A RETROSPECT.
When I entered upon the Christian ministry fifty-six years ago, there
was no probability that I would live to see four-score. My father had
died at the early age of twenty-eight, and several of his brothers and
sisters had succumbed to pulmonary maladies. My mother was dangerously
ill several times, but had a wiry constitution and lived to eighty-five.
That my own busy life has held out so long is owing, under a kind
Providence, to the careful observation of the primal laws of health. I
have eschewed all indigestible food, stimulants, and intoxicants;--have
taken a fair amount of exercise; have avoided too hard study or sermon
making in the evenings--and thus secured sound and sufficient sleep. In
keeping God's commandments written upon the body I have found great
reward. From the standpoint of four-score I propose in this chapter to
take a retrospect of some of the moral and religious movements that have
occurred within my memory--in several of which I have taken part--and I
shall note also the changes for better or worse that I have observed.
If as an optimist I may sometimes exaggerate the good, and minimize the
evil things, it is the curse of a pessimist that he can travel from Dan
to Beersheba and find nothing but barrenness.
The first change for the better that I shall speak of is the progress I
have seen in church fellowship. The division of the Christian church
into denominations is a fixed fact and likely to remain so for a long
time to come. Nor is it the serious evil that many imagine. The
efficiency of an army is not impaired by division into corps, brigades
and regiments, as long as they are united against the common enemy;
neither does the Church of Christ lose its efficiency by being organized
on denominational lines, as long as it is loyal to its Divine head, and
united in its efforts to overcome evil, and establish the Kingdom of
Heaven. Some Christians work all the better in harness that suits their
peculiar tastes and preferences. Denominationalism becomes an evil the
moment it degenerates into bitter and bigoted sectarianism. Conflicts
between a dozen regiments is suicide to an army. When a dozen
denominations strive to maintain their own feeble churches in a
community that requires only three or four churches, then sectarianism
becomes an unspeakable nuisance.
I could cite many instances to prove the great progress that has been
made in church fellowship. For example, my early ministry was in a town
in which the Society of Friends had a large meeting house, well filled
by a most intelligent, orthodox and devout congregation. But its members
never entered any other house of worship. I had the warmest personal
intimacy with some of its leading men, but they would say: "We would
like to hear thee preach on First Day, but the rules of our society
forbid it." I have lived to see the day when I am invited to speak in
Friends' meetings, and I have rejoiced to invite Quaker brothers, and
sisters also, to speak in my pulpit. When I visit London, the most
eminent living Quaker, J. Bevan Braithwaite, welcomes me to his
hospitable house, and we join in prayer together. I wish that the
exemplary and useful Society of Friends were more multiplied on both
sides of the sea.
During the early half of the last century sectarian controversies ran
high, especially in the newly settled West. It was a common custom to
hold public discussions in school houses and frontier meeting houses,
where controverted topics between denominations were presented by chosen
champions before applauding audiences. Ministers fired hot shot at one
another's pulpits; churches were often as militant as mendicant, and all
those polemics were excused as contending most earnestly for the faith.
Both sides found their ammunition in the same Bible. When I was a
student in the Princeton Seminary, a classmate from Kentucky gave me a
little hymn-book used at the camp meetings in the frontier settlements
of his native region. In that book was a hymn, one verse of which
contains these sweet and irenic lines:
"When I was blind, and could not see,
The Calvinists deceiv├Ęd me."
