The Newtown bee. (Newtown, Conn.) 1877-current, 1891-07-03

1sGraJlons OF the church, freely and glad
ly given without money and without
price. Now, mission halls, parish build
ings, free kinder gartens and day nurser-
les, homes and asylums, medicines, food
and clothing all cost money. The men
and women who supply the vast sums
necessary to carry on Christ's ministra-
tions are the accused hypocrites of the
churches. They do not seek the applause
of men for this simple duty of their
Christian profession, but they should be
defended against the reckless aspersions,
either of those who do not know the
truth, or who, knowing it, deliberately
bear false witness. The funds are forth
coming, and usually without difficulty,
but there is hindrance besides lack of
money to the Church's ministrations,
namely, lack of knowledge in individual
cases."
For the need must be known, land while
there is much necessarily overlooked,
still, in the seeking for Lazarus and his
brethren, the Christian church is doing
what lies in her power. Her clergy are
threading noisome alleys, her minister
ing women are climbing to the roofs and
descending to the cellars of poverty, her
school and mission workers are on the
alert to initiate the Master in going about
to do good. Doubtless much remains to
be done. But the simple truth is that
the great mass of the work of the
Church is done out of sight, unobserved
by the majority of men; it goes on stead
lily day by day, not spasmodically, but
as the sun rises and sets. 1t is a cruel
thing to lay to the charge of the church,
as neglect, that which is impossible. The
real workers in the Masters vineyard,
who bear the burden and heat of the day
are conscious enough that they can do
but part, but wandering lecturers who
find it easy to arraign the Christian
church for what it does not do, cannot
tell the working clergy and laity much
they do not know already about suffer-
ing and its amelioration. | have word
for them now. The very immensely of
it all tends to discourage US. But it must
not, and it need not, when we recall the
world that needed Him. every point, far
more than our world needs US. Where
Christ touched the eyes of one blind man,
there were a hundred whom He did not
reach. He did what He could. 1t is not in
tended that you and [ should take the
whole world on our shoulders, but, of its
burdens. only our share. We look too of
ten out upon the wide horizon, and turn
back dismayed to the little corner of the
Lords earth, which our strength en-
ables us to till. There is danger in such
thought which we cannot too carefully
guard against. From purely human
standpoint, before my eyes to-day, there
is blank, in the matter of bringing Or
der and beauty out of the confusion and
moral ugliness of much of the social
chaos of these times. From the heather
on our doorstep to the heather in the
heart of Africa from the misery of our
cutters to the gilded wretchedness of
our parlors; from the Grass ignorance
and bitterness of the so called "submerg-
ed tenth" of our population, to the pol
ished paganism and polite malice of our
superior better classes, / see no saliva
ton whatsoever from any purely human
source, or in any merely earthly point of
view. And yet it is with these conditions
that the Christian church has to dc. Sure
1y, there are sufficient human grounds
for encouragement, and yet, with the
memory of Jesus Christ's ministry
laid up in his soul, no man who is mem
Der of Christ. who realizes what such
membership means, has the smallest JUS
LITIGATION for encouragement. Looked at
from the eyes of a man, [ repeat, the out
look for solid and substantial results is
void and bare enough: To carry real
help to people in real need, while pre-
serving their self respect as children of
God and sons of men; to traverse the
wide highways where misery roams in
crowds, with the hope of assuaging it all
to teach those who are invincibly igno-
rant; to lead those who are passionately
headstrong; to avoid the obstacles plac-
ed in our path by those we are trying to
reach to bear up under hindrancss, fail
ures, disappointments and treasons, and,
in spite of all, to seem to accomplish so
little, and to be sneered at by irrespon-
slble writers and speakers, because, as
the phrase goes, we do not rescue the
masses. Where is the encouragement?
In Just this, my friends, that such work
is part of Christ's gospel of redemp-
ton for the human race, of which we