Fractical Ripers 
 on ParishProblems 
 
 \v^A.Grariger 
 
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 MAR lo 1920 
 
 A 
 
 %MfC/iLSlV:^ 
 
 BV 652 .G7 
 
 Granger, William Alexander, 
 
 1850-1922. 
 Practical papers on parish 
 
 Droblems 
 
PRACTICAL PAPERS 
 
 ON 
 
 PARISH PROBLEMS 
 
PRACTICAL PAPERS 
 
 ON 
 
 PARISH PROBLEMS 
 
 /By 
 W. A. GRANGER, D. D. 
 
 MAR J-ci 192 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 THE JUDSON PRESS 
 
 BOSTON CHICAGO ST. LOUIS NEW YORK 
 
 LOS ANGELES KANSAS CITY SEATTLE TORONTO 
 
Copyright, 1919, by 
 GILBERT N. BRINK, Secretary 
 
 Published July, 1919 
 
TO 
 
 WHO FOR MORE THAN FORTY YEARS 
 
 HAS SHARED IN A SYMPATHETIC 
 
 AND HELPFUL WAY 
 
 ALL MY TOILS AND TRIUMPHS WITHOUT 
 
 EVER NEGLECTING HER DUTIES AS A 
 
 WIFE AND MOTHER 
 
 THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 This book will prove immensely valuable 
 to pastors and to Christian workers of every 
 class. The author has been for eleven years 
 the honored president of the New York Bap- 
 tist State Convention, and has a remarkably 
 intimate knowledge of the churches that con- 
 stitute the Convention. These churches 
 number nearly a thousand, city and country, 
 big and little, rich and poor. In all of them 
 Doctor Granger is at home, and in many of 
 them he is counted a valuable counselor. 
 Before entering this general work, the au- 
 thor served city and country churches with 
 marked ability and preeminent success. No 
 living man has a profounder interest in our 
 church life or a keener appreciation of our 
 problems than the author of this book. 
 
 This is not a volume of dry statistics, nor 
 a scientific survey of church conditions. It 
 is a volume of charmingly written articles 
 full of common sense and sage philosophy. 
 
Foreword 
 
 Keen analysis, wide observation, and a re- 
 markable memory for interesting facts are 
 everywhere evident. The author has 
 thought through many of our difficulties and 
 problems, and here, in a fresh and interest- 
 ing way, he gives us his conclusions. The 
 book will be delightful and stimulating read- 
 ing to Christian workers " in harness," and 
 it is finely adapted to the needs of theological 
 students who are soon to put on " the har- 
 ness." It might well be studied in the class- 
 rooms of every seminary in America. 
 
 Several chapters of this book appeared 
 as articles in '' The Watchman-Examiner." 
 The eagerness with which they were read 
 suggested the publication of the book. Re- 
 written and enlarged, these articles have now 
 been put into permanent form, and others 
 of equal value have been added. The book 
 is a valuable contribution to the literature of 
 Christian service. 
 
 Curtis Lee Laws. 
 
 New York, June, 1919. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 I. The Pastor as the Leader of 
 
 HIS Church i 
 
 II. The Pastor as the Leader of 
 
 his Church (Continued) ... 19 
 
 III. The People a Factor in the 
 
 Problem 33 
 
 IV. Evangelism 45 
 
 V. The Prayer-m feting and 
 Why it Ought to be Mag- 
 nified 73 
 
 VI. How TO Magnify the Prayer- 
 meeting 85 
 
 VII. Dangerous Sunday School 
 
 Tendencies 97 
 
 VIII. The Country Church Once 
 
 More 107 
 
Contents 
 
 Page 
 
 IX. That Country Boy Again. . . 129 
 
 X. Causes of Weakness and In- 
 efficiency in the Churches 145 
 
 XL The Aged and Infirm Minis- 
 ter 161 
 
 XII. Our New York State Mis- 
 sionary Convention 183 
 
 XIII. The Stranger Within Our 
 
 Gates. 203 
 
THE PASTOR AS THE LEADER 
 OF HIS CHURCH 
 
THE PASTOR AS THE LEADER 
 OF HIS CHURCH 
 
 Let it clearly be understood at the out- 
 set that anything I may say about a human 
 leadership presupposes that of the divine. 
 When Constantine was laying the founda- 
 tions of his magnificent capital on the shores 
 of the Bosporus, he met the criticism of 
 his adversaries because of his vast expendi- 
 ture by the declaration that he was follow- 
 ing One who was leading him. 
 
 Every man attempting to lead a church 
 should be conscious of this higher leading. 
 In nearly all of our conferences on " rural 
 life " the speakers begin with the assumption 
 that the country church is a failure. Some 
 country churches are, and so are some in 
 towns and cities. Many of them are not, 
 but are grandly fulfilling their mission to 
 their community and the world. In the long 
 run, whether in city, town, or country, it is 
 a question of leadership, and wherever a 
 church is " going " and " doing its bit," it 
 is because a man of leadership is in the pul- 
 pit, *' a round peg in a round hole, not a 
 
 [3] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 square peg in a round hole," as Sidney 
 Smith used to say. Mark Twain in his last 
 days wrote a personal friend, saying, 
 " There is not an orphan in all this world 
 as lonely as I, a wretched old derelict, drift- 
 ing on the wasting seas of human life with 
 nobody on the bridge " — a picture of too 
 many churches, " derelicts with nobody on 
 the bridge." Now I insist that the pastor 
 should lead, " be on the bridge," and I am 
 emphasizing this point in the hope that there 
 will be a fuller assumption of such leader- 
 ship on the part of those in the pulpit, and 
 a fuller recognition of its right on the part 
 of those in the pew. He should not only 
 lead, but he should have, in his own mind 
 at least, a carefully thought-out, clear-cut 
 plan for the whole work of the church. Of 
 course, such a plan should not be completed 
 or announced without consultation with 
 those active in the various departments, but 
 this plan should be all-inclusive. It has al- 
 ways been my own custom to be in the 
 Sunday School of my church, as a factor ; if 
 not as superintendent, teacher, or substitute, 
 then to make announcements and the open- 
 ing or closing prayer, so as to keep in evi- 
 dence, to know, and to be known by, every- 
 body there. The same was practically true 
 of all the organizations in the church. After 
 
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The Pastor as the Leader of His Church 
 
 getting himself elected as superintendent, 
 an ambitious man informed me that I need 
 not feel that I must always be in the school. 
 I thanked him for his thoughtfulness of 
 me, told him what the habit of my ministry 
 had been, and that I had no idea of chang- 
 ing it. I was not going to be ruled out of 
 one great sphere of my influence, nor dis- 
 placed in my leadership, by any such 
 method. Moreover the churches are look- 
 ing for leaders, men who can make a policy 
 and carry it out. Frequently pulpit com- 
 mittees write me, saying, " We want more 
 than a preacher, we want a leader," and in 
 the average church they long to feel them- 
 selves in the grip of a strong, masterful 
 man, if they know where he is going. Now 
 let me name some of the lines along which 
 this leadership is to be exercised. 
 
 I. In his People's Religious Thinking, 
 their thinking in the realm of religious 
 truth. But is not all truth religious? 
 Hardly. All truth is important, but not 
 equally important to the development of 
 religious life. Mathematical truth is ex- 
 ceedingly important, perhaps even religious 
 for my old instructor in Colgate, but posi- 
 tively irreligious for some of his pupils, and 
 I recall some who nearly lost their religion 
 in his classroom. Jesse B. Thomas once 
 
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Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 said in our conference that a minister of 
 the gospel in our day ought to " meddle 
 with all knowledge," venture into every 
 realm of truth. For a man of his mental 
 make-up that may be possible, but not for 
 the average man. It is expected, however, 
 that the minister will be an authority in one 
 realm, that of religion, and that he will 
 compel thinking there. Not that undue em- 
 phasis should be placed on the intellectual 
 side of his work, for '' The influence of the 
 pulpit with the cultivated classes," says a 
 distinguished theological professor, " is 
 preeminently a religious influence, the in- 
 fluence of the man, his character, his devo- 
 tional spirit, his self-forgetfulness, and his 
 eminence in all the clerical graces." The 
 most intelligent and cultivated hearers 
 therefore are those who most heartily en- 
 joy the simplest preaching. Mr. Webster 
 complained in his day that much of the 
 preaching was '' too great a strain upon the 
 intellect to be sympathetic with the spirit 
 of worship." In the house of God he 
 wanted to meditate not upon mysteries and 
 abstractions, but upon the simple verities 
 and undoubted facts of our religion. In 
 other words, the preacher's appeal should 
 not be to the intellect alone, but to that 
 which is common to all men, the religious 
 
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The Pastor as the Leader of His Church 
 
 nature. In harmony with that thought, 
 Austin Phelps declared that the pulpit must 
 find its standing-place in the lowlands of 
 society or nowhere, and that an exclusive 
 pulpit, one that aims to minister only to a 
 class, is always a weak pulpit. What about 
 the professional men, the " top-heads " of 
 your congregation, some one inquired of 
 Mr. Beecher; ought not the preacher to 
 keep them especially in mind? *' Suit your 
 message to the lowly and you will touch all 
 above them," was his prompt reply. That 
 was the Master's way, he contended, and 
 thus illustrated it, "If you want to raise 
 a barn, you do not put your jack-screw up 
 under the side-plate, or when you turn the 
 lever you lift only the roof, but you put the 
 screw down under the sill, and then when 
 you turn the lever^ you lift the sill and 
 everything above it." So " Jesus was made 
 flesh and dwelt among men," on the lowest 
 level of life, and when he raised himself up, 
 he lifted all men with him. Ultimately the 
 educated classes honor and even follow after 
 the preacher who has this power of appeal 
 to the " common man." The nobility of 
 England ran after Whitefield when they dis- 
 covered that the " million-hearted common 
 people heard him gladly." When Mr. Lin- 
 coln, rather shabbily attired, went to Wash- 
 
 B [7] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 ington for his first inauguration, " polite 
 society " there sneered at him as a " hay- 
 seed from the West," but when Lloyd 
 George, England's new premier, goes into, 
 the House of Parliament to make an ad- 
 dress that all the world is waiting to hear,l 
 he begins it with a quotation from Lincoln. 
 " The rail-splitter " at last has " come to his 
 own." He has compelled the admiration 
 of the learned and the wise, because he had 
 already captivated the heart of the common 
 man. He is nearly as well known in Japan 
 as in our own land. His portrait hangs on 
 the walls of all their public schools. Billy 
 Sunday is having a similar experience while 
 yet alive. Three years ago there was strong 
 opposition on the part of some leading 
 ministers to a proposition inviting him to 
 New York. Finally he came on practically 
 a unanimous invitation. Austin Phelps in- 
 sists that the clamorers for sensationalism 
 in the pulpit are those who know the least 
 about good preaching, and are the poorest 
 judges of it when they hear it. A man who 
 had for years been in the congregation 
 of the most sensational preacher in our day 
 complained that he was " not fed " in a 
 prosperous suburban church where he 
 turned up later on. I happened to cross the 
 sea with him one summer, and when two 
 
 [8] 
 
The Pastor as the Leader of His Church 
 
 days out he came to me saying : " Now I 
 may be showing my ignorance, but I want 
 to ask a question. The people on this boat 
 are talking about Great Britain and the 
 Continent; what's the Continent?" Think 
 of it ! " Not fed ! " He is the type of man 
 who will be your most caustic critic. The 
 educated man will be sympathetic, for like 
 Webster he comes not to be ministered to 
 along intellectual lines, but to receive a mes- 
 sage for his religious nature. I went to 
 speak on our State work in a church where 
 the president of a great university was a 
 member, and felt relief when I found he 
 was absent that morning, and so expressed 
 myself to the pastor. On the way home, 
 the pastor assured me that he had no more 
 sympathetic, responsive hearer in that great 
 church than the university president, for 
 while he is one of the world's greatest 
 teachers of philosophy, he is as simple as a 
 child in his religious life, and goes to church 
 expecting a message to that part of his 
 nature. It is along those lines and in that 
 realm, the realm of religious truth to which 
 all men are responsive, that the minister is 
 to lead his church. 
 
 2. In his People's Living; he must select 
 and present the truth in such a way as to 
 develop their religious lives. And nothing 
 
 [9] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 will so stimulate their growth as his own 
 life illustrating and enforcing his teaching. 
 Washington Gladden tells us he was saved 
 from infidelity in the critical period of his 
 young manhood by the consistent life of his 
 uncle, in whose home he was spending the 
 winter. Who can estimate the influence of 
 that plain man's life as exerted through the 
 ministry of Doctor Gladden all these years? 
 A little girl under examination by the dea- 
 cons for church-membership, when asked 
 " under whose preaching " she was con- 
 verted, said, *' Under nobody's preaching, 
 but under Aunt Mary's practice." When 
 William M. Tweed was being called to ac- 
 count for his grafting activities in New 
 York, he sneered at his prosecutors, but 
 when Thomas Nast began to publish his 
 cartoons in " Harper's Weekly," he soon 
 cowered, and calling his Tammany leaders 
 together said : '' Gentlemen, them pictures 
 must be stopped. I don't care what they 
 write about me, for the larger part of my 
 constituency can't read, but them pictures 
 all can read." What men see impresses 
 them as deeply as anything they hear. Then 
 many see and are influenced by the life a 
 man lives, who never enter a church and 
 therefore do not hear him preach. In great 
 cities this influence is not what it was 
 
 [10] 
 
The Pastor as the Leader of His Church 
 
 formerly, for often the man is lost in the 
 multitude. For a hundred years, old 
 Trinity was the most conspicuous landmark 
 in down-town New York. Now it is lost in 
 the great forest of business buildings, an 
 illustration of how the material dominates 
 the spiritual in our day, but in the rural 
 regions the every-day life of the minister is 
 as potent in its influence as ever. Joseph 
 Henry Crooker, in his '' Church of To-day," 
 gives this concrete illustration. A man who 
 had been pastor of a village church for 
 nearly twenty years felt that a change might 
 be better for him and the church, so he sud- 
 denly resigned. The next morning one of 
 his official members was in a place of busi- 
 ness in that town when the pastor passed by 
 the window, and the merchant spoke of his 
 resignation and expressed great regret. 
 " But you were never in our church," said 
 the official ; " how can it affect you ? " " No, 
 I never heard him preach," the man replied, 
 " but every time he passes that window every 
 good impulse in me gets mightily strength- 
 ened, and I am sorry he is going." In the 
 open country and in the village, the preach- 
 er's influence, like Peter's shadow, falls on 
 men, and it blesses or blights them according 
 to the character of the man. 
 
 3. In his People's Giving, their steward- 
 
 [II] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 ship before God. Perhaps here we preach- 
 ers have failed as nowhere else. Why do so 
 many of our churches and missionary So- 
 cieties come down to the end of their fiscal 
 year with deficits? The people have the 
 money, they never had so much, and the 
 scale of their living shows it, but they have 
 not been trained to give. Has not the 
 leader, the man in the pulpit, been at fault 
 here ? I was holding a conference in an up- 
 State church, where I was urging the im- 
 portance of a better financial system and 
 the pastor's responsibility for it. The pas- 
 tor of that church, a personal friend of 
 mine, seemed troubled as I went on. At the 
 close of the conference some of his officials 
 thanked me for coming, my message had 
 been just what was needed there, for while 
 their pastor's salary was above that of the 
 average member of the church, he contrib- 
 uted nothing regularly for the support of 
 the church, nor was he any help to them 
 in their financial problems. When Napo- 
 leon was returning from his Egyptian cam- 
 paign, he issued an order that all well men 
 should walk, only the sick and wounded 
 could ride. The next morning at the time 
 set for breaking camp, his orderly notified 
 him that the " little gray mare " was saddled 
 and bridled, ready for him to mount, and 
 
 [12] 
 
The Pastor as the Leader of His Church 
 
 he smote the orderly in the face, saying: 
 " Fool, did not I say that the well should 
 walk? I lead." So the pastor must lead in 
 the giving as well as in the thinking and the 
 living. '' But is the pastor of a church to 
 dabble in money matters?" Call it what 
 you like, but the thing must be done, and if 
 no one else can or will do it, then he must. 
 I am not insisting that he must do every- 
 thing, but he must get things done. Any- 
 how the people must be made to understand 
 that the giving of money is as religious as 
 praying and preaching, and they will never 
 come to the full measure of their power till 
 that lesson is learned. It is not enough for 
 him to urge giving upon them, he too must 
 give, here as elsewhere his own example 
 must enforce his teaching. John Willis Baer 
 was having a frolic with his little boy on 
 Sunday afternoon, when a nickel fell out of 
 the boy's pocket, the one given him by his 
 mother for Sunday School. When called 
 to account he explained his neglect to put 
 in his money by the way in which the offer- 
 ing was taken. One pupil held the basket 
 while the others marched to music, dropping 
 in their coins as they went. He held the 
 basket that day. Too many of us hold the 
 basket, make occasions for others to give, 
 but fail to give anything ourselves. 
 
 [13] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 4. In his People's Attitude toward the 
 Reforms of the Day. These movements, 
 wise or otherwise, are increasing with 
 alarming rapidity. Pastors are often be- 
 wildered at the appeals or demands made 
 in connection with them. One Sunday 
 morning, an hour or two before service, the 
 critical time in all the week, my door-bell 
 rang, and a woman announced that the 
 Lord had sent her there with a message for 
 my people. I had tried to be open to the 
 influence of the Spirit during the week, and 
 felt that I had a message for them myself, 
 and so informed her. She went to another 
 pastor with the same story, and he opened 
 his pulpit to her. Incidentally in her address 
 there she paid her respects to me, and gave 
 me six months to stay in the town. In three 
 months I was called to a field with much 
 larger opportunities on double the salary, 
 because of my supposed leadership. Unless 
 you are obedient to the beck and call of those 
 active in these movements, they are ready 
 to discredit, possibly unseat you. What now 
 should be the pastor's attitude toward them ? 
 One of friendliness, as far as possible and 
 consistent. Under no circumstances must 
 he allow his attitude toward any real reform 
 to be misinterpreted. Aim to do for them 
 what the sun does for the storm-cloud that 
 
 [14] 
 
The Pastor as the Leader of His Church 
 
 has passed by on a summer afternoon — 
 spiritualize, touch up with glory and beauty. 
 While important and needful, all these 
 movements are incidental and subordinate to 
 the one great end for which the church 
 exists and which may be lost sight of. An 
 Adirondack hunter informs me that when 
 a hound is put on the track of a deer he 
 cannot always be relied upon to keep the 
 trail. Coming to a place where a trail has 
 been crossed by a bear, he follows that till it 
 in turn has been crossed by a fox or a coon, 
 and he goes off after them. Follow him far 
 enough, and you are likely to find the dog 
 barking in a common rat-hole. Brethren, let 
 us not be found barking in common rat- 
 holes. It is high and noble work to which 
 we are called, and God forbid that we should 
 lose sight of it. 
 
 5. In Redeeming and Saving Men; and 
 Doctor Jefferson declares that to be the 
 primal work of the church. ^' As the Fa- 
 ther hath sent me, even so send I you," and 
 this end is to be secured through individual 
 men. In an evangelistic effort in New York, 
 Justin D. Fulton once said, " You are not 
 going to save New York by the job." A 
 lot is being written in our day about the 
 " larger vision " by men who are utterly 
 oblivious to the great needs of individual 
 
 [15] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 men everywhere about them. Visionary 
 men! Paul and Silas, obedient to a vision 
 in the night at Troas, went over into Mace- 
 donia, '' assuredly gathering that the Lord 
 had called them for to preach the gospel 
 unto them." That was the first step in the 
 evangelization of Europe, and the movement 
 was inaugurated through Lydia, the woman 
 whose " heart the Lord opened " at the 
 praying-place in Philippi, " that she attended 
 unto the things which were spoken to Paul." 
 Jesus finally spoke of his work as '' finished." 
 Washington Allston spent twelve years at- 
 tempting to paint the scene of Belshazzar's 
 Feast, and then died and left his work un- 
 finished. The chief difiiculty, one which his 
 genius could not overcome, was that of de- 
 picting the look of despair on the face of the 
 doomed king. Raphael died at thirty-seven 
 and left the " Transfiguration," his master- 
 piece, to be finished by the hand of another. 
 When his body was laid out in state in the 
 Pantheon, with the unfinished picture hung 
 on the wall back of the casket, the Roman 
 people came and looked into his face, then 
 at the unfinished picture, and " wept as if 
 their hearts would break." These men left 
 their work unfinished, and we shall leave 
 ours unfinished, unless we find out what our 
 work really is and give ourselves in utter 
 
 [i6] 
 
The Pastor as the Leader of His Church 
 
 consecration to it. In the Louvre, I saw a 
 picture of a monk, sitting at a desk, writing 
 with a fiery enthusiasm. The artist's con- 
 ception was that in this life the monk had 
 been lazy and shiftless, and now death had 
 let him go back to toil at his unfinished task. 
 A beautiful thought from the standpoint of 
 the artist, but scripturally untrue, for death 
 never lets us go back in that way. " What- 
 soever thy hand findeth to do, do it with 
 thy might, for there is no work, nor device, 
 nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, 
 whither thou goest." '' With thy might " 
 and " now " is the spirit of biblical teaching. 
 Nor are we alone in the great task. There 
 is a beautiful legend connected with the 
 building of an old church in England. 
 When the monks were nearing its comple- 
 tion there appeared among them a strange 
 monk who always took upon himself the 
 heaviest tasks; and at last, when lifting a 
 gigantic beam into place, a beam as impor- 
 tant to the building as the keystone to the 
 arch, they were appalled to find they had 
 been mistaken in their calculations, for it 
 was several feet too short. No device of 
 the builders could remedy it. The night 
 came on and they went to their rest with 
 sad and weary hearts, but when morning 
 came they found the beam lengthened and in 
 
 [17] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 its place. The unknown monk had disap- 
 peared, but now they knew that he who had 
 been among them, supplying their lack, was 
 none other than the Lord himself. They 
 were not alone in their task, nor are we. 
 " I am with you always," and it is our privi- 
 lege to say with the apostle, " I can do all 
 things through Christ which strengtheneth 
 me." Conscious of such a divine Compan- 
 ion, we cannot fail in our leadership. 
 
 [i8] 
 
II 
 
 THE PASTOR AS THE LEADER 
 OF HIS CHURCH (Continued) 
 
THE PASTOR AS THE LEADER 
 OF HIS CHURCH (Continued) 
 
 The substance of Chapter I, in the form 
 of an address, was given to a company of 
 ministers in Brooklyn and at their request 
 was printed in an issue of '' The Watchman- 
 Examiner." Men over the State wrote me 
 commending the positions taken and asked 
 for a fuller elaboration of the points made. 
 In some cases the questions asked indicated 
 a desire for light on problems incidental to 
 their own fields. While full information 
 cannot be given without a knowledge of all 
 the conditions, a general reply can be made 
 to the questions raised. With that end in 
 view the second chapter under the same title 
 has been written. 
 
 It ought to be clearly understood that 
 what I am urging is that the pastor should be 
 a leader, not a '' boss " in the sense in which 
 that term is used in political life. Too often 
 I fear men are ambitious to be bosses or 
 dictators, and fail, as they ought to fail. 
 By a leader I mean one fitted by force of 
 ideas, by character and consecration, by 
 
 [21] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 genius and administrative ability to arouse, 
 to incite, and to direct his fellowmen in up- 
 right living and noble endeavor. To such 
 a leadership, exercised along such lines, I 
 am urging men in our pulpits to aspire, and 
 I urge the people in the pews to recognize 
 and follow it. It goes without saying that 
 such leadership cannot always be gotten 
 merely for the asking, nor is it wise for a 
 man simply because he is in the pulpit to 
 demand it imperiously. Indeed, it cannot 
 always be won in a month or even in a year. 
 If it comes at all to a pastor, it comes be- 
 cause the people in the pews see that he is 
 worthy of it on account of his loyalty to 
 the Great Leader and because of his utter 
 consecration to all the interests of the cause 
 to which he and they profess to have given 
 themselves. 
 
 " But suppose when entering on a pastor- 
 ate you find a layman in the saddle, what 
 would you do ? " I cannot tell beforehand 
 just what I would do in any particular place, 
 for my rule in life has been not to cross 
 bridges until I come to them. Coming to such 
 a situation, I should depend upon the highest 
 wisdom given me in that hour for that task. 
 '' Don't worry, it may never happen," is the 
 suggestive motto I have seen hanging in 
 some business places lately. But without 
 
 [22] 
 
The Pastor as the Leader of His Church 
 
 any hesitation I can say that I should be slow 
 to interfere with the layman's leadership. 
 Your predecessors may have been singularly 
 lacking in the qualities looked for in lead- 
 ers, and he may have come to his position, 
 not by his own will or choice, but by the 
 force of circumstances — possibly he may 
 have saved the cause there. If dominated 
 by the Master's spirit, he may be ready to 
 turn over the responsibility as soon as he 
 discovers your fitness for it. I have in mind 
 such men and such conditions now. 
 
 *' But if he is an ambitious, narrow- 
 minded, wilful man, what then?" Even 
 then, be careful not to, antagonize him. If 
 after prayerful consideration you conclude 
 that the interests of the cause demand his 
 elimination, keep the decision under " your 
 own hat," for if it gets out his antagonism 
 will be aroused, his friends will be rallied, 
 and you may as well " fold your tent like 
 the Arab and silently steal away." If he is 
 not positively bad, take him into your con- 
 fidence, and later on you may find him re- 
 sponding to your treatment, perhaps falling 
 in with your plan and carrying it out. Any 
 plan of yours should be elastic enough to 
 provide for that very thing. Many years 
 ago I was taken by a friend down on Staten 
 Island to see " Bufifalo Bill's Great Wild 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 West Show," a mammoth outdoor perform- 
 ance. In the course of the afternoon I was 
 amused and interested to see a man strug- 
 gling for the management of a jackass. The 
 animal was wilful and stubbornly refused to 
 follow the leading. Finally a third party 
 appeared on the scene, pulled down one of 
 the donkey's long ears, and whispered into 
 it. At once the beast was perfectly sub- 
 missive to him. I said to myself. Here is a 
 lesson; get confidential with even a jackass, 
 and you can manage him. I have often re- 
 called and had use for that lesson. Breth- 
 ren, try it on the wilful man who contests 
 your leadership. It may work. 
 
 '' But when there is an older element in 
 control of all the affairs of the church with 
 a strong young element demanding recogni- 
 tion and threatening to withdraw altogether 
 unless you secure it for them, what is to 
 be done? " Under no circumstances should 
 a pastor, even in his own heart, admit that 
 such a condition exists, least of all must he 
 identify himself with one element against 
 another. The writer was called to a church 
 where there had been such serious conflict 
 between various elements for years that the 
 church had virtually lost its place in the 
 community. He accepted the call in which 
 all elements were factors with the distinct 
 
 [24] 
 
The Pastor as the Leader of His Church 
 
 understanding that he would not attempt 
 anybody's vindication, nor would he justify 
 or condemn any events in the past. His only 
 aim would be to unify that church and re- 
 store it to the great place it had so long held 
 in that part of the State. It was the most 
 difficult and delicate task he had ever under- 
 taken. At the end of six months, a quaint, 
 sweet-spirited little man, well known and re- 
 spected, arose in the covenant meeting, say- 
 ing : '' I have been watching the elder all this 
 time to see which way he was going to jump, 
 but I am now convinced that he is not going 
 to jump, but just going right on in the mid- 
 dle of the road. I want him and you to 
 know that I am with him." That state- 
 ment called out similar expressions from 
 others who had been prominent in the con- 
 flict, and from that hour the pastor's leader- 
 ship was unquestioned, and the way was 
 clear for doing one of the most distinctive 
 pieces of work in which he had ever had a 
 part. To have allowed himself to seem to 
 lean toward any element would have been 
 fatal. 
 