Just imagine the incense of devout praise ascending heavenward in such a
thick smoke of sectarian contentions! All the denominations were more or
less afflicted with this controversial malady; and I will venture to say
that in Kentucky and Ohio and other new regions, the Presbyterians were
often a fair match for their Methodist neighbors in these theological
pugilistics. I might multiply illustrations of these unhappy clashings
and controversies that have often disfigured even the most evangelical
branches of Christendom. What a blessed change for the better have I
witnessed in my old days! Among the foremost efforts of denominational
fellowship was the organization of the American Bible Society, the
American Tract Society, and the American Sunday School Union. Later on
in the same century came those two splendid spiritual inventions--The
Young Men's Christian Association, and the Society of Christian
Endeavor. Sir George Williams, the founder of the one, and Dr. Francis
E. Clark, the father of the other, should be commemorated in a pair of
twin statues of purest marble, standing with locked arms and upholding a
standard bearing the sacred motto: "One is our Master, even Christ
Jesus, and all ye are brethren." To no man are we indebted more deeply
than to the now glorified Mr. Moody who made Christian fellowship the
indispensable feature of all his evangelistic endeavors--with Brother
Sankey leading the grand chorus of united praise. Union meetings for the
conversion of souls and seeking the descent of the Holy Spirit are now
as common as the observance of Christmas or of Easter Day. Personally I
rejoice to say that I have been permitted to preach the Gospel in the
pulpits of all the leading denominations, not excepting the
Episcopalian; and I once welcomed the noble and beloved Bishop Charles
P. McIlvaine of Ohio to my Lafayette Avenue Church pulpit, where he
pronounced a grand discourse on "The Unity of All Christians in the Lord
Jesus Christ." If I lived in England I should be heart and soul a
nonconformist. But I can gratefully acknowledge the many kind courtesies
which I have received from the clergy of the Established Church. Once,
when in London, I was invited to the annual dinner given by the Lord
Mayor to the archbishops and bishops, and I found myself the only
American clergyman present. The Archbishop of Canterbury, when Bishop
of London, did me the honor of presiding at a reception given me at
Exeter Hall, and whenever I have met the venerable Dr. Temple I have
been cheered by his warm-hearted and "democratic" cordiality of manner.
In return for the kindness shown me by my brilliant and scholarly
friend, Archdeacon Farrar, I was happy to preside at a reception given
him in Chickering Hall. He had a wide welcome in our land, but it was as
the untiring champion of temperance reform that he was especially
honored on that evening. He and Archdeacon Basil Wilberforce are among
the leaders in the crusade against the curse of strong drink. Amid some
evil portents and perils to the cause of evangelical religion,
one of the richest tokens for good is this steady increase of
interdenominational fellowship. For organic unity we need not yet
strive; it is enough that all the regiments and brigades in Christ's
covenant hosts march to the same music, fight together under the same
standard of Calvary's Cross, and press on, side by side, and shoulder to
shoulder, to the final victory of righteousness and truth and human
redemption.
Another change for the better has been the enlargement of woman's sphere
of activity in the promotion of Christianity and of moral reform. As an
illustration of this fact, I may cite a rather unique incident in my
own experience. During the winter of 1872 I invited Miss Sarah F.
Smiley, an eminent and most evangelical minister in the Society of
Friends (and a sister of the Messrs. Albert and Daniel Smiley, the
proprietors of the Lake Mohonk House) to deliver a religious address in
my pulpit. The discourse she delivered was strong in intellect, orthodox
in doctrine and fervently spiritual in character; the large audience was
both delighted and edified. A neighboring minister presented a complaint
before the Presbytery of Brooklyn, alleging that my proceeding had been
both un-Presbyterian and un-Scriptural. The complainant was not able to
produce a syllable of law from our form of government forbidding what I
had done. Long years before, a General Assembly had recommended that
"women should not be permitted to address a promiscuous assemblage" in
any of our churches; but a mere "deliverance" of a General Assembly has
no binding legal authority.
In my defense I was careful not to advocate the ordination of women to
the ministry in the Presbyterian Church, or their installation in the
pastorate. I contended that as our confession of faith was silent on the
subject, and that as godly women in the early church were active in the
promotion of Christianity (one of them named Anna having publicly
proclaimed the coming Messiah), and that as the ministry of my
excellent friend, the Quakeress, had for many years been attended by the
abundant blessings of the Holy Spirit, my act was rather to be commended
than condemned. The discussion before the Presbytery lasted for two days
and produced a wide and rather sensational interest over the country.
