To Your Tents, O Israel!
By Editor
WE have been deeply impressed with the timeliness and worth of the late suggestions of the bishop of Central New York. Let us repeat some of his pregnant suggestions:— "The remedy for church worldliness is in the faithfulness of the followers of Christ. You say we need the favor and money of the world. The church needs not a penny from such sources. If she can't do large things she can do small things, and with clean hands. If she can't build a tower, she can preach the gospel in a tent. If men of money choose to come to the tent, let them come and sit with the day laborer. If the rich man does not prefer to come, the issue is not between the church and him, but between God and himself."
This is as sound doctrine as if one of our own bishops had said it. It is doctrine which needs Congregational practice. Many a Congregational Church is dying through neglect of it. The old Church-and-State curse is a clinging one, and it seems as if its massive sophistries were never to lose their force over many minds. One would think Orthodox Congregationalists might have learned in the bitter school of the Unitarian controversy of five-and-seventy years ago, that going down into the Egypt of an ecclesiastical society, and staying on the horses, and trusting in the chariots of the world, for help in sustaining the preaching and practice of a pure Christianity, must be a wretched reliance as compared with seeking the Lord and looking unto the Holy One of Israel. But only here and there a church has apprehended it. In many places to this day we can hear those old deluding pleas: that, if the church would win the world, she needs better housing and costlier accessories than she can herself afford to furnish and must, therefore, ask aid from purely secular sources; that the business men of any community will be conciliated toward religion if they are invited to definite co-operation in the management of its affairs, and given a voice in deciding who shall fill the pulpit; and that, since they are not expected to believe in Him of whom they have not heard, and cannot hear without a preacher, and will be much more likely to be attracted toward a gospel in whose success they have some direct pecuniary interest, it is well that they be admitted as to the outer-court of the Gentiles and intrusted with a co-operative responsibility. Now, there are grave reasons for doubting the soundness of these views. Or, admitting all the truth claimed for them, there exist counter-balancing disadvantages which may more than neutralize their force. Shrewd, worldly men are not apt to consider seriously the claims of a religion which they do not thoroughly respect; and it does not add to their respect to religion that it be made subservient to their inexpert, if not unfriendly, views. It cannot help weakening the force of any doctrinal system over their minds for them to discover that as between two types of it, both of which cannot be wholly true, its professors are willing to leave them—the confessedly irreligious—to suit themselves in the quality. It is a little too much like inviting a congress of patients in a hospital to assist in the diagnosis of their own cases, and to suggest a preference between various remedies thought to be applicable. He who inwardly feels himself to be very sick, and in danger of dying, will be likely to prefer to put himself, without suggestions of his own, into the hands of the physician in whom he has most confidence, and give a fair trial to his treatment. Moreover, we lack faith in the very common plea that for the church to win the world, and especially the young world, to the gospel, it is of great importance that aesthetics receive large attention, and meeting houses be made "attractive" by quartette choirs, and stained-glass windows, and various Gothic grandeurs, all of which have to be paid for roundly, and to which the church is not equal, unless the world, in the shape of a parish, takes hold and helps. It is the honey in the glass, and not the elegance of the glass, that draws the bees; and it is the power of the gospel in the hearts and lives of its professors, and in the preaching of the pulpit and the labors of the pastor, which gives the Word success. Note two facts in proof of this: that in any town or city, where opportunity of comparison is fairly given, there is usually a much larger spiritual increase in connection with the honest, earnest, plain mission chapel work, than with the "aesthetic" buildings and services; and that at the present time in Sweden and Norway the masses of the working classes and the young, over whom the established churches have utterly failed in power, throng to most uncomfortable repletion the barest and even most ungainly structures, in which a living presentation of Christ and Him crucified is set forth. No. It is quite time we were reaping the wisdom of our long experience. It is quite time that our churches outgrew their pupilage to the imperfect wisdom of the past, and boldly assumed, in the humility of Christ, a position of independence of the world. Let them come out and be separate, and touch no unclean money, the price of infidelity to Him who died for them. Let them assume sole responsibility of their own affairs; in the kindest spirit inviting all their neighbors and friends to worship with them—and not refusing any aid such may desire to give, but no longer relying upon anything but their own God-helped strength. If they cannot afford a house, they can afford a barn. If they cannot afford a barn, they can afford a tent. And the blessing of God in a tent is sweeter and richer than his indifference or his frown, in a cathedral. That church which should show confidence enough in its cause, and its Master, to make such a move as this—were it done discreetly—could hardly fail to win the confidence of all, with a most helpful sympathy. To your tents—if need be—O Israel!—Congregationalist.