The Charlotte Democrat., 1889-03-22
Commercial Religion.

AT the conference OF Episcopalian
clergymen and laymen held at New York
recently, letter was read from the Right
Rev. +. d. Huntington, Bishop of Central
New York, in which this passage attracted
wide attention:
"Iutense political ard commercial forces
are ready to push their way into the
church, to magnify its material and secu-
lar aspects in commercial and political
centres, and to match the wealth and
the world with hierarchical and other like
distinctions in the kingdom of God. To
specify the multiplying marks of such a
tendency might seem invidiods, but it
could be easily DONE"
Bishop Huntington was asked by San
correspondent for an elaboration of his
views on the subject.
"Hy views," he said, shave never been
concealed, and am entirely willing to
state them to the public at any time and
in any form. That commercial forces are
pushing their way into the church is very
obvious. This is seen repeatedly in the
election of vestrymen. Spirituality seems
often no longer the test of church official;
business success, high social position,
shrewdness in the conduct of affairs, are
coming to be considered the more import
ant qualifications for good vestryman or
trustee. do not refer to the Episcopal
church alone, but to churches 10 general
The man poor in spirit, but rich CONNER.
eially is preferred as a church officer to
the poor in worldly goods, though rich
spiritually. There are Numerous instances
| daily before our eyes of men holding high
places as church officials who would not
hold such high position were spirituality
the test of Office.
"This commercial tendency is also OBJ.
vious in the pew renting. The rich occupy
the choice places, while the poor must sit
in the obscure, out-ofthe-way corners
The church becomes a club house, and this
amounts in cases to an exclusion of the
poor. If the church was TO be merely a
means of providing comfortable incomes
for Sunday orators and cosy seats for
wealthy listeners, the pew-renting system
might be success. But as the church is
for common salvation of rich aud poor
alike, no system that shuts out the poor or
| puts the rich into fashionable house with
| a saints name at one end of the town and
the poor into bare chapel by themselves
at the other end, can ever be system that
God will prosper Thereis all that class
of persons who in this generation are SER
wants and iaborers, but whose children in
the next generation will be the lords and
ladies of the land, all of whom, under the
pew system, are just as completely and
| effectually excluded from the house OF God
as though it were written upon the door
No admittance for servants aud laborers
here The system virtually cuts off from
the sound of the Gospel and from all
heavenly helps of the church portion of
every population. 1t is we'll nigh impos-
| sible, with the commercial influence to the
front, with property as the controlling ele.
ment, that the spiritual interest should
not suffer. The question how costly a
pew or how high a tax the parishoner can
afford will obscure very often those simple
merits of meek aud lowly heart. If it
could be known openly in how many
parishes at this momen. some influential
and managing men are secretly discussing
the question of how they shall contrive to
get rid Of the minister they have, because
he is not paying we'll in pew rents, or how
they shall ind one that will do that, an
appeal Of alarm would arise TO the ears of
God