The final vote of the Presbytery, while withholding any censure of my
course under the circumstances, was adverse to the practice of
permitting women to address "promiscuous audiences" in our churches. Two
or three years afterwards, a case similar to mine was appealed to the
General Assembly and that body wisely decided that such questions should
be left to the judgment and conscience of the pastors and church
sessions. When the news of this action of the assembly reached us, the
old sexton of the Lafayette Avenue Church hoisted (to the great
amusement of our people) the stars and stripes on the church tower as a
token of victory. It has now become quite customary to invite female
missionaries, and other godly women, to address audiences composed of
both sexes in our churches; the padlock has been taken off the tongue of
any consecrated Christian woman who has a message from the Master. I
invited Miss Willard and Lady Henry Somerset to advocate the Christian
grace of temperance from my pulpit; and if I were still a pastor I
should rejoice to invite that good angel of beneficence, Miss Helen M.
Gould, to deliver there such an address as she lately made in the
splendid building she has erected for the "Naval Christian Association."
Foreign missions were in their early and vigorous growth eighty years
ago. I rode in our family carriage to church with Sheldon Dibble and
Reuben Tinker, who were just leaving Auburn Theological Seminary to go
out as our pioneer missionaries to the Sandwich Islands. The _Missionary
Herald_ was taken in a great number of families and read with great
avidity. Many of the readers were people who not only devoutly prayed
"Thy Kingdom come," but who were willing to stick to a rag carpet, and
deny themselves a "Brussels," in order to contribute more to the spread
of that Kingdom. Wealth has increased to a prodigious and perilous
extent; but the percentage of money given to foreign missions is very
far from what it was in the day of my childhood. It is a growing custom
for ministers to utter a prayer over the contribution boxes when they
are brought back to the platform before the pulpit; I suspect that it in
too many cases should be one of penitential confession.
While I was a student in the Princeton Seminary we had a visit from the
veteran missionary, Levi Spalding, who sailed from Boston to Southern
India in the very first band which invaded the darkness of Hindooism He
was as nearly like my conception of the Apostle Paul as anyone I ever
beheld. He told us that when he was a youth and his heart was first
drawn to the cause of missions, he told his good mother that he had
decided upon a missionary life (which was then thought equivalent to a
martyrdom), and she was perfectly overcome. He said to her: "Mother,
when you gave me as an infant to God in baptism, did you withhold me
from any service to which I might be called?" She assented in a
moment--went to the old chest--from it she took a half-dollar (all the
money she possessed in the world), and, handing it to him, said: "Levi,
you may go, and this starts you on your education." On his way over to
India his preaching converted all the sailors, including the ship's
carpenter, "whose heart was as hard as his broadaxe." That was the stuff
our first missionaries were made of. The tears flowed down our cheeks as
we listened to Spalding's recital, and the result of his visit was that
more than one of our students volunteered for the work of foreign
missions.
It was also my great privilege during that Princeton course to put eye
upon a man who, by common consent, is regarded as the king of American
missionaries. On my way from Princeton to Philadelphia in the Christmas
week of '45 I found among my fellow passengers a gentleman with a very
benign countenance, and to my great delight I learned that he was
Adoniram Judson, who was on his final and memorable visit to his native
land, and was received everywhere with the most unbounded and reverent
enthusiasm. He had begun his work in Burmah in 1813, but under great
difficulties. During the first six years he made no converts; he defied
the demon of discouragement and labored on with increased faith and
zeal, and then came an abundant harvest. The colossal work of his life
in Burmah was the translation of the Holy Scriptures into the Burmese
language. To this work, which is likely to endure, he added a
Burmese-English dictionary. At length the toils and exposures broke down
his health and he was obliged to take several voyages in adjoining
waters. Soon after I saw him he married Miss Chubbuck and returned to
Burmah in the following year. The old conflict between the holy and
heroic heart and failing body was soon renewed. He resorted once more to
the sea for relief, but died during the passage, on April 12, 1850. When
crossing the Atlantic in the summer of 1885 I spent much of the time
with that noble minister, Rev. Edward Judson, of New York. A funeral at
sea occurred, and as the remains were disappearing in the water Mr.
Judson said to me, with solemn tenderness: "Just so my beloved father
was committed to the deep: his sepulchre is this great, wide ocean,"
That ocean is a type of his world-wide influence. Not only in the
priority of time as a fearless pioneer into unknown dangers, but in
profound and patient scholarship, and in the beauty of a holy and
lovable personality, Adoniram Judson still hold the primacy among our
American missionary heroes.