 Nothing, however, made his job there so 
 hard as the attitude of the pastors of other 
 churches in that town. Some disaffected 
 members of his church had found refuge and 
 become pew-holders in theirs, and his sue- 
 
 [25] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 cess meant the possible loss of pew-holders 
 to them. The interest they felt in his prob- 
 lem was amazing — a curious side-light on the 
 " interdenominational comity " that we hear 
 so much about in our day. Brethren, do not 
 permit men in other communions to coddle 
 you and prejudice you against those of your 
 own by intimating that your '* time is up, 
 and that you are likely to suffer as did your 
 predecessors on that field." Your predeces- 
 sors may have been victims of their own 
 folly and suffered only what they deserved. 
 Because other men have failed, or because 
 a church's reputation is not altogether sa- 
 vory, do not be unduly discouraged, and do 
 not too -easily desert your post. Most of all, 
 do not make up your mind that all men must 
 agree with you in all things all the time. 
 
 Two classes of men are a sore trial to a 
 pastor — those who never agree with him, 
 and those who never disagree with him. It 
 is not easy to say which tries him most, for 
 while one class is too opinionated and in- 
 tractable, the other is too thoughtless and 
 uninformed. In a real sense the pastor is the 
 leader and should be respected as such ; but 
 in a sense just as real the layman is a fel- 
 low-worker whose counsel and advice should 
 be desired. The church of Christ is not a 
 place for dictators, either in the pulpit or in 
 
 [26] 
 
The Pastor as the Leader of His Church 
 
 the pew. Information and suggestions 
 should be welcome from any source, and in 
 all church relations and management, de- 
 mocracy should be preserved. 
 
 Many years ago I officiated at the funeral 
 of a man who had lived for fifty years in 
 that community and of whose character 
 and influence there were widely differing 
 opinions. At the close of the service an 
 elderly man, who had long known the de- 
 ceased, approached me, saying : " There was 
 much curiosity in the town to know what 
 you would say about this man. Evidently 
 you have found out that there is often a deal 
 of good wood in crooked sticks." So in 
 many a man with whom we have to deal 
 there is good material, although it is some- 
 what unattractive at times and in certain 
 ways. 
 
 When Rev. W. S. Clapp closed a pastor- 
 ate of nearly thirty years in Carmel I hap- 
 pened to be moderator of the Union Asso- 
 ciation in which men and women in all the 
 churches had felt the influence of his re- 
 markable ministry. When a resolution ap- 
 preciative of his life and labors had been 
 adopted at the annual meeting, he arose to 
 respond : " Brethren, you have been very 
 patient and tolerant of me and my effort. 
 I have only tried to do my part. I have 
 
 [27] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 looked for the best in my fellows, and then 
 tried to build them up along that line. That 
 has been the philosophy of my ministry." 
 Was he not right? Failing to act on that 
 principle, we are likely to fail in our leader- 
 ship. 
 
 There is so much of good in the worst of us, 
 So much of bad in the best of us, 
 That it ill behooves any of us 
 To talk about the rest of us. 
 
 Then we ought not to make " martyrs of 
 ourselves for nothing." I have known men 
 ready to sacrifice themselves and their in- 
 fluence for what they contended was a prin- 
 ciple where I could not see that any princi- 
 ple was involved, but in the last analysis it 
 was a question of wilfulness, a question of 
 having their own way. In many instances 
 it is not a question of principle, but one of 
 expediency — ^doing the best for the cause 
 under the circumstances. There seems to 
 be a warrant for that sort of thing in the 
 New Testament. More than once we find the 
 apostle Paul acting from expediency. Cer- 
 tainly there is room for Christian diplomacy 
 in our ministry. 
 
 " But ought not a man to have back- 
 bone ? " Yes, but he ought not to go around 
 showing it all the time. Men too often use 
 
 [28] 
 
The Pastor as the Leader of His Church 
 
 that term without understanding the real 
 mechanism of a back-bone. Made up of 
 more than a score of bones separated by a 
 cartilaginous substance acting as cushions, 
 the back-bone is capable of yielding in multi- 
 tudinous ways without break or injury. 
 Some men's idea of a back-bone is like that 
 of a lamp-post. Men of this idea fail to 
 secure or hold their places as leaders because 
 they do not know how to yield gracefully, 
 where no principle is at stake, and let the 
 other man have his way. Of course there 
 are times when a man ought not to yield. A 
 great principle is in the issue, and he must 
 be adamantine. Oftener, however, it is sim- 
 ply a matter of method or of expediency, and 
 he can get or hold his position, carry the day, 
 by giving in to his opponent. " A man then 
 must sometimes adapt himself to circum- 
 stances and conditions ? " Assuredly ! 
 
 Standing with a friend on London Bridge 
 watching the various types of boats on the 
 Thames, I saw a little tugboat with a great 
 smoke-stack approaching, and I saw at once 
 that the spring of the arch would not per- 
 mit its passage and so expressed myself to 
 the friend. " Never mind ! the boat or 
 bridge are not yours and why be anxious? 
 You are on a vacation." As the tug neared 
 the bridge, with my anxiety increasing, the 
 
 [29] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 smoke-stack went down to a horizontal po- 
 sition on the deck, the boat passed under the 
 bridge, the stack rose up, and the boat went 
 on its way down the stream. There was a 
 joint in the smoke-stack. So we must have 
 joints in our smoke-stacks, or there will be 
 a collision, and we shall go to pieces. Many 
 a man has gone in this way. 
 
 '' Shall a man then trim his sails to all the 
 winds that blow — be a creature of circum- 
 stances ? " Nothing of the kind ! There are 
 conditions to which no man ought to adapt 
 himself. The conditions can be changed, 
 and he should insist upon changing them. 
 
 When I was a small boy, my father used to 
 let me ride on one of the horses when plow- 
 ing. In one of the fields on his farm what ap- 
 peared to be a rock rose above the surface of 
 the soil. As we neared that rock I would re- 
 mind my father and he would throw the 
 plow out and guide it around the rock, put- 
 ting it in on the other side. One spring 
 when we were using colts not fully broken, I 
 was slow in reminding him, and before he 
 realized it the point of the plow touched the 
 rock, the colts sprang into their collars and 
 threw the stone clean out. It was only a 
 boulder. For years we had been plowing 
 around that boulder, and adapting ourselves 
 to it. The first time we tackled it we threw it 
 
 [30] 
 
The Pastor as the Leader of His Church 
 
 out. For generations we have been plowing 
 round certain social and political evils, such 
 as the saloon, when we ought to have girded 
 ourselves and thrown them out. Some con- 
 ditions we cannot change. The highest ex- 
 pressions of the Divine Will concerning us 
 are sometimes found in the things we cannot 
 change — the inevitable experiences of life. 
 
 The first time I went into the home of 
 Rev. A. W. Rogers, of Schenectady, and 
 sat down opposite his wife at the tea-table I 
 asked her what I ask nearly all the wives of 
 men who have been at Colgate, if she was 
 a Hamilton girl. " No, I was a Schuyler- 
 ville girl," she replied. " Schuylerville is 
 where Burgoyne surrendered," I said. 
 " Yes," and with a twinkle in her eye as she 
 looked at her husband, ^' and that is where 
 A. W. Rogers surrendered." Through that 
 surrender he achieved a splendid victory. 
 
 Brethren, do not fail in your leadership 
 by not knowing how to yield to the other 
 party, especially where no high and noble 
 principle is involved. Do not insist on be- 
 ing " martyrs for nothing." Finally, do 
 not despair of leadership. Looking back 
 through more than forty years of public 
 life I can see that the way has been beset 
 with difficulties which at the time have 
 sorely tried my soul. Stress and storm and 
 
 [31] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 struggle have been encountered, and yet I 
 have had a good time. Without boasting, I 
 can say that I have rarely set my heart on a 
 thing that sooner or later has not been mine. 
 In the long run I have had my way, but I 
 flatter myself that the things on v^^hich I 
 have set my heart have not been vain or 
 foolish things. They were things that ap- 
 pealed to the good sense of the average man 
 and woman. 
 
 A young man went to a field in New York 
 State where man after man for years had 
 retired on the ground of " insuperable diffi- 
 culties." Inside of a year, under his quiet 
 but persistent ministry, the tide was chang- 
 ing, and I wrote him a letter of congratula- 
 tion. Replying, he said, " When I arrived 
 and sensed the situation, I said to myself, 
 there will be a revival in this church, and I 
 will succeed on this field, or there will be a 
 funeral in the parsonage." 
 
 Brethren in the ministry, that is the spirit 
 that gets and holds leadership. Are you 
 willing to pay the price ? 
 
 [32] 
 
m 
 
 THE PEOPLE A FACTOR IN THE 
 PROBLEM 
 
THE PEOPLE A FACTOR IN THE 
 PROBLEM 
 
 " Much every way '' is a curious combina- 
 tion of words used by the apostle Paul. 
 They fitly describe many of the men in our 
 pulpits. They are '* much " physically, in- 
 tellectually, socially, and spiritually ; and yet 
 no man is enough in any one or all of these 
 ways to do the great work to which he has 
 been called, without the cooperation of his 
 people. I have seen men who had been con- 
 spicuously successful in one section of the 
 country called on their record to another 
 where they barely escaped failure. The 
 same man, the same consecration, the same 
 message, and the same spirit. How can his 
 success be accounted for in one place when 
 he failed in the other ? Only on the ground 
 that he had the cordial support of his people 
 in one place, and was left to stand alone in 
 the other. No man is big enough to stand 
 alone. His people must be a factor in the 
 problem. Success or failure is theirs as well 
 as his. Let me note some of the ways in 
 which they can help him. 
 
 [35] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 I. By Their Presence at the Services. 
 The thoughtful pastor prepares his sermons 
 with the needs of the people in his mind, 
 " giving each his portion in due season." 
 When in the seclusion of his study a pastor 
 has carefully prepared a sermon adapted to 
 help his people in the circumstances under 
 which they are struggling to live uprightly, 
 there is nothing that so inspires and helps 
 him in his utterances when he comes to his 
 pulpit on Sunday as to look into the faces of 
 the very persons he had in mind when mak- 
 ing it. There is nothing that so handicaps 
 and takes the heart out of him as to find 
 their places vacant. 
 
 Richard S. Storrs began his great career 
 in Brookline, Massachusetts, a suburb of 
 Boston, in a building erected for the future. 
 When he went into his pulpit on a Sunday 
 morning to speak to about one hundred per- 
 sons in a house built to seat twelve hundred, 
 it was " rather a woody prospect." " Young 
 gentlemen," he said, speaking of it, " there 
 is no inspiration in the backs of pews." At 
 the end of my first pastorate in Long Island 
 City I stated in my farewell address that I 
 had been a factor in twenty-five hundred or 
 three thousand services in the ten years and 
 four months of my ministry there. A dea- 
 con came up at the close of the meeting and 
 
 [36] 
 
The People a Factor in the Problem 
 
 informed me that he had missed but two of 
 them. Think of it! He had heard nearly 
 every word that had fallen from my lips in 
 all those years and was still living to tell of 
 it. That man knew how to help his pastor 
 by his presence. A little later a woman came 
 to remind me that I had not preached her 
 sermon. Early in my pastorate she had 
 requested me to speak some time on the 
 " Transfiguration." Two or three times I 
 had spoken on that event, but she had not 
 been there to hear me. She did not know 
 how to help her pastor. Men and women in 
 the churches, you can hardly realize how 
 helpful you can be to your pastor by your 
 presence in the sanctuary. 
 
 2. You Can Help Him by Your Practice, 
 the Life You Live. I went to speak at a 
 young people's convention in a great barn- 
 like country church. There early I inquired 
 of the sexton about the lighting of the place. 
 When the time came he pulled down a chan- 
 delier that held six small oil lamps. I 
 doubted whether he could light the room 
 with them, but he insisted that I wait and 
 see. When he lit the lamps and they were 
 drawn back into place a combination of re- 
 flectors was so arranged in the ceiling as to 
 flood every corner of the room with light. 
 What those reflectors were back of the little 
 
 [37] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 lamps the lives of the people are back of the 
 man in the pulpit. He may be only an ordi- 
 nary, tallow-candle type of man, but if they 
 illustrate and enforce his teachings in every- 
 day life, they reduplicate and intensify his 
 influence, flash the light into the remotest 
 corners of the community. 
 
 We live in an age of illustrated papers, 
 when men are impressed by what they see 
 as well as by what they read and hear. In 
 the last years of his life Doctor Storrs wrote 
 a great book on " The Divine Origin of 
 Christianity Judged by Its Historical Ef- 
 fects," a high-priced book of nearly a thou- 
 sand pages. The average man could not 
 afford to buy it, and would not have time to 
 read it, if he could; but the open book of 
 our every-day life all men read, and they 
 judge our religion accordingly. After all, 
 the unanswerable argument for Christianity 
 is not a syllogism, or a book, but a consistent, 
 consecrated life. 
 
 A man with the critical faculty alert 
 stopped before the windows of a taxidermist 
 shop on Broadway, and began to criticize 
 the quality of the work done there. He 
 insisted that the owl on a perch in the fore- 
 ground was not true to nature, because an 
 owl rarely stands on both feet, usually on 
 one, while resting or warming the other. 
 
 [38] 
 
The People a Factor in the Problem 
 
 Nor was the eye natural. Just then the old 
 owl picked up one foot and winked his eye, 
 and the man had business down the street. 
 What do I mean ? I mean that the manifes- 
 tation of life on the part of that owl lifted 
 him absolutely out of the realm of criticism 
 on the part of that man. So, I repeat, the 
 unanswerable argument for our religion is 
 not a book, but a symmetrical, consistent 
 Christian life. There is no way in which 
 you can so help the pastor and the cause he 
 stands for as by living such a life. Success 
 or failure, for him and for the church, will 
 depend largely on the life you are living. 
 
 3. You Can Help Him by Your Praise. 
 Not flattery ; God forbid, no true man wants 
 that, but the appreciative word he needs, 
 and often longs for. When Mr. Beecher 
 came down out of the chapel pulpit of the 
 Yale Divinity School, after giving his " Lec- 
 tures on Preaching," Doctor Bacon inquired 
 if, after some of his great efforts, the devil 
 did not tell him he had done a big thing? 
 " No," said Mr. Beecher, *' he sends you to 
 do it." Only another way of saying that 
 the voice of the flatterer may be the voice 
 of the adversary, and I say no true man 
 wants that. But if your pastor in his minis- 
 tration has enabled you to stand against 
 temptation, girded you to carry life's bur- 
 
 J5 [ 39 ] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 dens triumphantly, or spoken comfort in 
 the hour of sorrow, do not fail to let him 
 know it. When in the pastorate I used to 
 tell my people that if they had any flowers 
 for me, to bring them now, not to keep 
 them for my casket or my grave, for flowers 
 on the caskets and graves of the dead never 
 atone for neglect of the living. Many a 
 pastor would have been spared the experi- 
 ence of Elijah under the juniper tree, if his 
 people had only spoken what they felt in 
 their hearts and had let him know what his 
 ministry had meant to them in the trying 
 hours of life. 
 
 It isn't the thing you do, dear, 
 
 It's the thing you leave undone 
 That gives you a bit of a heartache 
 
 At the setting of the sun. 
 The tender word forgotten, 
 
 The letter you did not write, 
 The flowers you did not send, dear, 
 
 Are your haunting ghosts at night. 
 
 4. You Can Help Him by Your Patience. 
 In my travels among the churches over my 
 State I hear petty complaints from full- 
 grown persons because they have been shut 
 in for a week, and the pastor has not called. 
 Has the physician called? Certainly, they 
 " phoned him." Why did they not " phone " 
 
 [40] 
 
The People a Factor in the Problem 
 
 the pastor, or send him a postal ? " He 
 ought to know ! " Unreasonable and un- 
 warrantable assumption! I know most of 
 our pastors in my State, and am confident 
 that the average man among them will go at 
 any hour of day or night, if he knows his 
 services are needed in his own flock or else- 
 where. Bear in mind that your pastor is 
 not an angel, or ought not to be, to more 
 than one person, but just a man. I don't 
 want an angel for my pastor, for angels 
 know nothing of my human needs, but I 
 want a man with like passions with myself. 
 Being a man, the pastor may have moods, 
 like the rest of us, and there may be days 
 when he does not feel like calling unless he 
 is especially needed. I used to wake up 
 some mornings, feeling that I wanted to put 
 in a full day in my study with my books, and 
 hardly went out of the door unless called 
 out. Other days I felt like doing pastoral 
 work and gave the whole day to it, calling on 
 thirty or forty families. So if the pastor 
 does not call today he may come tomorrow. 
 If you need him, command him, and he'll 
 come, but do not be impatient. 
 
 5. You Can Help Him by Promptly Meet- 
 ing Your Financial Obligations to Him. 
 The most courageous man in the community 
 ought to be the man in your pulpit, and yet 
 
 [41] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 many such men are handicapped in their at- 
 titude and in their utterance, because they 
 cannot meet their obligations to local busi- 
 ness men in their pews. The failure of 
 their people to keep their pledge to them 
 embarrasses them in their ministry. The 
 churches call men on salaries wholly inade- 
 quate to their needs, and then fail to make 
 any provision for the payment of the same. 
 If anybody has to borrow money, it should 
 be the trustees, not the pastor. -Certainly 
 his place in the community should not be 
 jeopardized because of their shortcomings. 
 In many instances the situation would be 
 saved by a better financial system. 
 
 6. Help Him by Your Prayers. If you 
 have been lax in your attendance, careless in 
 your life, and unappreciative of his efforts 
 on your behalf, it will not mean much to 
 him to be told of your prayers for him, for 
 he is not likely to regard such prayers as 
 " effectual." But if you have tried to be 
 helpful in the ways I have indicated, it will 
 be peculiarly comforting to him to be as- 
 sured of your prayer. I heard John Hall 
 say, in his last days, that nothing meant so 
 much to him at the end of the Sabbath as 
 the consciousness that every mother in his 
 great church, on putting her little children to 
 bed, taught them to pray for Doctor Hall. 
 
 [42] 
 
The People a Factor in the Problem 
 
 Pray for your pastor, and teach your chil- 
 dren to pray for him. I do not wish to em- 
 phasize the earlier points in this article in 
 such a way as to oppress the invalid, or the 
 very poor, but such persons will heartily 
 approve all I have said along those lines. 
 What I am insisting upon is the most hearty 
 cooperation of the people with their pastor in 
 every possible way; then their prayers will 
 mean something to him. I am more anxious 
 than I can tell that every member should add 
 to, not take from, the influence of his 
 church. 
 
 When James G. Blaine and Grover Cleve- 
 land were nominated for the presidency, an 
 illustrated New York weekly came out with 
 a double-page cartoon. On one page was a 
 gigantic elephant, " the G. O. P." carrying 
 the " Plumed Knight," and underneath these 
 words, " The Party Carries Him." It had 
 to carry him, and from first to last it was a 
 campaign of explanation ending in defeat. 
 On the other page was Grover Cleveland, a 
 stalwart man, carrying a donkey, the Demo- 
 cratic Party, on his back, with these words 
 underneath, " He Carries the Party." He 
 did, and carried it to victory. The rank and 
 file of our church-members are in one or the 
 other of these positions, either where the 
 church carries them, and has to explain and 
 
 [43] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 apologize for them, or where they carry the 
 church in their thought, their effort, their 
 prayer, and their beneficence. Reader, in 
 which position are you? It is a frank but 
 fair question, and I trust that at the bar of 
 your own conscience at least a straight an- 
 swer will be given. 
 
 7. The Presence and Power of the Holy 
 Spirit is Essential. After more than forty 
 years in the ministry I am convinced there is 
 no real abiding prosperity in any field where 
 " the heart," the whole man, intellect, affec- 
 tions, and will, are not under the dominion 
 of the Spirit of God. In one of the galleries 
 of Europe I saw the picture of a man in a 
 cell, the victim of religious persecution. 
 Through a window opposite the door a ray 
 of light came and passed across the back 
 wall of the cell. With a rude instrument he 
 had carved on that wall the image of Christ. 
 He could work only when the sun shone. 
 Brethren, we shall carve the image of Christ 
 in the lives of our fellow men only as we 
 live and work in the sun, an atmosphere 
 vitalized by the spirit of Jesus Christ. 
 
 [44] 
 
IV 
 EVANGELISM 
 
EVANGELISM 
 
 I. THE PASTOR HIS OWN EVANGELIST 
 
 At seasons when the land seems aflame 
 with religious fervor, I should want to em- 
 phasize the importance of evangelism and 
 the pastor's part in it, especially in rural 
 and village churches. It goes without say- 
 ing that such work is essential to real 
 growth, extensive and, intensive, in all 
 churches everywhere. I do not, therefore, 
 dwell upon the history, philosophy, or ne- 
 cessity of revivals, interesting as that phase 
 of the subject may be. Mr. Beecher, speak- 
 ing out of his own rich and varied experi- 
 ence, did that in a masterly way in his " Yale 
 Lectures " forty years ago, and his succes- 
 sor, Newell Dwight Hillis, has been doing 
 it in Plymouth Church recently. Let me say 
 a word in the way of definition, not de- 
 fense. By evangelism I mean effort on 
 the part of a pastor and his people to " re- 
 deem and save men," the great end for 
 which Charles E. Jefferson declares a church 
 exists. In all such effort I contend that the 
 pastor should lead. Returning from his 
 
 [47] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 summer vacation, spent in the mountains or 
 beyond the sea, with plans in his heart for 
 the year's work, the anxious pastor is often 
 amazed to find how indifferent and unre- 
 sponsive his officials and the rank and file of 
 his members are to his appeals for that sort 
 of work. In the rural sections the county 
 fair, the election, Thanksgiving, and holi- 
 day festivities, with many other social and 
 business demands, are urged as reasons for 
 delay. The people never seem to be quite 
 ready to cooperate with the pastor in that 
 particular line of work. Indeed, his own 
 heart shrinks from it, and all too readily he 
 yields to their suggestions about a " more 
 convenient season." 
 
 Charles S. Robinson once issued a leaflet 
 on " The Delicacy of Spiritual Dealing." It 
 is the most delicate and difficult task ever 
 undertaken by man, and he who does not 
 shrink from it is unfit for it. But the pastor 
 must do it, and he must lay it upon his peo- 
 ple to attempt it with him. If he fails to 
 overcome their indifference and inertia, the 
 time is sure to come when they will be com- 
 plaining of the barrenness of his ministry, 
 and intimating the need of a change in the 
 pastorate. Doubtless there are convenient 
 and favorable times, and he must be on the 
 lookout to take advantage of them. He 
 
 [48] 
 
Evangelism 
 
 should not plan to begin just before an ex- 
 citing election, or any other event in which 
 all the people are interested, for two great 
 movements cannot occupy the popular mind 
 at the same time. The one is sure to swal- 
 low up the other. 
 
 When to Begin Meetings. But is there 
 not a " set time for God to favor Zion? " 
 Yes, but that " set time " is not a date in the 
 almanac, but a state in the minds and hearts 
 of men, and the pastor, under God, must 
 help to bring about that state. When the 
 servants of the Lord '' take pleasure in the 
 stones of Zion and favor the dust thereof " 
 God's '^ set time " is at hand. Many years 
 ago the pastor of a large church in Albany, 
 appearing one morning in the Ministers' 
 Conference in New York, was called on for 
 information about a recently reported work 
 of grace in the churches in the State capital. 
 He admitted such a work, but declared that 
 the men in the pulpits there had nothing to 
 do with it, were even surprised by it. A 
 lamentable confession, for some one had 
 something to do with it ! That kind of thing 
 Cometh " but by fasting and prayer." 
 
 The Pastor s Responsibility. The re- 
 ligious life of the people in the pew rarely 
 rises above that of the man in the pulpit. 
 At the close of the Moody and Sankey meet- 
 
 [49] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 ings in the old Hippodrome in 1876, when 
 New York was stirred as it has never been 
 stirred since, some one in the audience asked 
 Mr. Moody how he would go to work to 
 warm up a church. " Put a stove in the 
 pulpit," was his instant reply. So I insist 
 that the man in the pulpit is the one who, 
 year in and year out, must stand for evan^ 
 gelistic effort in the church and the commu- 
 nity. He must wisely plan and then persis- 
 tently prepare for it by keeping a sweet and 
 healthful atmosphere in the church and all 
 its services. I speak reverently when I say 
 that there are some things our God cannot 
 do. He cannot work miracles of grace in 
 conviction and conversion of men in the 
 atmosphere of a church rife with bitterness 
 and animosity. Consult the florist, and you 
 will find that he is about the only man who 
 months beforehand can tell you just when 
 Easter comes because the Easter lily is a 
 large part of his harvest. If Easter comes 
 earlier, he puts up the temperature of his 
 conservatory ; if later, he lowers it. He can 
 accelerate or retard the development of plant 
 life in that way. So one can accelerate or 
 retard the development of religious life by 
 the atmosphere of a church, and the pastor, 
 I repeat, is responsible for doing it. Fail- 
 ing in this, he fails utterly. 
 
 [50] 
 
Evangelism 
 
 The Pastor Must Lead. Moreover, he 
 ought to lead in the actual effort for which 
 he has been planning and preparing. Some 
 men of fine intellectual and spiritual attain- 
 ments lead their people on through all the 
 preparatory steps, and then at the critical 
 hour call in another to guide the people in 
 taking the " ultimate step " that brings them 
 into the kingdom. I can understand this 
 hesitation on the part of a pastor to be a 
 factor in the precipitation of the religious 
 experiences of his hearers, but to my mind 
 it is a grave mistake for all concerned. One 
 never learns how to do a thing except as he 
 does it. No man ever learned to swim by 
 standing on the shore watching expert swim- 
 mers, or by reading a treatise on swimming. 
 Only as he plunges in does he learn the art. 
 The same is true of winning souls. 
 
 An Illustrative Experience. In the early 
 days of his ministry, before his ordination, 
 the writer prayed and planned for a revival 
 with the conviction that nothing else would 
 save the situation. In an old-fashioned 
 " watch-meeting " between two years there 
 was " a going in the tops of the mulberry 
 trees," and strong men and women were 
 seeking the Lord. Entirely without experi- 
 ence, he knew not what to do, so announced 
 from the pulpit his intention of calling in a 
 
 [51] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 neighboring pastor to take charge. At the 
 close of the service a consecrated woman, 
 whose shining face has been before him 
 through all the years, urged him to do noth- 
 ing of the kind, but to depend on God and 
 the help of his own people. Doing just that 
 thing brought a revival that shook the town 
 and doubled the working force of that 
 church. That woman's suggestion has been 
 the keynote of all his ministry, and never, 
 so far as man can direct, has a service gone 
 out of his own hands. No man knows what 
 is in him or what he can do until responsi- 
 bility is upon him. To plan for special work 
 and prepare for it and then to allow another 
 to take his place is to miss the blessing for 
 his own soul, and surrender the joy of real 
 success. "Let no man take thy crown." 
 Character is the outcome of responsibility 
 assumed and triumphantly borne. When you 
 stand by and see another do the thing, you 
 never really get under the burden. Mr. 
 Lincoln once said that he had been driven 
 again and again to his knees in prayer by 
 the overwhelming conviction that he had no- 
 where else to go. At a " fast day " in the 
 dark days of the Civil War a Massachusetts 
 senator, who had not been seen in church in 
 twenty years, was found kneeling with his 
 neighbors at the altar in prayer. '' What, 
 
 [52] 
 
Evangelism 
 
 you here ?" inquired a friend. *' Yes, the 
 nation is in a tight place, and it is time we 
 began to look for help somewhere," was his 
 reply. Some such conviction as that lays 
 hold of a man, girds him, and grips him 
 when attempting to lead a movement for the 
 salvation of men. And somehow, in his own 
 consciousness, he comes very near to God. 
 Austin Phelps says," Jesus Christ is never 
 a reality until he becomes a necessity." 
 Overwhelmed by the magnitude of our task, 
 the interests involved, and our inability to 
 meet it alone, we look up with the feeling 
 that we must have God in Christ to help, 
 and he draws wondrously nigh. 
 
 Leadership and Cooperation. For these 
 reasons I urge a fuller assumption of leader- 
 ship in this work on the part of those in the 
 pulpit and a fuller recognition of it by those 
 in the pew. Many of the unfortunate 
 circumstances and reactions incidental to 
 so-called " professional evangelism " are 
 avoided when a pastor and his people initiate 
 and carry on the work themselves. Read 
 again the last verses of Mark's Gospel : " So 
 then, after the Lord had spoken unto them, 
 he was received up into heaven and sat down 
 on the right hand of God. And they went 
 forth and preached everywhere, the Lord 
 working with them, and confirming the word 
 
 [53] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 through the signs that followed " — his pres- 
 ence and power were manifested. 
 
