Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1877-04-04
Church Work In Great Cities.
PROM JOSEPH COOKS LECTURES.

One day in Parliament William Pitt said I:
al have no fear for England. She will
stand till the day of judgment" But Ed
mund Burke replied "What fear is the
day of no Judgment" The relation of the
temperance reform to the future of great
cities has an unsounded depth of interest
from Edmund Burke's point of view. In
1900, one twenty-ffth OF the population of
the United States was in towns numbering
eight thousand or more inhabitants in 1870,
one-ffth.
WHAT MANY CHURCHES ARE DOING
OF course | need not emphasize the fact
| that many of our churches are doing their
duty on the topic of temperance in great
towns. | do not overlook starry exceptions.
/ remember that Roswell Hitchcock's church
in New York was once called together i'll
order that two persons, who had joined it,
might have work assigned them on the
church philanthropic committees. There
was no other business before the gathering
than to set two persons at work, the only
ones out of a very large church who had not
something definite to do in our sorely tried
metropolis. Other individual churches are
active; but the mass of our churches are
sngularly inefficient IN moral reform i'll
cities. The other day saw heap of manu-
script books, in which the names of the most
abandoned streets and lanes in this city
were written down, and in which compe-
tent number of fit persons were assigned to
the work of visitation in these desolate quar-
teIs. Now, is it not circumstance rather
| humiliating, that a man who is compare
| lively stranger in this city must come halt
way across the continent to set us here i'll
Boston at work which we ought to know bet
ter than he does how to do? Is it not
fact somewhat nexpressble in its wincng
outcome, as it touches our poor pride, to
know that many town i'll New England,
| Boston not excepted from the list, is allow
! ing Young Mems Christian Association,
for instance, that wishes to do Just such
work as this, to starve? You are not Civ
ing half money enough to the agents you
employ for religious effort among the poor
and degraded in cities, and you do not work
yourselves You act through the finger
! tips of few saints, women missionaries,
city missionaries and you are starving
them. There is not a city missionary, there
is not an established religious agency OF
yours among the perishing and dangerous
classes and their heecers, that has adequate
financial support, TO say nothing of sympathy.
WHAT ALL THE CHURCHES OUGHT TO DO.
America wants her churches to organize
| themselves for permanent and aggressive,
| just rs they occasionally have organized
| themselves for temporary and timid, work
for the sQualid and debased ! read in the
newspapers the other day that some noble
women, lineal descendants, no doubt, OF
those who were among the most efficient OF
all the powers that cowed old Rome by the
purity of Christian life, have gone into the
Jaws and throat of despair in some aban
doned quarters of this city, and have found
homes for degraded women and taken the
almost incredible word OF hope to persons
like some to whom our Lord himself spoke.
| This work is going on silently. 1t must
not be heralded. What want is that it
should be made permanent.
Lessing said that by-and-by, when the
world has found out what church does the
most good, it will know in what church to
| believe. Show me the church that is will
ing to wash the feet of the degraded show
me the church that goes about from house
to house doing good show me the church
organized for permanent, aggressive, auda-
cious, moral effort; show me church that
/ has not lost her masters whip OF small
cords, and will show you the church, and
the only church, that can save America when
she has two hundred to the square mile.
WHAT THE CHURCH AROUSED CAN DO
New England has seen lately some new
indications that temperance discussion in
the church will be heard by the masses out
side of it. Look at the Merrinack River
and its cities, and notice what one man, DIR.
REYNOLDS, has done there. You do not be-
ieve in all his methods, although experience
is endorsing them significantly? Very well
will YOU invent better ones? What are we
about, when men, and some women, through
the country, more rapidly than under the
sycthe of war, .re falling into their graves
under the flame of these gross-consuming
habits that we do not turn all the mora
power of the church, at least once month
in cities, on this conhagration We have
power to put down by moral suasion grea
amount of this evil, and our responsibility
is proportionate to our power Let mora
suasion once have free course, and legal sua
sion will follow of the right sort. When
ever Temperance has tried to fly on on
{ wing, that is, either with legal suasion alon'
: on the one hand, )r with moral suasion alon'
p on the other, her flight has been a orr.
spiral She never will ascend to God, o
: even make the circuit OF the globe, unit
she strikes the air with majestic equal vans
: keeping rhythm with each other-moral sua
sion and legal suasion-acting side by side
To bear her on, and to winnow the earth o
both the tempters and the temptable.