The progress which has been made in Christianizing heathendom during the
last century (which may well be called the century of foreign missions)
is familiar to every person of intelligence. The number of converts to
Christianity is at least two millions, and several millions more have
felt the influence of Christian civilization. The great mass have not
been suddenly revolutionized, as in Luther's time, but one by one
individual hearts yield to the gospel in nearly every land. As a serious
offset to these glorious results the commerce of nominally Christian
nations is often poisonous. Britain carries opium into China and India;
America and other civilized nations carry rum into Africa. The word of
life goes in the cabin, and the worm of death goes in the hold of the
same vessel! The sailors that have gone from nominally Christian
countries to various ports have often been very far from acting as
gospel missionaries. It is not only for their own welfare, but that they
may become representatives of Christianity that the noble "American
Seamen's Friend Society" has been organized. The work which that society
has wrought under the vigorous leadership of Dr. Stitt entitles it to
the generous support of all our churches. If toiling "Jack" braves the
tempest to bring us wealth from all climes, we owe it to him to provide
him the anchor of the gospel, and to save him from spiritual shipwreck.
To no other benevolent society have I more cheerfully given service of
tongue and pen than to this one. An honest view of the foreign mission
enterprises to-day reveals the laying of broad foundations, and the
building of solid walls, rather than any completed achievements already
wrought. Blood tells, and God has entrusted his gospel to the
Anglo-Saxons and the other most powerful races on the globe. The
religion of the Bible is the only religion adapted to universal
humanity, and in the Bible is a definite pledge that to all humanity
that religion shall yet be preached.
Among the great spiritual agencies born within my memory, none deserves
a higher place than The Young Men's Christian Association. When my
beloved brother, Sir George Williams (now an octogenarian) started the
first association in London on the 6th of June, 1844, he "builded better
than he knew," The modest room in his store overlooking Paternoster Row
in which he gathered the little praying band on that day is already an
historic spot. My own connection with the Young Men's Christian
Association began in New York when I joined the association there in the
second year of its existence, 1854. We met in a room in Stuyvesant
Institute and the heroic Howard Crosby was our president. We had no
library, or reading room, or gymnasium, or any of the appliances that
belong to the institutions of these days. After several migrations, our
association found its permanent home in the spacious building on
Twenty-third Street, to which Morris K. Jesup and William E. Dodge were
among the foremost contributors. The master spirit in the operations of
the New York Association for thirty years was Mr. Robert McBurney, who,
when he landed from Ireland, was only seventeen years of age. He was
among my evening congregation in the old Market Street Church. During my
seven years' pastorate in that church I delivered a great many
discourses and platform addresses on behalf of the association, and
through all of the subsequent years it has been a favorite object on
which to bestow my humble efforts. Here in Brooklyn a host of young-men
have found a moral shelter, and many of them a spiritual birthplace, in
the fine structure, reared largely from the munificent bequests of that
princely Christian philanthropist, the late Mr. Frederick Marquand. It
is not permitted to every good man or woman before they die to see the
glorious fruits of the trees they planted, but to the eyes of the
veteran George Williams the following facts must seem like a rehearsal
of heaven. The Young Men's Christian Association now belts the globe
with half a million of members, and ten times that number in some direct
connection with the organization. It is housed in hundreds of solid
structures which have cost between thirty and forty million
dollars--each one a cheerful home--_a_ place for physical development,
manly instruction and training for Christ's service.
It has brought thousands of young men from impenitence to Christ Jesus,
and made thousands of young Christians more like Jesus in their daily
life. The most effective lay preacher of the century, D.L. Moody,
confessed that in his training for spiritual work he owed more to the
Young Men's Christian Association than to any other human agency. It has
moulded the students of colleges and universities; it has been the
salvation of many a soldier and sailor; it has led many into the gospel
ministry; it has taught the whole world the beauty and power of a living
unity in Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit has set the Divine seal of His
blessing on its world-wide work, and to the triune God be all the praise
and all the glory.
