ, the 
 more thoroughly he will please the un-Chris- 
 tian as well as the Christian business men of 
 his congregation. No other theme has such 
 power ; no other theme has such variety ; no 
 other theme has sources of such satisfaction. 
 A great court preacher, preaching before the 
 Queen of England, chose as his subject : 
 " Religion in common life." The sermon be- 
 came a favorite of Queen Victoria. Let the 
 minister of the most worldly congregation se- 
 lect the most spiritual of subjects, — Christ 
 
AMONG BUSINESS MEN 69 
 
 himself, — and he will not only do the most 
 good, but also give the greatest satisfaction. 
 
 I would also beg to suggest that ministers 
 should not fail to come into the closest per- 
 sonal relationship with the business men to 
 whom they preach. It were well if ministers 
 were even more anxious to call on the men of 
 their churches at their places of business than 
 on the women in their homes. If a minister 
 is at all worthy of being known, the bank pres- 
 idents and the plumbers, the lawyers and the 
 carpenters, want to know him. The pastor 
 should get down close to the hearts of the 
 rich as. well as of the poor men of his church. 
 Not in gushing, not in the manner of the 
 cloth, not in either fawning or patronage, but 
 in simple and true manliness, let him know, 
 and be known by, the busy business men. 
 Let the men know his life as well as hear his 
 truth. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 FROM THE BUSINESS POINT OF VIEW. 
 
 CHURCH is not a business concern, 
 though in certain ways it is to be 
 managed on business principles. It 
 is not a business concern, for its purpose is 
 not to see how it can get the most money or 
 hire the cheapest help. Its purpose is not to 
 save money or to secure the largest surplus. 
 Its purpose is not to make its income equal 
 to its expenses. The pecuniary motives of 
 the business concern have no place as aims 
 in the church. For the church is a spiritual 
 institution. Its purpose is moral, ethical. 
 Christian. Its purpose is to continue the 
 work begun by Christ, to turn men from sin to 
 righteousness. Its purpose relates to human 
 character. And yet the church has a financial 
 side. Though it is not a. business institution. 
 
THE BUSINESS POINT OF VIEW. J I 
 
 it is in certain respects to be managed in a 
 business way. Though its purpose is not to 
 make income equal expense, yet in every 
 church income should equal expense. The 
 general principles of economy, efficiency, and 
 honesty prevailing in successful business 
 should prevail in the management of the 
 church. In securing such principles, it seems 
 wise for Christian business men to be the 
 leaders in its financial interests. With their 
 Christianity, they will manage affairs as if 
 the church were a church; with their mer- 
 cantile methods, they will make the manage- 
 ment economical and efficient. 
 
 It is not wise usually, it seems to me, for 
 ministers to take an active interest in the 
 pecuniary affairs of their churches. In some 
 cases it seems necessary for ministers to have 
 an important part in this work. In many 
 small churches the deacons and elders leave 
 the pecuniary affairs of the church, as they 
 do the spiritual, to the pastor. They ought 
 not so to be remiss in their duty ; the min- 
 ister ought to cause them to take up this 
 
"JZ THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 task belonging to them, and the doing of it 
 would be found to be a means of grace. But 
 in many large churches, of course, the min- 
 ister not only has no need of being especially 
 concerned in these financial matters, but also 
 he ought not to be so concerned. Men are 
 in the church with greater ability than his for 
 such administration. A former pastor of one 
 of the principal churches in New York City 
 said to me that about one half of his time 
 was taken up with the pecuniary affairs of 
 the parish. His ministry was not successful, 
 and it is not a surprise that it was a failure. 
 Time and strength devoted to financial admin- 
 istration were time and strength subtracted 
 from spiritual efficiency. 
 
 The minister, though having no active part 
 in the financial management of his parish, 
 should yet be deeply interested in that man- 
 agement ; for the success or failure of his 
 ministry may in a large degree be dependent 
 upon the success or failure of the financial 
 execution. He should also look upon the 
 failure or success of the financial management 
 
THE BUSINESS POINT OF VIEW, 73 
 
 of the church as a symptom of the interest 
 or lack of interest in his work. It is to be 
 said, however, that even business men do not 
 employ in the management of their churches 
 the same wisdom which they employ in the 
 management of their own mercantile inter- 
 ests. A prominent church in a university 
 town, in its love for its departing pastors, 
 borrowed upon one occasion five thousand 
 dollars and upon another occasion ten thou- 
 sand dollars as a farewell gift. It is not 
 wise to put a mortgage upon your principal 
 property for the sake of making a large 
 present to a friend. A church in New York 
 City some years ago, out of love also for its 
 pastor, presented him with a sum of money to 
 meet the expenses of a trip to Europe. This 
 sum was not the result of gifts, biit was 
 raised through a mortgage upon the church 
 edifice. Certainly such methods are not the 
 methods that men employ in business. The 
 church has its financial side, and its financial 
 interests should be administered with effi- 
 ciency, economy, and honesty; and it will 
 
74 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 usually be found that the business men in a 
 church are the best fitted thus to administer. 
 
 It is frequently said that churches are too 
 expensive ; that the cost of being a member 
 of a respectable church is so great that many 
 respectable people are kept from affiliating 
 themselves with such a congregation. It is 
 complained that pew rentals are too high; or 
 if the pew rentals are not too high, that the 
 demands for missions and missionary work 
 are too frequent and too heavy. In some 
 churches a basis for the charge may exist. 
 But the reason of the complaint lies quite 
 as much in the fault of the one complain- 
 ing as in the churches themselves. In all 
 churches are pews of which the rental is so 
 cheap that no person earning ordinary wages 
 should hesitate to hire them. The rental of 
 a single pew in some churches for a year 
 amounts to several hundred dollars. But such 
 pews are very few, and are taken by those 
 who are presumed to be able to pay the thou- 
 sands. But even in such churches the ma- 
 jority of the pews can be had for a few 
 
THE BUSINESS POINT OF VIEW. 75 
 
 score of dollars ; and a large number of them 
 can be had so cheap that a single sitting costs 
 its occupant only a few cents each week. 
 
 The charge of the too great expensiveness 
 of churches is of course to be viewed in rela- 
 tion to what one receives for the expense. 
 One receives from this financial relation to 
 his church more than first thought might 
 suggest. He receives the right to his sitting 
 for two services each Sabbath. He also has 
 a special right to all the meetings of the 
 church of prayer, of social intercourse, of 
 musical and literary culture. In relation to 
 what he receives, the cost is very small. 
 
 The chief element in the cost of the admin- 
 istration of churches is, of course, the salary 
 of the pastor. The salaries of a few pastors 
 in this country are large, but of only a few. 
 The number even of pastors having more 
 than four thousand dollars each year is not 
 large. In one sense a minister should re- 
 ceive exactly what he earns; his wages should 
 be determined by those same laws of political 
 economy that determine the wages of any 
 
'je THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 wage-earner. In another sense he cannot 
 receive too much. What does the minister 
 give to his church } He does not give his 
 brain merely, he does not give his physical 
 strength only, — gifts which most men bring 
 to their work ; but he also gives his heart, 
 himself, his all. The relation between a 
 minister and his church is more akin to that 
 between a husband and wife than to the re- 
 lation between employee and employer. A 
 church, therefore, in one sense should not 
 look upon their minister as a hired servant, 
 but as one to whom, in return for his great 
 gifts to them, they are to give all that he is 
 able to receive. I take it that this is the 
 relation existing between Mr. Spurgeon and 
 the church of which he is pastor. A promi- 
 nent officer of that church told me that Mr. 
 Spurgeon was usually supposed to receive 
 five thousand dollars a year, but that he drew 
 whatever he wished. The church trusted 
 him, and he trusted the church. With cer- 
 tain ministers this would not be possible ; for, 
 as was remarked of a prominent minister in 
 
THE BUSINESS POINT OF VIEW. yy 
 
 an American city, " he would," said the 
 treasurer of this church, "break the Bank 
 of England." 
 
 But the charge of expensiveness of the 
 churches is not based simply upon the paro- 
 chial item, but also upon the demands for 
 what is usually termed benevolence. The 
 contribution box is looked upon as the sym- 
 bol of this exhausting process. The notice 
 from the pulpit for the collection is regarded 
 as a thief regards arrest. In this same line 
 of expensiveness, also, the pastor is supposed 
 to be, through his personal endeavors, an es- 
 pecial factor. With the subscription paper in 
 hand he goes to individuals in office and 
 home, asking for money either for building a 
 new chapel in the city, or to endow a college 
 in Dakota, or to raise a testimonial fund for 
 a retiring deacon, or to increase the annual 
 offering for the cause of foreign oe home 
 missions. 
 
 Of such endeavors for benevolence, it seems 
 to me that many people have a false and 
 wrong idea. As a rule, people are not to be 
 
yS THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 urged to give. As a rule, people do desire 
 information as to Christian work. They are 
 willing that such opportunities of Christian 
 service should be pointed out to them ; and 
 when such information has been given and 
 such opportunities have been pointed out, the 
 time has come for their action. The minister 
 has done his whole duty in giving the infor- 
 mation, in indicating the opportunity. The 
 subsequent action belongs to his people ; and 
 their do!ng, or failing to do, their duty is a 
 question for themselves as servants of the 
 Most High. People should constantly have 
 placed before them opportunities for Chris- 
 tian giving and for Christian service. Such 
 opportunities it would be difficult to present 
 too frequently. But the minister should re- 
 frain from either speaking or acting in such 
 a way as to give the impression of undue 
 urgency. It also seems to me that it is well 
 for a minister to refrain from soliciting per- 
 sonally contributions for Christian work. The 
 temptations to such solicitation are frequently 
 very strong. Some pastors have much sue- 
 
THE BUSINESS POINT OF VIEW. 79 
 
 cess in such endeavors. A prominent min- 
 ister of the Presbyterian Church himself 
 raises the debt which afflicts the parish, or 
 secures the money for a new organ. But, on 
 the whole, it would be wiser for him to have a 
 great interest in any such attempt, — to be, if 
 one chooses, the heart of it, or even the heart 
 and the brain of it, but not either the hands 
 or the feet. Serving thus personally, he is in 
 peril of lessening his spiritual influence over 
 the character of his parishioners, for the sake 
 of a financial gain. Such a peril he should 
 never be willing to run. To his pastor a pa- 
 rishioner may not infrequently be inclined to 
 give a larger subscription than he feels he 
 ought. Such a subscription is far from being 
 a means of grace to the subscriber. In gen- 
 eral, more money will be given by a church 
 for benevolent work if the pastor does not 
 take a personal concern in its solicitation. 
 
 In the business management of the church, 
 as in business management of every sort, 
 great advantage is to be found in frequent 
 and frank conference of officers and pastor. 
 
80 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 If the pastor is inclined to emphasize too 
 strongly the pecuniary side of his work, the 
 officers should very plainly tell him his mis- 
 take, and he should be willing to bear the crit- 
 icism and correct the fault. If the pastor sees 
 in the church elements or conditions which 
 he believes are antagonistic to its spiritual 
 or other interests, he likewise should be very 
 free to communicate his impressions to the 
 officers ; and they also should bear with 
 Christian charity the criticism, and endeavor 
 to remedy the fault thus indicated. Church 
 quarrels usually begin in a lack of free fra- 
 ternal communication between the officers. 
 Such communication should be very full and 
 broad and intimate. It is thus that estrange- 
 ments are avoided ; and with the avoidance of 
 estrangements, ecclesiastical quarrels would 
 also be prevented. 
 
