That which attracts to a church today is not higher criticism, elaborate
ritual, hair-splitting creeds, but fearless fighting for public health,
for good government, for righteous labor conditions, for clean courts of
justice. It was the leader of a darky revival who, when asked why he
didn't _sometimes_ read the Old Testament, replied: "No, sah. Dem
commandments just upset de whol' revival." There is no need that taking
up politics and social questions should exclude the preaching of the
Christ. Men will follow today a Kingsley and a Maurice, a Lincoln, a
Beecher, a Brooks, or a Worcester as they will a Heney, a Hughes, or a
Folk or any man in whom they see plainly reflected the unselfish love
of the Christ.
Who cares, as a matter of fact, which way these men said their prayers?
They may have been Catholic or Protestant, or in honest doubt, but we
love them and will follow them. To us they stand for real love to man,
and so real faith in God; for true pluck and willingness to take up
their cross. Oh, if every member of the churches and every wearer of
"the cloth" realized the privilege of standing by every uplifting
effort, and was always so valiant for truth as to make a Rueff or any
agent of the devil occasionally think it worth while to take the risk of
trying to kill them--as in the case of this same Lincoln, of Heney, of
Lindsey, and of the Master--the world would recognize then that the
Church _was_ worth while, and there would be no discussing whether it
was going to die out or not. A little physical shooting wouldn't hurt
the Church. The world wants a Church Militant, not a backboneless
intellectualism. Only the "great Church victorious" can be the "Church
at rest."
Nowhere is this fact more unanswerably demonstrated than in the
missionary field. Faithlessness in this respect and fearfulness of
expenditure, both of men and money in missionary work, have always stood
in any church for choked channels of spiritual power, and subsequently
spelled anæmia, atrophy, and death. Constant metabolism is as essential
for spiritual life as physical. A church must die that doesn't use up
and give out energy as surely as a physical body. The period of latent
physical life is not long. God in his mercy has seemed to prolong latent
spiritual life almost unduly in the case of some churches. Those who
love the Church are breathing a little more freely because of the
Laymen's Missionary Movement.