 Importance of Prayer. In many a church 
 the pastor and people are praying for a re- 
 vival, and the importance of prayer cannot 
 be overestimated. Thousands of meetings 
 for prayer, held weekly for months in Phila- 
 delphia, prior to the coming of " Billy " Sun- 
 day, explain, in part at least, the awakening 
 that followed. But while prayer is essential, 
 the time comes when men must do more than 
 pray; they must gather up the energies of 
 their souls and move out along the line of 
 their petitions with the assurance that God 
 will meet them there. Fred Douglas, the 
 slave, prayed for years, but never got an 
 inch nearer deliverance until he began to 
 pray with his legs, run toward the North 
 Star. The Israelites, pursued by Pharaoh, 
 and his hosts down at the Red Sea, had only 
 one way open, the way up, the way that 
 never can be closed to any soul, and the 
 record says : *' They cried unto the Lord. 
 And the Lord said unto Moses, Wherefore 
 criest thou unto me? Speak unto the chil- 
 dren of Israel that they go forward." And 
 as they went the way was opened, and they 
 were delivered from the hand of the Egyp- 
 tians. The ways of God with men are the 
 same now. Pastors of churches confronted 
 
 [54] 
 
Evangelism 
 
 by perplexing difficulties in far-off isolated 
 places should be of good cheer, for God is 
 not far from them nor can his empowering 
 promise fail them. On a rock far above 
 the city and harbor of Naples is the castle 
 of St. Elmo, about which gather centuries 
 of Italian history. In the fourteenth cen- 
 tury the castle w^as surrounded by a besieg- 
 ing army. After six months the command- 
 ing officer was called upon to surrender 
 on the plea that starvation was inevitable. 
 His only reply was a gigantic living fish 
 hung over the battlements of the castle. 
 They had subterranean connection with the 
 sea, putting all the resources of old ocean 
 at their command. So the unfailing re- 
 sources of an all-wise, loving, and omnipo- 
 tent God are at the disposal of those who 
 trust and obey him. In our conferences on 
 rural life we are urging a " survey "of the 
 community to find out existing conditions, 
 also insisting upon " social service " and 
 other forms of altruistic effort. These are 
 important, but incidental and subordinate to 
 the one great end for which the church ex- 
 ists, '' redeeming and saving men." Let our 
 pastors arouse their people, claim the prom- 
 ise, and secure the blessing. The pastor, the 
 people, and God — these are the three great 
 factors in the problem. 
 
 E [SS] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 II. OTHER METHODS OF EVANGELISM 
 
 In the preceding paragraphs I have em- 
 phasized the importance of the fact that 
 every pastor should be his own evangelist, 
 leading his church in a special effort for the 
 saving of the people some time during every 
 year. With equal urgency I now insist that 
 he should also be a factor in a movement di- 
 rected by the local missionary committee to 
 make the same sort of thing possible in every 
 church within the limits of his own associa- 
 tion. Some of the churches in towns and 
 cities as well as in the open country are 
 " decadent " from various causes, but 
 oftener than anything else this decadence 
 arises from an inefficient leadership or from 
 frequent changes in the pastorate, so that 
 for the lifetime of a generation there has 
 not been a real awakening in the member- 
 ship. It would be amusing, were it not so 
 serious, to note the means sometimes pro- 
 posed to revitalize such churches. To my 
 mind the simple, natural, scriptural, and only 
 effective method is a '* refreshing from the 
 presence of the Lord." Difficulties appar- 
 ently insuperable disappear or are conquered. 
 Nearly all problems are easy of solution 
 when God comes near and " rains righteous- 
 ness upon the people." The evangelism 
 
 [56] 
 
Evangelism 
 
 advocated is not " extensive," a mere in- 
 crease in numbers, but " intensive " as well. 
 When Paul and Silas " went through Syria 
 and Cilicia, confirming the churches," the 
 outcome of their ministry was given in this 
 verse : '' And so were the churches estab- 
 lished in the faith and increased in number 
 daily." The same sort of twofold process 
 enters into all real evangelism. With so 
 many churches, distributed over such a wide 
 area, it is well-nigh impossible for me to re- 
 spond to all the appeals with associational 
 missionaries or paid workers of any kind. 
 
 Pastoral Cooperation in Evangelism. To 
 meet the demands for help in special ser- 
 vices I suggest that pastors of larger 
 churches, many of whom have already had a 
 campaign on their own fields, put one or two 
 weeks' time at the disposal of churches 
 where there is no financial ability to secure 
 outside men, or where there is prejudice 
 against the ''professional evangelist." Speak- 
 ing out of the " fulness of their hearts," 
 little special preparation would be required. 
 W^ho can estimate what such a service would 
 mean to many of the weaker churches? 
 Then it would greatly bless the man doing 
 it. Some of the pastors would be surprised 
 at the response to their appeals, and in the 
 informal week-night service, amid new sur- 
 
 [57] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 roundings, would experience a freedom and 
 a power that they had never feh before. I 
 know men who have found themselves anew 
 in this sort of work. Of course, I am aware 
 that I am not proposing a new measure, for 
 many excellent men have given such service 
 every year. Frank P. Stoddard, while pas- 
 tor at Amsterdam, New York, and New- 
 burgh, rode a wheel all over the Saratoga, 
 Long Island, and Hudson River Central 
 associations, doing that kind of work. 
 There are persons in scores of the little 
 churches in those sections of New York 
 State who gratefully recall his ministry now. 
 Edwin B. Richmond and Thomas J. Whita- 
 ker have been doing this work all through 
 their ministry. George Caleb Moor did it in 
 the Chautauqua region, and Frank O. Bel- 
 den all through the central counties when he 
 was pastor in Binghamton. What I am urg- 
 ing is the cooperation of many others in this 
 wider missionary work. 
 
 Lay Evangelists. Strong laymen ought 
 also to help in the task. English Baptists are 
 ahead of us in this respect. When in Robert 
 Hall's old pulpit in Cambridge on a recent 
 summer I missed some of the officials at the 
 Standay morning service. This explanation 
 was given : " They are away this morning 
 supplying the little churches in the outlying 
 
 [58] 
 
Evangelism 
 
 districts. You will see them tonight." That 
 church " mothers " half a dozen weak inter- 
 ests in the shire. In many of our churches 
 there are strong, consecrated laymen who 
 could do the same thing, and the Empire 
 State, with its ten millions of people, will 
 never be evangelized without this volunteer 
 service. 
 
 Schoolhoiise Revivals. There are great 
 possibilities in the school districts of the 
 State. During the five years of my pastor- 
 ate at Owego, I held series of meetings in 
 six schoolhouses within a radius of a few 
 miles. Some of the most precious memories 
 of my whole ministry gather about that 
 period, when groups went out with me night 
 after night in an effort to reach the people. 
 Do not anticipate objections from the ir- 
 religious. Preaching a sweet and tender 
 gospel, a man is welcome everywhere, irre- 
 spective of creed, class, nationality, or con- 
 dition. A young Presbyterian layman had 
 conducted a summer Sunday School in one 
 of those schoolhouses for twelve years, and 
 not a sermon had been heard there all that 
 time, except at a funeral now and then. He 
 urged us to come up and speak to the people 
 some Sunday afternoon at the close of the 
 school. I went up on a July day, with the 
 thermometer at ninety, and after I had 
 
 [59] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 spoken twenty minutes on the Twenty-third 
 Psalm, twenty-three aduhs took Jesus as the 
 Shepherd of their lives. 
 
 At the International Young Men's Chris- 
 tian Association Conference on the Rural 
 Church two years ago in New York, one 
 speaker declared that the people in the coun- 
 try had lost their vision of God. How could 
 they help it? Who of us would keep our 
 faith under the same conditions? In many 
 parts of the great State there are places from 
 five to ten miles square, where, year in and 
 out, there is not a religious service of any 
 kind. Out of such communities will come 
 many in the great day saying, " No man 
 cared for my soul." In view of these facts 
 I plead again for evangelism in every church, 
 schoolhouse, or place where the people can 
 be brought together. 
 
 No man knows what possibilities there 
 are in such little groups. Dr. W. C. P. 
 Rhoades, when pastor of a church in a col- 
 lege town in Ohio, went out one night to 
 preach in a schoolhouse. It was dark and 
 dreary, and he had some misgivings on the 
 way out, questioning in his own heart 
 whether a man in his position ought to be in 
 that sort of business. On his arrival there 
 were but fourteen persons present. But 
 when the service was over a good man and 
 
 [60] 
 
Evangelism 
 
 woman took him home with them for the 
 night. Who were they? The father and 
 mother of Hubert C, E. Arthur, and Byron 
 A. Woods, three men as choice as any God 
 has called into our ministry. On his return 
 he was chiding his own heart never again to 
 despise fourteen people, for one does not 
 know who is among them. 
 
 The last time I met one of the most emi- 
 nent laymen of our day the conversation 
 turned on friends in a town where he had 
 been a boy and I had once been a pastor. 
 Among those recalled was an early teacher 
 of his in a near-by schoolhouse. When I in- 
 formed him that I knew that teacher and 
 also the place, as I had held a series of meet- 
 ings there, he replied with quivering lip, 
 " Doctor Granger, some of the deepest im- 
 pressions of my whole life were received 
 there." Out of such groups in the far-off 
 places are to come the leaders of the future, 
 and for that reason every such place should 
 be reached with evangelistic effort. 
 
 Pastoral Oversight. But there are perils 
 in evangelism? Certainly! There are in 
 every form of religious activity, but most of 
 them may be avoided, or safely encountered, 
 if the right sort of work is done by the man 
 residing on the field. To a people properly 
 led and taught Austin Phelps is right in say- 
 
 [6i] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 ing: " Revivals of religion may come and {p 
 as the most natural process of religious ex- 
 perience, creating no morbid excitement, and 
 leaving behind them no evils to be corrected. 
 They may be as natural as the tides — them- 
 selves a purifying agency — instead of need- 
 ing, as actual revivals often do, to be them- 
 selves purified." In other words, whether 
 evangelists and outside helpers come and 
 go as auxiliaries or revolutionists depends 
 upon the sanity and fidelity of the regular 
 pastor. 
 
 With Mr. Beecher I hold that " revivals 
 are preeminently desirable, because they 
 arouse individuals; because they carry up 
 those already Christian to a higher pitch of 
 experience; because they renovate the 
 churches themselves ; and because they do a 
 work for scattered populations in outlying 
 districts which would never otherwise be 
 done. There are multitudes of men that 
 could never get away from the current of 
 their business, never face the public senti- 
 ment, the social current of the community, 
 unless the community itself became warmed, 
 leavened, aglow with moral influence. Then 
 they would go with the stream; and there 
 are thousands of men who, in that way, 
 come into the kingdom of God, but never 
 would have come into it up-stream." 
 
 [62] 
 
Evangelism 
 
 III. THE EVANGELIST 
 
 In my former article3 on " Evangelism " 
 I advocated the importance of every pastor 
 being his own evangelist, and urged that 
 every pastor should be the helper of other 
 pastors in evangelistic work, so as to make 
 special effort for the saving of the people 
 possible to every church and in every preach- 
 ing place some time every year. Now I want 
 to put a like emphasis on the place and work 
 of the evangelist. If in the previous article 
 I seemed to belittle him, I shall aim in this 
 one to exalt him and give him his true place, 
 for I thoroughly believe in the evangelist and 
 sometimes even attempt evangelism myself. 
 
 Evangelists Necessary. In the life and 
 activities of the church there has always been 
 a place for men fitted by temperament, train- 
 ing, and talent to serve as evangelists. The 
 gifts of the risen and ascended Lord to the 
 apostolic church, as enumerated by Paul, 
 were ^' apostles, prophets, evangelists, pas- 
 tors, and teachers." The records of the 
 church in early times, indeed in all times, 
 have been illuminated by the toils and tri- 
 umphs of evangelists, and in the upbuilding 
 and perfecting process for which they wvxe 
 given they are to be recognized factors to 
 the end. Austin Phelps says, " More than 
 
 [631 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 one-half of the history of Christianity in 
 this world would be blotted out if we should 
 erase the record of these great sympathetic 
 waves of religious sensibility that have 
 rolled over communities and nations and 
 races, and our hope of the world's conver- 
 sion is a dream, if religious progress is to be 
 measured by that of the intervals between 
 these awakenings of the popular heart." 
 Wise ministers will all the while be on the 
 look-out for these movements, and all their 
 plans of preaching and pastoral work will 
 contemplate them. " A pulpit not adjusted 
 to revivals is like a system of husbandry not 
 planned for a harvest." 
 
 Some pastors have the evangelistic gift 
 in an unusual degree, aim to promote re- 
 vivals, are never surprised by them, and 
 therefore rarely feel the need of an evangel- 
 ist. It is worthy of note that nearly all the 
 great evangelists of modern times, like Ed- 
 wards, Wesley, Lyman Beecher, Knapp, and 
 Swan, were successful pastors and widely 
 known before they became evangelists. On 
 the other hand there are men called of God 
 and specially endowed as evangelists; only 
 moderately successful in the pastorate, they 
 find themselves at last, " come to their own " 
 in evangelism. Even evangelistic pastors, 
 after long years of service on one field, 
 
 [64] 
 
Evangelism 
 
 wearied or broken physically, feel the need 
 of help, and call in the evangelist. Others 
 by reason of constitutional timidity, or be- 
 cause never thrust into actual evangelism, or 
 perhaps because of what seemed like failure 
 in one effort, have not been able to summon 
 their courage or energy for another. Still 
 others, of fine social, mental, and spiritual 
 attainments, who on platforms enthrall 
 multitudes of their fellow men, seem utterly 
 helpless in leading them to take the " ulti- 
 mate step " and willingly confess their in- 
 ability in this respect. A man of the rarest 
 culture was for nearly twenty years pastor 
 of a great church in a New England town, 
 and though admired for his character and 
 gifts as a preacher, saw only a meager out- 
 come to his ministry in conversions and ad- 
 ditions to the church. His successor, far 
 less gifted, had the " wooing and winning 
 note," and multitudes have been received. 
 Of course, both men were factors in all that 
 happened there, one sowing and another 
 reaping. Differing then, as men do through 
 inheritance, education, and experience, or 
 through conditions which they have not 
 created and cannot control, the time comes 
 when they imperatively need an outside 
 helper. Whom shall they call? Hardly a 
 week passes that I am not asked by some 
 
 [65] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 pastor or church to name " just the man." 
 While I cannot always name the man 
 wanted, I can sometimes indicate the man 
 they certainly do not want. I am on delicate 
 ground here, but the interests involved com- 
 pel me to speak frankly and plainly, for 
 while there are clean, cultured, conscientious, 
 Christian men, increasing numbers of them, 
 in evangelism, some words of caution are 
 needed. 
 
 Know Your Evangelist. Consider bo 
 man about whose character or standing 
 there is any uncertainty. Like Caesar's wife, 
 the evangelist must be " above suspicion." 
 Men may be out of the pastorate and in 
 evangelism because pulpits are no longer 
 open to them. Uncontrolled tempers, com- 
 mercial dishonor, or immorality have 
 branded them as unfit to lead a church. 
 Driven out of one locality by "^ an infuriated 
 public opinion," they are " hearing the call " 
 to this most delicate of all tasks in another. 
 One man, for years a member of an '' inter- 
 denominational evangelistic combination," 
 left debts amounting to five hundred dolkirs 
 in his last pastorate. The State missic«n- 
 ary organization in whose employ he had 
 been, paid his bills to save the credit of the 
 church, and took his note, on which he re- 
 fuses to pay interest and which he does not 
 
 [66] 
 
Evangelism 
 
 even recognize as an obligation. Imagine 
 such a man leading an evangelistic campaign 
 anywhere! *' What you do," says Emer- 
 son, '' speaks so loudly that I cannot hear 
 what you say." It is not surprising that 
 churches that have been compromised by 
 such men as pastors are shy of them as 
 evangelists. 
 
 Have Your Evangelisfs Work Defined. 
 Have a clear understanding as to what the 
 man comes to do, whether to lead in a posi- 
 tive religious effort, or in a reform move- 
 ment to " clean up a town." It is often said 
 of Mr. Sunday that towns, cities, and even 
 States '* go dry " as a result of his cam- 
 paigns. While that may be true, it is only 
 incidental, a by-product of his work, for 
 the dominating purpose of the man is re- 
 ligious and seems never to be lost sight of. 
 For me to stand in another man's pulpit, 
 when I am invited there as an evangelist, 
 and indiscriminately attack public men in the 
 church or out, because I am in a place where 
 they cannot reply, is to me unmanly and 
 cowardly in the extreme. And yet that 
 thing is frequently done in the name of 
 evangelism. I know that the personal ele- 
 m-ent is one of the most important factors 
 in all successful preaching, especially in 
 evangelism, and that many fail for the lack 
 
 [67] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 of it. A sailor on a whaling vessel in New 
 York harbor, returning from a down-town 
 mission, when asked about the service, de- 
 clared that " everything there was in ship- 
 shape, decks all scrubbed from stem to stern, 
 but not a harpoon on board," no personal 
 element in the sermon, nothing that 
 " found " him. Carefully written and sealed 
 letters are sometimes held for an address, 
 and some sermons ought to be held for the 
 same reason. Without the personal ele- 
 ment they do not mean anybody. The 
 preacher, like a man firing his gun in the 
 air, aims at nothing and usually hits it. 
 While the personal element then is essential, 
 it must be the helpfully personal, not un- 
 kindly personal. I am told that empty 
 freight cars, thousands of them, go astray 
 and are lost every year. They get switched 
 off the main line and are sidetracked at local 
 stations. Salaried men traverse the conti- 
 nent looking them up and starting them on 
 again toward their places of destination. 
 Churches are sometimes completely side- 
 tracked by men who are mere reformers and 
 have lost sight of the great end for which 
 the church exists. Pastors, if not them- 
 selves unseated, are sometimes obliged to 
 waste months after such men are gone, re- 
 pairing the damage done. 
 
 [68] 
 
Evangelism 
 
 We all believe in reform, but it must be a 
 religious reform, or it is nothing. The 
 Bishop of Calcutta, on the platform of a 
 society for the reform of Hindoo morals, 
 said, *' If you wish to make anything eternal 
 you must build it on the Christian religion, 
 for that is the only thing in this world that 
 is eternal." And he was right. An emi- 
 nent Presbyterian minister of the last 
 generation began an address by saying: 
 '' Brethren, we'll consider the subject first 
 from the view-point of Scripture and the- 
 ology; second, philosophy." After speaking 
 for a time on the first point he drew a long 
 breath, lowered his voice and said, " Now let 
 us descend to philosophy." So when we 
 abandon the high place into which God has 
 put us as preachers of the everlasting gospel 
 to be the mere advocates of some reform, 
 we " descend," come tremendously down. 
 A real revival will give a new impulse to 
 every reform, and often revolutionize the 
 administration of municipal affairs. If the 
 revival is the end sought, let that be clearly 
 understood by the man coming to promote it. 
 
 Have a Definite Financial Understanding. 
 Have a definite financial arrangement which 
 all the people know about and can share in. 
 Mr. Sunday is right in refusing to allow 
 any man to ''under write " the whole cam- 
 
 [69] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 paign. The more taking part the better, 
 is true in a financial as in every other way. 
 Frankness and publicity at the outset often 
 save from embarrassment and humiliation 
 later on. Inefficient financial management 
 has been the " fly in the ointment "of many 
 an evangelistic campaign. 
 
 No Evangelistic Imitators. Avoid men 
 who are echoes or imitators of others. 
 When Moody and Sankey returned from 
 Great Britain in 1875 they found themselves 
 famous. In a few months hundreds of men 
 on both sides the Atlantic were aping the 
 men and their methods, and something like 
 it is happening now. For a man to fall into 
 the slang of the street or to adopt the ver- 
 nacular of any calling, and to smash articles 
 of furniture on platforms, because '' Billy " 
 Sunday has been known to do it, is to miss 
 the real secret of the man's power and to 
 make himself ridiculous. When Gough, the 
 temperance advocate, died, Theodore Cuy- 
 ler said, " Providence never repeats himself; 
 he'll never treat us to another John B. 
 Gough." This is substantially true of all 
 the remarkable men called and used of God 
 in evangelism. Each one has had his own 
 peculiar gifts, constituting that subtle, in- 
 describable something called personality, 
 and through that personality God came by 
 
 [70] 
 
Evangelism 
 
 his Spirit convincing and persuading men. 
 Other men, trying to use their peculiar meth- 
 ods, may find themselves in the position of 
 the vagabond Jews at Ephesus, who called 
 over them that had evil spirits the name of 
 the Lord Jesus, saying, " We adjure you by 
 Jesus whom Paul preacheth," when the evil 
 spirit answered and said, " Jesus I know, 
 and Paul I know; but who are ye?" At- 
 tempting Paul's method, they were overcome 
 and fled, " naked and wounded." How then 
 can a man appeal to his age, arrest and grip 
 it ? Only as he preaches a Christ which his 
 own heart knows and loves and serves. But 
 why am I stressing evangelism? Because 
 so many of our churches, missionary and 
 self-supporting, go through a whole season 
 without any additions on confession of faith. 
 Some years more than half of all the 
 churches in the State do not report a single 
 baptism. Any reference to this condition 
 nearly always awakens resentment. Pastors 
 contend that baptisms are not the test of effi- 
 ciency, that " Eternity will show results." 
 All the same, I insist that baptisms are a test, 
 if not the test, of efficiency, and if results 
 are expected everywhere else in this world, 
 why should there be an exception in the 
 realm of religion? Campbell Morgan says, 
 " If a church is existing only by letters of 
 
 [71] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 transfer it is time its doors were closed, and 
 * Ichabod, the glory of the Lord has de- 
 parted,' was inscribed across them." " I 
 must work the works of him that sent me 
 while it is day; the night cometh, when no 
 man can work." 
 
 [72] 
 
THE PRAYER-MEETING AND 
 
 WHY IT OUGHT TO BE 
 
 MAGNIFIED 
 
THE PRAYER- MEETING AND 
 
 WHY IT OUGHT TO BE 
 
 MAGNIFIED 
 
 " Has the prayer-meeting had its day, 
 and is it a thing of the past ? " That very 
 question, announcing the subject of a Sun- 
 day morning sermon, I have seen on the 
 bulletin-board of a great up-town church in 
 New York within a year or two. Evidently 
 it was a thing of the past with that church 
 and its pastor, or the question would not 
 have been raised. In the Epistle to the He- 
 brews we are exhorted " not to forsake the 
 assembling of ourselves together " — another 
 way of saying that we ought to magnify the 
 appointments of the Lord's house, and I 
 think he had in mind the social gatherings 
 on a week-night, as well as those for public 
 worship on the Lord's Day. Can one hope 
 to say anything new on a subject so thread- 
 bare ? Perhaps nothing new ; certainly some 
 things true, as tried and proved in pastoral 
 experiences of many years. I shall give 
 two or three reasons, then, why the prayer- 
 meeting ought to be magnified. 
 
 [75] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 I. What the Prayer-meeting Means to 
 the Preacher. A few years ago The Ex- 
 aminer had a discriminating editorial on the 
 " finding quality in the sermon." Most of 
 us know what was meant, for we have often 
 been in churches in which the whole service 
 was formal and uninteresting, with no per- 
 sonal element in it, nothing that found us. 
 Again, we have gone, wearied in mind and 
 body, with life's burdens resting heavily 
 upon us, perhaps have gone out of a sense of 
 duty ; and while we have waited, in the song 
 and prayer and testimony our burdens have 
 been lifted; those things that perplex and 
 annoy have been forgotten; and we have 
 gone out refreshed and glad. Something in 
 the service found us. Fatigued by sightsee- 
 ing and travel, I went into a little English 
 chapel one summer Sunday afternoon in 
 Heidelberg, where I could hardly keep 
 awake. On the way out I was greatly com- 
 forted to hear an Englishwoman speak of 
 it as a *' dreary performance, nothing in it 
 that any one could carry away." No " find- 
 ing quality " ! We differentiate preachers 
 by their ability or inability to put the '' find- 
 ing quality " into their sermons. But when 
 a sermon finds us, is it not because the man 
 who made it had us, or some one like us, in 
 mind? Just as skilful physicians write out 
 
 [76] 
 
The Prayer-meeting 
 
 their prescriptions after making a careful 
 diagnosis of their patients, so helpful 
 preachers make their sermons with refer- 
 ence to the needs of their hearers. But how 
 can they do this ? How can they know the 
 conditions under which their people are liv- 
 ing, or the peculiar experiences through 
 which they are passing ? Only as they come 
 in personal touch with them somewhere. 
 
 When I was pastor of a church with sixty 
 members in a small town I could see nearly 
 all of them on Saturday afternoon, and in 
 that way insure their presence in the ser- 
 vices on Sunday, but when I had a thousand 
 members scattered in a city of thirty thou- 
 sand it was a different thing, requiring fif- 
 teen hundred or two thousand calls every 
 year. Not an easy task, but one that must 
 be undertaken, for ^' the man who is invisi- 
 ble six days in the week will be incompre- 
 hensible on the seventh." 
 
 But while the pastor must know his peo- 
 ple in order to preach helpfully to them, he 
 cannot live on the streets, nor can he spend 
 the larger part of his time in their homes. 
 A man who was an untiring pastor in a 
 large town startled his people by resigning 
 his pastorate at the end of two years, and 
 when they demanded a reason he frankly 
 replied that " his pond had run out." So 
 
 177] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 much of his time had been spent on the 
 streets and in their homes that study and 
 preparation had been neglected, and he was 
 seeking relief in change. 
 
 Time must be found for study and pulpit 
 preparation. Spurgeon rightly says, " The 
 pulpit is the Thermopylae of this war," and 
 in the last analysis the man stands or falls 
 by the work done there. How then can he 
 obtain the knowledge of his hearers so es- 
 sential to his helpfulness as a preacher? 
 Here we see the place and value of the 
 prayer-meeting, for it is what Beecher calls 
 " the voice of the church," where in prayer 
 and song and confession their great heart 
 needs are made known. In that service they 
 empower him to bring a finding, helpful 
 message to them on Sunday. I have gone 
 to prayer-meeting many a time unable as yet 
 to determine what I would preach about the 
 coming Sunday. While there the meeting 
 grew, one after another taking part, ser- 
 mons have been suggested, and when de- 
 livered have had the " finding quality " in 
 them. The prayer-meeting is the clinic of 
 the church. If ill or in trouble, the preacher 
 should go to the people, but when able they 
 should come to him. So I say the prayer- 
 meeting should be magnified, first, because 
 of what it means to the man in the pulpit, 
 
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The Prayer-meeting 
 
 informing and enabling him to be helpful to 
 the people in his ministrations. 
 
 2. What the Prayer-meeting Means to 
 the People. There is always helpfulness in 
 association with those of like aims and pur- 
 poses. Ministers, musicians, artists, law- 
 yers, doctors, and teachers, those in all 
 professions, come together for mutual in- 
 spiration. Nowhere is this truer or more 
 important than in the realm of religion. 
 '' Then they that feared the Lord spake 
 often one to another," the prophet tells us, 
 and we know what they were speaking 
 about, for " out of the fulness of the heart 
 the mouth speaketh." When persecuted in 
 the apostolic time " the disciples being let 
 go went unto their own people " ; the law of 
 spiritual affinity took them there, and it 
 would have been against their Christianity 
 had they gone elsewhere. You have gone to 
 prayer-meeting, thinking God had singled 
 you out for some peculiar trial, but as you 
 have listened to the outpouring of other 
 hearts you have recalled the apostle's words, 
 " There hath no temptation taken you but 
 such as is common to man," and you have 
 been comforted in the thought that you were 
 not alone in your trial; others were in the 
 " same boat." 
 