 In the business management of a church, 
 as well as in management of other kinds, it 
 is important for the pastor so to bear himself 
 towards his parishioners that he will appeal 
 to their highest needs. He will approach 
 
THE BUSINESS POINT OF VIEW. 8 I 
 
 them upon the highest planes of conduct and 
 character. He will not allow himself to give 
 the impression that he desires to make 
 money out of them, or that his purpose in 
 being pastor of a church is pecuniary. He 
 will give the impression that he comes seek- 
 ing, not theirs, but them. In this approach 
 to men in their highest needs, he will be 
 frank and hearty. As he will not suffer his 
 parishioners to lose respect for him, so also 
 he will not suffer himself to lose his self- 
 respect. He will approach the members of 
 his church as a Christian man having the 
 highest aim, — to serve in the noblest ways 
 those whose spiritual nurture is in no small 
 degree committed to his keeping. 
 
 In this endeavor to foster the interests of 
 his church, he will, above all else, love its 
 members. Love is the universal solvent. If 
 the minister fails to love, he should cease to 
 be a minister. If he loves his church, his 
 church will love him ; if he fails to love his 
 church, his church also will fail to love him. 
 His church is usually worthy of his love. If 
 6 
 
82 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 he love it, he can, it may be said, persuade it, 
 as a church, to almost any line of ecclesiasti- 
 cal conduct. The history of churches shows 
 that the churches in which the pastorates 
 are long and successful are those in which 
 the pastor has loved his church with a fulness 
 of affection next to the love for wife and for 
 child ; and the churches in which the pastor- 
 ates have been short and have not succeeded, 
 are those in which the pastor has not loved 
 his church. 
 
 In the spirit of love, the pastor will 'be 
 saved from the not uncommon fault of antag- 
 onizing the members of the church and the 
 church itself. It is never wise to antagonize 
 in church life. If a fundamental principle 
 is under discussion, the minister must of 
 course make known his opinion, and make 
 his opinion impressive by wise means ; but 
 he should never suffer himself to be led into 
 an antagonistic mood over matters of trifling 
 importance. Some ministers seem to have a 
 peculiar facility for catching upon some snag 
 in the current of ecclesiastical life, and there 
 
THE BUSINESS POINT OF VIEW. %2> 
 
 resting. The snag, to be sure, is small, but it 
 holds them just as firmly from all advance 
 in Christian service as if they were ashore. 
 If a minister is to antagonize his church, let 
 there be chosen a point worthy of antag- 
 onism. If there is to be a church *' quarrel," 
 let the " quarrel " be over some important 
 point that is worthy of a battle. And as a 
 rule, the minister is to bear himself above all 
 parties ; he is to mind his own business, 
 which means that he is to do his own work 
 and to do it well, and also not to meddle in 
 the work of others. 
 
 Such a position, free from antagonism, may 
 be gained by a right intellectual and moral 
 perspective of the work of the church. In 
 the church some work, some methods, some 
 plans, are of prime importance ; others are of 
 secondary or third-rate importance. Let not 
 the minister, for the sake of adopting meth- 
 ods that are of third-rate importance, suffer 
 methods that are of secondary importance to 
 fail. Let him not, for the sake of accomplish- 
 ing work of secondary worth, allow work of 
 
84 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 first-rate importance to suffer. Let his view 
 of truth be broad and accurate, adjusted to 
 the real conditions. 
 
 Furthermore, in the management of the 
 church, it is well for the minister to work 
 along long lines. Let him ever keep his end 
 in view. Let him know the discipline of 
 patience. Knowing that the end is of su- 
 preme importance, let him be willing to 
 change his methods, his means, his measures. 
 Let the principles of ministerial service be 
 laid broad, deep, and firm. Let the applica- 
 tion of these principles be made in all wisdom 
 and charity. These principles, with such ap- 
 plication, will eventually become realized. If, 
 for instance, that matter which at times dis- 
 tresses every minister — the introduction of 
 a better hymn-book into the Sabbath services 
 — perplexes him, let him not be in any special 
 hurry to change it. The time may not be 
 ripe. Many people do not want it. He may 
 give himself the reasonable assurance that 
 the service is not suffering serious loss by 
 reason of the use of the present book. Let 
 
THE BUSINESS POINT OF VIEW. 85 
 
 him, however, lay down the principle that 
 the service of music in the church should 
 be of the most elevated character ; in due 
 time this principle will become so prevalent 
 among the people that they themselves will 
 demand a change in the hymn-book. The 
 adage, " A place for everything and every- 
 thing in its place," may with a slight change 
 be applied to time : A time for everything 
 and everything in its time. The minister 
 holding the supreme purpose of his ministry 
 strongly, will, with waiting and righteous en- 
 deavor, find that purpose achieved. 
 
 And though all this be true, he should 
 withal, in the managing of the interests of 
 his parish, be a man of convictions. For his 
 own sake and for the sake of his church, he 
 should have, and also be willing to manifest, 
 the courage of his convictions ; manifesting 
 this courage, of course, with all courtesy, and 
 with a full regard for the convictions of his 
 brethren, but holding his own as he holds his 
 life. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 TWO SPECIAL AGENCIES. 
 
 I^^SjN the working church are two agencies 
 PSm deserving particular mention, — the 
 Sunday-school and the mid-week 
 service. These agencies are related to our 
 special subject as the means or methods 
 through which the church labors. 
 
 The aim of the Sunday-school is the aim 
 of the church, — the turning of men to right- 
 eousness through love for Christ. In secur- 
 ing this aim. it is of prime importance that 
 the atmosphere, the tone, of the school be 
 spiritual. The present is an age of machin- 
 ery in ecclesiastical work. The peril is, there- 
 fore, that the spiritual will become eliminated 
 from the life of the church. No display of 
 knowledge as to Biblical cosmogony or geog- 
 raphy or history should be permitted to 
 
TJVO SPECIAL AGENCIES. 8/ 
 
 impede spiritual activity. Much less should 
 any endeavor for securing a large number 
 of members or constancy of attendance be 
 allowed to thwart the gaining of the ultimate 
 end. Not a few schools seem like vast ma- 
 chine-shops in which processes and methods 
 and tools are more manifest than the pro- 
 ducts, good and great as the products may 
 be. Schools should be a garden in which 
 the still atmosphere of love, the still shin- 
 ing of the sun of God's peace on the soil 
 of human life, should each contribute to the 
 growth and nurture of the individual Chris- 
 tian character. 
 
 The supreme purpose of the Sunday-school, 
 however, is more vitally dependent upon its 
 teacher than upon its general influence. 
 Through the Sunday-school teacher the 
 church works most directly and powerfully 
 and effectively upon the individual. The 
 opportunity that is open to the Sunday- 
 school teacher is marvellous. No such op- 
 jDortunity for the influencing of the character 
 of children is found outside the home. Most 
 
88 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 boys and girls do not gain much knowledge 
 in the hour of the school. But the effect 
 that a noble Christian man or woman has 
 as the teacher of a boy or girl is a mighty 
 factor in the moral character and life of that 
 child. It is an influence somewhat akin to 
 the influence that the Earl of Shaftesbury ex- 
 erted upon a depraved man. " What did his 
 Lordship say to you, that made you a reformed 
 man.?" was asked. "Oh, he didn't say 
 much," was the reply. "He just sat down 
 by my side and said, * Jack, we will make a 
 man out of you yet.' " It was the upward 
 gravitation of Christian manhood that helped 
 Jack. Such celestial attractions belong to 
 the character of the Sunday-school teacher. 
 
 The most important element of the Chris- 
 tian character of the Sunday-school teacher 
 as related to the character of the scholar, is 
 his love for the scholar. No amount of Bib- 
 lical knowledge, indeed, no degree of intel- 
 lectual skill in presenting the truth, can sup- 
 ply the lack of personal affection. If a 
 teacher loves, his intellectual qualifications 
 
TIVO SPECIAL AGENCIES. 89 
 
 will become the more useful. This love can- 
 not be simulated. Young human nature de- 
 tects the counterfeit as quickly as the bank 
 balances the depraved coin. The teacher is 
 to be willing to sacrifice himself for his class. 
 He is to respect its members. He is to have 
 a regard for them, not in the mass, but as 
 individuals. " He calleth his own sheep by- 
 name." Having a love for each, he will also 
 have a knowledge of each, in the home and 
 the school, in the trials and the joys, in the 
 past and the hopes of each. Furthermore, 
 the teacher bearing this love to his pupils is 
 to feel free to talk with each pupil as to his 
 personal character. The teacher is to be the 
 pastor of the class ; he is to be the shepherd 
 of this little flock. He is to be the great aid 
 of the parent in training each boy or each 
 girl into Christian manhood or womanhood. 
 It would be well if the teacher should be not 
 less of a teacher but more of a pastor, and 
 if each teacher should recognize himself as 
 the pastor of the class. 
 
 To the giving of such personal influence 
 
90 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 most members of the Sunday-school easily 
 offer themselves by reason of their age. A 
 large proportion of the Sunday-school" con- 
 sists of young people. It is to the young 
 people that we are to look for the beginning 
 of the Christian life. In a recent meeting at 
 St. Paul, a distinguished evangelist asked for 
 the age of the conversion of those who were 
 in the audience. The audience numbered 
 about twelve hundred people. He first asked 
 for those who became Christians after the age 
 of fifty to rise, and one arose. He asked next 
 for those who became Christians between the 
 ages of forty and fifty to rise, and one rose. 
 Then he asked in turn for those to rise who 
 became Christians between thirty and forty, 
 and twenty-one rose ; for those between 
 twenty-five and thirty, and thirty-eight rose; 
 for those between twenty and twenty-five, 
 and one hundred rose ; for those who became 
 Christians before twenty years of age, and six 
 hundred rose. The larger share of the mem- 
 bers of the school consists of those who are 
 below the age of twenty. It is the age of con- 
 
Tl^FO SPECIAL AGENCIES. 9 1 
 
 version. It is the period when the teacher's 
 love and words have the strongest influence 
 in leading boys and girls into the acceptance 
 and confession of Christ. 
 
 In the Sunday-school the working church 
 works in and through its teacher. The re- 
 mark of Garfield that the best college for him 
 was a log, at one end of which sat President 
 Hopkins and at the other James A. Garfield, 
 is quite as true of spiritual discipline as of 
 intellectual. The best church is that which 
 has the best Sunday-school, and the best 
 Sunday-school is that which has the best 
 teacher, 
 
 A second agency which the working church 
 employs in its administration is the mid-week 
 service. 
 
 It has been said, by the best of recent Eng- 
 lish historians, that the England of the Puri- 
 tan was a nation of a book, and that book was 
 the Bible. It may likewise be said that the 
 mid-week service of the church is becoming 
 the study of a book, and that book is the 
 Bible. The prayer and conference meeting 
 
92 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 is undergoing a change, not of purpose, but 
 of method. This meeting of a former gen- 
 eration partook of the character of a lecture 
 conducted by the pastor, deacons, and elders. 
 Undoubtedly it had many advantages. If it 
 were dull, as it not infrequently was to the 
 younger attendants, it certainly was edifying 
 in Christian character to the more mature. 
 Within the memory of many young Chris- 
 tians, this type has become comparatively 
 extinct. It has been followed by a meeting 
 of quite a different character, in which the 
 interest and profit were measured by the 
 number who took part. The meeting was a 
 meeting of testimony. The minister asked 
 not for speeches, but for talks. The briefer 
 were the more acceptable ; and the more per- 
 sonal they were, the greater was their power. 
 This form of meeting still continues. It has 
 much to commend it. It is a most important 
 means of Christian growth. It suggests one 
 cause of the marvellous growth of the Metho- 
 dist Church. Its principle is the central prin- 
 ciple in the admirable Christian Endeavor 
 
TWO SPECIAL AGENCIES. 93 
 
 movement. It is of great usefulness in lead- 
 ing men to the personal acceptance of Christ. 
 It promotes the sense of personal responsi- 
 bility. It is a constant and public confession 
 of Christ. It develops the spiritual life. Its 
 peril is the fostering of a mechanical and hol- 
 low type of piety. Its danger lies in lacking 
 intellectual and Scriptural substance. Its 
 weakness consists in the development of self- 
 consciousness. 
 