As I witnessed the birth of the Young Men's Christian Association, I
also saw the birth of a kindred organization, the "Society of Christian
Endeavor." Many years ago an absurd and extravagant statement was widely
afloat, claiming that I was the "grandsire" of this society. The simple
truth was that Dr. Francis E. Clark, its heaven-directed founder, had
seen in some religious journals my account of the good work wrought by
the Young People's Association of the Lafayette Avenue Church, and he
recognized the fact that its chief purpose was not mere sociality or
literary advancement, but the spiritual profit of its members. He
examined its constitution and reports, and when he constructed his first
Christian Endeavor Society in the Williston Church of Portland, Maine,
he adopted many of its features; and my beloved brother Clark, in his
public addresses, has generously acknowledged such obligation as he was
under to our Young People's Association (now in its thirty-fifth year of
prosperous activity). It has always been a source of grateful pride that
it should have furnished any aid to the origination of one of the
foremost spiritual instrumentalities of the century. As any attempt to
describe the sublime grandeur of Niagara would be a waste of time, so it
would be equally futile for me to describe the magnificent extent of the
Christian Endeavor Society's operations and the immense spiritual
results that have flowed from them. There is no civilized speech or
language where its voice is not heard; its line has gone out to all the
earth, and its words to the ends of the world. It has done more than any
other single agency to develop the life and to train for service the
energies of the youthful members of the churches It has yet still wider
possibilities before it, and when the hand that planted this mighty tree
has turned to dust its boughs will be shedding down the fruits of the
Spirit on the dwellers in every clime.
One of the most striking improvements that I have witnessed has been in
the sanitary condition, both physical and moral, of our great cities.
The conditions in New York, when I came to the pastorate of the Market
Street Church almost fifty years ago, would seem incredible to the New
Yorkers of to-day. The disgusting depravities of the Fourth Ward,
afterwards made familiar by the reformatory efforts of Jerry McCauley,
were then in full blast, defying all police authority and outraging
common decency. The most hideous sink of iniquity and loathsome
degradation was in the once famous "Five Points," in the heart of the
Sixth Ward and within a pistol shot of Broadway. At the time of my
coming to New York public attention had been drawn to that quarter with
the opening of the "Old Brewery Mission," and by the first planting of
a kindred enterprise which grew into the now well-known "Five Points
House of Industry." The brave projector of this enterprise was the Rev.
L.M. Pease, a hero whose name ought not to be forgotten. As my church
was just off East Broadway, and within a short walk of the Five Points,
I took a deep interest in Mr. Pease's Christian undertaking, and aided
him by every means in my power. His wife became a member of my church.
The "Wild Maggie," whose escapades described in the _Tribune_ gained
such public notoriety, became also, after her reformation, one of our
church members and afterwards held the position of a school teacher.
After the resignation of Mr. Pease and his removal to North Carolina,
his place was taken by one of our Market Street elders, the devout and
godly minded Benjamin R. Barlow. In order to keep awake public interest
in the mission work at the Five Points, and to get ammunition, in its
behalf, I used to make nocturnal explorations of some of those satanic
quarters. I recall now one of those midnight forays of which, at the
risk of my reader's olfactories, I will give a brief glimpse. In company
with the superintendent of the mission and a policeman and a lad with a
lantern I struck for the "Cow Bay," the classic spot of which Charles
Dickens had given such a piquant description in his "American Notes" a
few years before. Climbing a stairway, from which the banisters had
long been broken away for firewood, we entered a dark room. There was
only a tallow candle burning in the corner, and in the room were huddled
twenty-five human beings. Along the walls were ranged the bunks--one
above the other--covered with rotting quilts and unwashed coverings.
Each of these rented for sixpence a night to any thief or beggar who
chose to apply for lodging--no distinction being made for sex or color.
As the lad swings the lantern about we spy the rows of heads projecting
from under the stacks of rags. In one bed a gray-haired, disheveled head
cuddled close to the yellow locks of a slumbering child. While we are
reconnoitering, something like a huge dog runs past and dives under the
bed. "What is this, good friend?" we ask. "Oh, only the goat," replied a
merry Milesian. "Do the goats live with you all in this room?" "To be
sure they do, sir; we feeds 'em tater skins, and milks 'em for the
babies," Country born as we were, we have often longed to keep a dairy
in this city, but it never occurred to us that a bedroom was sufficient
for the purpose. Truly, necessity is the shrewd-witted mother of
invention! Opposite "Cow Bay" was "Cut-Throat Alley." Two murders a year
were about the average product of the civilization of this dark defile.