 Then it is the place where we get new 
 
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Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 visions of Christ. When the two disciples, 
 disappointed and sorrowing, were going 
 back to Emmaus on the afternoon of the 
 resurrection, ** while they communed to- 
 gether and reasoned, Jesus himself drew 
 near, and went with them." At the end of 
 that memorable journey, in which he had 
 " expounded unto them in all the Scrip- 
 tures the things concerning himself," they 
 constrained him to go in and abide with 
 them, and in the breaking of bread he was 
 made known unto them, and then vanished 
 out of their sight. " And they rose up at 
 the same hour," forgot all their sorrows and 
 weariness in the new vision of him, " and 
 returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven 
 gathered, and they told them what things 
 were done in the way, and how he was 
 known of them in breaking of bread." 
 '' And as they thus spake, Jesus himself 
 stood in the midst of them, and said, Peace 
 be unto you." What an argument for the 
 prayer-meeting! As we commune and rea- 
 son about the things that have happened to 
 us, the Master comes and shows himself 
 again. After all, brethren, is not this new 
 vision of the Master and the consciousness 
 of his presence the great need of our 
 churches in city, town, and country? Car- 
 lyle in his last years got a letter now and 
 
 [80] 
 
The Prayer-meeting 
 
 then from Emerson, whom he had met in 
 early life. These letters from Concord he 
 declared to be open windows in the heavens 
 to his soul. If there is any place where the 
 windows of heaven are open above us, and 
 where we look into the face of Jesus Christ, 
 I believe it is the place where we gather for 
 prayer. 
 
 Fellowship is also promoted in the prayer- 
 meeting, because in our prayers and testimo- 
 nies we reveal ourselves. In my first pas- 
 torate, a business man, member of a church 
 in Brooklyn, was often in our Sunday eve- 
 ning service. Because of his position with 
 a great corporation there was considerable 
 prejudice against him in the community. 
 When his daughter was baptized into our 
 church he concluded to cast in his lot with 
 us. Knowing the popular feeling against 
 him, I was somewhat disturbed, but the first 
 time he was heard in prayer at our midweek 
 service all prejudice was gone, and the peo- 
 ple went out saying they had never known 
 the man till they heard him pray. We reveal 
 ourselves in the prayer-meeting and at the 
 same time find and recognize the best that 
 is in our brethren. 
 
 3. What the Prayer-meeting Means to 
 the Church. In the corridors of our great 
 hotels there is what business men call the 
 
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Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 "ticker," that enables them to tell at a 
 glance the market value of securities. The 
 prayer-meeting is the " ticker " of the 
 church, showing pretty nearly the place and 
 influence it has in the community. If the 
 " church is Christianity organized for the 
 conquest of the world," then the prayer- 
 meeting is its training-ground and girding- 
 place, and its real working power is usually 
 found there. As I look back through thirty- 
 four years in the active pastorate, and re- 
 call the influential factors in the four 
 churches served, they are almost invariably 
 the men and women who were active in the 
 prayer-meeting. I am not disposed to em- 
 phasize this point in such a way as to op- 
 press some unavoidably kept away, but even 
 they will bear me out in saying that the 
 throbbing heart of the church is felt there 
 as in no other service, and for that reason 
 I was always urging newcomers quickly to 
 find their place there. In his little book on 
 " The Church of To-day," Joseph Henry 
 Crooker has a remarkable chapter on " Re- 
 ligion as a Corporate Life," which he defines 
 to be the sum total of all the influences ex- 
 erted by all the members of the church, liv- 
 ing and dead, which abide, a permanent life 
 influence in the community. Just as in the 
 fall of the year the tree draws out of the 
 
 [82] 
 
The Prayer-meeting 
 
 leaf and back into itself the " vital stuff " 
 that is in the leaf, for service another year, 
 so the church, as a great tree of life, draws 
 into itself and preserves the influence of the 
 individual as he passes on, so that long after 
 he has gone away like the fading leaf the 
 spiritual substance of his life remains in the 
 organism to enrich and bless others. From 
 the fulness of this corporate life the weak 
 are strengthened, by it the sorrowing are 
 comforted, and through it the sinful are 
 chastened. Thus organized, incorporated, 
 instituted, it is a permanent evangel among 
 men, and nowhere, to my mind, do we come 
 into such vital contact with it as in the 
 prayer-meeting. 
 
 Moreover, it seems to be the place pecu- 
 liarly favorable to the precipitation of re- 
 ligious experience. While many of us were 
 impressed and heard the call of God in the 
 public service or through a personal friend, 
 most of us really surrendered and took the 
 " ultimate step " in the prayer-meeting. Be- 
 cause then of what this service means to the 
 man in the pulpit, the people in the pews, 
 and the church in the community we ought 
 to make more of it. The outcome of evan- 
 gelistic effort in the churches this season will 
 be determined very largely by what our at- 
 titude toward the prayer-meeting has been. 
 
 [83] 
 
VI 
 
 HOW TO MAGNIFY THE 
 PRAYER-MEETING 
 
HOW TO MAGNIFY THE 
 PRAYER-MEETING 
 
 Chapter V was printed as a leaflet and 
 quite generally distributed over New York 
 State. Some pastors and theological pro- 
 fessors commend it, showing they still be- 
 lieve in the prayer-meeting, while others 
 have sneeringly said, " Let the poor old 
 thing alone." Still others, approving the 
 position taken, have asked for some hints 
 on how to magnify it. While conscious that 
 I shall be on '' thin ice " here, the impor- 
 tance of the subject leads me to venture. 
 
 We Can Magnify the Prayer-meeting, 
 first, By our Presence, by being there our- 
 selves, not simply when convenient, but 
 habitually. Let me begin with the minister. 
 Some pastors in this busy age are out of 
 their prayer-meetings once or twice every 
 month, and then wonder why the service is 
 not more successful. They do not magnify 
 it themselves, why should anybody else? I 
 met one such pastor on his way to an up- 
 State Association the other summer, and 
 he seemed anxious to get back that night, 
 
 G [87] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 for it was his church prayer-meeting from 
 which he had been absent six consecutive 
 services already. He was hearing the call 
 to manage the affairs of the whole denomi- 
 nation over the country, and of course a 
 little matter like his own church prayer- 
 meeting could not stand in the way of this 
 larger service. " Meddling with world 
 problems '* is what they call this " larger 
 ministry " which absolves them from their 
 own pastoral duties. " Real duties never 
 clash," some one has said, and I doubt if 
 there is any real duty anywhere that calls 
 the average pastor from his own church on 
 a prayer-meeting night. Possibly there are 
 exceptions, but they are rare. I have not 
 missed a commencement at Colgate in thirty 
 years, but I have frequently " cut out " the 
 alumni dinner, so as to be in my midweek 
 meeting. I would have been readily ex- 
 cused, but what would have become of all 
 my teaching along that line? I cannot, in 
 fact, I have no right, to ask my people to 
 stand for a service, when I do not stand for 
 it myself. A year rarely passed, when in 
 the pastorate, that I did not preach a ser- 
 mon emphasizing the prayer-meeting, and 
 the importance of our fidelity to it. If I had 
 lightly excused myself, what would have 
 been the effect of my sermon? But while 
 
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How to Magnify the Prayer-meeting 
 
 I urge the pastor's presence, I do not mean 
 he shall be the whole thing, do all the talk- 
 ing. A man accepted a call to a large church 
 whose prayer-room was crowded, and in 
 less than two years he talked it nearly 
 empty. Many of the chairs were stored in 
 out-of-the-way places and the rest arranged 
 so as to give more aisle and less seating 
 space. Gifted in speech he easily used most 
 of the time himself, then called on two or 
 three and closed. Freedom and spontaneity 
 were throttled. In fact, he let it be known 
 that he did not believe in the value of the 
 average man's testimony. It was " not 
 conducive to edification," and soon the meet- 
 ing dwindled. So I say, he must be there, 
 there on time, and the people must be wel- 
 comed and encouraged as factors in the 
 service. More than that, everybody must 
 be made to feel that they can come and not 
 be singled out in prayer or in any way have 
 attention called to them. Let it be clearly 
 understood that anybody can come and go 
 from that service, just as freely as from the 
 public worship on Sunday. Welcome 
 strangers warmly when they come, but do 
 not express surprise or act as if it were an 
 unusual thing for them to be there. I tried 
 for months to get a certain man in prayer- 
 meeting, and the first time he came, a dea- 
 
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Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 con said: "What, you here? Aren't you 
 afraid the building will fall on you? " And 
 yet we make deacons and trustees out of 
 such fools ! Make the service informal and 
 free, with a sweet homelike atmosphere, a 
 sort of weekly gathering of the family, and 
 it will come to be regarded as a place where 
 their bodies are rested, their cares for- 
 gotten, and their spirits refreshed. They 
 will come then not out of a sense of duty, 
 but because they love to come. A little boy 
 was taken by his mother to the primary class 
 in our Sunday School, rather against his 
 own will. The teacher was wise and knew 
 something about the management of boys, 
 and when the time came to take the offer- 
 ing she said : " We have a new scholar to- 
 day; his father helps to take the collection 
 in church; perhaps he'll help us to take it 
 here." He fell right in with the plan and 
 at the close of the service said, " I want to 
 belong." Make the prayer service what it 
 ought to be, and give the people their true 
 place in it, and they will assuredly " want to 
 belong." 
 
 We Can Magnify the Prayer-meeting, in 
 the second place, By a Preparation for It. 
 Not the kind of mental preparation that 
 enables a man to print on a card six months 
 beforehand what will be the subject of each 
 
 [90] 
 
Hoiv to Magnify the Prayer-meeting 
 
 meeting. The man with a theological pro- 
 gram to exploit may do that, but it will 
 hardly be a prayer-meeting. To my mind 
 the prayer service should not be too studied, 
 but should grow largely out of the life of 
 the people and be helpful to them in the ex- 
 periences through which they are passing; 
 and who can tell what those experiences will 
 be months in advance? Mr. Beecher said 
 he was all the while " growing sermons " 
 into which the events and scenes of daily 
 life entered as factors, and when Sunday 
 came he shook the tree and the ripest fruit 
 fell. The most important hour in all the 
 week he declared was just before the ser- 
 vice, when he was beating himself up into 
 what he called the " higher mood." We 
 want that sort of preparation for the prayer- 
 meeting, beating ourselves up into the 
 higher mood. One of the reasons why so 
 many of us preachers *' beat the air " and 
 accomplish so little with our sermons is that 
 there is such meager preparation for the 
 service on the part of our people. William 
 Arnot, in that great book " The Church in 
 the House," says, " If my dear people would 
 only spend the last few moments before 
 coming to service, taking veils off their 
 hearts instead of putting veils on their faces, 
 how much more helpful I could be to 
 
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Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 them ! " I do not mean to belittle mental 
 preparation, but when that has been care- 
 fully done, and the time for the service ar- 
 rives, the preacher will often find that some 
 startling event has happened within a few 
 hours, and in spite of himself the prayers 
 and testimonies of the people will be out of 
 the fulness of their hearts, colored by what 
 has just happened. Under such circum- 
 stances, a wise leader will lay aside his care- 
 iully prepared address and fall in with the 
 line of thought uppermost in the minds of 
 his hearers. Anyhow, he will seek to utilize, 
 correct, and properly direct their thought, 
 or he may be sidetracked himself. The 
 necessity for such a change will be excep- 
 tional, however, and does not militate 
 against preparation. Be there early and be 
 ready to set the meeting going. Do not sing 
 the spirit all out of the people before the 
 service really begins. Carefully select the 
 hymns from which you expect to make 
 your choice during the evening, so as not 
 to be fumbling over a book looking for a 
 hymn, while others are praying. Above all 
 cultivate the spontaneous singing of a verse 
 of some old familiar hymn now and then. 
 Nothing lifts a meeting at certain stages 
 like a verse sung in that way. Half the ef- 
 fect is lost if the number has to be an- 
 
 [92] 
 
How to Magnify the Prayer-meeting 
 
 nounced, followed by a great commotion in 
 finding the place. 
 
 Thirdly and lastly, Participation in the 
 Service is Essential, prayer and testimony 
 by the people as well as by the leader. And 
 do not be afraid of " long prayers," if they 
 are real prayers and not '' dreary drivel." 
 In the church of my childhood there were 
 strong, untutored men who could pray with 
 such unction and power that the place where 
 we met was literally " shaken" and the 
 whole service lifted up to the very throne of 
 God. They were not ^' sentence prayers " 
 that Christian Endeavor has made fashion- 
 able in our day when some one sits with a 
 pad and pencil to keep tab on the number 
 that take part, as if the value and power of 
 a prayer-meeting could be tabulated by any 
 such picayune method. I heard Doctor 
 Lorimer say in his last days that his " old 
 heart was yearning to hear some man again 
 who had piety enough to pray for half an 
 hour." I am not advocating long prayers, 
 but I am not afraid of them if they are 
 real, not simulated. Nor am I afraid of 
 what is termed " the awful pause." I recall 
 the Scripture, " And David sat before the 
 Lord," an indication that our heavenly Fa- 
 ther is pleased to have us quietly and rever- 
 ently sit in his presence, even though an 
 
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Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 " everlasting chattering " is not going on. 
 Such moments in a service are beautiful to 
 me, times when God can speak and there is 
 some possibility of our hearing. Nor can a 
 service always be closed at a set time. Elder 
 Swan, one of the great evangelists of the 
 last generation said, " You cannot run the 
 kingdom of God on the clock," and he was 
 right. A Methodist bishop, speaking to a 
 class of young men he was ordaining, said, 
 " There are sermons that are long at half an 
 hour, and there are sermons that are short 
 at an hour and a half." He cautioned them 
 against allowing some lawyer in the congre- 
 gation to snap his watch on them at the end 
 of an hour. That " lawyer " he said, " takes 
 whole days in court, with witnesses and a 
 jury of twelve men, at the public expense, 
 trying to establish the ownership of a peck 
 of onions, while you are dealing with im- 
 mortal interests. Do not allow him to limit 
 you in your great task." Usually an hour is 
 long enough for the service, but there are 
 times when unusual interest develops, and 
 you can afford to go on longer. These last 
 few moments in such meetings are the 
 '' critical moments," and the " prayer-meet- 
 ing bummer " must be headed off and 
 guarded against. When the fire really gets 
 to burning there will be no lack of partici- 
 
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How to Magnify the Prayer-meeting 
 
 pants. What is needed is a goodly number 
 of consecrated men and women who can be 
 relied upon to help build the fire and do it 
 without being called upon. To keep the 
 'last moments of such a service when you 
 want to fasten impressions and fix destinies, 
 sacred and free, will tax your wisdom and 
 courage, but somehow you must do it if the 
 end of the service is to be secured. How 
 can it be done ? By kindly but frankly deal- 
 ing with the offenders. The man who is 
 always ready to confess other people's sins, 
 but rarely his own, must be put in his true 
 place or silenced altogether. One of that 
 type of men used to get up about ten minutes 
 before I wanted to close, and evidently I 
 betrayed my feeling in my face, knowing 
 that the end of all things was at hand for 
 that meeting, for when I went into his place 
 of business he said, *' Pastor, whenever I get 
 up to speak I notice you look at the face of 
 the clock." " Yes," I said, " and I look at 
 the face of the people before I look at the 
 clock, and if you insist on this course I am 
 going to call for a show of hands to see how 
 many want to hear you, and I imagine that 
 will reveal a condition that will make it im- 
 possible for you ever to open your mouth 
 there again." He took the hint and '^ gov- 
 erned himself accordingly," for he had rea- 
 
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Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 son to know I was his friend. Frankness 
 saved the situation for me, and it will 
 usually do it if done in the right spirit. 
 These are what Mr. Beecher used to call 
 '* the flies in the ointment." At the close of 
 a great prayer-meeting in Plymouth Church, 
 when he had been speaking on the love of 
 God as revealed in Jesus Christ and his 
 sympathy for struggling men, one of these 
 men with fiery red hair rose and said, " Mr. 
 Beecher, I feel just like laying this red head 
 of mine in the Master's bosom." " What 
 could I do after that? " asked Mr. Beecher. 
 Nothing but close the meeting. " Neverthe- 
 less," he said when relating the incident, 
 ^' I believe in the prayer-meeting." So, in 
 spite of all the " flies in the ointment," for I 
 too have had my trials in that direction, let 
 me say that I believe in the prayer-meeting, 
 and I believe it can be made very much more 
 valuable to all our churches. The man in 
 the pulpit must believe in it, and it comes 
 pretty near being a part of his job to give it 
 its rightful place. Certainly he must not let 
 the impression get abroad that it bores him. 
 
 [96] 
 
VII 
 
 DANGEROUS SUNDAY SCHOOL 
 TENDENCIES 
 
DANGEROUS SUNDAY SCHOOL 
 TENDENCIES 
 
 In spite of all that can be said of the be- 
 neficent influence of the Sunday School, 
 there are those who think they can discern 
 some possible dangers in its present tenden- 
 cies. My mother carried me into the Sun- 
 day School, before I was able to walk there, 
 and either as pupil, teacher, or superinten- 
 dent I have been there ever since. Many 
 years a pastor I rightly value all that the 
 Sunday School has meant to the work in 
 which I have been a factor, and yet I some- 
 times wonder if there are not phases of its 
 activity that need safeguarding? Ready to 
 resent any indiscriminate attack upon the 
 school as an institution, may it not be well 
 for even its friends to inquire if some of its 
 enthusiastic promoters are not in danger of 
 losing sight of the fundamental idea for 
 which it came into existence? Let me call 
 attention to two or three possible dangers. 
 
 First, The Danger Toward the Home. 
 The earliest of all institutions is the family, 
 older than the Sunday School, or even the 
 
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Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 church. The family is also underneath all 
 the rest, for God founds the church and the 
 nation upon the family, and that complex 
 thing called civilization is progressive, per- 
 manent, and beautiful only as it recognizes 
 the place and the sacredness of the family. 
 When the Roman mother counted her chil- 
 dren as her jewels, the nation was safe ; but 
 when the laws of family life were disre- 
 garded, as in the Augustan age, the nation 
 was already tottering to its fall. *' The re- 
 public of a hundred years is at the fireside of 
 today," said the Roman orator. The church 
 is there too, and what the church and nation 
 are yet to be will depend largely on the atti- 
 tude of fathers and mothers toward their 
 parental obligations. Growing out of the 
 family relation is the duty of prayerful, per- 
 sistent, religious instruction, a duty that 
 never can be delegated to another. " Thou 
 shalt teach them diligently to thy children, 
 and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in 
 thine house, and when thou walkest by the 
 way, and when thou liest down, and when 
 thou risest up " (Deut. 6 : y). 
 
 No device of Sunday School, or any other 
 institution, should be allowed to interfere 
 with the " irreversible obligation " of par- 
 ents in all time to teach their children the 
 great eternal verities of their religion. I ask 
 
 [ lOo] 
 
Dangerous Sunday School Tendencies 
 
 if the Sunday School of today is not taking 
 over, perhaps invading, the realm of pa- 
 rental religious instruction? Are we not 
 making it easy for parents to neglect this 
 divinely imposed duty by practically abdi- 
 cating in favor of the modern Sunday 
 School teacher? Some of us can remember 
 when it was the custom to assemble the 
 family on Sunday afternoon after dinner to 
 recall the morning sermon and make per- 
 sonal application of its teaching. How 
 many families do that now? I should be 
 afraid to call for a show of hands on that 
 point in an average congregation. " But are 
 not all the children in the Sunday School? " 
 Yes, and to a great extent we have turned 
 over the whole moral and religious teaching 
 of the rising generation into the hands of 
 the modern Sunday School teacher. I do 
 not say this has been done deliberately or 
 intentionally, but that has been the result all 
 the same, and in just so far as this has been, 
 the very end for which the Sunday School 
 came into being has been defeated. The 
 teaching in the Sunday School may and 
 ought always to supplement that of the 
 home, but never supplant it. Anyhow it 
 was not primarily intended for the children 
 of Christian homes, but for those of god- 
 less homes. The germ of the Sunday 
 
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Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 School is found in the passage : " Gather 
 the people together, men, and women, and 
 children, and thy stranger that is within thy 
 gates, that they may hear, and that they may 
 learn, and fear the Lord your God, . . and 
 that their children, which have not known, 
 may hear, and learn to fear the Lord your 
 God" (Deut. 31 : 12). In English and 
 Scotch homes, where I have been a guest 
 and have expressed surprise that their chil- 
 dren were not in a Sunday School, the in- 
 stant reply has been, " We are taught at 
 home, the Sunday School is for those who 
 have no such teaching at home." Are they 
 not right? Lycurgus, the Spartan ruler, 
 severed the tie binding together the parent 
 and child, and established a sort of public 
 nursery. Are we not in danger of repeating 
 the folly, in another direction, by making a 
 spiritual public nursery of the Sunday 
 School ? 
 
 A Second Possible Danger is Toward the 
 Scriptures. I think I appreciate all the 
 items that go to make up the " equipment " 
 of an up-to-date Sunday School, such as 
 "maps," "charts," "wall rolls," "black- 
 boards," " sand-maps," and " quarterlies," 
 but in the maze of all these things are we 
 not likely to lose sight of the word itself? 
 " These words which I command thee this 
 
 [ 102 ] 
 
Dangerous Sunday School Tendencies 
 
 day shall be in thine heart," and these were 
 the words that they were to *' teach dili- 
 gently unto their children." These words 
 were to be '' a lamp unto their feet, and a 
 light unto their path." They were also to 
 enlighten the understanding, for " the en- 
 trance of thy word giveth light." Then, 
 they were to safeguard the " heart out of 
 which are the issues of life," for the Psalm- 
 ist says, '' Thy word have I hid in my heart, 
 that I might not sin against thee." Presum- 
 ably all these " helps " are calculated to illu- 
 minate, illustrate, and enforce the Scrip- 
 tures, but do they ? Indeed I am sometimes 
 tempted to ask if the latter days are so much 
 better than the former? In the old home 
 church where I first went to Sunday School, 
 we had only a six-cent copy of the New 
 Testament, without references, maps, or 
 helps of any kind. After the session was 
 opened with prayer and the singing of 
 Robert Lowry's hymns, the pupils began the 
 recitation of Scripture verses memorized 
 during the week. The lesson assigned was 
 seven verses as a minimum. Whole chap- 
 ters, in some instances whole Gospels, were 
 memorized, ^' hid in the heart," by boys and 
 girls in those days, whereas now there seems 
 to be no place in the curriculum for that sort 
 of thing. A Sunday School *' expert " came 
 
 H [ 103 ] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 to speak to the teachers in Mount Vernon, 
 and spent the whole evening on a *' Sand 
 Map, its Construction and its Uses." When 
 I asked him what place there was in his 
 scheme for memorizing Scripture, he said, 
 " Absolutely none, I don't believe in it, ex- 
 cept by the law of indirection. Inciden- 
 tally, as the pupils make the map, locate its 
 places of interest, and associate the great 
 men of the Bible with them, they will come 
 to be familiar with their words." A novel 
 notion surely, and I wonder if any consider- 
 able number of our Sunday School " ex- 
 perts " hold that view? ^ 
 
 A Third Possible Danger is Toward the 
 Church. One of the notable preachers of 
 the last generation used to speak of the 
 Sunday School as *' the children's church," 
 an unfortunate characterization, for on the 
 ground of their presence in the Sunday 
 School many children are excused from the 
 services of the church, and then when they 
 drop out of the school, as many of them in- 
 
 ^ Since the above was written, I have been delighted to 
 find that our Publication Society in its series of Graded 
 Quarterly Lessons makes special provision for memorizing 
 the Scripture. Columbia University is also establishing an 
 innovation among our great educational institutions by mak- 
 ing the Bible an examination unit for entrance. Included 
 in the examinations will be the memorizing of passages from 
 the Bible, Hebrew history from the Egyptian period to the 
 destruction of the Jewish Commonwealth in A. D. 70, and 
 the origin of the different books of the Bible, and how they 
 have passed down to the present generation. Surely this 
 is one of the hopeful signs of the times. 
 
 [ 104] 
 
Dangerous Sunday School Tendencies 
 
 evitably do, with no church habit, they are 
 lost to the church entirely. Is not this evil 
 " unclasping the clinging associations of 
 childhood from the sanctuary," and giving 
 us a generation of non-churchgoers? One 
 Sunday morning last summer, I went to 
 speak in a church, the pastor of which had 
 been taken ill the night before, and where 
 the school met previous to the church ser- 
 vice. When I arrived there were more peo- 
 ple outside, going away from the church, 
 the superintendent among them, than were 
 inside to hear me speak. They were not 
 running away from me, for they did not 
 know I was coming. That was their cus- 
 tom, making the Sunday School their 
 church. If a child or an adult cannot attend 
 both, by all means let him attend the church, 
 and any organization, be it Sunday School, 
 young people's society, organized class, or 
 even Young Men's Christian Association, 
 that leads away from the church and not to 
 it, is defeating the fundamental idea of its 
 own being. Moreover, the value of any of 
 these organizations is to be measured by 
 what it means to the services of the church, 
 the preaching service, and the church 
 prayer-meeting. I am not an alarmist, but 
 with the increasing number of organizations 
 in the name and under the roof of the 
 
 [105] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 church, and in view of the effects some of 
 them are having upon the stated meetings 
 of the church, I feel that the time has come 
 when we must exalt the church itself and 
 stand for its services as never before. For 
 myself, I rather deprecate the separation of 
 the church into so many classes, ^' young," 
 *' old," " primary," " intermediate," and 
 ^' senior." In the forest one finds the giant 
 oak that has stood for a hundred years, and 
 the seedling just piercing the sod, and there 
 is every species of plant, shrub, and tree be- 
 tween those extremes. The same sun 
 warms and quickens them, the same dew and 
 rain cleanses and refreshes them and the 
 same storms rage about and test them. 
 They sprout, grow, and mature in the same 
 soil and under the same influences. In due 
 time each gets what it needs. They grow 
 together. That is God's way in nature. Is 
 it not also his way in grace ? 
 
 [io6] 
 
VIII 
 
 THE COUNTRY CHURCH ONCE 
 MORE 
 
THE COUNTRY CHURCH ONCE 
 MORE 
 
 In making a plea for the country minister 
 in a recent number of '* The Watchman-Ex- 
 aminer," the writer again calls attention to 
 the relation of the rural church to the de- 
 nomination and the .world. To my mind, 
 this relation has never been more vital than 
 now, and has never imposed upon us a larger 
 obligation to care for such churches. 
 
 An Adirondack pastor says : " Here is my 
 problem: If I receive a dozen young people 
 in my church this season when I return from 
 my vacation next autumn, all of them who 
 are not anchored by a mother's money or a 
 father's business will be gone." The mo- 
 ment these young people become Christians 
 they get a new outlook on life, its meaning, 
 and its possibilities, and begin at once to 
 feel the stirring of ambition to do a man's 
 or a woman's work in the world. To prepare 
 for active careers they go to the great cities 
 with their increased educational facilities, 
 so that the rural church is being all the 
 while depleted, in some cases decimated and 
 
 [ 109] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 desolated, in the interest of the larger 
 churches in the populous centers. 
 
 Some men born in cities, may read this 
 statement with a feeling of resentment, but 
 it is true, nevertheless, that ministers, mis- 
 sionaries, musicians, artists, editors, lawyers, 
 doctors, teachers, engineers, and captains of 
 industry in almost overwhelming numbers 
 come from the country. If we had space to 
 call the roll of the heroes of faith in our na- 
 tional and church life the readers would be 
 amazed at the result. Offhand, without any 
 careful or systematic examination, let me 
 give some concrete illustrations of how the 
 rural places are our source of supply. I can 
 cite more cases from the ministry than from 
 other callings, because I am more familiar 
 with them, but the proportion is about the 
 same in all the professions. Note this list: 
 
 Newton Lloyd Andrews, for fifty-three 
 years teacher of Greek at Colgate, came 
 from the village of Fabius; John L. Heff- 
 ron, physician, dean of the medical faculty 
 of Syracuse University, and Ceylon H. 
 Lewis, the well-known lawyer, were born in 
 the same town, and received early religious 
 impressions from the little Baptist church 
 there; Aaron Hale Burlingham, pastor of 
 churches in Pittsburgh, Boston, New York, 
 the American Chapel in Paris, and in the 
 
 [no] 
 
The Country Church Once More 
 
 last years of his life, representative of the 
 Foreign Mission Society, came from Castile. 
 Frank O. Belden, many years of the Main 
 Street Church, Binghamton, then of Mount 
 Vernon, now of San Diego, Calif., was also 
 born there. Saugerties, one of the old 
 towns of Hudson River Valley, gave to Al- 
 bany and New York Charles DeW. Bridg- 
 man, one of the most charming men and 
 brilliant preachers of the last generation. 
 Busti, a far-off little place in Chautauqua 
 County, has given sixteen men to our minis- 
 try, F. P. Stoddard among them. Such a 
 contribution alone would have justified the 
 existence of that church. 
 