 But this type of meeting is being already 
 somewhat pushed aside by a third and in 
 many respects a higher form. The central 
 principle of this meeting is knowledge of 
 the Scriptures. Its method is determined 
 by the Bible. Its purpose is edification by 
 the Word of God. This type of meeting is 
 less a study of the Bible in its historical or 
 ethical, doctrinal or theological relations, than 
 in its practical. It seeks to know the mind 
 of God as thus recorded upon all those sub- 
 jects which relate to the upbuilding of in- 
 dividual character. It is a Bible reading, 
 conducted not by the leader, but by the 
 
94 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 whole congregation. Various and diverse are 
 the measures used in conducting it. The 
 subject, announced in advance, may be an- 
 alyzed, and different divisions assigned to 
 different members for treatment. Slips, with 
 certain passages of Scripture indicated, may 
 be distributed among a dozen or more for 
 reading when they are asked for. The leader 
 should, at all events, hold the meeting in his 
 own keeping, making the best of the com- 
 ments, yet encouraging the habit of asking 
 questions ; suggesting many passages of Scrip- 
 ture, yet encouraging in every way the habit 
 of independent study of the Word of God. 
 The mid-week service of this type is in widely 
 separated parts of the country becoming pop- 
 ular. An eminent pastor said to me recently 
 that he does not care to hear the voice of the 
 attendants upon the prayer-meeting of his 
 church, except as the truth of the Bible is 
 indicated. In the church of which I am the 
 minister, this method seems to work to the 
 satisfaction and profit of all. It combines 
 the advantages of the two forms of meetings 
 
TWO SPECIAL AGENCIES. 95 
 
 to which I have alluded. It is in the best sense 
 edifying, tending to build up the individual 
 character in the simple truth of God. It 
 promotes the sense of individual responsi- 
 biUty. It fosters constant public confession 
 of Christ. It has warmth with light, appeal- 
 ing to the feelings, yet having sufficient in- 
 tellectual substance and vigor. It turns the 
 eye of the soul away from itself to the Father 
 and Saviour. This method succeeds in avoid- 
 ing stupidity and dulness ; it stops the long 
 and hopeless exhortations ; it gives movement 
 and progress. 
 
 If the prayer-meeting were more true to its 
 name, there would be less cause for rejoicing 
 over this evolution of the Bible meeting. But 
 the prayer-meeting is not true to its name. It 
 has become a " remarks " meeting, — remarks 
 which are of some worth, but not of such a 
 degree of worth as an hour in which a few 
 score or a few hundred men and women of in- 
 telligence and piety assemble together, ought 
 to offer. But the Bible meeting demands 
 and promotes piety and intelligence, quickens 
 
96 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 the heart and the brain, and endeavors to 
 support sound practice with sound theory and 
 to cause sound theory to eventuate in sound 
 practice. 
 
 The causes of this development or ten- 
 dency are manifold ; but the chief cause is 
 the same general movement which in theo- 
 logical seminaries results in the introduction 
 of Biblical theology into the course of study, 
 which in the college is demanding that the 
 Bible be made the object of special attention, 
 which in the Sunday-school is contributing to 
 the enlightened as well as reverent study of 
 the Word of God. The age is an age of in- 
 quiry. Systems of theology have use, — a use 
 of prime importance. But this age of inquiry 
 has gone back of theological treatises to that 
 Book which is the fountain and source of 
 whatever in those treatises is of enduring 
 worth. 
 
 It may prove of aid in conducting such 
 Bible meetings as the mid-week service to 
 bear in mind : — 
 
 (i) That the subject considered should be 
 
TWO SPECIAL AGENCIES. 97 
 
 drawn immediately from life. It should pos- 
 sess the most interesting practical interest. 
 The Bible fosters the choice of subjects of 
 this character. It is concerned chiefly with 
 human life and with God's relation to human 
 life. 
 
 (2) That all finical and allegorical inter- 
 pretations should be avoided. Sound com- 
 mon-sense should be predominant in all 
 exegesis. Men of sense, Christian or un- 
 christian, are repelled by interpretations 
 which lack sense. 
 
 (3) That topics chosen should be so broad 
 as to lend themselves to easy division and to 
 give that variety of personal reference and 
 application which the Christian in the variety 
 of his spiritual needs may require. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 TREATMENT OF STRANGERS. 
 
 HE church is not primarily a social 
 institution ; it is primarily a relig- 
 ious institution. Yet the social re- 
 lations of its members have a primary im- 
 portance in the development of the church as 
 a religious institution. The problem — simple 
 in its terms, though far from simple in its so- 
 lution — which each church has thus presented 
 to itself, is, How can we attract strangers to 
 our services ? How can we secure their in- 
 troduction to ourselves and to our work ? 
 How can we the most speedily and cour- 
 teously cause them to be at home with us ? 
 In answering these questions I can hardly 
 hope to give more than suggestions. 
 
 But before making any attempt, it may be 
 said that those moving into a town and at- 
 
TREATMENT OF STRANGERS. 99 
 
 tending its church as strangers owe certain 
 duties to that town and to that church as 
 well as the town and the church to them. 
 These duties are seldom considered. Pas- 
 tors endeavor to open wide the doors of 
 hospitality to strangers ; but they are pre- 
 vented from driving or pushing strangers 
 through the portals. They exhort the older 
 members to be cordial ; but their sense of 
 courtesy forbids their preaching to strangers 
 upon the proper methods of accepting offers 
 of hospitality. 
 
 It is, we doubt not, the experience of the 
 large majority of ministers that strangers fail 
 in their duty to the church far more lament- 
 ably than the church fails in its duty to them. 
 In every congregation are a few who from 
 the first morning they are shown to a pew 
 are as ready to receive attention as the older 
 members are prompt to bestow it. But nine 
 tenths are far otherwise. They hold them- 
 selves aloof from the church services. They 
 occupy the rear seats at the prayer-meeting ; 
 and before the pastor can reach the door they 
 
lOO THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 are in the street. They receive a dozen calls 
 at their homes, but wait months before re- 
 turning them, even if they see fit to return 
 them at all. In a large Congregational church 
 of a large Massachusetts city two ladies made 
 in a month seventy-five calls upon those who 
 were comparative strangers. Of these seventy- 
 five calls only one received its fitting and 
 courteous acknowledgment. The wife of the 
 pastor of a church less than a thousand miles 
 from Boston has a rule of calling upon all 
 new people coming into the congregation. 
 The proportion of those who return her calls 
 is about one to five. In that respect of which 
 strangers usually complain bitterly of a church, 
 they are themselves most derelict. Strangers 
 are also, as a body, negligent in contributing 
 to the financial support of a church as soon 
 as they have decided to make it their relig- 
 ious home. The writer knows of a lady who 
 remarked, after attending a church for a year, 
 that she was ashamed to be seen there longer 
 without renting a seat. She felt as she ought 
 to feel, — that as soon as possible after her en- 
 
TREATMENT OF STRANGERS. 1 01 
 
 trance she should hire a seat and pay for it. 
 Many strangers are also inclined not to be 
 faithful in contributing to the directly relig- 
 ious welfare of the church. They do not let 
 their light shine in the meetings of devotion 
 as early as they ought. For Christian mod- 
 esty, humility, and the passive virtues we 
 have great reverence ^ but they are ever to 
 be distinguished from positive indifference 
 or unassuming selfishness. 
 
 What, then, is the duty of strangers to the 
 church which is so seldom paid t The duty 
 is the very simple one of making themselves 
 known ; of holding themselves ready to re- 
 ceive attentions from the older members ; of 
 declaring, in forms either direct or indirect, 
 their desire to co-operate in the work of 
 the church. They should come towards the 
 church, not perhaps half-way in accepting 
 its hospitalities, but at least a quarter way. 
 They should not only manifest their willing- 
 ness to receive the social courtesies of the 
 members, but also their hearty purpose and 
 wish to return all such courtesies in fitting 
 
102 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 ways. They should let their voice be heard 
 in the service of song and of prayer. They 
 should let the influence of their dollars be 
 felt in the revenue of the parish and in the 
 benevolent offerings. They should give peo- 
 ple a chance to shake their hand. And all 
 this they should do at the earliest possible 
 day after making their home in the neighbor- 
 hood of the church. 
 
 In the swiftly changing communities of our 
 cities the new members of any congregation 
 soon find themselves the old members. With- 
 in a decade one half of the ordinary congre- 
 gation of the cities changes, and at the close 
 of a period of twenty-five years hardly one 
 member in ten remains. Much sooner, there- 
 fore, than they would think, have the strangers 
 become the established residents. Upon them, 
 therefore, at an early day devolves the duty of 
 showing those same rites of hospitality which 
 were shown to them. They ought to forget, 
 as soon as may be, that they are new members, 
 and so become an integral part of the essential 
 and aggressive forces of the church. 
 
TREATMENT OF STRANGERS. IO3 
 
 For its social work the church should be 
 furnished with a body of ushers, and also 
 with a reception committee. The work of 
 these gentlemen is limited to the more pubHc 
 services. It should, however, include the 
 larger week-day prayer-meetings as well as 
 the services of Sunday. The reception com- 
 mittee should remain in or near the vestibule 
 of the church at each public service to extend 
 a greeting to strangers. Its members should 
 know the congregation so well that they can 
 at once detect those who are " new-comers." 
 The welcome thus given should be hospitable, 
 courteous, neither effusive nor indifferent. It 
 should, by both words and manner, indicate 
 the heartiness of the greeting of those who 
 are personal friends in Christ, even if they 
 are not in each other. The member of the 
 reception committee who thus welcomes them 
 should at once say to the usher that the 
 gentleman or lady is a stranger and would be 
 glad to be shown to a seat. This semi-intro- 
 duction may give the usher a sufficient occa- 
 sion to speak a word of greeting. But in the 
 
104 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 coming of many strangers into a large con- 
 gregation, any conversation is necessarily brief 
 and fragmentary. It is not, therefore, unfit- 
 ting for the usher to adopt some more satis- 
 factory method for extending the courtesy of 
 the church. I know of at least one church in 
 which a body of polite and faithful ushers has 
 found the following method of much worth. 
 Each usher has a small card, on one side of 
 which is printed this : — 
 
 " If you are a stranger in this church it would 
 give me pleasure to see you at the close of the ser- 
 vice and to introduce you to our pastor and other 
 members." 
 
 This simple invitation is signed by the 
 name of the usher. On the obverse side is a 
 blank space for the name and address of the 
 one who receives the card. This method has 
 various advantages. It gives the stranger an 
 opportunity for knowing somewhat of the ser- 
 vice of the church before revealing his iden- 
 tity. He need not be hurried against his will 
 into taking up a connection which he may 
 
TREATMENT OF STRANGERS. 105 
 
 regret. It is not too effusive. It is yet suf- 
 ficiently aggressive in the offers of hospitality. 
 It invites accuracy in identifying each person. 
 It puts each stranger in the line of the per- 
 sonal life and work of the church. In the 
 execution of this plan the number of ushers 
 must be large, and they should be aided by 
 the reception committee and by others who 
 may be blessed with social gifts. Emphasis 
 should also be constantly laid by the pastor 
 upon the duty of all pew-holders speaking to 
 strangers whom they may meet. It may also 
 be noted that it is well to pursue a similar 
 method in the case of large prayer-meetings. 
 Along this line it may be suggested that the 
 pastor at the close of the prayer-meeting 
 should make his way to the door through 
 which the people pass, and should give to 
 each one a hearty greeting. I know of able 
 ministers who indicate their hospitality in a 
 like way at the close of the Sabbath morning 
 service. Selecting the aisle which is the least 
 filled, they rush to the door of exit. I con- 
 fess that such a procedure under the circum- 
 
lo6 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 Stances seems to me to be lacking in dignity. 
 It is far better for the ushers to meet strangers 
 at the close of the service, and to escort them 
 to the pastor, who remains near the stairway to 
 the pulpit. 
 
