The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1885-01-14
OPEN SANCTUARIES.
Some of the People Who Rest and
Pray Therein.
Spiritual Waits Seeking LIgbt-Men
and Women without Masks.
The Woman Who Lives Half
Her Life in IA Church.

Slowly but surely it is being RECOGNIZED in
New York that churcles can be made as
helpful to humanity every day. even in
their emptiness, as on Sunday when their
people are gathered together and there is
service of song aud prayer. The Romanists
have alveys recognized the everyday uses
of the emples of worship and hold their
doors open all days, so that whoever would
might enter and partake of the holy calm,
the deep peace which there abounds.
A few of the Protestant Episcopal
churches have always done so, notably old
Trinity, through whose open doors stray
Cling stream of pilgrims continually filters.
Usually it is the curious rather than the de-
votional element which lures them thither.
They have heard of this splendid Gothic
structure, with its historic dead lying within
it and about it, and come to look at it with
interested if not reverential eyes.
Three or four other Episcopal churches
have adopted the same plan of keeping their
doors open every day. Some even put cut
a notice of invitation to the public, telling
them they are welcome to enter.
Having lived for more than year in the
vicinity of st. Georges church, which is
directly west of Stuyvesant square, on Ruth
erford place, between Seventeenth and
Eighteenth streets, and passing it often.
was attracted by the conspicuous invitation
In large gilt letters over the steps, "Come
In, Rest and Pray" and went in; not once,
but often. Very naturally one is drawn
toward any pleasant place where ones well
come is unmistakable; and 1 grew fond OF
going into the big empty church and shut
ting out the noise of the world and the
things Of the world.
In some silent, psychological way grew
acquainted with some of the people vElo
cams there often-not their outer and con-
ventional selves, but their inner and spirit
ual ones. o ce inside they cast off their
masks of repression. worn so bravely in the
crowd, and their souls stood revealed. Thus
il was that somehow learned to know that
this one was seeking courage to fight him
self; that another was cropping for light on
. pathway envelopsd in clouds; that still
ancth stood wavering at the junction of
two roads, uncertain which to take and
trustfulIy hoping that in the silent church
an apocalypse of light might point out the
better way.
So it was there; so it is elsewhere. All
are building blindly and eternally seeking
uclp IEOn SOHto pONoE 4AAShIASAs
more enlightened than themselves.
st. Georges church is a beautiful temple,
Gothic as to construction, with two tower
ing steeples and a great clock in one which
serves the people in the high stories around
about instead of private time-Seces. Rev.
Rainsford, its pastor, is an exceptionally
Gberal-minded, as well as intelligent man,
It was his idea to open the church through
the day, and henever rested until he inaug-
urated the practice.
Then, too, it holds fast to its people by
means OF various little services, reminding
them that their spiritual needs are not for
gotten ana keeping them within the infiu-
ence Of its protecting arms Every NOM
ing at nine o'clock there is brief service,
into which many wander who rarely enter
church when it is in its finest array, filed
with the more prosperous. Sometimes there
are only six or eight persons present, some
times dozen or more, sometimes twenty or
twenty i've, but the service is just the same.
They are not always the people the church
who go because they are expected to; indeed,
/ fancy there are but lew of those. They
ara the spiritual waits and wanderers,
people who belong nowhere, live nowhere
long, hut feel the need of some sort of
spiritual strength and seek it where it is
held out to them, as here.
In this big city, where the struggle for
life is so deadly, where many human beings
are always anxious, distraught and despair
ing, cropping in thick darkness for ray Of
light, CLEAN of hope, an open church like
st. Georges is a spiritual haven-a place
where both body and soul can rest from the
fierce attrition of life.
Once inside, the world rolls away. The
incessant roar of the great city grows faint,
and even the thoughts of the world, which
but moment ago seemed so engrossing and
perplexing, take fight. Thoughts are like
people; they will not stay where the atno-
sphere is not congenial.
These autumn days have peculiar beauty
as felt through the sacred barrier of stained
glass windows and thick church walls. Here
and there slanting pane lets in the dying
breath Of the summer and that low. n, lam
chcly hum of the insects which precedes the
death of vegetation. The dead leaves
drou down from the few surround