New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1872-04-22
CHURCHES AND COMMON SENSE.

The Methodist Conference in this city, which
adjourned on Tuesday, took bold step in
advance of any past action in that church on
the subject of Popular Amusements, when it
recognized the right of any earnest Christian
to decide upon the prOpriety or hurtfulness to
himself of any given course of conduct.
While the members urged caution and faith
fulness in warning their churches in this
matter of amusements, they admitted, for the
first time, we believe, in their history as a
sect, that each individual had a conscience as
well as organs of taste and digestion of his
own, whose rights deserved to be respected.
The right of private judgment has been here
tofOre too often little more recognized by Pro-
testant than by Catholic churches: Priests and
pastors are brought down nowadays to the same
plane with their parishioners, and can no more
shut off theaters, music, dancing, all bonnets
that are not calashes, and all coats that are
not shad-belied, into the limbo Of the devils
property, than they can deliver over the souls
of the offending of their flock with their heads,
arms, knee-caps, and toes, into his eternal hell
fire.
There are some of their ancient usages,
however, which we are sorry to see our
Methodist brethren, too much like other
denominations, leaving behind with the
black calash bOnnets. Time was when
the Wesleyan testified to the faith that was
in him by his zeal in PROSECUTING souls to God,
and by the severe simplicity of his church
building Lately, he sees fit to justify his
creed by stately edifices and costly music, not in
frequently but half paid for. Bricks and mortar
are assurediy a cheaper mode of wOrshiping
God than the slow conversion of erring fellow
sinners; but we doubt if in the long run they
will prove quite so effectual. Recent Phila-
delphia papers, for instance, brought us
glowing account of "a successful Methodist
congregation" which has its duplicate
in the history of two-thirds of our city
churches. This band of Christians, number
ing at first but twenty-four, call upon the
public to witness how they have glOrified God
and let their light shine before men by erect
ing building which cost over s225,OOO; while
during the same time they have contributed
to religious and charitable purposes little
over $4,000. Now here is the net product of
all their fervor and love to Christ and their
brethren in tasteful heap of white marble,
with a pittance flung to the Ignorant,
brutazed mass Of human beings who swarm
up to its very doors. We have no wish to
select this especial church for censure. They
have only yielded to the popular clamOr for
costly church buildings which is heard all over
the land taste and beauty" we are inces-
sanity told, "can be nowhere better employed
" than in the worship of God, who has created
all perfect nature and all true art. The poor
"haye been the care of the church for ages; it
is time that the God fOrsaken rich were
tempted into the sanctuary by costly mar
"bles, pictures, painted windows, exquisite
music.o
Now all these things are well enough in
their place, we grant; but we hoped that our
hard-sensed Methodist friends, at least, would
have shown us something better. There is no
need to go back to their wooden dry-gOOds-
box temples; beauty of form and color aresnot
costly. We have no doubt that the white
spire of the Philadelphia church, after it has
absorbed all the money and Christian zeal of
its builders, gives transient pleasure to the
eye of every passer-by on BrOad-st.; but we
doubt that it suggests God to them half as
strongly as the budding naples on the side
walk or the chirpng sparrOws i'll their branches.
II is very satisfactory to an aesthetic taste that
the eye should be thus agreeably Initiated; but
might not our Christian friends leave
moro of such duty of Utilization to the
thcatcrs and public lbuildings' We had
thought their work lay in higher
level, remembering the words of the great
master, when, standing on the sea-shore,
he looked over n world full of vice, poverty,
and ignorance, aud babe his disciples leave
even the certainty of life behind them to feed
his sheep. White spires and marble walls did
not answer the exigenoies of the case then,
nor do they now. l,r .--