 As soon as one indicates his desire to feel 
 at home in a church, the people of that church 
 should extend to him the ordinary courtesy 
 through calling at his home. Every church 
 should have its committee upon strangers, 
 but no church should demand that this com- 
 mittee have all the pleasure of first knowing 
 these strangers. The members of this com- 
 mittee should indeed call at the home of 
 strangers, but they should also make these 
 strangers known to those of the church who 
 live in the same neighborhood into which 
 they have moved. In a large church it is quite 
 impossible for any one person to know more 
 than a small proportion of all the members. 
 Acquaintance, therefore, in the same neighbor- 
 hood should be specially fostered. The chair- 
 man of the committee on strangers, therefore, 
 at once on knowing that a family in a neigh- 
 
TREATMENT OF STRANGERS. 10/ 
 
 borhood desires to become associated with 
 the church, should communicate the fact to 
 the older members residing in the same neigh- 
 borhood, and ask them to call and to know 
 the new residents. This method tends to 
 do away with a mere formality of church 
 acquaintance. It tends to found this ac- 
 quaintance upon genuinely social as well as 
 ecclesiastical considerations. It makes ac- 
 quaintance easy because natural. It is eco- 
 nomical in labor and time. It is simple ; it 
 adopts the principle of the division of labor, 
 and wherever it has been wisely applied it 
 has proved of much worth. 
 
 The traditional '' social " should not be 
 slighted in the organized endeavor of the 
 church. But the " social " should always be 
 sociable. If it is cold in its atmosphere and 
 filled with unnecessary formalities, it is a 
 dull, gloomy, distressing occasion. The hour 
 should not be so filled with music and read- 
 ings and addresses as to leave no time for 
 conversation, and yet the hour should not be 
 so devoid of such pleasures as to seem vacant 
 
I08 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 and bare. The socials should also recognize 
 the fact that it is much easier to be sociable 
 over a cup of coffee ! 
 
 It remains to be added that as the pastor 
 succeeds in getting strangers at work in the 
 church, they cease to be strangers. The 
 work identifies them with the church. Work 
 promotes knowledge of, and love for, the 
 church. The sooner the pastor is able to 
 assign some individual Christian duty to each 
 new member, the sooner he may throw aside 
 all responsibility as to mere social acquaint- 
 ance. Work for Christ and His church makes 
 all one. Let the church hold itself as a 
 spiritual institution, using social courtesies as 
 agencies in its -spiritual development. It is 
 also true that the use of social courtesies as 
 means renders them more social and more 
 courteous than if they are regarded as ends. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE UNCHURCHED. 
 
 LUSTERING about many churches, 
 be they in the city or in the country, 
 is a population as remote from the 
 church in sentiment as it may be near to it 
 in space. As to the duty of the church to 
 endeavor to reach these people there is no 
 question. The question is as to the method 
 of reaching those who are thus unchurched. 
 I answer, first, that a systematic religious cen- 
 sus should be made of all the families of each 
 city, town, and parish. The church census 
 is not designed as a substitute for spiritual 
 power. Its express purpose is to facilitate and 
 to make more effective the work of the Holy 
 Ghost. Nor is its aim the annulling of the 
 religious duties of the members of a church. 
 It proposes to increase these duties and to 
 
no THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 add to their obligation. The Massachusetts 
 pastor was as right in his logic as he was 
 wrong in his piety in saying that he did not 
 desire his church to make this canvass, since 
 it would give the members too much to do ! 
 
 The church census is simply a voyage of 
 discovery to learn who are outside of direct 
 religious influences, for the purpose of draw- 
 ing those thus found within the circle of 
 these influences. It is a movement pre- 
 liminary to the wise presentation of the or- 
 dinances of the church to those not receiving 
 them. The motive is spiritual, the method 
 simple, and the means accessible. 
 
 The present conditions of social and re- 
 ligious life emphasize the need of a canvass 
 of this character in each town. The in- 
 clination of non-attendance at church is 
 strong. The causes of this inclination may 
 be open to debate ; the fact is generally 
 acknowledged. Population circulates rapidly. 
 Families have no permanent abiding-place. 
 The American home, like that of George 
 Eliot in her last years, is on wheels. The 
 
THE UNCHURCHED. Ill 
 
 increasing custom of renting houses invites 
 this constant rotation. Furthermore, the 
 drift of population from rural districts to 
 metropolitan centres is great, — hardly less 
 great in the West than in the East. 
 
 The church census is therefore needed. 
 For the constant or irregular migration from 
 town to town loosens the religious ties of the 
 ordinary home. Without special desire of 
 availing itself of the privileges of the church, 
 the family fails to take up a connection with 
 the church in the new neighborhood. It 
 simply falls out of all ecclesiastical relation- 
 ship. This condition every minister knows 
 is not infrequent. The canvass reveals fam- 
 ilies of this nature. It so makes them known 
 that the church not only can open its doors 
 to them, but even invite them to enter. The 
 urban movement of population works similar 
 effects. Many persons from country homes 
 are inclined to feel that they are not wanted 
 in the city churches. The feeling is, I be- 
 lieve, not accordant with the facts, yet it is 
 more or less sincere. The religious census 
 
112 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 of a city discovers not a few homes, whose 
 members are church-members, in which this 
 sentiment prevails. The knowledge of the 
 fact prompts to urgency in the extending of 
 the courtesies of the church. 
 
 We present on page 113 a series of ques- 
 tions which should be asked of each family 
 of a town, through a personal canvass. This 
 form has also been- employed in a census. 
 
 The census represents the proper attitude 
 of the churches toward those who are in- 
 clined to neglect their services. This atti- 
 tude should be that of hearty invitation. 
 The church, like Christ, is sent to find the lost 
 sheep. It is not merely to invite, it is also 
 to go out into the highways and the byways 
 and compel, them to come in. The minister 
 who, when asked what he was doing to reach 
 people, replied, " Opening the doors of the 
 church Sunday morning," had failed to grasp 
 the central truth of Christianity. By its 
 very constitution the church cannot be any- 
 thing else than missionary. This attitude of 
 the churches is at the present time of special 
 
THE UNCHURCHED. 113 
 DATE AO 
 
 No Street. 
 
 Name 
 
 Members of. 
 
 Attendance or Preference.. 
 
 Members elsewhere or letter 
 
 No> in family Under 21 years 
 
 No. who attend S. S. Where. „ 
 
 Servants 
 
 Boarders 
 
 Willing to teach in S. S,. 
 
 Have you a Bible f 
 
 Remarks 
 
 Will the pastor to whom this is sent keep this slip for 
 future reference and use ? 
 
114 '^^^ WORKING CHURCH, 
 
 importance. For communities both change 
 and increase rapidly in population. In 
 twenty-five years the constituency of many 
 urban and suburban churches undergoes a 
 complete revolution. In these swift changes 
 many families fail to form any relation, other 
 than the slightest, with a church. If they 
 know the church, the church, under ordinary 
 conditions, fails to know them. A minister 
 of a church in a city, either large or small, or 
 in a village, cannot learn the ecclesiastical 
 preferences of families that are more or less 
 peripatetic. But such families should be 
 reached ; if not reached, they fail to receive 
 the gospel quite as much as the heathen. 
 
 But this canvass is of greatest worth in form- 
 ing a basis of more definite and more aggres- 
 sive Christian work. The canvass reveals 
 those who are unchurched ; the minister and 
 congregation should at once endeavor to 
 gather them into the church. When the 
 census makes known " backsliders," efforts 
 should at once be made to reclaim them. 
 When the census discovers children who are 
 
THE UNCHURCHED. 115 
 
 members of no Sunday-school, Sunday-school 
 committees should at once be sent to bring 
 them into classes. If the church has no room 
 for these new-comers, room should in some 
 way be made. The privileges of the house 
 of God should be denied to no soul by reason 
 of lack of square feet of flooring. If one 
 church can«not give them room, another may 
 be able. Certainly under so^ne ecclesiastical 
 roof-tree they should find a Christian church- 
 home. 
 
 The endeavor to reach the unchurched 
 should not simply be systematic, it should 
 also be constant. Systematic visitation 
 should be continued, not for six months, but 
 for years. Constant pressure is more effec- 
 tive for the proposed purpose than heavy 
 periodical pressure. Furthermore, both the 
 church and the minister should strive to re- 
 tain even the slightest ties which may connect 
 a family with the church. The service at a 
 wedding or a funeral may be the small cord 
 which may in years grow into the cable 
 uniting the individual family to the church- 
 home. 
 
I 1 6 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 In many instances, instead of the man 
 coming to the church, the church must go to 
 the man. The church is apostolic, mission- 
 ary. In this aggressive endeavor no methods 
 are more worthy of attention than those of 
 Mr. McAll in Paris. 
 
 For several years the churches and min- 
 isters of the United States have been talking 
 as to means and measures for reaching the 
 unchurched of the large cities. The general 
 difficulty with many means and measures 
 proposed is the difficulty of most patents, — 
 complication ; the machinery is too elabo- 
 rate. The methods of Mr. McAll represent 
 the simplicity of spiritual genius and the 
 genius of simplicity. 
 
 The first point relates to a place of meet- 
 ing. The stations of the McAll Mission are 
 rooms, seating from one hundred and fifty to 
 three hundred persons, plainly furnished, yet 
 attractive, with chairs and pictures, on the 
 ground floor, and usually in places where 
 people *' most do congregate." To reach the 
 masses, one must ^o where the masses are. 
 
THE UNCHURCHED. \\J 
 
 We must get as close to them as we can. It 
 is not necessary to build a church edifice. A 
 simple, attractive room, on the ground floor, 
 brilliantly lighted at night, is far more ef- 
 fective than a building which in form and 
 structure proclaims its religious purpose. To 
 effect this purpose of gathering in all classes, 
 the place of meeting must be immediately 
 off the street. Mr. McAU would never have 
 achieved his present success had he obliged 
 Frenchmen to climb a flight of stairs to 
 attend his services. We cannot evangehze 
 Boston, or New York, or Chicago on the 
 second floor! In every way should the ap- 
 proach to the room in which these evangehstic 
 services are held be made easy and attractive. 
 Placard and gas should draw and hold the 
 attention. The surroundings should be in- 
 viting to the evening stroller. A word of 
 welcome should await him at the threshold, 
 and be continued and emphasized with a 
 warm grasp of the hand within the doors. 
 
 A second point as important as the loca- 
 tion and attractiveness of the place of meet- 
 
Il8 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 ing relates to the character of the meeting. 
 The service, first of all, should be interesting. 
 If it is dull or stupid, it is a failure for its im- 
 mediate aim. It is impossible to hold the 
 unconverted masses without interesting them. 
 In gaining this purpose, the power of song 
 has, in France, proved most effective. The 
 Moody and Sankey songs are translated and 
 sung quite as much in Paris as in New York. 
 The wanderers on the streets at night can 
 be thus attracted. These songs are open to 
 criticism on grounds of reverence and truth- 
 fulness as well as of aesthetics. But for their 
 purpose of drawing and holding the masses, 
 they are unequalled. Scores of people will 
 come off the street to sing, 
 
 " The half was never told," 
 
 who would turn away from the most eloquent 
 sermon. 
 
 But a meeting at a McAll station is incom- 
 plete without an address. This address is 
 usually a direct, personal, warm, wise appeal. 
 I have seen scores of the blue-jacketed work- 
 
THE UNCHURCHED. II9 
 
 men of Paris listening to such appeals. Some 
 were listless, more were touched in heart, 
 most were interested. Will not the laborers 
 of Boston, New York, and Chicago likewise 
 listen } The masses of the American people 
 seem to me less hungry for the gospel than 
 the masses of the French people; but I am 
 constrained to believe that under proper con- 
 ditions scores, if not hundreds, could be 
 gathered night by night into little mission 
 rooms in our great cities, — scores who now 
 do not enter a church once a year. 
 