The keeper of the famous grog shop there, who died about that time, left
a fortune of nearly one hundred thousand dollars. In city politics the
keeper of such a den is one of the leaders of public opinion. We climbed
a stairway, dark and dangerous, till at length we reached the wretched
garret through whose open chinks the snow drifted in upon the floor.
Beside the single broken stove, the only article of furniture in the
apartments, sat a wretched woman wrapped in a tattered shawl moaning
over a terrible burn that covered her arms; she had fallen when
intoxicated upon the stove and no one had cared enough to carry her to
the hospital. She exclaimed, "For God's sake, gentlemen, can't you give
me a glass of gin?" A half eaten crust lay by her and a cold potato or
two, but the irresistible thirst clamored for relief before either pain
or hunger. "Good woman," said my friend, "where's Mose?" "Here he is." A
heap of rags beside her was uncovered, and there lay the sleeping face
of an old negro, apparently of fifty. In nearly every garret we entered
practical amalgamation was in fashion. The superintendent told me that
the negroes were fifty per cent. in advance of the Irish as to sobriety
and decency. Descending from the garret we entered a crowded cellar. The
boy's lantern shone on the police officer's cap and buttons. A crash was
heard, and the window at the opposite end of the cellar was shattered
and a mass of riddled glass fell on the floor. "Poor fool!" exclaimed
the policeman, "he thinks we are after him, but I will have him before
morning." From these sickening scenes of squalor, misery and crime what
a relief it was for us to return to the House of Industry, with its neat
school room and its capacious chapel and its row of little children
marching up to their little beds. It was like going into the light-house
after the storm.
I have drawn this pen picture of but a part of the shocking revelations
of that night, not only that my readers may know what kind of work I
often engaged in during my New York pastorate, but that they may also
know what kind of city I labored in. New York is not to-day in sight of
the millennium; it still has a fearful amount of vice and heathenism;
and the self-denying men who are conducting the "University Settlement,"
and the Christ-serving "King's Daughters," who are giving their lives to
the salvation of the poor in the Seventh Ward are doing as apostolic a
work as any missionary on the Congo. Nevertheless it is true that a "Cow
Bay," or an "Old Brewery," or a "Cut-Throat Alley" is no more possible
to-day in New York than the building of a powder factory in the middle
of Central Park. The progress in sanitary purification has been most
remarkable.
This narrative of the sanitary and moral reform wrought in the Five
Points reminds me of another good man whom the people of this city and
our whole country cannot revere too highly as a public benefactor. I
allude to Mr. Anthony Comstock, the indefatigable Secretary of the
"Society for the Prevention of Vice." I knew him well when he was a
clerk in a dry goods store on Broadway, and when he undertook his first
purifying efforts, I little supposed that he was to achieve such
reforms. It was an Augean stable indeed that he set about cleansing.
Fifty years ago our city was flooded by obscene literature which sought
no concealment. The vilest books and pictures were openly sold in the
streets, and an enormous traffic was waged in what may be called the
literature of hell. Such a courageous crusade against those abominations
and against the gambling dens, by Mr. Comstock--even at the risk of
personal violence and in defiance of the most malignant
opposition--entitles him to a place among our veritable heroes. At a
time when deeds of military prowess receive such adulation, and when the
"man on horseback" outstrips the man on foot in the race for popular
favor, it is well to teach our young men that he who takes up arms
against the principalities and powers of darkness, and makes his own
life the savior of other lives, wins a knightly crown of heavenly honor
that outshines the stars, and "fadeth not away."
The most unique organization that has been formed in our time for the
evangelizing of the lost masses is the "Salvation Army." When I was in
London, in the summer of 1885, I attended one of their monster meetings
in Exeter Hall. There was an enormous military band on the platform
behind the rostrum. Their Commander-in-Chief, General Booth, presided--a
tall, thin, nervous man, who looked more like an old-fashioned Kentucky
revivalist than an Englishman. His bright-eyed and comely wife, Mrs.