 In the same country, near Frewsburg, 
 John E. Clough, our apostle to the Telugus, 
 was born. January 21, 1867, he organized a 
 church at Ongole, with eight members. 
 In twelve years it had grown to thir- 
 teen thousand, the largest church in the 
 world. In six weeks of the summer of 
 1878, more than eight thousand were bap- 
 tized into its fellowship by Clough and his 
 helpers. Pentecostal seasons came again to 
 men through his ministry. The whole 
 Christian world is familiar with the career 
 of this boy from Frewsburg. 
 
 The old town of Homer, now a suburb 
 of Cortland, gave to the educational and 
 
 [III] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 diplomatic world Andrew D. White, and 
 to religious journalism Edward S. Bright. 
 Justin D. Fulton, preacher, editor, author, 
 and lecturer, was born in Sherburne, N. Y., 
 where his father was pastor of the Baptist 
 church. George D. Adams, preacher, col- 
 lege president, and now pastor at Mount 
 Vernon, N. Y., came from the same town. 
 H. W. Barnes, so long Secretary of the 
 New York State Convention, was a boy 
 in the church at Owego. The Genung broth- 
 ers, authors, teachers, preachers; C. M. 
 Brink, professor of English History at Kala- 
 mazoo ; and Henry W. Sherwood, pastor at 
 Syracuse, Kingston, and Hudson Falls, were 
 all born near by and licensed from the same 
 church. John D. Rockefeller lived in the 
 vicinity, attending the Free Academy, where 
 Washington Gladden and Benjamin F. 
 Tracy were also pupils. 
 
 A. C. Osborn, one of the oldest living 
 graduates of Colgate, pastor at Louisville, 
 Ky., St. Louis, Mo., North Adams, Mass., 
 Albany and Broooklyn, N. Y., and for the 
 last ten years of his public life president of 
 Benedict Institute, South Carolina, was born 
 at North Wilna, Jefferson County. W. W. 
 Dawley, pastor at Gloversville, Duluth, St. 
 Paul, and then at Syracuse, came from the 
 same place. 
 
 [112] 
 
The Country Church Once More 
 
 The little hamlet of Great Bend, where 
 the church numbers but a dozen members, 
 just now taking on new life, gave us C. H. 
 Merrill of Gloversville, and Woolworth, the 
 " Ten Cent Store " man, who is a Methodist. 
 The village of Elbridge, near Syracuse, con- 
 tributed the Rhoades Brothers, W. C. P., of 
 the Borough of Brooklyn, and Charles L., 
 of Fredonia. The Sears brothers, Albert 
 Barnes, of Syracuse, and Charles H., super- 
 intendent of the New York City Mission 
 Society and author, came from Delphi Falls 
 in the same locality. From Red Creek, 
 Wayne County, we got George G. Dutcher, 
 of the Borough of Brooklyn, first vice-presi- 
 dent of the Convention, and Dr. James A. 
 Bennett, long treasurer of the New York 
 City Mission Society. Arthur Jones, many 
 years pastor at Waterford and Newburgh, 
 for twenty-three years professor of Homi- 
 letics at Colgate, was born in South Tren- 
 ton. Mrs. Helen Barrett Montgomery was 
 the gift of the church in the same place to 
 the denomination and the world. 
 
 M. J. Winchester, of Oswego, was the 
 twenty-third man to enter our ministry from 
 the little church in Truthville, Washington 
 County; W. S. Warren of Greene, the 
 thirty-third man from the church in Trux- 
 ton. E. J. Farley, for more than twenty 
 
 [113] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 years pastor in Oneonta, and one of the 
 most influential men in that section of the 
 State, came from Kingsbury, near Lake 
 George. C. S. Pendleton, pastor of the 
 Second Church, Oneonta, long prominent in 
 Free Baptist circles, was an Oxford boy. 
 Thomas O. Conant, thirty-five years on the 
 staff of '' The Examiner," with great pride 
 showed the writer the house in Hamilton 
 where he was born. John B. Calvert, 
 preacher and so long president of our Con- 
 vention, came from a Cortland County vil- 
 lage. Curtis Lee Laws, pastor in Baltimore 
 and Brooklyn, now the versatile editor of 
 our great denominational journal, is the gift 
 of a little town in Virginia. Howard B. 
 Grose, preacher, professor, author, and 
 editor of '' Missions," was born in Miller- 
 ton, N. Y., where his father was pastor. 
 Louis J. Gross, thirty-three years pastor of 
 the church at Barker, was a boy in Inter- 
 laken. 
 
 T. J. Whitaker, twenty-five years in Bush- 
 wick Avenue, Borough of Brooklyn, re- 
 ceived his earliest impressions in the church 
 at Deposit. His nephews, the Briggs boys, 
 George, of Buffalo, and Charles W., now di- 
 rector of Bible Schools and Young Peo- 
 ple's Work in New York State, came from 
 the same church. 
 
 [114] 
 
The Country Church Once More 
 
 W. S. Clapp, for thirty years pastor at 
 Carmel, easily the ablest man in all that sec- 
 tion of the State east of the Hudson River, 
 was born in Stillwater. Calvary Church, 
 Borough of Manhattan, and the medical pro- 
 fession of New York are indebted to the 
 little town of Redwood for Dr. Wendell C. 
 Phillips. Nathan Bishop, one of the most 
 generous and useful laymen New York 
 ever had, was the gift of Vernon. Ticon- 
 deroga, historic and picturesque, was the 
 birthplace of Joseph Cook, whose father was 
 a Baptist deacon there, and of A. A. Ken- 
 drick, professor of Shurtleff College. Una- 
 dilla gave us W. J. Quincy, of Schenectady, 
 while Harpursville, not far away, sent A. W. 
 Bourne, who served great churches in 
 Gloversville, Auburn, and Buffalo. 
 
 Charles E. Hughes, lawyer, law professor, 
 governor, associate justice of the Supreme 
 Court of the United States, and presidential 
 candidate, was born in what was then the 
 village of Glens Falls, where his father 
 preached. L. W. Cronkhite, missionary to 
 Burma, was his boyhood friend in the same 
 neighborhood. 
 
 G. W. Lasher, long editor and proprietor 
 of " The Journal and Messenger," was born 
 in Duanesburg. William I. Knapp, pro- 
 fessor of Romance Languages at Colgate, 
 
 [115] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 Vassar, Yale, and Chicago, and author of 
 many books in the Spanish language, also 
 diplomatic adviser, was a Greenport boy. 
 Henry L. Morehouse, for half a century the 
 most potent factor in shaping and carrying 
 out the policy of our great Home Mission 
 Society on this continent, first saw the light 
 in Stanford, Dutchess County, while Henry 
 M. Flagler, the oil man, came from Ham- 
 mondsport. 
 
 Last, but not least, William Newton 
 Clarke, preacher, author and theological 
 professor, known and admired wherever 
 our language is spoken, was a native of 
 Cazenovia, where his father served the vil- 
 lage church. 
 
 This list might be almost indefinitely pro- 
 longed by the names of men notable in all 
 the walks of life, but enough instances have 
 been given to establish my contention. 
 
 At the close of a service in a large church, 
 in which the writer had been making an 
 appeal for the rural interests, a prominent 
 man said that if he were in my place as 
 president of the Convention, he would 
 " wring the necks of a score of those little 
 churches and put them out of business." 
 Nothing could be farther from the spirit of 
 the Nazarene than indiscriminately to close 
 up any considerable number of these little 
 
 [ii6] 
 
The Country Church Once More 
 
 churches in the country. More than that, it 
 would be a suicidal policy, because of the 
 relation they sustain to all our denomina- 
 tional activities. 
 
 The last time Gipsy Smith was in this 
 country he was given a great reception in 
 one of the Manhattan churches before sail- 
 ing for home. In responding to some com- 
 plimentary words that had been spoken 
 about him and his work, he said, *' Brethren, 
 when I return from campaigns like this, 
 where I have been signally honored of God 
 and men, I go into a little room in my home 
 in Cambridge, England, and standing before 
 a picture on the wall, a rude copy of the 
 gipsy wagon in which my mother gave me 
 birth, I say to my own heart, ^ Don't be 
 lifted up; there's where you began.' " 
 
 So my brethren, ministers and laymen, in 
 large churches, in towns and cities, let me 
 express the hope that you will not be lifted 
 up, or forgetful of the places where your 
 real life began, little churches in far-off rural 
 localities where you caught your first vision 
 of life and its possibilities, here and here- 
 after. Because of what these churches have 
 been to you and multitudes like you, because 
 of what they now mean to the communities 
 where they exist, I ask you to help us keep 
 them open that they may go on doing for 
 
 [117] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 others what they did for you. Can we de- 
 pend on your cooperation? 
 
 Further Illustrations 
 
 The many kind words spoken or written 
 about the preceding paragraphs on the coun- 
 try church as a source of supply when they 
 appeared as an article in " The Watchman- 
 Examiner," leads me to supplement them 
 with further illustrations. In that article I 
 confined myself, with one exception, to men 
 born or now living within New York State. 
 Now, in addition to native New Yorkers, I 
 cite some men and women who came from 
 other territory. On a closer examination 
 one is embarrassed with the wealth of ma- 
 terial, and hardly knows where to begin or 
 to end. Some one else compiling a list 
 might make even a more favorable showing 
 for the rural church without repeating the 
 names in mine. 
 
 Galusha Anderson, preacher, author, theo- 
 logical professor, and college president, 
 came from Bergen, Genesee County; Wal- 
 lace Butterick, pastor in New Haven, St. 
 Paul, and Albany, and now secretary of the 
 General Education Board from Potsdam, 
 St. Lawrence County; L. A. Crandall, of 
 Owego, New York, Cleveland, Chicago, and 
 
 [ii8] 
 
The Country Church Once More 
 
 Minneapolis, from Plymouth, Chenango 
 County. Fanny Crosby, just now gone 
 from us at the age of ninety-five, author of 
 more devotional hymns than any other 
 singer of our time, came from Brewster, 
 Putnam County, while R. E. Burton, 
 twenty-five years in Delaware Street Church, 
 Syracuse, recently deceased, came from 
 Clyde, Wayne County. 
 
 Theodore Cuyler, Presbyterian preacher 
 in Manhattan and Brooklyn, prolific writer 
 on devotional themes, author of several 
 books. Young Men's Christian Association 
 worker, and temperance advocate, was al- 
 ways grateful for his childhood days in 
 Aurora, on the shore of Cayuga Lake. 
 
 Chester A. Arthur, president of the 
 United States, though born just over the 
 line in a Vermont village, spent most of his 
 early years in Eastern New York towns, 
 where his father served Baptist churches. 
 The pastor of one of these churches re- 
 cently showed the writer a bathroom that 
 was once young Arthur's bedroom. Grover 
 Cleveland, lawyer, mayor, governor, presi- 
 dent, was born in a Presbyterian parsonage 
 in the village of Caldwell, N. J., but more 
 than twenty years of his life were passed in 
 Fayetteville, Clinton, and Holland Patent, 
 towns in Central New York. Martin Van 
 
 I [119] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 Buren, lawyer and president, was a native 
 of Kinderhook, Columbia County. Sam- 
 uel J. Tilden, lawyer, reformer, governor, 
 presidential candidate, and benefactor was 
 the gift of Nev/ Lebanon in the same 
 section. 
 
 David Jayne Hill, preacher, professor, 
 author, college president (Bucknell and 
 Rochester), assistant secretary of state, and 
 our representative at foreign courts, was 
 licensed by the church at Pawling, Dutchess 
 County, where his father was the preacher. 
 C. H. Dodd, pastor in Mount Vernon, 
 Newark, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, was 
 a boy in Almond, in the southern tier. 
 James (" Jim ") Betts, teacher, lawyer, jus- 
 tice of the Supreme Court, was a farmer's 
 son in the open country in Saratoga County, 
 where the writer has often been. Pharcellus 
 Church, preacher, editor of " The Watch- 
 man and Reflector," Boston, then editor and 
 proprietor of '' The Chronicle," New York, 
 later merged with " The Examiner," came 
 from Seneca, now Geneva, N. Y. 
 
 Elmer E. Ellsworth, colonel of Zouaves, 
 personal friend of Lincoln, whose premature 
 death so deeply stirred the hearts of the 
 North in the early days of the Civil War, 
 was a Mechanicsville boy, and his body now 
 lies in his native place. 
 
 [ 120] 
 
The Country Church Once More 
 
 The Dean brothers, Leonard J. and Dele- 
 van D., both came from Morrisville, Madi- 
 son County, the birthplace of William Dean, 
 their illustrious relative, for fifty years mis- 
 sionary to China. Emily C. Judson came 
 from the same church. 
 
 William Groom, whose early taking off 
 brought such sorrow to the churches in 
 Amsterdam and Ballston, was born in 
 Broadalbin, Fulton County, where his fa- 
 ther was eighteen years pastor of the church 
 in which Jonathan Wade, fifty years mis- 
 sionary to Burma, was ordained in 1823. 
 Nearly a dozen young men have been li- 
 censed to preach by this church since then, 
 Loren Rowley, of Edmeston, Clayton Grin- 
 nell, of Altoona, Pa., and the writer, among 
 them. Galway, an inland town, twelve miles 
 east, is where Eugenio Kincaid was or- 
 dained and served as pastor before going as 
 missionary to Burma. Both Wade and 
 Kincaid were members of the first seminary 
 class graduated at Hamilton in 1822. 
 Forty years ago John Humpstone was or- 
 dained at Galway, serving the church as 
 pastor for one year. At Vail Mills, a mile 
 west of Broadalbin, where the writer first 
 went to school, lived W. E. Wait, author of 
 " Wait's Law and Practice," a series of 
 books found in every law library of the last 
 
 [121] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 generation. The little office in which most 
 of the work on the earlier volumes was done 
 is now used as a hen-house by one of the 
 residents of the village. Duncan Kennedy, 
 a notable Presbyterian minister, was born 
 less than a mile away. Ten miles west is 
 the historic village of Johnstown, where 
 Daniel Cady practised law, and where his 
 famous daughter, Elisabeth Cady Stan- 
 ton, was born and reared. Joshua Day, who 
 was stricken in Calvary pulpit in Albany, 
 left a business position in Johnstown to 
 enter the ministry. 
 
 Four miles south, in the Mohawk Valley, 
 is the quaint old town of Fultonville, the 
 home of John H. Starin, member of Con- 
 gress and founder of the River and Harbor 
 Transportation Company, New York. In 
 Glen, three miles away, Abram Vreeland, the 
 father of fifteen children, was pastor of the 
 village church, with an afternoon appoint- 
 ment at Tribes Hill, the southern terminal 
 of the Indian Trail between the Sacondaga 
 and Mohawk rivers. H. H. Vreeland, 
 prominent in street and steam railway cir- 
 cles of the country, was born in the Glen 
 parsonage. On a recent visit there with 
 the writer, he found in the garret of the old 
 house the cradle in which his mother rocked 
 him. 
 
 [ 122] 
 
The Country Church Once More 
 
 A little farther up the valley, on the north 
 side, back of Herkimer, the home of United 
 States Senator Warner Miller, is the little 
 village of Newport, where, in the Baptist 
 parsonage, was born W. C. Brown, many 
 years president of the New York Central 
 Lines. Still further on is Deerfield, a sub- 
 urb of Utica, where Horatio Seymour, 
 lawyer, historian, and governor lived. Nine 
 miles south we come to Clinton, seat of 
 Hamilton College and the home of Elihu 
 Root, lawyer, secretary of state, secretary of 
 war. United States senator, and Nobel Prize 
 man. Three generations of the Roots were 
 born here. 
 
 President Schurman of Cornell, Charles 
 A. Eaton, of the Borough of Manhattan, 
 W. B. Wallace of Rochester, J. A. Huntley, 
 of Troy, N. Y., and A. A. Shaw, of the 
 Borough of Brooklyn, all came from towns 
 in Nova Scotia, or near-by Provinces. 
 
 Miss Huntley, of Rochester, the friend 
 of all good causes, was a girl in a little 
 church in the Oswego Association. E. B. 
 Shallow, teacher, lawyer, and now associate 
 superintendent of public schools, of Greater 
 New York, and Sereno Payne, thirty years 
 in Congress (lately deceased), were both 
 Hamilton boys. Of the thirteen men who 
 formed the Baptist Education Society of the 
 
 [ 123 ] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 State of New York, eight were from Hamil- 
 ton, the other five from the neighboring 
 villages of Eaton, Lebanon, Hartwick, and 
 Fabius. 
 
 John Peck, a pioneer in State Convention 
 and home mission work, the organizer of 
 many churches, and long pastor at New 
 Woodstock, N. Y., was born in Milan, 
 Dutchess County. Fifteen young men went 
 into the ministry from the New Woodstock 
 church during that pastorate, among them 
 his own sons, Linus M. and Philetus B., 
 whose memories are still green in the 
 churches at Hamilton and Owego. These 
 rare young men both died in the same week 
 of October, 1847. 
 
 Jacob Knapp, the great evangelist, was 
 from Otsego County ; Andrew K. Fuller, of 
 Kingston, with thirteen other ministers 
 from Masonville, Delaware County; G. W. 
 Northrup, preacher, theological professor at 
 Rochester, and afterward president of Chi- 
 cago Theological Seminary, came from Ant- 
 werp, Jefferson County, not far from the 
 birthplace of Frederic Remington, painter 
 and sculptor. W. R. Wilcox, teacher, 
 lawyer, writer, park commissioner, post- 
 master, and public service commissioner of 
 New York City, is a native of Smyrna, Che- 
 nango County; Alvah Hovey, preacher, au- 
 
 [124] 
 
The Country Church Once More 
 
 thor, and president of Newton Theological 
 Institution, of Greene, a little further down 
 the valley. The Meyers brothers, Cortland, 
 of Tremont Temple, Boston, and Johnston, 
 of Chicago, are natives of Kingston-on- 
 Hudson. Henry M. Sanders, pastor in 
 Yonkers and Manhattan, came from Homer, 
 Cortland County. 
 
 Robert Stuart MacArthur, forty-one 
 years pastor of Calvary Church, Manhattan, 
 author of many volumes, lecturer, and presi- 
 dent of the Baptist World Alliance, came 
 from Dalesville, Quebec ; John Peddie, from 
 Ancaster, Ontario, and A. W. Rogers, of 
 Schenectady, from Brantford, in the same 
 Province. 
 
 Chester Fairman Ralston, pastor in 
 Yonkers, contributing editor of " The 
 Watchman-Examiner," was born in Fair- 
 view, Ohio ; A. E. Knapp, of Amsterdam, in 
 Pierrepont, N. Y. ; J. M. Hutchinson, of 
 Calvary Church, Rochester, N. Y., in Rich- 
 ford. William H. King, thirty years pastor 
 in Owego, came from the little village of 
 Wellsbridge; his nephew, William Harvey 
 King, M. D., of New York, author and 
 lecturer, from near Waverly. M. W. Wells, 
 author of " Holy Spirit, Faithful Guide," 
 was a farmer near Hartwick, Otsego 
 County, and was in the barn alone husking 
 
 [ 125 ] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 corn on a dark autumn day when the in- 
 spiration to write the hymn came upon him. 
 The Negus brothers came from Taberg, 
 Oneida County; the Penny brothers from 
 Unadilla Forks, Otsego County; the Vose 
 brothers from Spencer, Tioga County; H. 
 C. Colebrook, of Gloversville, from Caze- 
 novia; W. C. Taylor, of Owego, from Jay, 
 in the Adirondacks; Edward Babcock, of 
 McKeesport, Pa., from Constantia, Oswego 
 County. 
 
 The Hunt brothers, Rye of them, Eben, 
 Horace, James M., Emory W., and Garrett, 
 were all born in the village of East Clarence, 
 near Lake Ontario, where their father was 
 pastor the larger part of his life. 
 
 Marcus C. Mason and Elnathan G. 
 Phillips, more than forty years missionaries 
 in Assam, both came from rural places in 
 New York State. E. W. Clark, forty-one 
 years in the Naga Hills, Assam, and James 
 B. Simmons, pastor in New York and Phila- 
 delphia, secretary of the Home Mission and 
 Publication Societies, also founder of col- 
 leges in the South, were boys together in 
 Dutchess County. John Mason Peck, pio- 
 neer in home mission work, " Prophet of the 
 Prairies," was born in Litchfield, Conn., the 
 town that gave us Beecher, Bushnell, E. P. 
 Farnham, and Charles G. Finney. 
 
 [ 126 ] 
 
The Country Church Once More 
 
 Many other names equally famous and 
 worthy, might be added to this list, but 
 space will not permit. Those already men- 
 tioned emphasize and illustrate the value of 
 'the rural church as a factor in community 
 life and are an unanswerable argument for 
 its maintenance. Whether the rural 
 churches are doing the work they once did 
 or ought to be doing now is an open ques- 
 tion which may be considered in another 
 article. Meanwhile, it might be well for 
 some one to show us what the churches in 
 great cities have done along similar lines. 
 
 [127] 
 
rx 
 
 THAT COUNTRY BOY AGAIN 
 
THAT COUNTRY BOY AGAIN 
 
 The boy from the country is met with so 
 often, and in so many positions of great re- 
 sponsibility, that we are coming to think of 
 him as well-nigh ubiquitous. On every 
 board, in every meeting of men representing 
 large financial interests, in groups of philan- 
 thropists planning for the betterment of liv- 
 ing conditions in our cities, in the legislative 
 halls of the State and the nation, the boy 
 from the country is always a factor to be 
 reckoned with. Newell Dwight Hillis re- 
 cently said that eighty-five per cent of the 
 leading men of New York City came from 
 the farm or the town. Twenty-three of our 
 presidents were country bred, and more than 
 eighty per cent of the ministers of all de- 
 nominations are furnished by the rural sec- 
 tions of the land. A religious newspaper is 
 responsible for the statement that if all the 
 moneys contributed by the men and women 
 who spent their early days in the country 
 were suddenly diverted or witheld, the 
 larger part of our educational, benevolent, 
 and religious institutions would have to sus- 
 pend within a year. Incredible as this may 
 
 [131] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 seem, it is undoubtedly true. Since prepar- 
 ing the former articles on this subject, I 
 have been amazed at the material calculated 
 to show the city's indebtedness to the coun- 
 try places for what they are all the while 
 sending to it. 
 
 Eliphalet Nott, preacher and educator, 
 was born in Ashford, Conn., a little town 
 not far from Hartford. As the near- 
 est district school was five miles away, he 
 was taught by the best of all teachers, his 
 sister and his mother. Called to preach, he 
 began his ministry in Cherry Valley, N. Y. 
 In two years he was invited to the pastorate 
 of the First Presbyterian church, Albany, 
 where in 1806 he preached a sermon on 
 " The Fall of Hamilton " that made him 
 famous, and resulted in his election to the 
 presidency of Union College, Schenectady, a 
 position he held for sixty-four years. In 
 1825 Union had passed Harvard and Yale 
 in the number of its students, and for nearly 
 a quarter of a century had the honor of 
 being the largest college in the country. 
 Early in his career there, he was one day rid- 
 ing over a country road in Dutchess County, 
 inquiring for a blacksmith. Some one told 
 him farmer Potter had a man who could 
 shoe a horse. While Nott was waiting for 
 the job to be done, two little boys appeared 
 
 [ 132] 
 
That Country Boy Again 
 
 to watch the process. He at once asked the 
 farmer what he was going to do with the 
 boys, suggesting for them a course at Union. 
 The boys were Alonzo and Horatio Potter. 
 Both went to Union and were graduated 
 with high honor, the one afterward becom- 
 ing bishop of Pennsylvania, the other the 
 bishop of New York. Alonzo married 
 Doctor Nott's daughter and nine sons were 
 born to them, " all men of conscience and 
 leadership, who were intent not on private 
 gain, but on the common good." Clarkson 
 N. Potter, a lawyer of distinction, served 
 for more than twenty years in the United 
 States Congress, where he rendered con- 
 spicuous service. Howard Potter was one 
 of the founders of the United States Sani- 
 tary Commission, and an incorporator of the 
 Metropolitan Museum of Art and of the 
 American Museum of Natural History, 
 president of the New York Society for Im- 
 proving the Condition of the Poor, and 
 founder of the State Charities Aid Associa- 
 tion. Robert B. Potter was a soldier of the 
 Civil War, rising to the post of major-gen- 
 eral. Edward T. Potter was a musician and 
 architect, devoting himself to the study of 
 the housing of the poor, planning model 
 tenements. Henry C. Potter was rector of 
 Grace Church, and successor to his uncle as 
 
 [ ^33 ] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 bishop of New York. Eliphalet N. Potter 
 was president of Union and Hobart Col- 
 leges. James N. Potter was a colonel in the 
 Civil War. William A. Potter was super- 
 vising architect of the Treasury Department 
 at Washington. Frank H. Potter was a 
 musician and a journalist. Who can 
 measure the influence exerted in the various 
 walks of life by these nine remarkable men, 
 sons of one of the little boys whom Doctor 
 Nott met that day while waiting for his 
 horse to be shod by farmer Potter's hired 
 man? Stephen Smith, now past ninety- 
 five, many years surgeon at Bellevue, St. 
 Vincent's, and Columbus hospitals, editor of 
 '' New York Journal of Medicine " and 
 " American Medical Times," professor of 
 anatomy and clinical surgery in Bellevue 
 Medical College, author of medical books, 
 founder of the American Public Health As- 
 sociation, creator of the Health Department 
 of the State of New York and of the New 
 York State Lunacy Commission, served as 
 volunteer surgeon in the Civil War, as com- 
 missioner of health in New York City, as a 
 member of the National Board of Health 
 and of the State Bureau of Charities, repre- 
 sentative of the United States on the Inter- 
 national Sanitary Commission, Paris, 1894, 
 was born at Spaff ord, near Skaneateles Lake, 
 
 1 134] 
 
That Country Boy Again 
 
 Onondaga County, N. Y., where he now has 
 a summer home. 
 