 Work of this character demands a man, 
 and demands money. It requires wisdom, 
 faith, hope, tact, patience, and, above all else, 
 a love for perishing souls and a love for 
 Christ who died to save them. But is it not 
 a method of work the success of which in 
 the new republic of the Old World gives a 
 promise of its success in the old republic of 
 the New World ? Is not God able to do, 
 through us, for American cities what He is 
 doing through an English Congregational min- 
 ister for Paris and other French cities ? 
 
I20 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 If the individual church would do its duty 
 to those who live in its immediate vicinity, 
 and who neglect all religious services, it were 
 well. Yet even such faithfulness would not 
 effect results equal to the general needs. For 
 beyond the immediate vicinity of the church- 
 es, in parts of the cities whence churches 
 have withdrawn, are thousands of people who 
 are without the help which the church should 
 be able and willing to offer. In each country 
 district, too, miles away from any church, are 
 many families, who are more bereft of the priv- 
 ileges of the church than the Fiji Islanders. 
 Many churches are devoting every energy to 
 keeping themselves alive. They feel unable 
 to be aggressive in either personal or pecuni- 
 ary effort. They yield to the up-town pres- 
 sure of the tide of the better class of people. 
 They seek what is recognized as a more 
 desirable constituency. They are not worthy 
 of blame only, since their mistake is quite as 
 much one of method as of motive ; but the 
 church, however, should know that it can 
 maintain its integrity only by bringing into 
 
THE UNCHURCHED. 1 21 
 
 its life as constant factors those who dwell 
 about its edifice. For the purpose of bring- 
 ing these persons into the church, every 
 means of personal visitation and attractive- 
 ness in service should be employed. 
 
 For the purpose, however, of reaching the 
 non-churchgoing population, the union of 
 churches in aggressive endeavor may prove 
 of much worth. The organic uni-on of all 
 denominations of Protestants is a hope born 
 of the unreasoning heart of the religious en- 
 thusiast. Organic union is not possible, and 
 if it were possible, is not to be desired. And 
 if organic union were once formed, it is more 
 than probable that the union thus formed 
 would for religious efficiency become dis- 
 union. But union for Christian work is pos- 
 sible at the present time, and is more to be 
 desired than any other practical method of 
 evangelization. It is thus that neighborhoods 
 having too few churches may be supplied 
 with religious privileges. It is thus that 
 neighborhoods having too many churches may 
 spend their superfluous strength in destitute 
 
122 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 districts. It is thus that the evils of an over- 
 multiplication of churches may be avoided, 
 and religion instead of rivalries promoted. 
 
 The history of Christianity since the apos- 
 tolic age, when there were Cephasites, Apol- 
 losites, Paulists, and Christians, has been the 
 history of ecclesiastical divisions. The list of 
 these divided members of the one body of our 
 Lord is to-day longer than ever. The pastor 
 has been too eager to build up his individual 
 church, and not sufficiently eager to build up 
 the whole church of his order ; and the whole 
 church of all orders has suffered. The whole 
 church of one order has been too solicitous to 
 build up itself, and not sufficiently solicitous 
 to build up the whole church of all orders ; 
 the church universal has suffered. ^ The time 
 has now come when the broadest and high- 
 est motives should have a controlling influ- 
 ence. Denominational methods have proved 
 
 1 " The Catholic religion respects masses of men, and ages. It 
 is in harmony with Nature, which loves the race and ruins the indi- 
 vidual. The Protestant has his pew. which of course is the first 
 step to a church for every individual citizen, a church apiece." 
 — Journal of R. W. Emerso7i, Cabofs Memoir, p. 472. 
 
THE UNCHURCHED. 123 
 
 insufficient. Interdenominational methods of 
 work are not practicable. Undenominational 
 methods are at once practicable, desirable, 
 and full of promise. With a basis as broad 
 and strong as the love for God and man, let 
 all the churches unite in the aggressive war- 
 fare against the world, the flesh, and the devil. 
 With a doctrinal union as firm and elastic 
 as the Apostles' creed, let all those confess- 
 ing the one Name in which alone there is 
 salvation, become one in purpose, methods, 
 and movement. Let co-operation take the 
 place of competition, and diversity be sub- 
 stituted for division. 
 
 The religious census is the beginning of 
 this advance. The second step is the sys- 
 tematic visitation and personal invitation to 
 participate in the work and worship of the 
 church. Personal conversation upon the 
 most personal, which is also the most impor- 
 tant, of subjects should become usual. Those 
 classes now neglecting and neglected by the 
 church may thus be won into close and help- 
 ful fellowship. Let the churches unite in 
 
124 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 caring for districts in our own land that are 
 now more heathen than Japan. 
 
 Such a united movement would be most 
 useful in calming the ruffled waters which 
 are so stirred up by socialistic agitations. 
 By hanging bomb-throwers, the law cannot 
 put out the fires hissing in the furnace of 
 public discontent. The gospel alone can cure 
 socialism and anarchy ; and the gospel must 
 cure socialism and anarchy, or they will not 
 be cured. The divine love as the divine law 
 for human acceptance, and the divine love as 
 the divine law for human obedience, must be- 
 come supreme. The Church, the one Church 
 of the one Christ, having one body though 
 many members, and each member adjusted to 
 every other, should, in love for Him and love 
 for man, give itself, in a Christlike spirit and 
 according to wise methods, to these Gentiles 
 of its own Judaea. 
 
 Note. — In answer to the question " What can the ordinary 
 church do to reach the masses ? " the Rev. Dr. D. A. Reed (Pro- 
 ce2dings of the Second Convention of Christian Workers in the 
 United States and Canada, Sept. 21-28, iS?;, p. 32) has suggested 
 these methods : — 
 
THE UNCHURCHED. 1 25 
 
 " In concluding, let me summarize : * What can the ordinary 
 church do to reach the masses ? ' 
 
 "(i) Let the services of the church be simple, pleasing, and 
 attractive. 
 
 " (2) Have special evangelistic services in the evening, with 
 good music. 
 
 " (3) Have a well-manned Sunday-school, with building suitable 
 for class-rooms for a large number of adult classes ; also where 
 classes can meet during the week for literary and social purposes. 
 
 " (4) Have educational classes, and lectures on certain evenings, 
 on the great burning questions of the day, by live, earnest men. 
 
 "(5) Where a church numbers over three hundred, have two 
 pastors, or a pastor and a trained assistant, devoting his whole 
 time to the work, under the direction of the pastor or supplement- 
 ing him. 
 
 " (6) Make much of personal work, the efforts of individuals 
 whose hearts are full of love for souls. Have a band of men and 
 women trained in the Bible, who shall know how to use it and 
 love to use it, ready to work in all meetings of an evangelistic char- 
 acter in the inquiry-room, ready to go and see individuals and con- 
 verse with them about their spiritual needs, wise to win souls. 
 
 " (7) Have the parish districted, and find out where the people 
 attend church, if possible ; and if they do not attend, go for them 
 and invite them, not once but many times. 
 
 " (8) Have branch chapels or cottage prayer-meetings, or both, 
 in the districts where fewest people attend church. They will 
 often go into these places when they will not go into the church. 
 
 *' (9) Have a sufficient number of visitors for each district, so 
 that too many families will not be given to' any one. 
 
 *' (10) Have classes into which those who are converted can 
 enter and be instructed in the great doctrines of Christianity, and 
 taught how to study the Bible with profit and pleasure, and how 
 to engage in some form of Christian work. 4i»' 
 
 *'(ii) Set the converts to work, watching, directing, encourag- 
 ing them until they get to love it and consecrate themselves to it. 
 Show them, by the teaching and example of pastor and older 
 Christians, that the great aim of the church is to bear true witness 
 to the gospel of Jesus Christ and save men. Show each Christian 
 that he or she has a personal work to do with persons ; that 
 
126 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 money and prayers are not sufficient ; that sympathy and love 
 and personal solicitude for the comfort and salvation of men are 
 w^hat the masses need. 
 
 "(12) Money, brains, consecration, and the aid of the Holy 
 Spirit v^rill enable any ordinary church to win the masses." 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 BENEVOLENCE. 
 
 ERTAIN principles every pastor may 
 and should impress upon his church, 
 (i) All property should be conse- 
 crated to God. The Christian's wealth is not 
 his ; it is Christ's, to whom he himself belongs. 
 He is, therefore, to keep or to give, to hoard 
 or to spend, as will result most fully in the 
 doing of the Divine will. He may, like Dea- 
 con Safford, place a self-imposed limit on the 
 wealth he will retain, giving away each year 
 whatever he finds in excess. He may, like 
 not a few, reserve ten per cent of his income 
 for benevolence. He may give away large 
 amounts or small, either in person or by be- 
 quest. But whatever method he adopts, the 
 principle is to be followed that property be- 
 longs to God. 
 
128 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 (2) The peril of great property, which is 
 worldliness, is best avoided by great benevo- 
 lence. Many members of our churches are 
 becoming rich, and not a few" very rich. The 
 United States is to be the richest nation of 
 history. Many men making money rapidly 
 can keep alive their Christian faith only by 
 giving away a certain percentage of it as rap- 
 idly as it is made. ** I grow avaricious," said 
 a prosperous banker, "if I do not give away 
 much money." Benevolence is an ethical and 
 Christian safeguard. 
 
 (3) Benevolence is a duty laid upon all. 
 Churches distinguished for their generosity 
 usually gain their eminence from the gener- 
 osity of a few. An offering recently made in 
 a Presbyterian church of New York amounted 
 to some fourteen thousand dollars. It was 
 heralded as a munificent contribution ; but in 
 it was one check for ten thousand dollars, and 
 the larger part of the balance was given by 
 two or three men. I have been told of a con- 
 tribution of sixteen thousand dollars, of which 
 fifteen thousand dollars were given by three 
 
BENE VOL ENCE. 1 2 9 
 
 contributors. Each should not only give, but 
 each should give in proportion to his means. 
 
 (4) The larger one's property or income, the 
 larger should be the percentage of his benev- 
 olence. The tithe represents a great funda- 
 mental principle. But one hundred dollars 
 from an income of a thousand is, relatively to 
 the needs of a home, a much larger sum than 
 a thousand dollars drawn from an income of 
 ten thousand. The thousand dollars may 
 hardly more than suffice to buy necessaries; 
 the ten thousand, after supplying the common 
 wants, leaves a large balance for permanent 
 investment. On the whole, rich men are rel- 
 atively less generous than poor men. 
 
 (5) The just demands of benevolence are 
 to be recognized as imperative. What do they 
 not include } Home missions and foreign, 
 charitable organizations of every sort, philan- 
 thropic movements, the endowment of col- 
 leges and schools and seminaries, and every 
 endeavor looking to the redemption of the 
 world from sin and unto Christ, are within 
 tlie horizon of these just demands. Almost 
 
 9 
 
I30 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 daily comes some appeal to the desk from 
 which this chapter was written. Each ap- 
 peal is worthy. By itself each demand seems 
 to deserve prompt and generous response. 
 Every secretary of every mission board 
 hourly hears the cry for help. To refuse 
 to hear the cry always means retrenchment 
 of the work, frequently retreat, and some- 
 times absolute defeat. Despite their great 
 generosity, most churches and most Chris- 
 tians have no conception of either the duty 
 or the joy of giving money to Christ's work 
 in the world. 
 
 (6) Benevolence should not be subject to 
 impulse, but the result of wise deliberation 
 upon the needs of Christian work. Offerings 
 should not be proportioned to the interest 
 which a speaker for a cause may or may not 
 awaken ; they should not be dependent upon 
 a rainy Sunday or upon personal presence in 
 a service in which the contribution box is 
 passed. Their amount should be adjusted to 
 income and to property on the one side, and to 
 the demands of the work on the other. They 
 
BENEVOLENCE. 131 
 
 should be systematic, — systematic as to time, 
 as to amount, as to distribution. They should 
 be the subject of premeditation, and in many 
 instances of pledge in advance. The objec- 
 tion, so often made, to pledging an offering of 
 a certain sum, since the amount of future in- 
 come is an uncertain quality, is not candid. 
 Pledges made toward the benevolences of a 
 church are usually so made that to cancel 
 them is easy. Furthermore, the objection is 
 so based as to lose all definitive force. Every 
 family lives in a certain recognized way, 
 though its future income is unknown. 
 