Catharine Booth, was with him. She was a woman of remarkable
intellectual force and spiritual character, as all must acknowledge who
have read her biography. Her speech (on the Protection of Young Girls)
was finely composed and finely delivered, and quite threw into the shade
a couple of members of Parliament who spoke from the same platform on
the same evening. When she made any telling point that awakened
applause, her husband leaped up, and gave the signal: "Fire a volley!"
Whereupon his troops gave a tremendous cheer, followed by a roll of
drums and a blast of trumpets. The chief agency which the army employs
to gather its audiences is music--whether it be the rattling of the
tambourine, or the martial sound of a brass band. Some of their hymns
are little better than pious doggerel, and they do not hesitate to add
to Perronet's grand hymn, "All hail the power of Jesus name," such a
stanza as the following:
"Let our soldiers never tire,
In streets, in lane, in hall,
The red-hot Gospel's shot to fire
And crown Him Lord of All."
Grotesque as are some of the methods of this novel organization, I
cannot but admire their zeal and courage in dredging among the submerged
masses with such spiritual apparatus as they can devise. They are doing
a work that God has honored, and that has reached and rescued a vast
number of outcasts. Their chief weakness is that they appeal mainly to
the emotions, and give too little solid instruction to their ignorant
hearers. Their chief danger is that when the strong arm of their founder
is taken away he may not leave successors who can hold the army
together. Let us hope and pray that the period of their usefulness may
yet be protracted.
While an abnormal agency, like the Salvation Army, may do some useful
service among the occupants of the slums, the greater work of reaching
and evangelizing the immense mass of plain, humble working people must
be done by the churches themselves. What do the dwellers in the
by-streets and the tenement houses need? They need precisely what the
dwellers in the brown stone houses on fine avenues need--a sanctuary to
worship in, a Sunday school for their children, a preacher to give them
the Gospel, and a pastor to visit them and watch over them--in short, a
spiritual home. As for bringing the poorer class of the back streets
into the elegant churches on the fashionable avenues it is an absurdity,
both geography and human nature are against it. The plainly dressed
laborers of the back districts could not come to the fine churches on
Fifth Avenue, or similar streets, because these edifices are already
occupied by their regular pew holders; they would not come, for they
would not feel at home there. Since the humbler toiling classes will not
come to the sanctuaries occupied by the rich, the only true Christian
policy is for the rich churches to build and maintain plenty of
attractive auxiliary chapels in the regions occupied by those humbler
classes. Not mean and unattractive soup-house style of chapels should
they be, either--they ought to be handsome, cheerful, well-appointed
sanctuaries, manned by godly pastors who are not above the business of
saving souls that are clad in dirty shirts. And that is not all: the
members of the wealthy churches which rear the auxiliary chapels should
personally go and attend the services and Sunday schools and weekly
meetings in the chapel--not go in costly raiment that touches the pride
of God's poor, but in plain clothes and with a hearty democratic
sympathy in their whole bearing. To reach the masses we must go after
them--and then stay with them when we get there. If broadcloth religion
waits for poverty and ignorance to cross the chasm to it, then may they
at last come to be a menace to the safety of society--with imprecations
on it for criminal neglect. Christianity must build the bridge across
the chasm, and then keep its steady procession crossing over it with
bright lamps for dark homes, and Bibles for darker souls, and bread for
hungry mouths, and, what is best of all, _personal intercourse and
personal sympathy_. The music of a Christmas carol would be very sweet
in poverty's garret; the advent of the living Jesus in the persons of
His true-hearted followers would be a "Merry Christmas" all the year
round.