 Henry C. Vedder, author, preacher, many 
 years on the editorial staff of *' The Exami- 
 ner " and a professor in Crozer Theological 
 Seminary, came from DeRuyter, Madison 
 County, N. Y. ; Truman J. Backus, fifteen 
 years professor of English Literature in 
 Vassar College, and then to the end of his 
 life president of Packer Collegiate Institute, 
 Borough of Brooklyn, came from Milan, 
 Dutchess County, N. Y. ; Leveret F. Crumb, 
 lawyer and mayor of Peekskill, from a New 
 Jersey village where his father was pastor. 
 Dr. Albert Coit, pastor at Wellsville and 
 Hornell, financial secretary of Cook Acade- 
 my, and for nearly forty years a member of 
 the Board of Managers of the New York 
 State Convention, came from Central 
 Square ; Jabez Ford, his brother. Dr. Smith 
 T. Ford, of Chicago, his son, Spencer J. 
 Ford, of New York, and his nephew, W. J. 
 Ford, of Albion, New York, all came from 
 Camden in New York State. Rev. C. W. 
 Brooks, for forty years connected with the 
 New York State Convention, and author 
 of *' A Century of Missions in the Empire 
 State," was born in Solon; the Kneeland 
 brothers. Rev. F. W. and Rev. L S. Knee- 
 land, came from Strykersville ; J. Bying- 
 
 [135] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 ton Smith, from Schroon Lake; George B. 
 Stevens, professor in Yale University Di- 
 vinity School, author of commentaries and 
 theological text-books, from Spencer; An- 
 son Burlingame, statesman and diplomat, 
 negotiator of important treaties with China 
 in 1868, came from Otsego County, where 
 I saw a tablet marking his birthplace. Dr. 
 J. N. Murdock was born in Oswego when 
 it was only a village. W. N. Sage, fifty- 
 one years in the Sunday School of the 
 First Church, Rochester, as scholar, sec- 
 retary, teacher, superintendent, and Bible 
 class leader, came from Ballston Spa. Dr. 
 Martin B. Anderson said that the first 
 twenty years of growth and prosperity of 
 the University of Rochester were due to 
 Mr. Sage's wisdom and sacrifice. Charles 
 T. Brockway, who taught a Bible class in the 
 First Church, Syracuse, larger than the aver- 
 age preacher's congregation, was a Broadal- 
 bin boy, where his father was an honored 
 deacon. John W. Allis, an official member 
 of the Baptist Temple, Borough of Brook- 
 lyn, and a leading factor in the Utica Knit- 
 ting Company, came from Philadelphia, 
 N. Y., where the family name is greatly 
 revered. Phillips Phillips, a singing evan- 
 gelist before Sankey's day, was the gift of 
 the church at Cassadaga, Chautauqua 
 
 [ 136 ] 
 
That Country Boy Again 
 
 County. Isaac M. Haldeman, thirty-three 
 years pastor of the First Church, New 
 York, was born in Concordia, Pa. George 
 C. Baldwin, for forty-five years pastor of the 
 First church, Troy, was born at Pompton, 
 N. J. ; John W. Olmstead, long editor of 
 " The Watchman and Reflector," was born 
 in Schuylerville, N. Y. ; Elisha E. L. Taylor, 
 pastor of Pierrepont Street, and founder of 
 Strong Place Church, in the Borough of 
 Brooklyn, secretary of the Home Mission 
 Society, and father of President Taylor, of 
 Vassar College, was born in Delphi Falls, 
 N. Y. A stone column on the road from 
 Mount Vernon to White Plains marks the 
 place where Daniel O. Tompkins, vice-presi- 
 dent, and one of the ablest governors of New 
 York State, was born. Not far away, in Pel- 
 ham, is the birthplace of William Hague, 
 pastor of strong churches in Utica, Boston, 
 Providence, Newark, Albany, and New 
 York. John W. Sarles, forty years pastor 
 in Bridge Street, Brooklyn, came from Bed- 
 ford; W. F. Benedict, pastor of large vil- 
 lage churches in Central New York, from 
 the open country, in Delaware County ; J. O. 
 Mason, forty-six years in the Bottskill 
 Church, Greenwich, from Fort Ann ; W. W. 
 Everts, pastor in New York and Chicago, 
 from Granville ; Professor Sprague, superin- 
 
 [137] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 tendent of education in Utica, from Moriah. 
 George Fenton, whose life has been spent in 
 educational work, still owns the farm on 
 which he was born in Broadalbin. Ira Har- 
 ris, lawyer. State senator, Supreme Court 
 judge, successor to W. H. Seward in the 
 United State Senate, promoter of higher 
 education as trustee of Union, Vassar, and 
 Rochester, twice member of the Constitu- 
 tional Convention of New York State, and 
 official of Emmanuel Church, Albany, was 
 born in the little village of Charleston, 
 Montgomery County; Friend Humphrey, 
 Albany business man, constituent member 
 of the First Church, several terms mayor of 
 the city and State senator, was born in Sims- 
 bury, Conn. " No improvement, no enter- 
 prise, no mission, and no charity that com- 
 mended itself to the wise and liberal was 
 without his aid." E. H. Harriman, financier 
 and railway magnate, was born in Hemp- 
 stead, L. L, where his father was rector of 
 the Episcopal church. Frederick Under- 
 wood, president of the Erie and allied lines, 
 came from a Wisconsin village where his 
 father was a successful Baptist minister. 
 The Perry brothers — George, preacher, Jo- 
 siah, lawyer, and Lincoln, business man — 
 came from Boonville. The Hale brothers — 
 Albert C, of Brooklyn, George D. and Wil- 
 
 [138] 
 
That Country Boy Again 
 
 Ham B., of Rochester, all Phi Beta Kappa 
 men in the University of Rochester — came 
 from Adams, Jefferson County. R. J. 
 Thompson, associational missionary in the 
 north country, was a boy in Vermont. W. 
 B. McNinch, just entering the service of the 
 New York State Convention, was born in 
 Livingston County, N. Y. Russell H. Con- 
 well, lawyer, war correspondent, author, 
 lecturer, and preacher, with his cousin, John 
 D. Pease, the piano manufacturer, was born 
 in the little town of Worthingham, Mass. 
 Elmer Burritt Bryan, high school teacher, 
 professor in two colleges, commissioner of 
 education in the Philippines, president of 
 Franklin College, Indiana, and now presi- 
 dent of Colgate University, was born in a 
 log cabin, built by his father's own hands, in 
 the woods of Ohio. Washington, Jefferson, 
 Clay, Webster, Lincoln, Beecher, Bushnell, 
 Austin Phelps, Garfield, McKinley, John 
 Hay, and Woodrow Wilson were all country 
 boys. 
 
 What these men have been in the places 
 where their lot in life was cast, the factors 
 they became in business, in the educational, 
 political, and religious life of the world, was 
 largely due to the influences that came upon 
 them in their early days, inspiring them with 
 high ideals, molding their characters, safe- 
 
 [ 139] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 guarding them against evil, and filling them 
 with achieving power. Of course, there is 
 something in breeding, for " blood tells in a 
 man as well as in a horse." Henry Ward 
 Beecher on his seventieth birthday, in the 
 Academy of Music, crowded with Brook- 
 lyn's best citizens to honor him, said, " I 
 am what I am by the grace of God and Ly- 
 man and Roxanna Beecher." The accumu- 
 lated tendencies toward high and noble liv- 
 ing for generations past were gathered up 
 and centered in him, and he gratefully recog- 
 nized it. The same is true of many of us. 
 We do not always know who is living and 
 speaking in us. Ancestral hands beckon 
 some up and on, while they drag others 
 down. It works both ways, but never so as 
 to interfere with our responsibility. 
 
 There is also something in environment, 
 though it must not be made too much of. 
 Bunyan's " genius blossomed," and he wrote 
 his immortal work within prison walls at 
 Bedford, while Burns at Ayr lived under 
 the same roof with the cattle. In spite of 
 these exceptions, fresh air, exercise in the 
 open, with pure wholesome food and plenty 
 of sleep, must tell in the development of the 
 boy. Educational equipment in the country 
 is likely to be meager, but a real teacher now 
 and then is found in " the little red school- 
 
 [140] 
 
That Country Boy Again 
 
 house." One such, with but little of the 
 training of the schools, laid his hand upon 
 my head in Vail's Mills, where I first went 
 to school, and the touch of his hand is felt 
 yet. He knew how to help a boy find him- 
 self. Forty-nine years ago, when I went 
 into Edward Judson's classroom in Hamil- 
 ton, fearful lest I could not go on because of 
 inadequate preparation, he put his arm about 
 me, assuring me of sympathy and help, and 
 I have been the stronger for it ever since. 
 
 Then the church and its services, with its 
 associations of godly men and women, is 
 even a greater factor in the process. A man 
 in Buffalo, where I had made an appeal for 
 the rural church, followed me into the pas- 
 tor's study and wrote a check for one hun- 
 dred dollars to help keep one open, because 
 of what the church of his boyhood days had 
 meant to him. In fostering such churches 
 we are also helping the cities with their per- 
 plexing problems, for one is a vital factor 
 in the other. " If you would save the na- 
 tion, you must care for the town. The life 
 of New England began in the church and the 
 schoolhouse at the crossroads," said a Yale 
 College president. My father at the close of 
 a hard day's work in winter, threshing or 
 chopping, used to take me on his back and 
 never put me down till he reached the old 
 
 [141] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 Broadalbin church, more than two miles 
 away, where a revival was in progress, then 
 go back over the same lonely road after 
 meeting, whistling or singing as he went. 
 Did that service mean anything to me at the 
 age of seven? Yes, indeed, for the appeal- 
 ing face of the preacher has been with me 
 through all the years, and Deacon Kasson's 
 voice leading the congregational singing of 
 the old hymn 
 
 The judgment-day is rolling round, 
 Prepare to meet thy God, 
 
 is ringing in my ears yet. These are the 
 influences that put iron into the blood of 
 the boys and girls in the rural regions, and 
 contribute so largely to their after-careers. 
 In a magazine article on the '' Things that 
 Influenced me," Eliot, of Harvard, summed 
 all up by saying, " I happened to have a 
 mother." On his return from a summer in 
 England, Henry W. Bellows met Robert 
 Collyer on the street in New York and said : 
 '' Now, Robert, I know where you got your 
 outfit, I have been in Yorkshire and met 
 your dear old mother." " There are fa- 
 thers and mothers whose children are or- 
 phans, God pity them," said Victor Hugo. 
 The home, the school, and the church, these 
 
 [ 142] 
 
That Country Boy Again 
 
 are the three great factors in our country 
 problem. The State, with such men as John 
 H. Finley, is trying to make the school more 
 helpful. The minister's task is with all 
 three, more particularly the home and the 
 church. 
 
 [143] 
 
CAUSES OF WEAKNESS AND 
 
 INEFFICIENCY IN THE 
 
 CHURCHES 
 
CAUSES OF WEAKNESS AND 
 
 INEFFICIENCY IN THE 
 
 CHURCHES 
 
 Let it be clearly understood at the outset 
 that I make a distinction between weakness 
 and inefficiency. Some churches are weak 
 in numbers, in social standing, and in ma- 
 terial things, but strong in achievement and 
 splendidly efficient. Well organized and 
 well led, they are serving effectively their 
 own community, and are meeting all their 
 financial obligations for current expenses, 
 and for kingdom work the world over. 
 Weak but efficient ! 
 
 On the other hand, there are churches 
 strong numerically, socially, and materially, 
 but wo fully inefficient. Poorly organized 
 and without leadership, they aim at no goal 
 and reach it. Strong but wretchedly ineffi- 
 cient. Nor are the weak and inefficient 
 churches limited to any one locality. They 
 are to be found in city, town, and country, 
 and perhaps in almost equal proportions. 
 
 What are some of the causes of weak- 
 ness ? 
 
 [147] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 I. The Shifting of Population and Con- 
 centration of Peoples in the Centers. After 
 making a tour of Scoharie County I found 
 that there were three thousand less people 
 there than fifty-five years ago, before the 
 Civil War. The population of the Empire 
 State has doubled and trebled within that 
 time. What has happened there? Where 
 are the people? Gone to Cobleskill, One- 
 onta, and Binghamton, but more particularly 
 to Schenectady. When I was a boy, living 
 north of the Mohawk Valley, Schenectady 
 was our largest near-by town, with a popula- 
 tion of ten or twelve thousand, streets paved 
 with cobblestones among which the grass 
 grew. Now they have more than a hundred 
 thousand — thirty thousand men employed 
 in the General Electric and the American 
 Locomotive Works alone. Where have they 
 all come from ? From the ends of the earth, 
 but especially from territory within fifty to 
 a hundred miles away. 
 
 Many a little hamlet that was once self- 
 contained, thriving and growing, has had the 
 heart taken out of it. All life, business, edu- 
 cation, and religion have felt the pull in 
 other directions. One town, where I went 
 last summer, has only twenty-three pupils 
 left in the public school, in which formerly 
 there were from fifty to seventy-five. So it 
 
 [148] 
 
Weakness and Inefficiency in Churches 
 
 is an educational as well as a religious prob- 
 lem. You can hardly realize how many 
 school districts have been wiped off the map 
 because there are no longer children enough 
 to maintain a school. The State provides 
 for them elsewhere or in other ways. While 
 it has become increasingly difficult to main- 
 tain churches in these localities, we cannot 
 desert them and turn them over to heathen- 
 ism. We must keep the altar-fires burning. 
 
 With three thousand young men studying 
 agriculture in the schools and colleges of the 
 State, we can already discover a trend back 
 toward the tilling of the soil, and we have 
 reason to believe that into many of those 
 places life will come back again. Indeed, I 
 found several places in Cortland and Os- 
 wego counties, where men were coming 
 from the far West and taking up farms that 
 had been abandoned only a few years since. 
 This process of reclamation is likely to go 
 on, and we shall have a duty to these new- 
 comers in making the region safe for them 
 to live and rear their families in. 
 
 Without doubt some places will have to 
 be given up, for there is no longer a con- 
 stituency, perhaps never will be. Fifty years 
 ago the Adirondack region was dotted all 
 over with great tanneries. Hides were 
 hauled in from all the great railway lines, 
 
 [149] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 tanned into sole-leather, and then hauled 
 back. Now hardly a tannery can be found 
 in all that section of the State, because the 
 supply of hemlock bark has given out. It 
 would be just as reasonable to insist upon 
 keeping up the tanning business in the Adi- 
 rondacks, without bark, as to insist upon 
 keeping up churches in places where there 
 are no longer any people, for people are as 
 essential to the maintenance of a church or 
 school, as logs to a sawmill, or hemlock bark 
 to a tannery. In Lewis County I learned 
 there were six thousand less people than be- 
 fore the Civil War. These are concrete il- 
 lustrations of what has been going on over 
 the State and the country, creating for us 
 the " Country Church Problem." 
 
 2. The Frequent Changes in the Pastor- 
 ate. Some men do not remain on the field 
 long enough to make or carry out a policy. 
 On the lookout for something easier, they 
 run away from difficulties in one place, only 
 to find them reappearing in the same or 
 other forms elsewhere. A young man wrote 
 Mr. Beecher, intimating that he wanted an 
 " easy place." Mr. Beecher advised him not 
 to enter the ministry, medicine, or the law, 
 but to '' get six feet of earth, dig a hole, and 
 get into it, for the grave is the only easy 
 place in this world." 
 
 [150] 
 
Weakness and Inefficiency in Churches 
 
 One man who had had many pastorates 
 confessed to me that he had lost his temper 
 and resigned an early pastorate to get away 
 from a cantankerous deacon named Jones. 
 Now he acknowledges that he has found 
 Deacon Jones, though not always bearing 
 that name, in every place to which he has 
 since gone, the same difficulty reappearing 
 in other forms in every field. How much 
 better to gird oneself and conquer " Deacon 
 Jones " at the outset ! I have seen a flock of 
 birds hovering about the top of a tree, as if 
 ready to light, when another impulse seized 
 them and away they would go. Just what 
 some men do, flutter over, and hover about 
 a field, but never light and grapple with the 
 problems incidental to the place. The 
 churches are suffering incalculable harm 
 from that sort of thing. Sometimes it is the 
 fault of the man in the pulpit, sometimes of 
 the people in the pew, and frequently both 
 parties are at fault. 
 
 At the 150th anniversary of the Bottskill 
 Church at Greenwich, N. Y., the other sum- 
 mer, I saw a memorial window to Rev. J. O. 
 Mason, forty-six years pastor, and another 
 to Rev. Barber, thirty-eight years pastor, 
 and Rev. Thomas Cull, who was sixteen 
 years pastor, sat in the audience. Three 
 men covered a hundred out of a hundred 
 
 L [151] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 and fifty years of that church's history. No 
 wonder that the church is strong, and that 
 its influence reaches out to the ends of the 
 earth. 
 
 A dear old lady looked out of the window 
 of a railway car just as the train was pass- 
 ing over a deep gorge, and she startled the 
 passengers by saying, " The machine has left 
 the earth." When she looked out again, 
 terra Urnia was in sight. " Thank God she 
 has lit," was her reassuring remark. Men 
 in the ministry ought to light on these fields, 
 grapple with their problems, and if they 
 find conditions difiicult, remember they are 
 there to change them. It is their job — a job 
 that cannot be turned over to the local mis- 
 sionary committee or State Convention ofli- 
 cial. If everybody and everything were all 
 right on these fields, conditions ideal, we 
 should all be out of business. 
 
 3. Lack of an Adequate Financial Sys- 
 tem. Churches call a man to the pastorate 
 without any idea of where the money is 
 coming from to support him. It is the 
 Lord's work, they reason, and somehow it 
 will come out all right. With a good deal 
 of gusto, they sing that old hymn, " Some- 
 how or other the Lord will provide," and 
 make no effort to provide for the work 
 themselves. While I believe in the senti- 
 
 [152] 
 
Weakness and Inefficiency in Churches 
 
 ment of that hymn, I insist that the Lord 
 does not provide through our folly and indo- 
 lence, but through our wise and careful 
 planning and activity. Nothing goes of 
 itself in this world except when it is going 
 down-hill. Josh Billings declared that the 
 way was greased for a man going down- 
 hill, and when a man begins to deteriorate 
 every circumstance and association in life 
 does seem to help him on to lower levels, but 
 anything that goes up and on has to be 
 pushed up and on with a strong hand. We 
 recognize this in farming, in education, in 
 business, and in war, but not in the realm of 
 religion, and yet nowhere is it more im- 
 portant. 
 
 In too many instances, the whole financial 
 management of the church has fallen into 
 the hands of picayune, incompetent men. 
 When people in a church or community hand 
 checks directly to the pastor, on the ground 
 that they have little or no confidence in the 
 men who are managing the finances, that 
 church is cruelly handicapped, and yet just 
 these conditions too often prevail. Clean, 
 clear-headed young business men sit in the 
 pews of the churches with no responsibility 
 laid upon them, while all the financial inter- 
 ests are still in the hands of feeble, inefii- 
 cient men. 
 
 [153] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 While always ready to honor age, char- 
 acter, and consecration, I do contend that 
 the very best brains and blood in the mem- 
 bership of a church should be utilized in the 
 solution of its financial problems. Anyhow, 
 the church will never come into its own, have 
 the place, and exert the influence it ought 
 to have in its community, till it comes to 
 higher ground financially. At .one place 
 I was making this point, a dear old man, 
 looking up through his tears, said, *' Doctor 
 Granger, I want to die in the harness." He 
 realized that the carrying out of my sugges- 
 tion might eliminate him from an official 
 position, and when I mentioned the incident 
 in another place. Mayor Conover, of Am- 
 sterdam, said, " It makes all the difference 
 in the world how they die in the harness, 
 whether in the collar or in the breeching, 
 pulling or holding back." Too many men are 
 dying in the breeching, and the churches are 
 crippled because of it. In some of the little 
 churches which I have visited, if the present 
 organization could be wiped out entirely and 
 a new beginning made, allowing the people 
 to elect whom they please to official position, 
 there would be a chance for the cause, but 
 not under present conditions. 
 
 These are hard things to say or print, but 
 they are facts and must be faced. The great 
 
 [154] 
 
Weakness and Inefficiency in Churches 
 
 underlying difficulty is the failure to recog- 
 nize the giving of money as religious. 
 Preaching, praying, singing, and speaking 
 in meeting, these are all religious, but the 
 giving of money is a sordid, secular affair. 
 I suspect that we preachers are at fault for 
 not clarifying the popular mind on this 
 point. When going into the pulpit of a 
 large church I am sometimes cautioned by 
 the pastor in a whisper not to say much 
 about money there, the very thing for which 
 I came. He is afraid to speak frankly to his 
 own people along these lines, and afraid to 
 let me do it. 
 
 Why do so many of our churches and 
 missionary organizations come to the end of 
 the fiscal year with deficits? Because the 
 people have never been enlightened on the 
 subject of stewardship, the Christian's use 
 of money. We have the money, we never 
 had so much, and our scale of living shows 
 it. Living on a scale four or five times 
 above that of their fathers and mothers, the 
 average man and woman in many a rural 
 church is giving the same " measly " five or 
 ten dollars given by their fathers or grand- 
 fathers fifty or sixty years ago. They are 
 disposed to keep the church on the same low 
 level. They ask the Lord to keep the minis- 
 ter humble, and they can be relied upon to 
 
 [155] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 keep him poor. Think of what we have in 
 the way of comforts today as compared with 
 former days! Electric light, steam heat, 
 telephone, rural free delivery, the daily 
 paper, the auto, and the victrola, and so on 
 to the end of the list. 
 
 No man rejoices more than I in all that 
 has come to the people. I would not take 
 one of these comforts away from them if I 
 could, but I am anxious that the same scale 
 of expenditure should be carried round the 
 whole circle, in the realm of religion as 
 elsewhere. Why not? In one of the 
 churches in my home town there was a man 
 with a wooden leg, who always sat in the 
 " amen pews," at the left of the pulpit. 
 When the minister began to warm up in 
 his sermon, this man would indulge in 
 shouting and handclapping, even thump the 
 floor with his wooden leg, so that every per- 
 son in the house felt the jar of it. When a 
 man came into that pulpit who was a little 
 more finely made up than his predecessors, 
 this man's expressions of approval got on 
 his nerve, and he suggested that the con- 
 tribution-box be passed to him, venturing 
 the opinion that he would be '' dumb as an 
 oyster " in a minute, and he was. Clapping 
 of hands, shouting, and thumping the floor 
 was positively and intensely religious, but- 
 
 [156] 
 
Weakness and Inefficiency in Churches 
 
 the mere mention of giving money utterly 
 squelched him. 
 
 I once called on Dr. William Harvey 
 King, so long the pastor of the Owego 
 church, and found him in his garden hoeing 
 among tomato-plants recently put out. 
 After speaking of the fall of the man whom 
 both of us had known, he called attention 
 to a tomato-plant that had wilted in the 
 sun that hot morning, and proposed to locate 
 the cause. With one or two strokes of the 
 hoe he uncovered a great white gaib that 
 had cut off the plant. " There you are," he 
 said, " a worm at the root ; and at the root 
 of nearly all lapses, moral or otherwise, you 
 are sure to find a worm." After ten years 
 of service in our State work, and after be- 
 ing in all our churches, taking time for a 
 careful study of conditions in some of them, 
 I am confident that the real cause of weak- 
 ness and inefficiency, ** the worm at the 
 root," in city, as well as in the country is 
 an inadequate financial system, or a system 
 improperly worked. The average church 
 has resources equal to the solution of its 
 own problems, under proper leadership, and 
 with a real business management. 
 
 4. The Lack of a Sane, Scriptural, Per- 
 sistent Evangelism. Most of our churches 
 came into being in an atmosphere of evan- 
 
 [157] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 gelism, and what was essential to the be- 
 ginning of organized religious life in the 
 community is equally essential to its main- 
 tenance. I only hint at this point here, for 
 elsewhere I have devoted a whole chapter to 
 evangelism. This lack was illustrated in 
 an appalling way in a little church in the 
 open country. After dwelling upon the re- 
 lation of the church to the community, and 
 how it can fulfil its mission, I inquired about 
 when there had been a real work of grace 
 there, and no one seemed to know. Draw- 
 ing the lines a little tighter I asked when 
 there had been a baptism there, and was in- 
 formed there had not been one in seven 
 years. The next question revealed the fact 
 that twenty-three had been lost by death in 
 that time. Think of it! Out of a little 
 church of less than sixty members twenty- 
 three had died in seven years, and not one 
 had been added on confession of faith. 
 That little church represents a class that the 
 *' efficiency experts " speak of as ^'decadent," 
 and whose only remedy is to combine with 
 other organizations in the same condition, 
 " federation." By combining weak churches 
 you may get a stronger church, but you will 
 hardly get an efficient church by putting to- 
 gether several inefficient ones. 
 
 In the light of experience, history, and the 
 
 [158] 
 
Weakness and Inefficiency in Churches 
 
 Scriptures I insist that what is needed in all 
 such cases is a new vision of God, of our 
 relation to him and to the world that always 
 comes in a genuine religious awakening. In 
 'nine cases out of ten such an experience lifts 
 the church out of its low estate and starts it 
 on a new career, enabling it to realize, at 
 least in part, the great goals of our " Five 
 Year Program." 
 
 [159] 
 
XI 
 
 THE AGED AND INFIRM 
 MINISTER 
 
THE AGED AND INFIRM 
 MINISTER 
 
 Allow me to say at the outset that I am 
 not here this morning from my own choice. 
 Very reluctantly have I consented to at- 
 tempt a service for which I feel I have no 
 special qualification. Four weeks ago our 
 Men's Association in Mount Vernon had 
 their fall reunion and banquet, with Dr. 
 Kerr Boyce Tupper as the guest and speaker 
 of the evening. Going down from the place 
 where the men had assembled to the supper 
 room, Brother M. H. Pogson, secretary of 
 this society, urged me to use my influence in 
 securing Doctor Tupper for our annual 
 meeting, on Monday, December i8. More 
 than once during the evening I referred to 
 the matter, and the genial doctor assured me 
 that in case he found his calendar clear for 
 that date he would gladly serve us. A week 
 ago last Saturday night Secretary Pogson 
 called at my home, saying that the commit- 
 tee had decided I ought to make the address. 
 
 1 Delivered under the auspices of the Baptist Ministers' Home 
 Society, at its Twenty-second Anniversary, before the Baptist Minis- 
 ters' Conference of New York and Vicinity. 
 
 [ 163 ] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 When I inquired about Doctors Tupper, 
 MacArthur, and other eminent brethren who 
 had not been before the society, he told me 
 he had tried them all, and failed because of 
 their previous engagements. Now he was 
 going no farther. There was no use having 
 men like me on the Board unless we some- 
 times served them. I thought of Dr. Leon- 
 ard Woods, the president of a New England 
 college in the middle of the last century. 
 He was spending a summer in Europe. 
 While in Paris with some American friends, 
 he was invited to dine with Louis Philippe, 
 then King of France. On the day appointed 
 they went to the palace. After greetings the 
 king said : " My dear Doctor Woods, we 
 were uncertain about your presence today. 
 You did not answer our invitation." Equal 
 to the occasion Doctor Woods replied, " We 
 thought the invitation of a king was not 
 something to be answered, but to be 
 obeyed." So in obedience to the invitation 
 of the royal men on our board I am here 
 this morning. 
 
 You will hardly expect anything startling 
 or original from me on this subject. When 
 William M. Taylor was invited to deliver a 
 course of lectures before the Yale Divinity 
 School in 1876, he recalled the fact that 
 Henry Ward Beecher had been there in 
 
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The Aged and Infirm Minister 
 
 1872, 1873, and 1874, and John Hall in 
 1875; so he began his lectures in this way, 
 " What shall the man do that cometh after 
 the king ? " Remembering that Lorimer, 
 Henson, Johnston, Conwell, and Stone have 
 preceded me, I say now, '' What shall the 
 man do that cometh after the kings? " So 
 much in the way of introduction. 
 
 Let me say that I shall not dwell upon the 
 question as to whether the minister is an 
 underpaid man. Some of my predecessors 
 have gone over that ground. Sidney Smith 
 declared that brains, like any other commod- 
 ity, were worth what they would bring in 
 the market. You may differ with him. My 
 own opinion is that the average minister gets 
 about what he would have received in any 
 other calling into which he might have gone. 
 In any case, that was a matter carefully con- 
 sidered before we decided to enter the minis- 
 try. I think we felt then what we believe 
 now, that a good deal of the best work done 
 in this world never can be paid for in dollars 
 and cents. Having decided to enter the 
 work in that spirit, and with that under- 
 standing, it is hardly the manly thing for 
 us to whine about underpay now. Nor am I 
 going to dwell upon the " meanness of the 
 churches." It was quite the thing, when I 
 was a boy in this conference, for the breth- 
 
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Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 ren to gather about a lunch-table, at the 
 close of the Monday morning session, to talk 
 over their experiences. Often did the older 
 brethren dilate upon the meanness and pe- 
 nuriousness of the churches and their offi- 
 cial boards. If the younger brethren looked 
 incredulous, they were assured that some- 
 thing was in store for them in that line later 
 on. After many years in the pastorate, with 
 not one hour out of service I can say that I 
 know nothing of what the brethren were 
 speaking then. With a large part of my 
 ministerial life spent in harmonizing 
 churches that had been the victims of unwise 
 pastors, I must say what may be a very un- 
 popular thing to say in this presence, that 
 my sympathies are with the churches rather 
 than with the pastors. Thus far I have 
 been treated as well as I deserved. I might 
 also say that a large part of the time has 
 been spent with little churches, in which the 
 salary did not exceed a thousand dollars a 
 year. 
 