 For this general work of the church the 
 system of annual pledges and weekly gifts is 
 the best. The system is an education in be- 
 nevolence. It is an education in the feeling 
 of benevolence, but it is also an education 
 in the principle of benevolence. It tends 
 to make giving constant and wise. It em- 
 phasizes the duty. Unless one is trained, 
 he seldom gives according to his ability. 
 The largest givers, proportionally to their 
 means, are found among those who have 
 
132 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 been thus educated in and from youth. This 
 system teaches children as well as men. It 
 attracts and retains the pennies and five-cent 
 pieces. The constant regularity develops the 
 generous impulses and motives. 
 
 Akin to this advantage of education is a 
 second which the system offers. It tends to 
 change benevolent offerings from being re- 
 garded as acts of grace to being regarded as 
 acts of regular church administration. It les- 
 sens the inclination to judge benevolence as 
 a work of supererogation. This inclination 
 is strong. Many nominal Christians look on 
 the field of foreign and home missions as 
 one to which they bear no relation. If they 
 aid in maintaining missions, the assistance is 
 considered as a favor bestowed and not as a 
 duty done. They do not look on the Ameri- 
 ican Board as a society doing their work in 
 China and Africa. They do not regard the 
 'Home Missionary Society as their representa- 
 tive in the churches of Minnesota and Mis- 
 souri and Texas. They do not consider the 
 American Missionary Association as their 
 
BENEVOLENCE. 133 
 
 teacher and preacher to the American black 
 man and red man. This, however, is precise- 
 ly the fact. These and all other societies are 
 simply the churches organized and working 
 for certain ends. If this work is at all a duty, 
 the support of it is not an act of grace, but of 
 duty. The regular giving tends to foster this 
 just estimate of it. 
 
 The system of weekly offerings, further- 
 more, encourages all to benevolence. It en- 
 courages specially those whose gifts must be 
 small. One easily gives twenty-five cents a 
 week who would not feel able to pledge twelve 
 dollars a year. It is easier to give a sm^ll 
 sum regularly than a large sum, in the aggre- 
 gate no greater, irregularly. Those who are 
 accustomed to give nothing, through this sys- 
 tem are usually moved to give something. 
 Those who are accustomed to give largely are 
 thus moved to give more largely. The man 
 who is accustomed to give twenty-five dollars 
 a quarter discovers that he can and ought to 
 give more than two dollars a Sunday. Sub- 
 division, by diminishing the amount of each 
 
134 THE WORKING CHURCH- 
 
 gift, at once convinces those who are not 
 wealthy that they are able to give something, 
 and those who are wealthy that they are able 
 to give more generously. 
 
 Following from this advantage is a fourth, 
 which is that the amount of offerings is thus 
 greatly increased. The statistics show that 
 the introduction of the system usually results 
 in a gain of from 20 to 200 per cent. Of 
 three churches in Massachusetts one reported 
 a gain of 300 per cent, one of between 400 
 and 500, and one of not less than 500, conse- 
 quent upon the adoption of this method. Of 
 this increase there is indeed abundant need, 
 when, in a rich and generous Commonwealth 
 like Massachusetts, each Congregational 
 church-member gives less than five cents a 
 day for the maintenance and extension of 
 the church at home and abroad. 
 
 The disadvantages of the system are few 
 and slight. The uncertainty of income, the 
 uncertainties due to sickness and other disa- 
 bilities, render it inexpedient, it is said, to 
 pledge for a year in advance a specified week- 
 
BENE VOLENCE. 1 3 5 
 
 ly gift. But each person can usually be as- 
 sured of a certain income. He can make his 
 calculations upon this basis ; and if the 31st 
 of December shows that he has been pros- 
 pered more than he dared to hope, his bless- 
 ing may fitly be recognized and bestowed as 
 a thank-offering. The pledge is, indeed, not 
 one to be kept except as one is financially 
 able to keep it. 
 
 In the use of pledges, the apparent pub- 
 licity of the system would seem objectionable. 
 But this publicity is only apparent. At the 
 furthest the treasurer alone knows the 
 amount of each offering ; and usually he is 
 ignorant, — for an account is kept, not of the 
 names of the givers, but of certain numbers 
 which represent the givers. 
 
 This system of weekly offerings, though so 
 excellent, does not succeed of itself. It 
 needs, without exception, to be worked. A 
 poor system well applied may prove more 
 effective than a good system ill applied. This 
 method requires constant instruction and 
 appeal. 
 
136 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 In his own relation to the benevolence of 
 his church, the pastor should impress him- 
 self with the duty, ( i ) of giving full and 
 exact information to the members as to the 
 condition of those missionary endeavors in 
 which they invest ; ( 2 ) of never suffering 
 himself to be tempted by meagre contribu- 
 tions into petulance or scolding ; ( 3 ) of setting 
 a fitting example himself; (4) of wisdom in 
 approaching individuals as to the time, place, 
 and amount ; ( 5 ) of the education of the 
 young and old ni generous giving ; (6 ) of per- 
 sistence, which is only aggressive patience. 
 
 But principles even broader and more fun- 
 damental than, those to which I have already 
 alluded are to be made potent in the adminis- 
 tration. It is hardly too much to say that 
 money is the greatest material power in the 
 modern world for either good or evil. *' It 
 can do," as Mr. Dombey said to Paul, — " it 
 can do anything, almost." The expression 
 may seem bold, yet it is true, — that the pas- 
 tor should inspire his parishioners to make 
 money for Christ. This is an age of differ- 
 
BENEVOLENCE. 1 37 
 
 entiation in work. The workman who fifty 
 years ago knew a whole trade, now knows 
 only one branch of that trade. The editor 
 of the old times was the printer; his hands 
 set up and struck off the copy which the 
 same hands had written. To-day, on a large 
 paper, each department commands several 
 writers. This differentiation runs through 
 all departments of labor. It exists in Chris- 
 tian work. The old New England minister 
 received a part of his salary in the farm 
 which surrounded the parsonage. He raised 
 the oats and hay for the horse which carried 
 him over his parish ; and potatoes and corn 
 for the family use. To-day, in most parts, 
 he gives himself entirely to his work as a 
 minister^ and allows his parishioners to at- 
 tend to agriculture. The missionary goes 
 to China ; he goes simply as a missionary. 
 He goes with no purpose of earning a liveli- 
 hood. But he must have a livelihood. Now, 
 with this differentiation and subdivision of 
 labor, it becomes the duty of the home church 
 to make money for his livelihood. In a New 
 
138 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 England State is a farmer who has been a 
 missionary. He has sisters in Asia who are 
 now missionaries. He desires to aid them in 
 their work. But he can aid them more effec- 
 tively by staying at home, and on a Vermont 
 farm coining the dollars which are devoted to 
 the wise and effective prosecution of their dis- 
 tant labor. Prayers are essential, conversion 
 is essential, personal effort is essential ; but 
 benevolence is equally essential in Christian 
 work. 
 
 But money is not only an essential means 
 of doing good, money is also the means of 
 doing the widest good. Civilization increases 
 the power of the dollar. '' A dollar in a uni- 
 versity," remarks Emerson, in his essay on 
 Wealth, "is worth more than a dollar in a 
 jail ; in a temperate, schooled, law-abiding 
 community, than in some sink of crime, where 
 dice, knives, and arsenic are in constant 
 play." The electric telegraph has widened 
 the dollar's circle of influence. One can sit 
 in his dining-room and write a message which 
 shall, before he finishes his dinner, put bread 
 
BENEVOLENCE. 1 39 
 
 in the mouths of starving men in China. He 
 is feeding them just as truly as if he were in 
 Pekin, and standing on a street corner giving 
 away food. One can sit in his pew in a 
 church of New York or San Francisco, of 
 New Orleans or Minneapolis, and by his gen- 
 erosity dictate the removal of the barbarism, 
 and the enlightenment by Christianity, of 
 Asia and Africa. The forces of the air co- 
 operate with each Christian in his continental 
 labor of love. Puck put his girdle around the 
 world in forty minutes. The Christian of 
 the United States can put his girdle of con- 
 secrated gold as quickly around the globe ; 
 and wherever it touches the earth, its flashes 
 of divine influence illuminate the night of 
 heathendom. 
 
 At the opening of this century lived in 
 Salem a rich merchant by the name of John 
 Norris. Three years before the establish- 
 ment of the American Board he had resolved 
 to give a sum of money to the cause of for- 
 eign missions. To his home came, one winter 
 night in 1806, Dr. Worcester and Dr. Spring, 
 
140 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 of Newburyport. The reverend gentlemen 
 were endeavoring to found a theological 
 school at Andover. After explaining their 
 plan, they departed, without any promise of 
 aid from Mr. Norris. The next morning, 
 however, Mr. Norris said to Dr. Spring: "My 
 wife tells me that this plan for a theological 
 school and the missionary enterprise are the 
 same thing. We must raise up the ministers 
 if we would have the men go as mission- 
 aries." With this idea he promised to give 
 $10,000 to found Andover Seminary. He 
 went to the bank, drew out the whole amount 
 in silver, carried it to his chamber, and with 
 prayer dedicated it to the cause he loved. 
 He explained his gift in silver by saying that 
 " he had never heard that paper money was 
 given to build the Temple." Who shall 
 estimate the influence of those silver dollars t 
 They have helped to educate three thousand 
 ministers. They have helped to educate 
 hundreds of missionaries, who have preached 
 and taught, lived and died, for the heathen. 
 They have gleaned in a path reaching from 
 
BENE VOLENCE. 1 4 1 
 
 Andover hill round the globe to Andover 
 hill, — like the path of the just, which shineth 
 more and more unto the perfect day. 
 
 But money may also be the most lasting 
 power for good. Not only through all the 
 world, but even through all time its influence 
 may abide. For hundreds of years Oxford 
 and Cambridge Universities have existed. 
 For their endowment kings and queens were 
 glad to contribute. Henry IV., Edward VI., 
 Mary, Elizabeth, and Charles I. gave of their 
 rich bounty. The august rulers of England, 
 whose dust has mingled with native dust, still 
 rule in the kingdom of scholarship. Here 
 on these shores John Harvard and John 
 Winthrop and Saltonstall and Yale endowed 
 colleges. Funds are still held in trust by 
 Harvard University which have for two hun- 
 dred and fifty years made an education pos- 
 sible to youths whose brains were as large as 
 their purses were small. From generation to 
 generation, as men have come and men have 
 gone, these benefactions have remained, and 
 have dropped their showers of honorable aid. 
 
142 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 In benevolence much money is so used as to 
 be more useless than spilled water. It is the 
 nurse of indolence and of crime. The Middle 
 Ages were distinguished for their benevo- 
 lence. The begging friars overran Europe ; 
 but they came as the locusts upon Egypt, 
 to devour and to flee. But few results equal 
 to the amount expended appeared. The 
 relief was temporary. Money is not to be 
 spent in loaves of bread to toss to a man in 
 a bog ; it is to be spent in a plank to get him 
 out of the mire, that he may himself earn 
 bread. Money, to be the means of the 
 greatest good, must be so placed as to make 
 its benefits lasting ; and money may be so 
 placed that its benefits shall last as long as 
 eternity. The individual dies. His money 
 may never die ; it may last as long as there 
 are woes to relieve, needs to supply, hearts 
 to regenerate, souls to save. His money 
 may be as an enduring character to remain 
 on the earth to continue the work which he 
 himself began. 
 
 Wealth represents the highest values. 
 
