The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1866-12-05


newspapers, magazines, tracts, and Sunday
School books. 1t is the Church that prints and
circulates among the people thousands of Bibles
and Testhments in all languages. IL is the
Church, for the most part, that founds hospi.
tails and homes for the poor and aged, and
asylums Tor orphans, inebriates and Magda-
lenes. 1t Is the Church, and nobody else, that
sends out missionaries into the most wretched
parts Of the city, to extend practical pity to the
victims of vice. IL is the Church. in word,
that, 10 the prosecution of her divine mission,
keeps up and ever pushes into new fields.
the greatest OF all ideas, those, namely, of God,
OF virtue and eternal life. If her candle were
removed could there be anything left but
darkness?
Suppose it to be possible for example, that
you should wake up some BRIGHT Sunday morn
ing, and lind every church edi6ce removed and
theatre built in Its stead. And suppose this
were the end of the churches; no more were to
be built; the Sabbath gone, It's peculiarties lost
IN the din of business and pleasure; the
Sunday Schools all gone; Sunday School,
Tract, and Bible Societies, all, all at an end;
the Church and all its ideas things of the past.
why, the very picture starts our tears; aud II ii
could be realized, many even of the most aban-
doned people would come to their senses, and
feel that in gaining their ends they had plucked
down on their city and race irretrievable ruin.
Ibey would weep for the perished Church and
vanished Sabbath; and their dreams would be
visited by the ghosty echoes of the Sabbath
bell. Yes, brethren the Church and her insti-
tutions, her schools, her preaching, her ex-
restrain the over1owings OF crime and death
among u.s.
But os great a power for good as the Church
already is among us, casting her holy shadow
even in the face OF the most brazen sin, and
Eoldine out her steady lamp for all the dark
and wandering, she is bound, as she is able to
become still greater power. In order to this,
one of the first things to be done by her Is TO
become broader, not 1atitudnarian, in doctrine,
but more expansive in charity. Holding fast
the precious doctrines of religious experience,
and not enjoying them whit less than for
metly, we must grasp at the whole CITY, We
must awake to the fact that the worst classes
are our brethren, aud that we are bound
TO look after the man in vile raimeut,
who neither enters our church nor any
other, as much as after the perhaps worse man,
in gay clothing, who occupies seat among us.
We must I'LL up tLat grave, almost as deep as
petdition, between us and the outcasts. The
churches must-Chrst in the golden rule says
they must-they must seek to save the heather
at their door, And this increased breadth must
include union for these purposes with Christians
OF all denominations. We must cast behind u.s.
as utterly beneath the Church, that despcable
jealousy that will not work in a mission with
Others lest their sect should get the credit, and
finally own the Church that may grow out of
the enterprise. We must also abandon that still
meaner narrowness of making it point in our
city missions to build up from the more respect
able OF the neighborhood. We must seek all
even those of the bottom layer of infamy We
must remember that the divisions OF Christ's
ii
necessary one; and that when it prevents
us from working for the friendless and
vicious poor, it becomes sin.
As to the idea OF respectability in the Church,
II is SAD illustration of the extent to which
this nonsense may be carried, when we begin to
discuss the different grades of responsibility
among the wretched objects of our charity.
Indeed, the mania for responsibility is becom-
ing quite clog to the progress of the Church.
Some denominations seem to be built up on that
idea. All but the so-calied elite are excluded.
Fashion, not the cross, seems to be the bond of
union, and the qualification of candidates for
communion, not purity, but position in what is
called society! When l see a person in my
own church getting this itch for fashion,
allowed to go, the sooner the better. While
you are coaxing him to be satisfied
in his OLD home, and trying to persuade him to
turn away his gaze from the golden wedge and
Babylonsh garment, you might save and bring
into the Church twenty better men. Such men
are of worse than no account it is not better
Church they want, but good lot of common
sense, and few OF the first motions Of Christian
feeling. All such aflectation of responsibility
hampers and cripples the Church. She must
rather fill herself afresh with her great ideas,
and reread her Divine commission.
When she sees the drinking-houses and other
establishments open on Sunday, i'll defiance of
the plain letter of the law, and under the
eyes oil an indulgent police, she ought to forget
sectarian divisions, and make loud united,
aid irresistible demand for the cessation Of
such wickedness When people cannot traverse
our chief thoIoUghfares in the evening, in the
glare OF gas almost as bright as day, without
meeting Hooks OF CourteSans, proclaiming their
character by their shameless department, to
the imminent hazard of public morals, it is
time the Chulch should demand of the public
authorities a little moral scavengery, the purii-
cation OF the streets, or at least the preserVa-
ton in them OF modcum OF common decency.
When it is manifest that engine companies, on
the volunteer principle, are schools of vice,
creating more fires than they put out, and
becoming centres OF the vllest rowdylsm,
drunkenness, and riot, spreading the con-
tagion oil sinful disorder, and resulting in
frequent muroers, it is time that the society
whose work is virtue, and whose head is Christ,
should call on the public authorities to sub
stltute such companies by safer and more
peaceable Institution. Ii it is a matter of posi-
tive certainty, that to conduct municipal cleo
tions upon national or State political party
issues leads to peculation, corruption. and dis
order, making it almost impossible to bring
justice home TO the greatest offenders,
the churches should break away
from party thrall and demand that
municipal officers shall be elected on ac-
count OF their own competence and purity, and
with view 10 the promotion of public virtue,
justice, and tranquility. II our public schools
carry the meal OF mental culture IN one end of
the bag and the stone OF moral neglect in the
other, producing, in the case of ignorance and
citizenship, the Divine society is under impera-
tive obligations to use its pTayeriul and perse-
Verlng enoIts TO rap Inc stone out OF the bag and
put in its place loaf OF the bread of heaven, to
match the bread of earth in the other end of
the sack. That is, We ought to use our efforts
so to modify the public school course OF study,
as without offending sectarian prejudice, to teach
Christian morals.
II the Church sees that in our great cities the
supply OF re ieious instruction and evangelizing
ell ort is shametully meagre and inadequate, it
IS her duty to devise means to meet the demand.
Home missions must become an immense inte-
rest, and institutes should be founded for the
training especially OF city missionaries. of whom
there should be hfty where there is now one.
M han, I 10,