 Whenever we come to make the plea in 
 behalf of our aged or infirm brethren certain 
 suggestions always come from our laymen. 
 It is wonderful how fertile the laity are in 
 suggestions to the ministry. . If they, the 
 ministers, had only done this or that, they 
 would never have come into their present 
 
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 condition. In many cases these suggestions 
 are only excuses for not responding to our 
 appeals. Every minister ought to begin his 
 career by a practice of the most rigid econo- 
 my, we are told — a determination not only 
 to live within his means, but to lay up some- 
 thing every year. Well, I think the average 
 preacher does just that thing. Most of the 
 students for the ministry come from the 
 lowly walks in life, from homes in which, in 
 their earliest days it was a question how to 
 " keep the wolf away from the door." With 
 that sort of training they enter upon their 
 work, with the habit of their life upon them. 
 I know one minister, who, with his wife, 
 began in that way. At the end of twenty- 
 five years they had twenty-five hundred dol- 
 lars to invest in bonds. That amount repre- 
 sented just what they received in marriage 
 and funeral fees for that period. In other 
 words, they had lived within their means 
 and laid up that amount. I imagine that is 
 a fair sample of what the average man is 
 doing. Then there is the education of his 
 children. Without fear of contradiction I 
 afifirm that no class of men do more for their 
 children or contribute more in the way of 
 efficient men and women for all the varied 
 callings of life, business and professional, 
 than the Christian ministry. Many years 
 
 M [ 167 ] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 ago, when Austin Phelps was in his prime at 
 Andover, he made a careful study of all the 
 men in the seminary as to their antecedents 
 — where they were born, the character of 
 their parents, their early opportunities, and 
 training. Out of one hundred and twenty 
 men he found that one hundred and ten, or 
 eleven-twelfths of them, were from Chris- 
 tian homes, while nearly one-tenth were sons 
 of ministers. A careful examination of the 
 records of men, eminent in nearly all the 
 honorable walks of life, will reveal the same 
 thing. At a recent banquet in New York, in 
 honor of a great railway man, the guest him- 
 self, with two prominent corporation law- 
 yers at the same table, were sons of minis- 
 ters. The old fling at ministers about their 
 sons going wrong is not true then ? Not at 
 all. It is a malicious slander which I re- 
 sent. When my first boy came the people 
 began to warn me and remind me of the old 
 saying about clergymen's sons and what be- 
 came of them. Finally I asked them to 
 particularize, to mention an instance. They 
 named the son of a pastor who had lived in 
 that community twenty-five years before. 
 If you go into that town this afternoon and 
 the conversation turns on ministers' sons, 
 they will recall that wayward boy and his 
 career. When any go wrong it is so excep- 
 
 [i68] 
 
The Aged and Infirm Minister 
 
 tional as to become conspicuous, and the 
 memory of one boy who fell abides in that 
 town fifty years after he has gone from it. 
 More than that, the average minister not 
 only lives within his means, laying up some- 
 thing, and educating his children, but he 
 contributes his share toward the financial, 
 benevolent, and charitable work of the 
 church. Rarely does he urge his people to 
 go where he does not lead them in this re- 
 spect, and with every increase of income 
 there is a corresponding increase in the de- 
 mands made upon him. I can truthfully 
 say this morning that I have no more to 
 spend on myself now in the way of luxuries, 
 books, or travel, than I had when on a salary 
 of a thousand dollars. With every increase 
 has come greater demands. Of course, there 
 is here and there a man who does not live 
 within his means. No man is more unspar- 
 ing in his condemnation of such than I. 
 These are the men who scandalize our pro- 
 fession, compromise our religion, and cru- 
 cify our Lord afresh. For such a man, who 
 does not meet his obligations, there may be 
 a place somewhere, but certainly not in the 
 Christian ministry. But, brethren, let me 
 ask, not in their defense, but by way of in- 
 quiry, Why should the laity have a mo- 
 nopoly of that sort of thing? It must cer- 
 
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Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 tainly be remarked that all too many in our 
 pews fail in that respect. 
 
 Again we are told that our ministers ought 
 to be better business men. The intimation is 
 that destitution at last is due to his incom- 
 petency as a business man. Since when did 
 the minister fail in this respect? My own 
 observation has led me to believe that the 
 success of the average church is due more 
 to the business ability of the man in the 
 pulpit than any other man in it. There are 
 exceptions, I admit, but if the ordinary 
 church official transacted his own business 
 as he does that of the church, he would go 
 on the rocks inside of a year. The one man 
 who stands as a kind of unsleeping sentinel 
 over it all, year in and out, is the pastor, and 
 when a critical hour arrives, he usually comes 
 to the rescue. Nearly all our great denomi- 
 national organizations are the creations of 
 ministerial brains — planned and financed by 
 ministers. I never heard the late secretary 
 of our Home Mission Society preach a ser- 
 mon, make an address, or participate in a 
 debate that I did not say to myself. Here is 
 a man who could have conducted a great 
 political campaign, organized and managed 
 vast business interests, or distinguished him- 
 self in the legislative halls of the nation had 
 he chosen his life-work along these lines. 
 
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The Aged and Infirm Minister 
 
 " Much every way " are the words that de- 
 scribe Dr. Henry L. Morehouse, and this 
 generation will never appreciate his part in 
 the solution of the great problems of our 
 time. The same thing is true of Doctors 
 Ashmore, Clough, and others on the foreign 
 field. In a conference of ministers and lay- 
 men a few years since at the Manhattan 
 Hotel, called to stimulate interest in our 
 educational work abroad. Doctor Mabie an- 
 nounced a gift of ten thousand dollars from 
 Doctor Ashmore, the veteran missionary, as 
 the first contribution toward the proposed 
 endowment of half a million. How did it 
 come about? In this way. Years ago, on 
 his own judgment. Doctor Ashmore in- 
 vested some funds of the Missionary Union 
 where he was confident of handsome returns. 
 The members of the board in Boston disap- 
 proved and Doctor Ashmore assumed the 
 risk himself. Time vindicated his wisdom 
 in the matter, and now he is able to lead the 
 movement for larger educational work in 
 the East. I do not know it from their own 
 lips, but I have been told that both Ash- 
 more and Clough could have been appointed 
 to high positions as diplomats at Oriental 
 courts had they been willing to turn aside 
 from their chosen life-work. When General 
 Grant took command of the Army of the 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 Potomac some men who had served with 
 him in the West were invited to places on 
 his staff. Among them was a minister who 
 had been chaplain of the old regiment raised 
 and commanded by Grant. In a letter 
 thanking the General for remembering him 
 he said : '* I hold a commission from One 
 higher than any earthly commander, and he 
 wants me to preach. Therefore I must de- 
 cline your kind offer." That is the spirit in 
 which these great missionaries, qualified for 
 any position in the gift of men, have gone 
 about their work. Multitudes of churches, 
 Y. M. C. A. buildings, hospitals, and re- 
 formatory institutions, at home and abroad, 
 are monuments to the organizing and finan- 
 cial ability of the minister. If then a 
 " forlorn hope " is to be led, anywhere in the 
 community, in nine cases out of ten a min- 
 ister will he found to lead it to a successful 
 issue. 
 
 We are reminded further that the min- 
 ister should have been more careful in the 
 investment of his savings. I presume this 
 means that we ought to put the little we have 
 managed to lay up into the hands of the lay- 
 men to invest for us. Brethren, is not this 
 what the most of us have done? What has 
 been the outcome? Why, we have awak- 
 ened some morning not to find that ^' moth 
 
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The Aged and Infirm Minister 
 
 and rust have corrupted, but that thieves 
 have broken through and stolen." When I 
 came to my present field twelve years ago 
 some of my brethren in a former field re- 
 minded me of my obligation to myself and 
 family, insisting that I should take out a 
 large policy in some strong life insurance 
 company. In that way I would be com- 
 pelled, out of my increased income, to lay 
 up more each year. I at once acted on their 
 suggestion. Just here my blood gets quickly 
 to the boiling-point when I recall the sacri- 
 fices made by me and my family to keep up 
 that policy. If we get anything like equity 
 out of our investment, it will be because emi- 
 nent thieves have fallen out in the distribu- 
 tion of the '* loot." Similar experiences 
 have we had with savings banks and build- 
 ing and loan associations. The indifference 
 of eminent laymen on their boards has al- 
 lowed presidents and cashiers with Wall 
 Street propensities " to try their hands " 
 with our hard earnings. In the language of 
 General Grant, " The rascality of business 
 partners has brought us to the verge of 
 ruin." With the failure of our little invest- 
 ment has come the failure of health, break 
 in our work, and ultimately, a condition of 
 absolute need, obliging us to look to others 
 for the help we hoped to give ourselves. 
 
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Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 So when we have done our best, lived 
 within our means, wisely invested the little 
 we could lay up after educating our chil- 
 dren and bearing our part in the financial 
 work of the kingdom, some of us will come 
 down to the end of our career destitute. Not 
 a large number. Less than sixty out of 
 more than two thousand ordained ministers 
 in the three States in which we do our work 
 appeal to us for help. Others are cared for 
 by children, friends, or churches whom they 
 have served. Only about one in forty are 
 compelled to ask for aid. This is a re- 
 markable showing. Some there are, and 
 there always will be while men and the plans 
 they make are fallible. It is inevitable. 
 They are swept out or carried away by cir- 
 cumstances over which they have no control. 
 It is idle, when that inevitable hour comes, 
 to talk about what they ought to have done, 
 and where and how they ought to have 
 invested their funds. 
 
 The question is what shall be done for 
 these men when the hour of need comes? 
 In the spirit of our Lord we must minister 
 to them and care for them. We must do this 
 first because of what they are, what they 
 have been and done. The heritage into 
 which we as pastors and churches have come 
 Is ours because these men have lived and 
 
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The Aged and Infirm Minister 
 
 wrought. The '' consummate flower of our 
 Christian civilization " is not the growth of 
 a decade or century. Its roots reach back 
 into the past. The seeds out of which it has 
 grown were planted by the toils and watered 
 by the tears of these men. 
 
 When our National Anniversaries were 
 held in Washington in 1888 I went to Rich- 
 mond, the seat of the Confederacy. After 
 visiting the historic features of the Capital, 
 we drove out over the Fredericksburg road, 
 visiting the whole series of battle-fields from 
 Fredericksburg to Harrison's Landing. The 
 most impressive hour was at Old Cold Har- 
 bor, where McClellan went in 1862 and 
 Hancock made the awful charge in 1864. 
 Grant tells us that the only regret in his mili- 
 tary career was the giving of the order for 
 that charge, for nothing was gained by it. 
 Ten thousand men were wounded or dead 
 on the field in twelve minutes. A tree, 
 standing in a stone-wall toward which the 
 men rushed for shelter was trimmed as clean 
 as a telegraph-pole, and stands as a silent 
 sentinel over the scene of carnage today. A 
 Grand Army man, the keeper of the Na- 
 tional Cemetery, showed us where he lay 
 helpless among the dying and dead for 
 hours. A shell had torn away part of his 
 side. When asked if otherwise injured he 
 
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Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 showed scars received at Chancellorsville 
 and Seven Pines. Finally lifting his cap, 
 he revealed a great scar from a saber-stroke 
 in the Peach Orchard at Gettysburg. Draw- 
 ing a long breath I ventured to remark that 
 the enemy was near to him. '' Yes," he re- 
 plied, '' and I was just as close at hand." 
 Then in a lower tone he said it was the 
 enemy's last thrust. Every drop of blood in 
 my veins tingled as I stood silent in the 
 presence of that man. Brethren, it is that 
 sort of battle-scarred, heroic men who ap- 
 peal to us for help. How shall we respond 
 to their appeal? In July, 1893, I was at 
 Gettysburg at the dedication of the New 
 York State Monument. It was on Sunday 
 afternoon, the thirtieth anniversary of the 
 battle. Twenty-five thousand veterans of 
 the battle, marred and broken, only as men 
 can be in deadly conflict, gathered about the 
 speaker's stand. As T looked from the plat- 
 form into their faces I recalled Sherman's 
 words, that '* War is hell." In his opening 
 words General Daniel Sickles, one of the 
 commanders in the fight and the presiding 
 officer of the day, said, " A nation that does 
 not make liberal provision for its defenders, 
 will some day be without defenders, will be 
 unworthy of them." So I say a great de- 
 nomination that does not care for the men 
 
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The Aged and Infirm Minister 
 
 who have fought its battles, defended and 
 propagated its principles, made it what it is, 
 may some day be without defenders; yes, 
 will be unworthy of them. You will remind 
 me that some of our needy pastors have not 
 served long or achieved much. They seem 
 to have prematurely faltered by the way. 
 We recognize that, and in dealing with them 
 attempt to discriminate in favor of the men 
 who have served longest. And yet our re- 
 ward in the great day will not be according 
 to the length or jnature of our service. Paul 
 seems to emphasize that in his last words : 
 '' Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown 
 of righteousness, which the Lord, the right- 
 eous judge, shall give me at that day : and 
 not to me only, but unto all them also that 
 love his appearing." Not where we serve, 
 or what we do, or how long we serve, but 
 the spirit in which we do what we do will 
 determine our reward. 
 
 So I say, because of what these men have 
 been and the spirit in which they have served 
 we must respond to their appeals. " Inas- 
 much as ye have done it to the least of these 
 my brethren, ye have done it unto me." Do 
 not fail to do for them, and you do not fail 
 to do for Him. We must do this for them, 
 secondly, because they are men and belong 
 to our household of faith. " As we have 
 
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Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 therefore opportunity, let us do good unto 
 all men, especially unto them who are of the 
 household of faith." " All men," because 
 they are men, children of a common Father, 
 touched by the same Spirit, and redeemed by 
 the same Saviour, but " especially those of 
 our household of faith." When I went 
 home one summer I found my father about 
 to enter the courts of law with some of his 
 neighbors. What was the difficulty? His 
 only sister, whose inefficient husband had 
 carelessly given notes to unscrupulous men, 
 was about to be driven out of her home. I 
 urged him not to go to law with his neigh- 
 bors at that time of his life. Looking me in 
 the eyes, with trembling lip and deep feeling, 
 he said, " My boy, do you think I am going 
 to see my only sister driven out of her 
 home ? " Her blood was in his veins. Com- 
 mon ties and interest bound them together, 
 so he would defend her, and he did. Breth- 
 ren, can we be oblivious to the ties that bind 
 these men to us, and to God ? '' Our house- 
 hold of faith." 
 
 We must respond to these appeals, thirdly, 
 because it will give a new meaning to the 
 promises of God. John Wesley had a stu- 
 dent who felt called to the ministry. He 
 also had a growing family to support. 
 After a severe struggle it seemed impossible 
 
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The Aged and Infirm Minister 
 
 for him to go on, so he wrote to Mr. Wesley, 
 intimating that he would have to give it up. 
 Wesley wrote a letter calculated to encour- 
 age him. He closed the letter with the 
 Psalmist's words : " Trust in the Lord and 
 do good, so shalt thou dwell in the land, and 
 verily thou shalt be fed." Then he took 
 three or four five-pound Bank of England 
 notes, enclosing them with the letter and the 
 promise. In a few days a reply came from 
 the man in these words : " My dear Mr. 
 Wesley, Your letter heartens me greatly. 
 Also the notes on the promise. I had con- 
 sulted all the commentaries on that promise, 
 but found no notes so helpful as the ones you 
 sent." Shall we not give these brethren 
 some helpful notes on the promises ? It will 
 help them to a new interpretation of the 
 word. 
 
 Well, we must do this, in the fourth and 
 last place, because of the claim that weak- 
 ness has on strength. " We, then, that are 
 strong ought to bear the infirmities of the 
 weak, and not to please ourselves, for even 
 Christ pleased not himself." Booker Wash- 
 ington in his book, " Up From Slavery," 
 expresses great admiration for his old 
 teacher. General Armstrong of Hampton In- 
 stitute, Virginia. Armstrong's magic hand 
 was laid upon him in the critical period of 
 
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Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 his life, shaping his character and destiny. 
 He recognized it and ceased not to be grate- 
 ful for it. When a man was wanted to 
 organize and carry on a work at Tuskegee, 
 Armstrong suggested Booker Washington. 
 In his last days, when broken in health, the 
 general went to Alabama to look over 
 Booker's work. After he had rested from 
 the fatigue of the journey he was taken in 
 an invalid's chair by Booker's own hands to 
 a point where he could look over the whole 
 plant. The great black leader and educator 
 declares that to have been the proudest mo- 
 ment of all his life. The recognition of the 
 claim which weakness has on strength ! Enter 
 a street-car, and you are allowed to stand for 
 miles. No one thinks of offering you a seat. 
 Let a woman with a babe in arms enter, and 
 a score are ready to give their place to her. 
 So some one has said a woman with a babe 
 in her arms can travel around the globe. 
 Recognition of the claim which weakness 
 has on strength! Can we refuse to recog- 
 nize this claim on us? To come a little 
 nearer, let me remind you that the inevitable 
 hour of which I have spoken will come to 
 some of you, some of us. If not to us, our 
 wives or children. Nothing is more pathetic 
 than to see what becomes of some of our 
 wives when we are gone. A few years ago 
 
 [i8o] 
 
The Aged and Infirm Minister 
 
 I went into the Publication Society rooms on 
 a Monday morning. A sweet-faced woman 
 in black was examining the books, but she 
 seemed to know no one, and no one seemed 
 to know her. After the conference hour she 
 was still there, and I learned from the super- 
 intendent who she was — the widow of one 
 of the most eminent men in our denomina- 
 tion. He had been kind to me in my early 
 ministry, so I determined to speak to her. 
 Not another minister had recognized or 
 spoken to her that day. She wondered if 
 it were possible to drop out and be so soon 
 forgotten. A dear friend of her husband's 
 in another denomination, had made a place 
 where she was tenderly cared for. A man, 
 once pastor in this city, whom I had known 
 in student days, wondered if the work 
 our society undertakes was worth doing; 
 laughed at me for wasting time in service on 
 the board. All his ministerial life he had 
 been on a good salary, how could any man 
 be in want? Suddenly he went out of life. 
 Inside of a year a letter from his widow, a 
 proud, high-spirited woman, comes into my 
 hands, as chairman of the Committee on 
 Applications, appealing for help. And we 
 are giving it — giving, as in nearly all cases 
 we do, in a quiet, delicate way to piece out 
 what they may have in their home with chil- 
 
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Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 dren or friends. Brethren, if such an hour 
 shall come to you or your widow, what 
 ought to be the attitude of our society to- 
 ward you? What is your attitude toward 
 the society now ? 
 
 [182] 
 
xn 
 
 OUR NEW YORK STATE 
 MISSIONARY CONVENTION 
 
 N 
 
OUR NEW YORK STATE 
 MISSIONARY CONVENTION 
 
 Under this head I want to consider: 
 I. "The Convention"; 2. "Its Work"; 
 3. " Its Needs " ; 4. " Why It Ought to Be 
 Sustained." 
 
 1. Concerning the Convention, let me say- 
 that the Convention is our State organiza- 
 tion for the promotion of missionary work. 
 I like to emphasize this in a sentence or two 
 because it is not clear to the minds of some 
 of our people just what we stand for. In- 
 deed, I am sometimes introduced on public 
 platforms in such a way as to reveal the 
 fact that the man introducing me does not 
 know what I am there to represent. I can 
 put it in a single sentence, so it can be car- 
 ried away and recalled. It is the great 
 family of Baptist churches, joining hands 
 for service within the limits of the Empire 
 State. So much for the organization. 
 
 2. Concerning the Work. 
 
 (i) The Convention aims to promote the 
 preaching of the gospel, the establishment 
 and maintenance of Baptist churches. Why 
 
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Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 Baptist? Because Baptist churches more 
 nearly realize our ideal of what constitutes a 
 New Testament church than any other. The 
 celebrated Archbishop Whately of the En- 
 glish Church once declared that if our re- 
 ligion is not true, not in harmony with the 
 plainest teaching of the New Testament, 
 then we ought to change it and make it true, 
 but if it be true, then we are bound to propa- 
 gate and perpetuate it. So I say if the 
 things which our fathers and mothers be- 
 lieved, and for which some of them suffered, 
 were not true, we ought to change them and 
 make them true, but if they were true then 
 we are bound to propagate and perpetuate 
 them, and we are disloyal to their memories, 
 and utterly unworthy of the great inheri- 
 tance into which we have come by virtue of 
 our relation to them, unless we do it. 
 
 Our aim then is to promote the preaching 
 of the gospel, the establishment and main- 
 tenance of Baptist churches, always I trust 
 in the spirit of the Master, and yet without 
 any apology. 
 
 The last time Dean Stanley was on this 
 side of the water he received the Baptist 
 ministers of New York and vicinity, on a 
 certain Monday morning, at the residence of 
 Cyrus W. Field, where he was a guest. 
 Doctor Armitage, who was then the Nestor 
 
 [i86] 
 
New York State Missionary Convention 
 
 of our ministers, made an address in which 
 he thanked the eminent man for some kind 
 words he had said about Baptists, and what 
 they had stood for through the centuries. 
 Dean Stanley began to reply by saying, 
 " Brethren, any denomination that has given 
 to the world such poets as Milton, such 
 dreamers as Bunyan, such preachers as 
 Robert Hall, and such soldiers as Sir Henry 
 Havelock, has no reason to apologize for its 
 existence." So in view of our splendid his- 
 tory and achievement in this and other 
 lands, I insist that we have no reason to 
 apologize for our existence. Allow me, 
 therefore, to repeat that in our State mis- 
 sionary work, we aim, without making any 
 apology, first of all to promote the preaching 
 of the gospel and the fostering of Baptist 
 churches. 
 
 (2) We aim to encourage our common 
 educational interests. No great denomina- 
 tion can be far-reaching and permanently suc- 
 cessful in the world, except it give itself to, 
 at least make wise provision for, the educa- 
 tion of its own people. Martin B. Anderson 
 appealing for a more liberal endowment for 
 the University of Rochester, an institution 
 to which he had given the larger part of a 
 remarkable life, declared that Harvard Col- 
 lege was the top, bottom, and side of Unitar- 
 
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Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 ianism in New England. His contention 
 was that in just so far as Unitarianism was 
 inculcating its views in the life of the New 
 England people, it was doing it through 
 Harvard College rather than through its 
 pulpits. At the installation of Henry W. 
 Bellows as pastor of All Souls Church, 
 New York, in 1838, William EUery Chan- 
 ning was present and ventured the prophecy 
 that in fifty years Unitarianism would be 
 the ruling faith of New York. Fifty, yes, 
 eighty years have gone, and you can count 
 the places of Unitarian worship in New 
 York on the fingers of one hand and not 
 exhaust them. His prophecy has not been 
 fulfilled then in New York? No, nor any- 
 where else, outside the immediate influence 
 of Harvard College. 
 
 Now what I want to urge is that we Bap- 
 tists ought all the while to use our educa- 
 tional institutions for the propagation of our 
 denominational life, not rely upon them as 
 Unitarianism has done. It goes without 
 saying that the kind of an education we 
 stand for in all our institutions is an all- 
 round Christian education, because the more 
 you educate, unless it be in every part of the 
 nature, the more perilous young men and 
 women may become to the highest and best 
 interests of the people in the communities in 
 
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New York State Missionary Convention 
 
 which they live. Some of the brightest men 
 in this great State are behind prison walls, 
 and there are others who ought to be there 
 because utterly devoid of moral sense, 
 trained mentally, socially, and politically, but 
 not morally or religiously. The really dan- 
 gerous man then is not always the ignorant 
 man but the educated rascal. Captain Ober- 
 lin M. Carter was graduated at West Point 
 thirty years ago at the head of his class. In- 
 deed, if I am rightly informed, he holds the 
 record for scholarship of all the young men 
 graduated from that remarkable school, and 
 yet in fifteen years from the time he was 
 graduated he was in a military penitentiary 
 in the West for robbing the Government 
 that had educated him of more than five mil- 
 lion dollars, because his education had failed 
 to touch the moral side of his nature. More 
 perilous, because only partially educated. 
 So I say we stand for an all-round Christian 
 education, and for more than a hundred 
 years it has been a part of our duty to foster 
 these institutions. 
 
 (3) ^^^ <^^^^^ ^^-^^ ^^ encourage our de- 
 nominational Sunday School zvork. The 
 motto of the New York State Sunday 
 School Association, an interdenominational 
 organization, is this, " The word of God by 
 the hand of the living teacher, for every man, 
 
 [ 189 ] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 woman, and child in our State." That is on 
 all their stationery and on all their programs, 
 and yet in spite of their influence and the 
 influence of all our evangelical churches, we 
 have in this great State a million boys and 
 girls of school age not in any Sunday 
 School, or under any positive religious in- 
 fluence anywhere. One-tenth of the whole 
 population, an appalling fact! But, some 
 one intimates, they are in down-town New 
 York, in Albany, Troy, Utica, Syracuse, 
 Rochester, and Buffalo, where the foreign 
 elements are segregated. Just as large a 
 part of them in proportion to the population 
 are to be found in smaller cities, villages, and 
 even in the countryside, as among what Mr. 
 Beecher used to call the million-hearted com- 
 mon people in our great cities. I have been 
 half of my life in such places, and I know 
 what it is to make a careful canvass of a 
 whole township. If you will do this any- 
 where, in city, town, or country, you will be 
 amazed to find how many boys and girls 
 there are of school age all about you, not in 
 any Sunday School. 
 
 If this be true, then the ultimate hope for 
 reaching and saving them is not alone in 
 their environment. We have been empha- 
 sizing in our day, as never before, the im- 
 portance of a pure and healthful environ- 
 
 [190] 
 
New York State Missionary Convention 
 
 ment in which our children can come to 
 manhood and womanhood, and we cannot 
 make too much of that, and yet all the while 
 we realize that while their surroundings may 
 !'be salutary, they are not necessarily saving. 
 We shall save them only as we bring them 
 into a right relation in their own spirits 
 toward God as revealed in Jesus Christ. Ed- 
 ward Judson is reputed to have said con- 
 cerning Hamilton, the seat of Colgate Uni- 
 versity, that there was more of character, 
 piety, and culture there to a square foot 
 than any place with which he was familiar ; 
 whereat Dean Burnham, of the Seminary, 
 contended that he could parallel every crime 
 in the catalog in that same beautiful town, 
 and probably both were right. Chief Justice 
 Chase was once on his way from Washing- 
 ton to his Western home, when he had occa- 
 sion to step off the train onto the station 
 platform of a West Virginia town, where 
 the last rays of a summer sun were falling 
 over the mountaintops and flooding the place 
 with glory and beauty. " What a place to 
 be born in ! Patrick Henry was born here. 
 No wonder he was one of the most eloquent 
 men of the Colonial period," was his excla- 
 mation. " Yes," replied a hanger-on at the 
 station, who heard the remark, " dem moun- 
 tains and dat sunshine been here from time 
 
 [191] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 immemorial, and there has never been but 
 one Patrick Henry born here." 
 
 What did he mean ? What I am just now 
 insisting upon, that the determining factor 
 in character and destiny for every child 
 born into this world is not alone in the air 
 they breathe, the sunshine that warms them, 
 the song of the birds, or the perfume of the 
 flowers. Not in anything without them, but 
 within them, a right attitude toward God in 
 their own spirits. Now, if there is any rea- 
 son why we should have Baptist churches in 
 this State, there are just as many reasons 
 why we should have Baptist Sunday 
 Schools, and logically, in the long run, we 
 shall get one only as we foster the other. 
 Incidentally we do other things, like the set- 
 tlement of difficulties in churches, the bring- 
 ing of churchless pastors and pastorless 
 churches together, and the divine approval 
 is on all that kind of effort, but primarily, all 
 the while, we stand for the things I have in- 
 dicated, the preaching of the gospel, the 
 planting and fostering of Baptist churches, 
 and the encouragement of our educational 
 interests and our denominational Sunday 
 School work. 
 