BENE VOLENCE. 1 43 
 
 What are they ? They are intelligence, vir- 
 tue, honor, truth, duty, character. Wealth is 
 to be used in the fostering of these elements 
 and ideals. The men and the society that are 
 blessed with riches should be more intelli- 
 gent, more honorable, more loyal to truth and 
 to duty, and more just in the regard paid to 
 human character than those not thus blessed. 
 To the creation of these highest values wealth 
 should be devoted. 
 
 This nation is rich. It is the wealthiest 
 nation on the face of the globe. It has a 
 future of material grandeur which exceeds 
 the brightest pictures of fancy. Wealth 
 nearly doubles every decade. In 1850 the 
 real and personal property of the United 
 States was seven billions; in i860 it had 
 increased to sixteen billions ; in 1870 it had 
 become twenty-four billions; in 18S0 it was 
 forty-three billions. It increases six millions 
 every twenty-four hours. With this vast in- 
 crease of vast wealth, the question becomes 
 of mighty importance : Are these billions to 
 be devoted to the service of God or to the 
 
144 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 service of Satan ? In San Francisco are forty 
 millionnaires, and only one is sai.d to be a 
 member of an evangelical church. Shall the 
 wealth of this country be in the hands of 
 godly or of ungodly men ? 
 
 The old motto was, Noblesse oblige, — Nobil- 
 ity of blood binds one to noble service. 
 The new motto is, RicJiesse oblige, — Riches 
 bind one to noble service. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE REWARDS OF CHRISTIAN WORK. 
 
 O the members of every working 
 church, as to every pastor, in the 
 midst of wearying toil, frequently 
 recurs the question : " What is the reward, 
 what is the compensation ? " The answer 
 should always be free from utilitarian con- 
 siderations. Every Christian laborer needs 
 to inspire himself with the thought that the 
 noblest rewards are his. 
 
 To the Christian one such compensation 
 lies in the assurance that he is co-operating 
 with the best forces of mankind, — he is 
 putting himself in the line of the operation 
 of the highest and most lasting powers of 
 humanity. He is a part of that which makes 
 for righteousness. He is one in that body of 
 noble laborers which creates the best -history. 
 
146 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 He is one in that line of true men who re- 
 ceive the ball of progress and hand it on to 
 those who come after. It is only the Chris- 
 tian whose life and work are thus embodied 
 in the noblest forces of the race. I acknowl- 
 edge the cultured learning, the high wisdom, 
 and the literary genius of a Goethe ; but I 
 cannot forget that the pathway of Goethe 
 was like the pathway of the lightning, bril- 
 liant and destructive. I acknowledge the 
 pure aims, the unstinted generosity, the calm 
 judgment of Harriet Martineau ; but I cannot 
 forget that her last years were devoted to a 
 so-called science which, without lifting mor- 
 tals to the skies, does not succeed in drawing 
 angels down, — the science of Spiritualism. I 
 acknowledge, and acknowledge with pleasure, 
 the active philanthropies and the healthful re- 
 forms which are born and nurtured beyond 
 the pale of the Church. Those who thus la- 
 bor have their reward : it is the reward of 
 putting their lives and operations in the line 
 of those forces which work for righteous- 
 ness. But in a degree higher, in a mean- 
 
REWARDS OF CHRISTIAN WORK. 1 47 
 
 ing nobler, does a Christian put his life into 
 the work which elevates mankind. It is only 
 the Christian aim which provides an ideal 
 high enough for man. It is only the Chris- 
 tian motives which furnish strength suffi- 
 cient for permanent activity. It is only the 
 Star of Bethlehem which guides men to the 
 shrine of purest worship. In the crypt of 
 the old cathedral at Glasgow, facing toward 
 the statue of John Knox, is a window with a 
 picture of the Good Samaritan, and above it 
 these words, in broad Scotch : " Let the deed 
 shaw." So the Christian can say that his life, 
 his work, are to shaiv. In his life, in his work 
 in relieving the evils of the race, in giving 
 light for darkness, joy for sorrow, he has his 
 compensation. 
 
 'One may say that his life is a small life, 
 that his work is a slight work. Say it if one 
 will ; but I also say that great results may 
 flow from a life apparently small, from a work 
 apparently slight. At one time the history 
 of Europe depended upon the question 
 whether the look-out man upon Nelson's 
 
148 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 vessel would or would not descry a ship of 
 Napoleon's expedition to Egypt which was 
 passing not far off. " What shall we have ? " 
 An aching head, a heavy heart, a weary 
 back ; ** many a sorrow, many a labor, many 
 a tear." ** What shall we have t " If we 
 have wound-prints in our hands and feet, if 
 we have a crown of thorns, they are only 
 what He had. "What shall we have.?" 
 We shall also have what He had, — the con- 
 sciousness that our arm is striking strongest 
 blows against evil, that our hands are lifting 
 high the standard of the right. " Would you 
 see his monument, look about you ! " are 
 words written concerning Sir Christopher 
 Wren on the walls of St. Paul's in London. 
 Is there any compensation of Christian ser- 
 vice more sweet or more precious than the 
 assurance that we are working with the best 
 forces in the world for the improvement of 
 the race '^. 
 
 No petition is more frequent in the heart 
 of the faithful pastor than this prayer that 
 he may make his character of the greatest 
 
REWARDS OF CHRISTIAN WORR\ 149 
 
 worth. He would sell his life as dearly as 
 possible ; he would spill his blood, drop by 
 drop ; he would use heart and brain to the 
 utmost. But he asks for himself no higher 
 compensation than the consciousness that his 
 prayer is answered, and that he is spilling 
 his blood, drop by drop, in the fight for the 
 faith. 
 
 A further compensation of Christian ser- 
 vice, belonging both to the church, the pastor, 
 and the individual, is the assurance that one 
 is working with God. A faithful pastor can 
 bear the loss of popularity, can endure the 
 loss of the personal love of the church, can 
 see pews emptied and income decrease ; but 
 he can see all this with a braver heart than 
 he can see that his church is failing in its 
 personal consecration, thus failing to give 
 itself to the work of God for the world. 
 
 At Williamstown a single granite monu- 
 ment marks the spot where fourscore years 
 ago stood a haystack, kneeling in whose 
 shelter five college boys consecrated them- 
 selves to foreign missions. It is the birth- 
 
150 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 place of the foreign missionary work of the 
 American Church. I follow those boys into 
 manhood, and to the other side of the globe. 
 The Asiatic cholera smote Gordon Hall and 
 Samuel Newell, and their dust lies mingled 
 with the coral sands of India. Adoniram 
 Judson was buried at sea. Samuel J. Mills 
 found an ocean grave on the coast of Africa. 
 
 Say, if one will, if one is so narrow and 
 hard-hearted, that their lives knew no peace 
 and satisfaction ; but one cannot long reflect 
 on their work without knowing the deep com- 
 pensations of their lives. They had builded 
 their lives, they had builded their bodies, into 
 the temple of God on earth, — a temple within 
 whose walls the nations are to be gathered. 
 They had laid down their lives as stepping- 
 stones in the brook of time, that on them 
 the Son of Man might walk in His trium- 
 phant progress round the world. Thus to 
 build and thus to be were compensation 
 sufficient. 
 
 We ask, Was Christ's life happy or un- 
 happy, joyous or sad? It seems to me that 
 
REWARDS OF CHRISTIAN WORK. 151 
 
 it must have been a life in which both joy 
 and sadness were more complete than in that 
 of any other man. No one of Christ's insight 
 into human nature, of Christ's tender heart, 
 could live thirty-three years without seeing 
 the sufferings of our poor, fallen, suffering 
 humanity. Do you not think that He who 
 saw and felt all the anguish and woe and 
 sorrow of human hearts must have been sad 
 and sorrowful? We never read of His smil- 
 ing; we do read of His weeping. I think 
 He must also have wept many silent tears. 
 But do you not think that compensations of 
 infinite worth were also His ? What if one 
 could go down to the pestilential parts of the 
 great towns and say to the hungry, suffering, 
 maimed, perishing bodies and souls, " Come 
 to me ; I will give you what you most need," 
 would not his heart be full of the deepest 
 and richest and completest joy .? This was 
 Christ's power. This power must have been 
 the source of joy. He could give. He wanted 
 to give. He did give to all just so far as 
 they were willing to receive what each most 
 
152 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 needed. His work was simply the work of 
 man and of God, — the work of the God-man 
 for the redemption of the world. His life 
 must have been a life of the supremest joy 
 and satisfaction. 
 
 In the feudal period of the Middle Ages, 
 when a young man was to be made a knight, 
 the attendants clothed him in a white tunic, a 
 symbol of purity ; in a red robe, a symbol of 
 the blood which he was bound to shed in the 
 service of the faith ; in a toga, — a close black 
 coat, — a symbol of the death which awaited 
 him as well as all men. They put on his coat 
 of mail, bound on his spurs, and girded on his 
 sword. With his helmet on his brow, bran- 
 dishing his lance, he went forth to war in the 
 contest of chivalry. Imprisonment, suffering, 
 death, might await him ; honor and fame and 
 station might be his reward : but if he were a 
 true chevalier, his deepest compensation would 
 be the assurance that he was fighting for the 
 faith with all his might, and that a hundred 
 deaths were a bauble compared to his loyalty 
 to his Divine Master and Lord. We recognize 
 
REWARDS OF CHRISTIAN WORK. I 53 
 
 the compensations of the passive Christian 
 virtues. We remember the eighth chapter 
 of Romans. We know that like the anchor to 
 the ship is this assurance that all things work 
 together for good to the believer. We know 
 that confidence which is founded upon the 
 truth that ** every man's life is a plan of 
 God." We know the blessedness of seeing 
 the love of God as revealed in the cross of 
 Christ. They are all rich blessings and 
 heavenly rewards of Christian service. But 
 we would first give to men a richer com- 
 pensation, the compensation of the service 
 itself. " Behold, we have left all and fol- 
 lowed thee." The following is the reward. 
 Every faithful Christian can well say : *' My 
 Lord, in His work among men for God, suf- 
 fered. If in my work He calls me to suffer, 
 in that suffering may I find compensation. 
 My Lord knew His Gethsemane. If I also 
 have a Gethsemane, there, in the night and 
 the cold and the loneliness, too, may I find 
 my compensation. My Lord was crucified. 
 If I am also nailed to some cross, in the very 
 
154 THE WORKING CHURCH. 
 
 agony of death may I find compensation : all, 
 all in the assurance that the suffering, the 
 dark Gethsemane, and the cross are the 
 ways in which I work with God in His labors 
 for the redemption of the world." 
 
UNDER FRENCH SKIES; 
 
 Or, Sunny Kielos ^no Shady Woods. 
 By Madame de GASPARIN, 
 
 Author of ^^ Near and Heavenly Horizons." 
 16ino, Cloth, $1.25. 
 
 This is a new work by the author of " Near and Heavenly Hori- 
 zons," which, when pubhshed some years ago, attained such popularity 
 that the Countess Gasparin's latest publication will probably be 
 eagerly sought for. The author's love of nature, the depth of her 
 religious feeling, and the rare quality of her literary skill, give her 
 works a charm and grace which secure to them an assured place in 
 literature. 
 
 " We have seldom read a professedly religious book so thoroughly 
 free from dogmatism, so sympathetic in its tone, and so wholesome 
 in its spirit of wide and truly Christian charily, or one in which the 
 author so evidently wrote from the fullness of the heart. Considered 
 merely as a literary production, Madame de Gasparin's work is equally 
 deserving of praise. There is about it an amount of care and of finish 
 which are not amongst the least proofs of the writer's earnestness and 
 sincerity." — Glasgoiv Herald. 
 