Brooklyn is not a city of slums, nor does it abound with the
sky-scraping tenement houses, like those in which the myriads of New
York live, but we have a large population of wage-earners of the humbler
class. These mainly occupy streets by themselves. In order to do our
part in giving the bread of life to these worthy people, Lafayette
Avenue Church has always maintained two, and sometimes three, auxiliary
chapels. Of these, the "Cuyler Chapel," built and supported entirely by
our Young People's Association, is a fair representative. It has an
excellent preacher, who visits the plain people in their homes; it has a
well-equipped Sunday school--prayer meetings, kindergarten--its own
Society of Christian Endeavor, and King's Daughters, its penny savings
bank and its temperance society--in short, every appliance essential to
a Christian church. Many others of our strong Brooklyn churches are
working precisely on the same practical, common-sense lines. If all the
wealthy churches in New York would illuminate the darker quarters of
that city with a hundred well-manned light-houses, well provided with
the soul-saving apparatus of the poor man's Gospel they would do more to
silence the cavils against Christianity, and more to bridge the chasm
between the rich and the poor than by any of the superficial methods of
the "Humanitarians." What a poor man wants is not only a clean shirt, a
clean home, and a clean account on Saturday night; he wants a clean
character and a clean soul for this world and the next. Christianity
makes a sad mistake if it is satisfied to give him a full stomach, and
leave him with a starving soul.
In recent years we have heard much about the "Institutional Church" as
the long sought panacea. It is claimed by some persons that the churches
cannot succeed unless they add to ordinary spiritual instrumentalities,
various useful annexes, such as reading rooms, kindergartens,
dispensaries, and certain social entertainments. But it is a noteworthy
fact that the chief pioneer in "Institutional" methods was the late
Charles Haddon Spurgeon, and he was the prince of old-fashioned gospel
preachers. He never thought of his orphanage, and other benevolent
adjuncts of the Metropolitan Tabernacle as substitutes for the sovereign
purpose of his holy work, which was to convert the people to Jesus
Christ. He subordinated the physical, the mental, and the social to the
spiritual; and rightly judged that making clean hearts was the best way
to secure clean homes and clean lives. I have no doubt that a very
strong, well-manned and thoroughly spiritually managed church may wisely
maintain as many adjuncts, such as reading-rooms, libraries,
dispensaries, kindergartens and other humanitarian annexes as it has the
means to support. An illustration of this is seen in the successful and
Heaven-blessed Bethany Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia, founded and
maintained and guided by that hundred-handed Briareus in the service of
Christ--my beloved friend, the Hon. John Wanamaker. The aim of that
great church and its well-known Sunday School, is to make people happy
by making them better, and to save them for this world after saving them
for another world. When a church has the spiritual purposes and
spiritual power of the London Tabernacle and the Bethany Church, and is
guided by a Spurgeon or a Wanamaker, it may safely become
"institutional." But some experiments that have been made to establish
churches of that name in this country have not always been conspicuously
successful.
In taking this, my retrospective view at four-score, I have noted many
heart-cheering tokens of social and religious progress, and many
splendid mechanical and material inventions to make the world better and
happier. Yet I have also seen some painful symptoms of decline and
deterioration. All the changes have not been for the better; some have
been decidedly for the worse. For example, while there is an increase in
the number of the Christian churches, there is a lamentably steady
diminution of attendance at places of religious worship. Careful
investigation shows a constant falling off in church attendance--both in
the large towns, and in the rural districts. In spite of the blessed
influence of the Sunday School, the Young Men's Christian Association
and Christian Endeavor, there is an increasing swing of young people
away from the House of God, and therefore from soul-saving influences.
The Sabbath is not as generally kept sacred as formerly. One of the
indications of this sad fact is a decrease in church attendance, and
another is the enormous increase in the secular and godless Sunday
newspapers. Materialism and Mammonism work against spiritual religion,
and the social customs which wealth brings are adverse to a spiritual
life. As one illustration of this a distinguished pastor said to me:
"Forty years ago my people lived plainly, were ready for earnest
Christian work, and attended our devotional meetings; now they have
grown rich, our work flags, and our weekly services are almost
deserted." Half-day religion is on the increase almost everywhere.
Sporting and gambling are more rife than formerly. What is still worse,
the gambling element enters more largely into transactions of trade and
traffic. Divorces have become more easy and abundant, and, as Mr.
Gladstone once said to me: "This tends to sap one of the very
foundations of society," All these are deplorable evils to which none
but a fool will shut his eyes and by which none but a coward will be
frightened. _God reigns,_ even if the devil is trying to. The practical
questions for every one of us are: how can I become better? How can I
help to make this old sinning and sobbing world the better also?