 3. Concerning the Needs. Let me give 
 some facts that indicate the need and possi- 
 bility of mission work in this State, 
 
 [192] 
 
Neiv York State Missionary Convention 
 
 ( I ) More than ten millions of people are 
 in this territory. In 1783, at the close of the 
 Revolutionary war, there were less than two 
 hundred thousand people, nearly all in the 
 valleys of the Hudson, the Mohawk, and the 
 Susquehanna rivers. But in 19 18 there were 
 more than ten million, and they were coming 
 from lands beyond the sea, up to the time of 
 the declaration of the world war, at the rate 
 of a million and a quarter every year 
 through New York harbor alone, thirty- 
 three and a third per cent remaining on the 
 soil of this State. Now what part of the 
 whole population is in the membership of 
 our Baptist churches? One in fifty-five. 
 You wonder why we have so few? One 
 reason is to be found in the fact just men- 
 tioned, the large number coming from other 
 lands through the years, whose only concep- 
 tion of religious truth and religious life has 
 been gained in the State churches of the Old 
 World. Lest this statement be resented, let 
 me say that I came that way myself. I am 
 one of those immigrants. For fifty-six days 
 and nights with my parents I was tossed on 
 old ocean's wave between the harbors of 
 Liverpool and Quebec, in an old sailing ves- 
 sel that carried lumber from the Canadian 
 forests one way and brought back immi- 
 grants, ten dollars a head and children half- 
 
 [ 193 ] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 price, the other. So the first time I crossed 
 the Atlantic I had three thousand miles of 
 bed and board and travel for a five-dollar 
 bill. When I had told this story in a New 
 York pulpit a Columbia College professor 
 suggested the reading of Professor Steiner's 
 book, " The Trail of the Immigrant " — 
 where he goes after landing here. I rather 
 resented the suggestion, for I had read 
 nearly all Steiner had put into print. In any 
 case I did not need to read it, for out of ex- 
 perience I knew the way; these feet had 
 trodden the " trail." 
 
 (2) There are nearly a hundred villages 
 of from one to iive thousand people in the 
 State without a Baptist church, where your 
 children or mine could not find a place in 
 which God could be worshiped after the 
 faith of their fathers. Of course I do not 
 advocate the putting of a Baptist church in 
 every one of these towns, for some of them 
 are overchurched now. As a matter of fact, 
 I do not favor the organization of a Baptist 
 church anywhere merely for the sake of 
 saying we have a church there, but only as 
 it meets a real religious need. Doubtless in 
 some of these towns there are people of our 
 faith who ought to be inspired to erect a 
 church and do our part in bringing the king- 
 dom of God to the whole people. 
 
 [194] 
 
New York State Missionary Convention 
 
 (3) There are four hundred Baptist 
 churches with less than a hundred members. 
 Many of these, I am glad to state, are 
 " serving their generation by the will of 
 God " in a splendid way. But there are two 
 hundred churches, more or less dependent, 
 missionary churches that cannot, or think 
 they cannot, keep their doors open without 
 some outside financial help. What are the 
 reasons for their dependent condition? 
 Under the heading of " Causes of Weakness 
 and Inefficiency " I have considered this in 
 another chapter, and therefore indicate only 
 one or two reasons here. Some of them 
 have been the victims of unwise and unprin- 
 cipled men in the ministry as pastors, for 
 we have men in our ministry, and I am in- 
 formed the same is true of other denomi- 
 nations, who can be relied upon to wreck a 
 church in six months, if they can get into 
 its pulpit. We protect the churches from 
 these men just in so far as the churches 
 themselves will permit us to do it. 
 
 Then other churches are the victims of 
 their own financial meanness, they will not 
 let loose enough cash to insure success. But 
 these causes operate in the larger churches 
 as well as in the smaller. Strong churches 
 have been victimized by unwise and un- 
 principled men as pastors, and some of the 
 
 [195] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 same class utterly fail to fulfil their God- 
 given mission to the community and the 
 world for financial reasons. Human nature 
 in a little church averages up with human 
 nature in a large church. Doctor Burling- 
 ham once said in my pulpit that human na- 
 ture was a thing *' quite prevalent," a good 
 deal of it lying round in the pews of a 
 Baptist church, and in proportion to the 
 membership it is about the same in all 
 churches, large and small. 
 
 When all allowances have been made for 
 the frailties of human nature that can be 
 made, here is the fact — we have two hun- 
 dred dependent Baptist churches in this 
 State. Now what shall be done with them ? 
 A prominent man where I had spoken on 
 this phase of our work wanted to give ad- 
 vice, and that is about all some men give 
 us. It is amazing how much advice you can 
 get on almost any subject, " without money 
 and without price." He suggested that we 
 " wring the necks of a score of these little 
 churches, and put them out of business." 
 Radical and realistic treatment! Without 
 arguing the question, allow me to say that 
 nothing could be farther from the spirit of 
 the Nazarene than indiscriminately to close 
 up any considerable number of our little 
 churches, and later on I'll tell you why. 
 
 [ 196 ] 
 
New York State Missionary Convention 
 
 '' Combine them, two or three under one 
 man, and let him serve them as best he can," 
 is the suggestion of another. Exactly what 
 we are doing. More than two hundred sta- 
 tions were served that way by missionary 
 pastors and evangelists in a recent year, and 
 the measure of the divine approval on the 
 work is seen in the fact that nearly two 
 thousand souls were added to our churches 
 as the result. 
 
 It is worthy of mention that nearly eight 
 hundred of our nine hundred and eighty-five 
 churches in the State have at some time been 
 ministered to in that way. Such churches as 
 the First, Binghamton ; First, Elmira ; First, 
 Syracuse, Rochester, and Batavia, are 
 among them. It ought to be clearly under- 
 stood that wherever aid is granted a church, 
 it is with the understanding that it is to be 
 temporary, to tide them over a crisis. Theo- 
 dore Roosevelt pithily said : "If a man 
 stumbles you can steady him, if he falls you 
 can help him back to his feet; but if he lies 
 down and refuses to get up, you cannot pick 
 him up and permanently carry him." That 
 is true of an individual, and it is equally true 
 of a church. The greatest gift to any church 
 is a man in its pulpit with the genius of 
 leadership, one who can keep the people to- 
 gether with their faces toward God, which 
 
 [197] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 means victory always. This is the type of 
 men we are all the while on the lookout for, 
 and we have a right to expect that our semi- 
 naries will be giving us an increasing num- 
 ber of them. 
 
 4. Reasons why the Convention Should 
 be Sustained. 
 
 ( 1 ) Because these churches are so largely 
 our sources of supply. Ministers, missiona- 
 ries, musicians, artists, lawyers, doctors, edi- 
 tors, teachers, and engineers, men and wo- 
 men prominent in all the honorable callings 
 of life get their earliest inspirations in these 
 churches. In the chapters on " The Coun- 
 try Church " and '' The Country Boy " 
 many concrete illustrations are given. Not 
 only for what they have been, then, but be- 
 cause of what they now mean to their com- 
 munities, and to the coming generation, 
 they must be fostered, kept alive and effi- 
 cient. 
 
 (2) Because they belong to our '^house- 
 hold of faith.'' " As we have therefore op- 
 portunity, let us do good unto all men, es- 
 pecially those who are of the household of 
 faith," is the injunction of Scripture. I 
 have a duty toward all men, but I am in- 
 debted to some men as I am not to all men. 
 I love and am sympathetic toward all 
 churches, but I have an obligation to one 
 
 [198] 
 
New York State Missionary Convention 
 
 church as to no other, and that one is mine. 
 These dependent churches belong to our 
 Baptist household of faith, and there is 
 something wrong with our religion, if we 
 are not responsive to an appeal in their be- 
 half. In our family life I observe that all 
 the members are tender toward the weaker 
 ones. It ought to be the same here. 
 
 (3) Because of the claim that weakness 
 always has on strength. " We then that 
 are strong ought to bear the infirmities of 
 the weak, and so fulfil the law of Christ." 
 When the Titanic went down amid the ice- 
 bergs of the North Atlantic, and the presi- 
 dent of the White Star Line was among the 
 first reported saved, while women and chil- 
 dren perished by hundreds, we began to 
 wonder whether he had " played the man " 
 in saving himself and letting helpless women 
 and children drown. I pass no judgment 
 upon him, but I found the feeling against 
 him much stronger in England than here, 
 and the lurking suspicion that in that awful 
 hour he had not recognized the claim that 
 weakness has on strength has driven him out 
 of official position. Shall we recognize that 
 claim as we think of these dependent 
 churches ? 
 
 (4) As a matter of State policy we must 
 Americanize and Christianise these aliens 
 
 o [ 199 ] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 among us. When Carey came back from 
 India he appealed to England saying, *' Un- 
 less England Christianizes India, India will 
 heathenize England." So if we do not 
 Christianize these strangers within our 
 gates, they will heathenize us. Failing to do 
 what we ought to do for them, what God 
 expects us to do, with their rapid rate of in- 
 crease, the time is coming when they will so 
 far outnumber us that the question will no 
 longer be what we will do with them, but 
 what they will do with us. I am no pessim- 
 ist. When confronted with two or three 
 evils, the pessimist takes all of them. He 
 blows out the candle, then complains of the 
 dark. Though not pessimistic, I am con- 
 strained to say that in our dealing with these 
 people, we are confronted with a problem, 
 the like of which has confronted no genera- 
 tion in the past. 
 
 What the church, the nation, and what 
 civilization is yet to be in this land is going 
 to be determined by how we meet this crisis. 
 A delicate and difficult task? Yes, so deli- 
 cate and difficult that we shall succeed in any 
 degree, only as we live and work in an at- 
 mosphere vitalized by the spirit of Jesus 
 Christ. Thirty years ago, I went back to 
 the little town in England, where I was born, 
 and out of which my parents had taken me 
 
 [ 200 ] 
 
New York State Missionary Convention 
 
 many years before. At the close of the ser- 
 vice in the church where they were once 
 members, a sweet-faced woman announced 
 herself as my mother's girl friend. She 
 had been with my mother when she was bap- 
 tized into that church, when she was married 
 to my father, and when I was born into the 
 world. Can you imagine how the deepest 
 emotions of my heart were stirred as I 
 looked into the face of that woman ? " Give 
 your mother my love, and give her this," she 
 said, as she handed me a bulb, carefully 
 wrapped and tied, with the direction to put 
 it in rich soil and keep it in the sun. When 
 I landed in New York I mailed the bulb to 
 my mother in the old home with the direc- 
 tions of her girlhood friend, and when I 
 went over the great snowdrifts the next 
 March, to attend a funeral in that town, the 
 south window in my mother's home was a 
 mass of beautiful flowers. She had put the 
 bulb in rich soil and kept it in the sun. So 
 you and I will blossom, come to the best that 
 is in us, and do our work, delicate and diffi- 
 cult though it may be, only as we live and 
 work in the sun, in an atmosphere vitalized 
 by the spirit of Jesus Christ. 
 
 [201 ] 
 
xin 
 
 THE STRANGER WITHIN OUR 
 GATES 
 
THE STRANGER WITHIN OUR 
 GATES 
 
 In this chapter I want to speak of the alien 
 peoples, those who are spoken of in the Old 
 Testament as " the stranger within thy 
 gates." It will be a matter of surprise to 
 some of our readers to know how numerous 
 they are, to know that since 1820, when the 
 period of modern immigration began, be- 
 tween twenty-six and twenty-seven mil- 
 lions have come to us from lands beyond 
 the sea. More than sixteen millions of 
 them are now alive, and from thirty-five 
 to forty-five millions, nearly one-half the 
 population of the Republic, are either for- 
 eign-born, or the children of foreign-born. 
 When I was a little boy in a northern New 
 York public school I was the only English- 
 born boy there. When any of the pupils 
 wanted in any way to humiliate me, he 
 would sneer at me and speak of me as " that 
 Englishman," without ever mentioning my 
 name. All knew who was meant. No sane 
 child would attempt to humiliate another in 
 that way today, for every other man, wo- 
 
 [205] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 man, or child met with in all the walks of 
 life is either foreign-born or a child of for- 
 eign-born. The great mass of these foreign- 
 ers are here for the same reason that my fa- 
 ther and mother came — to better their ma- 
 terial condition. The mass of them are 
 therefore utterly out of harmony with the 
 genius and spirit of our free institutions, 
 civil and religious. 
 
 We have in them our peril, our opportu- 
 nity, and our responsibility. 
 
 They Are Our Peril. Statesmen of the 
 Old World for fifty years have been asking 
 how long the Republic could endure with 
 that vast mass of unassimilated material 
 cast in upon our shores every year, for they 
 were coming at the rate of three people in 
 every minute of time, day and night, year in 
 and out. In our better moments we have 
 been asking the same question ourselves, and 
 we cannot ask it too thoughtfully or prayer- 
 fully. But what shall be done with them? 
 Only one answer can be given. We must do 
 what we have been trying to do with them in 
 the past, absorb them, and make them a part 
 of us. If you ask if that can be done and 
 how ? I reply. By what some one has spoken 
 of as the '' miracle of assimilation," and the 
 '' image and superscription " borne by the 
 output will depend upon the dominating fac- 
 
 [206] 
 
The Stranger Within Our Gates 
 
 tor in the process. If we make that factor 
 preeminently Christian, tliere need be no 
 anxiety as to the outcome, but if we allow it 
 to be anything else, then the future will be 
 uncertain for us. For myself, I am opti- 
 mistic, and perhaps that is because I am one 
 of them. 
 
 I honestly think we have been getting in 
 these people through the years, at least in 
 brawn and muscle, about what we have 
 needed. If we were seeking to reinvigorate 
 the national stock, where should we go? 
 Not to London, for the mass of the people 
 in the lowly walks of English life are sodden 
 with drink. We who have been there for a 
 summer have been appalled at the conditions. 
 Nor would we go to Glasgow or Edinburgh, 
 for a charming Scotch gentleman declared 
 to me that he could not conceal from himself 
 the sad fact that the Scotch race is weaken- 
 ing in the fiber from strong drink. Beauti- 
 ful Edinburgh, where he has spent all his 
 life, is celebrated for two things, the manu- 
 facture of theological books and of Scotch 
 whiskey, the one calculated to neutralize the 
 other. Not to London or Edinburgh, cer- 
 tainly not in Paris, should we go to reen- 
 force the national stock. Where then? 
 Among the peasant peoples in the heart of 
 the continent of Europe, and it is from these 
 
 [207] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 countries that the bulk of immigrants have 
 been coming. 
 
 I am optimistic also because I believe in 
 God, believe that he loves them, and has a 
 purpose in their coming here. More than 
 that, I believe that he has confidence in our 
 American Christianity, and that we will do 
 what ought to be done for them. If you ask 
 me how I know he loves them, I answer as 
 Mr. Lincoln did when he had made the 
 statement that God loved the great mass of 
 homely common people of whom he was a 
 part, and some one asked him how he knew 
 God loved them. " He would not have 
 made so many of us had he not loved us," 
 was his reply. So I say, Did not our God 
 love these people and have a purpose to serve 
 in their coming, he would not allow so many 
 of them to be within our gates. A college 
 professor returning from a tour of Europe 
 became interested in a poor woman and 
 her children coming out in the steerage 
 to join her husband who had preceded 
 her and made a home for them in the 
 far West. As they neared our shores she 
 became increasingly anxious lest she should 
 miss the train that would take her to her 
 loved one. He reassured her by telling her 
 he had often been that way and would see 
 her safely on her train. As they walked 
 
 [208] 
 
The Stranger Within Our Gates 
 
 from the dock to the station, in order that 
 the grip he carried in one hand might not 
 collide with the child she was leading, he 
 stepped over on the inside of the walk, con- 
 scious that it was hardly the thing for him 
 to do. He had not gone a block when a little 
 Yiddish boy, only a few months on this side 
 of the sea, railed out at him saying : " You 
 greenhorn ! Don't you know that American 
 gentlemen don't walk on the insides but on 
 the outsides the ladies ? " Only a few 
 months within our gates, and yet open and 
 responsive to the spirit of deference to wo- 
 manhood, found here as nowhere else under 
 the sun! And if open to that spirit then 
 open to every other. If we are the '' chosen 
 and elect " among all the nations we shall 
 see to it that the Christian spirit is brought 
 to bear upon them. Whether the Republic 
 shall endure or go the way of all republics in 
 the past will be determined by our attitude 
 toward and our spirit in dealing with these 
 peoples. 
 
 Just before the war Theodore Roosevelt 
 declared that the great question after all be- 
 fore the nation was not a social, political, 
 or material question, but a moral and re- 
 ligious one, our dealing with the stranger 
 within our gates. Steiner closes a great 
 chapter in one of his books with the state- 
 
 [209] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 ment that in our dealing with the stranger 
 we are weaving either a wedding-garment or 
 a winding-sheet for the Republic. 
 
 We have more than a passing interest in 
 this problem because it is so large a factor in 
 our State work. While we have been think- 
 ing of home missions in connection with the 
 frontier and the far West, New York State 
 has become one of the greatest home mis- 
 sion fields on the continent, if not on the 
 globe. Depopulate, take away the last man, 
 woman, and child from twenty-three States 
 and Territories in the West today, and you 
 can repeople them from the Empire State 
 alone tomorrow, and have enough people left 
 to carry on business. In our population of 
 more than ten millions we have between 
 sixty and seventy nationalities. A New 
 York newspaper recently stated that thirty 
 men employed in a factory on the East Side 
 were born and grew to manhood in the little 
 town of Haran, where Terah the father of 
 Abram died when on the way to the Land 
 of Promise. Representatives of all the na- 
 tions of the earth within our gates ! Just as 
 the tides of old ocean force their way 
 through the Narrows, up the Hudson into 
 the heart of this great State, so the tides of 
 immigration have gone all over this terri- 
 tory. I travel thirty thousand miles an- 
 
 [210] 
 
The Stranger Within Our Gates 
 
 nually in this State, but I do not go so far 
 afield anywhere that I do not find them. 
 Neglected and left to themselves, they are a 
 menace to all we hold dear. 
 
 But We Have in Them also Our Opportu- 
 nity. The Great Commission in part at least 
 can be carried out through them. The word 
 " Go " may now be translated " give," no 
 longer a question of latitude and longitude, 
 but of attitude and spirit. Note some of the 
 advantageous circumstances under which we 
 can carry out the Commission to all the 
 nations, as represented by these strangers 
 within our gates. 
 
 I. The unity and freedom of our institu- 
 tions. One of the olDStacles to the propaga- 
 tion of the gospel in Oriental lands has been 
 the caste spirit, a kind of insurmountable 
 Chinese Wall, through or over which there 
 can be no communication. Nothing like that 
 in our land ; nearly fifty principalities under 
 one ruler, speaking practically one language, 
 living under one code of laws, and having 
 easy approach one to another by great lines 
 of intercommunication and travel; a free 
 Church in a free State, where the only ques- 
 tion asked about anybody is not where they 
 were born, or who their parents were, but 
 what they are, and what they can do. At 
 the close of a service in a great church in 
 
 [211] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 New York where I had spoken I had an in- 
 vitation for dinner from a well-to-do Pres- 
 byterian lady, living in a brown-stone front. 
 The invitation v/as gladly accepted, not be- 
 cause of her wealth or social standing, but 
 because when I was a barefoot boy going 
 about the town where she resided, doing er- 
 rands to make my contribution toward the 
 family life as all of us in that immigrant 
 home needed to do, she never allowed me to 
 pass her door without a kind word or a 
 smile, and when I canvassed the village for 
 books to meet the expense of my second year 
 in college, she said, " Yes, I will buy any- 
 thing you have to sell, not because I need 
 it, but because I want to help a boy who is 
 struggling up." Emerson long ago declared 
 that America was only another name for op- 
 portunity. Here the ^' barefoot boy " can 
 come up from the lowliest places to posi- 
 tions of responsibility and influence. Where 
 in all the earth is there another land with 
 such opportunity and such possibilities? 
 That is the first advantageous circumstance 
 for the carrying out of the Great Commis- 
 sion to all the nations represented by the 
 stranger within our gates. 
 
 2. On our own soil and in our own cli- 
 mate, A college classmate of mine went out 
 to the Orient as a missionary, and in a few 
 
 [212] 
 
The Stranger Within Our Gates 
 
 months was stricken with fever. Today he 
 lies in a lonely grave at the foot of the 
 Himalayas, a victim to the climate. After 
 five and thirty years of wanderings in Africa 
 David Livingstone died on his knees in his 
 lonely tent, with the Dark Continent on his 
 heart, because his quinine had given out. 
 Heathenism is dotted all over with the 
 graves of our heroic missionary dead, the 
 victims of the savage, the climate, and the 
 wild beasts. " Their graves have been the 
 stepping-stones of empire " the world over. 
 The time has now come when we can be 
 factors in the great missionary enterprise 
 without leaving our own land. 
 
 3. In our own language. One reason why 
 the progress of religious truth has been so 
 slow in foreign lands is the fact that only a 
 small part of any seminary class has a genius 
 for the mastery of a foreign tongue. Some 
 men out there for the lifetime of a genera- 
 tion are not even now at home in the lan- 
 guage. When pastor of the Madison Square 
 Presbyterian church Dr. William Adams 
 prophesied that in fifty years English would 
 be the universal tongue, and his prophecy 
 seems to be rapidly fulfilling. On a lecture 
 tour around the world Joseph Cook was 
 booked to speak in a large hall in Calcutta. 
 When the hour arrived he expressed regret 
 
 [213] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 that he could not speak to the people in their 
 own tongue. The mayor of the city who 
 was presiding assured him that he might dis- 
 miss his interpreter and speak in English, 
 for there were not a score present who would 
 not comprehend him as fully as if he were 
 speaking in Tremont Temple, Boston, and 
 he excused the interpreter and spoke in 
 English. 
 
 You can go round the globe today, in the 
 great highways of travel, speaking English. 
 A careful estimate shows that more than 
 two hundred out of every thousand speak 
 English, while only thirty or forty speak 
 French or German. When Howard B. 
 Grose wrote his illuminating account of the 
 Missionary Conference in Edinburgh in 
 19 10 for " Missions," he stated that of all 
 the nations represented there only one report 
 was made through an interpreter, all the rest 
 reported in English. English is fast becom- 
 ing the universal tongue! Newell Dwight 
 Hillis recently asserted that the time was 
 coming when one-fifth of the human race 
 would be living on the American Continent, 
 North and South America, all speaking En- 
 glish. Now if for social, political, educa- 
 tional, and business reasons all these peoples 
 speak English — and it is amazing how soon 
 most of them do — why not take advantage 
 
 [214] 
 
The Stranger Within Our Gates 
 
 of that fact and give them the gospel in En- 
 glish? In localities where they are segre- 
 gated, as in East Utica, with one-fifth of the 
 population of the city in a " Little Italy," 
 we must give the gospel at least to the first 
 generation in Italian, but even then we in- 
 sist upon services in English, or they lose 
 the children and the young people. I have 
 seen a letter in Martin B. Anderson's own 
 handwriting in which he declared that the 
 German department in Rochester Theo- 
 logical Seminary would be only a temporary 
 affair, for ultimately all our work would be 
 done in English. After speaking on this 
 subject at the Dutchess Association where 
 Dr. E. W. Clark, forty-one years in the 
 Naga Hills, was present, I was surprised and 
 delighted to have his approval of the posi- 
 tion taken. More than that, he was confi- 
 dent the time would come when our work in 
 foreign lands would be done in English, cer- 
 tainly wherever the English flag flies. This 
 would make it possible for every Christian 
 man and woman to be active in real mission- 
 ary work. 
 
 4. It is the Scriptural order, " beginning 
 at Jerusalem." John R. Mott, who has been 
 several times around the globe in the inter- 
 ests of missions, coined a phrase, and has 
 written a book under a title that has been 
 
 P [215] 
 
Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 made the watchword of the Laymen's Move- 
 ment, " The Evangelization of the World in 
 this Generation," insisted in the Student 
 Volunteer convention in Rochester that it 
 was idle to think of such a thing, unless we 
 begin with the man and woman nearest to 
 us. Then one-third of all these strangers 
 some time go back to the homeland, and all ' 
 life there is being revolutionized by Ameri- 
 can methods. A friend of mine, making a% 
 summer tour in those lands, saw the first 
 heating apparatus ever installed to make a 
 house comfortable in a town of several thou- 
 sand, and the first plate-glass window ever 
 put in there for the display of goods. Both 
 jobs were done by men who had been ten or 
 fifteen years in the United States. Now I 
 repeat, make that American spirit preemi- 
 nently Christian, and you have taken a long 
 step toward evangelizing the communities 
 where they go. Just here I should like to 
 ask what kind of representation we are hav- 
 ing in those lands by men and women who 
 for years have lived here in our own neigh- 
 borhoods? What has been our attitude to- 
 ward them while here ? It is a serious ques- 
 tion, but one that, some time, somewhere, 
 will have to be met. 
 
 John Fiske in his volume on " The Mak- 
 ing of New England " has a great chapter on 
 
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The Stranger Within Our Gates 
 
 ." Nation Making." In the welding together 
 of primitive, shifting tribes into stable and 
 powerful nations he thinks we can discern 
 three widely different methods that have 
 been followed at different times and places, 
 with widely different results. The first 
 method was the Oriental, where one tribe 
 conquered another, but did not incorporate 
 it. Many of the old despotisms in the val- 
 leys of the Nile and Euphrates originated in 
 that way. The second method was the 
 Roman, and may be described as conquest 
 with incorporation. The secret of Rome's 
 strength lay in the fact that she incorporated 
 the people she had vanquished into her own 
 body politic. In that way the whole Medi- 
 terranean world was under one government, 
 but it failed ultimately in that it lacked the 
 principle of representation, and therefore 
 ended in despotism. The third method was 
 the English, and it was different from the 
 Oriental and the Roman in that it contained 
 the principle of representation. That was 
 the great idea struggling for supremacy in 
 the Puritan revolution under Cromwell in 
 England. The struggle was finally trans- 
 ferred by the Puritans to our own land and 
 found its highest and fullest development 
 in our own day. That idea John Fiske in- 
 sists has come to rule and come to stay. 
 
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Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 Have we not here an indication of the 
 steps to be taken in dealing with these peo- 
 ple? Conquest, incorporation, representa- 
 tion. Conquer them by the power of the 
 gospel, incorporate them into our churches, 
 not set them apart in mission halls, and then 
 give them representation, make them our 
 representatives to their own people the 
 world over. The continued existence of our 
 churches in many localities depends on do- 
 ing just that thing. Some fine old historic 
 buildings in great cities are closed, the peo- 
 ple who once worshiped there gone to heaven 
 or to the suburbs. The field is deserted on 
 the ground that there are no longer any 
 people of the class to whom we have been 
 accustomed to minister left there. Only 
 another way of saying that we have been 
 ministering to a class, not a mass, been a 
 club not a church. 
 
 The same is true in some rural sections. I 
 recall a church where I used to go when I 
 was a boy on a farm, and where practically 
 all the members were Scotch, a Scotch Pres- 
 byterian church. There were the Camerons, 
 the Creightons, the McBeths, the Monteiths, 
 the Mclntyres, the Mclntoshes, the Mac- 
 Queens, the Robertsons, and the Stewarts, 
 and so on to the end of the list. After 
 nearly fifty years I find not more than one 
 
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The Stranger Within Our Gates 
 
 out of five or six families Scotch. The 
 farms have been gradually taken up by the 
 Swedes, the Dutch, the Poles, the Danes, and 
 the Norwegians. As these strangers have 
 come into the region through the years, the 
 official men of that church have given them 
 a cordial welcome and a place. It still is a 
 Scotch Presbyterian church, though only 
 now and then a Scotchman is left. The con- 
 tinued life of that church depended on re- 
 adjusting itself to the new and changed con- 
 ditions, the thing that must be done in many 
 other places, in city, town, and country. 
 The new material all about them must be 
 laid hold of and assimilated. " But," said 
 one man, " our people would hardly care to 
 have them in our pews," and doubtless many 
 others feel the same way. The existence of 
 your church may depend on that step, and 
 the real test of your religion may come along 
 that line in the future. 
 
 We Have in these Strangers, finally. Our 
 Responsibility. Austin Phelps in his last 
 days declared that the immediate evangeliza- 
 tion of our own country would mean more 
 for the redemption of the whole world than 
 that of any similar piece of territory. So it 
 seems to me that the evangelization of the 
 Empire State with more than ten millions of 
 people would mean more to the redemption 
 
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Practical Papers on Parish Problems 
 
 of the nation than that of any other section. 
 Dwellers along the Rhine combine their in- 
 terests, buy portable mills, anchor them out 
 in the stream, and take their grain out there 
 for grinding. They utilize the currents of 
 the historic river. It is a docile servant, 
 never striking for higher wages, never takes 
 a day off, and never gets intoxicated or unfit 
 for service. Standing in some such way 
 amid these great currents, migrations of peo- 
 ple, the very stars in their courses serve us. 
 Anyhow when there, we are in the place of 
 duty, and the man or woman standing in the 
 path of duty is in the highway to real great- 
 ness and splendid achievement always. 
 
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