 " This collection of histoi-iettes by Madame de Gasparin has to do, 
 in the way of scene, chiefly with the Jura borderland district on the 
 Swiss and French frontiers. It has a type of beauty of its own. Its 
 modest mountain heights contrasted with the magnificent panorama 
 of the Bernese Oberland within view, its wealth of dark pine forest, 
 its pastoral highlands of mtense green, have great attractions for 
 many, not least for the authoress herself. And this district, known 
 and loved as it is by the writer, is here peopled with a number of 
 actors who come forward in the various tales contained in the volume. 
 Raoul and Marjolaine, the happy young couple in their mountain 
 cottage and bit of farm, Pierre the woodman, Silvio and Serinelte, the 
 loves of Victor and Louise ; these, and many more, form the dfamatis 
 personcB that appear in the pleasant pages of the book." — London 
 Bookseller. 
 
 Sent, postpaid^ oti receipt of the price, by 
 
 THE BAKER & TAYLOR CO., 
 
 74-0 and 74-2 Broadway, New York. 
 
Two Books of National Interest. 
 
 Tha very general attention attracted by the publication, under the 
 title of "National Perils and Opportunities," of the Discussions of the 
 General Christian Conference held at Washington, D.C., Dec. 7-9, 
 1887, under the auspices of the Evangelical Alliance, has induced the 
 publishers, in the hope of finding a still larger circle of readers, to 
 issue, in two uniform cheap volumes, certain of these noteworthy 
 papers, grouped under the two following titles, which describe the 
 divisions into which the work of the Conference naturally fell : 
 
 PROBLEMS OF AMERICAN CIVILIZATION: Their Prac- 
 tical Solution the Pressing Christian Duty of To-day. By Pres- 
 idents McCosH and Gates, Bishop Coxe, Rev. Drs. Pierson, 
 Dorchester, McPherson, and Havgood ; Hon. Seth Low ; 
 Prof. BOYESEN ; Col. J. L. Greene, and Rev. Samuel Lane 
 LoOMis. (Uniform with Co operation in Christian Work.) 
 i6mo. Paper, 30 cents ; cloth, 60 cents. 
 
 The topics are: "Immigration," by Boyesen ; "Misuse of 
 Wealth," by Gates ; " Estrangement from the Church," by Pierson ; 
 " Uitramontanism," by Coxe ; " The Saloon," by Haygood ; "The 
 Social Vice," by Grp:ene ; Relation of the Church to the Capital and 
 Labor Question," by McCosh and Low ; " The City as a Peril," by 
 Dorchester, McPherson, and Loomis. 
 
 CO-OPERATION IN CHRISTIAN WORK : Common Ground 
 for United Interdenominational Effort. By Bishop Harris, 
 Rev. Drs. Storrs, Gladden, Strong, Russell, Schauffler, 
 Gordon, King, and Hatcher, President Gilman, Professor 
 Geo. E. Post, and others. (Uniform with " Problems of Amer- 
 ican Civilization.") i6mo. Paper, 30 cents ; cloth, 60 cents. 
 
 The topics are : " Necessity of Co-operation in Christian Work," 
 by Storrs, Harris, Gladden, and Post ; " Methods of Co-opera- 
 tion in Christian Work," by Strong ; " Co-operation in Small Cities," 
 by Russell; "Co-operation in Large Cities," by Schauffler; 
 "Christian Resources of Our Country," by King, Gilman, and 
 Hatcher; "Individual Responsibility Growing out of Perils and 
 Opportunities," by Gordon, and others. 
 
 Sent, postpaid, on receipt of the price, by 
 
 THE BAKER & TAYLOR CO., 
 
 740 and 742 Broadway, New York. 
 
A WORK OF PROFOUND INTEREST TO THE 
 CHRISTIAN WORLD! 
 
 SOCIALISM AND 
 
 CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 By A. J. F. BEHBENDS, D.D. 
 
 12N10, F*APEJR, 50 CENX3. CLOTH, Sl.OO 
 
 This book treats from a new point of view the problems raised by the most 
 frequently advanced social theories of the day ; their relations to the reciprocal 
 duties of Labor and Capital, and the position of the Christian Church with 
 reference to the social and industrial movements that are taking place about it. 
 
 CONTENTS: 
 
 I. Social Theories. II. Historical Sketch. III. The Assumptions of 
 Modern Sociahsm. IV. The Economic Fallacies of Modern Socialism. 
 V. The Rights of Labor. VI. The Responsibihties of Wealth. VII. The 
 Personal and Social Causes of Pauperism. VIII. The Historical Causes 
 of Pauperism and its Cure. IX. The Treatment of the Criminal Classes. 
 X. Modern Socialism, Religion, and the Family. 
 
 "It is a book for the times in the interest of truth and justice and pure religion. 
 We have read it from beginning to end with unflagging interest, and shall read it a 
 second time this summer, and hope to lay some extracts before our readers." — New 
 York Observer. 
 
 " It is the first approach to a popular systematic presentation of the principles of 
 the destructive socialism of the day. The questions which it discusses are now so 
 prominent, and their social bearing is so vital, that ministers should deal with them. 
 We commend this volume to them, especially to all who desire to get an intelligent 
 view of one of the burning questions of the day." — Presbyterian Journal. 
 
 " The book should be in every home ; and we are sure that if the principles which 
 it advocates and the information which it presents were given to every family in the 
 land, the present disturbances in our country would soon be at an end." — St. Louis 
 Central Baptist. 
 
 Sent, post-paid, on receipt of price, by 
 
 THE BAKEE & TAYLOR 00., PuMisHers, 
 
 74 and 74-^ Broadway, New York. 
 
EVANGELISTIC WORK 
 
 In Principle and Practice. 
 
 By Rev. Artthur T. Pierson, D. D. 
 12mo, Cloth, $1.25. 
 
 A new book on that method which has been one of the most 
 potent means of building up the Christian Church — Evangelization. 
 It is written by an acknowledgv,d master of the subject. 
 
 *' This book is preeminently a book for the hour. It is at once 
 a fruit of the reviving evangelistic spirit and a welcome and powerful 
 force for the promotion of that spirit among the disciples of Christ. 
 All who are working for Christ, especially all ministers and teachers, 
 ought to procure and study this book." — Christian Statesman. 
 
 " More truth, perhaps, than can be found in any single uninspired 
 book, concerning 'evangelistic work,' is included in a volume with 
 this title, by Arthur T. Pierson, D.D. Truths of the first imp'ortance 
 are spoken concerning methods and the treatment of the poor. After 
 having set down the principle as he believes it to be, the author has 
 enforced it in sketches of Whitefield, Howard, Finney, Chalmers, 
 Moody, Bliss, and others. The book ought to have a wide circulation ; 
 it cannot but be productive of the greatest good." — Hartford Post. 
 
 "Every phase of the question is discussed, the methods and 
 merits of different evangelists are set forth, apostolic and modem 
 preaching compared, and the causes of failure and success in minis- 
 terial work portrayed. It Is a book to be studied by all church 
 workers. " — Indianapolis Journal. 
 
 "The book is dedicated to Dwight L. Moody, and would seem 
 to contain nearly all that can be said in the way of information, 
 instruction, example, or exhortation upon the subject. " 
 
 — Baptist Standard. 
 
 " The chapters on the great Evangelists are delightfully written 
 in a lofty and devout spirit." — Indianapolis News. 
 
 " His views will be accepted as of orthodox authority." 
 
 — Washington Critic. 
 
 Senty postpaid^ on receipt of the price ^ by 
 
 THE BAKER & TAYLOR CO., 
 
 Publishers, 
 
 74G and 742 Broadway, New York. 
 
MODERN CITIES 
 
 AND THEIR RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS. 
 
 By Rev. SAMUEL LANE LOOMIS. 
 
 With an Introduction by Rev. JOSIAH STRONG, D.I>. 
 
 12nno, Cloth, $ 1 .OO. 
 
 " For all who love their fellow-men, this book will be a stimulus 
 and a guide. It presents clearly and forcibly the increasingly difficult 
 problem of the modern city, and will prove to be a storehouse of in- 
 formation to all workers in this field. Like 'Our Country,' by Rev. 
 Dr. Strong, this book is one of the most marked books of the current 
 year. Every worker in city or country should read and inwardly 
 digest this suggestive volume." — Rev. A. F. Schauffler, D.D. 
 
 " This volume is in point and substance the cornpanion volume to 
 be read in connection with ' Our Country/ by the Rev Josiah Strong, 
 D.D. The author's sociology is sound. The chapters on methods 
 of philanthropic endeavor, and especially those whiqh show what has 
 been done, are wise and helpful. We commend the book heartily to 
 our readers. " — 'J he Independent. 
 
 " This is an important little volume, and a fit companion to place 
 side by side with the remarkable work by Dr. Strong, entitled * Our 
 Country.' It is a book which will startle many and convince all who 
 read it. It ought to go into every household in the land." — Christian 
 at Work. 
 
 *'The author has reached more nearly to the true cause of the 
 difficulty, and the proper manner to remove it, than any other author 
 with whose works we are acquainted." — Hartford Post. 
 
 "A striking and sensible book — one of the clearest and best things 
 ever written on this live and stirring current question." — Michigan 
 Christian Advocate. 
 
 "A timely book, well written, sensible, practical. A book that 
 deserves reading." — Springfield Union. 
 
 " The present volume is directly to the point, wise, timely, and 
 earnest. " — Christian Sanctuary. 
 
 " This is a very able book." — Baltimore Sun. 
 
 Sent, postpaid, on receipt of the price, by 
 
 TThh Bakbr Si Taylor Co., 
 
 PUBLISHERS, 
 
 740 AND 742 BROADWAY, NEW YORK. 
 
A Book for all who love God and Country, 
 The 116th Thousand of "that Wonderful Book," 
 
 OUR COUNTRY: 
 
 ITS POSSIBLE FUTURE AND ITS PRESENl 
 CRISIS. 
 
 By Rev. JOSIAH STRONG, D.D. 
 With an Introduction by Prof. AUSTIN PHELPS, D.D. 
 
 229 PAGES. 12mo. PAPER, 25 CENTS. CLOTH, 50 CENTS. 
 
 This is probably the most powerful work that has come from the 
 American press during the present century. ^ With a brilliantly 
 marshalled array of unimpeachable facts, it portrays America's 
 material, social and religious condition and probable trend, points 
 out the perils which threaten her future, and, with wonderful clear- 
 ness and tremendous force, both shows the means of averting 
 danger and inspires enthusiasm for the task. The wide circulation 
 of this book has given an extraordinary impulse to the work of 
 holding America for the highest, political, social and religious, 
 national life. The following notices show what the press and the 
 pulpit think of it : 
 
 "Strong, careful, thoughtful." — Boston Journal, 
 
 "Stirring, startling, convincing." — The Guardian. 
 
 •• Ought to reach a circulation of a million." — N. Y. Evangelist. 
 
 ** Ought to be read by every person in this country." — St. Louis Central 
 Baptist. 
 
 "Words are feeble in the recommendation of this book. It enlightens, 
 stirs, quickens, and makes the blood boil with patriotic zeal and Chrisiiaji 
 vehemence." — Pulpit Treasury. 
 
 " ' Our Country' is the one book next to the Bible that I want them (the 
 people) to read." — Rev. A. T. Reed, Plainville, Conn. 
 
 " It thrills me through and through." — Rev. T. O. Douglas. 
 
 " The best book of its sort ever published." — Rev. Wayland Hoyt, D.D. 
 
 "It seems to me the most important book which has been issued in this 
 decade." — Rev. Charles F. Deems., D.D. 
 
 " This volume is a storehouse of information. We recall no recent volume 
 which has so much packed into it of value for the minister, the editor, the 
 teacber, and in general, the patriot, as this little volume on ' Our Country-.' " 
 — Christian Union. 
 
 Sent post-paid, on receipt of the price, by 
 
 THE BAKER & TAYLOR CO., Pnblishers, 
 
 740 and 742 BHOADWAY. NEW YORK. 
 
nlfi'i?!',!,'',^",',?^.'"' Seminary-Speer Library 
 
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