The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1902-11-11
THE OUTSIDER AND THE CHURCH.

The OU1SiUEk AMI NE
The writer who told in yesterdays
Advertiser why he does not go to
church a a grievance against the So
eiai side of the organization. He is
greeted in the church itself but is not
sought outside. The question there
fore arises as to whether one who at
tends public worship merely to get So
cial or business recognition has a right
to complain If the boon is withheld OF
but charity extended. It is not for sucn
things that churches are constituted;
they are, primarily, organizations for
the worship of God and h furtherance
of religious, moral and charitable work,
and the society which grows up in them
is supposed to come Of the natural anil
iation of men and women who have
such interests in common.
II a man goes to church and takes an
interest In its spiritual and material
welfare he cannot long be without
church friends and helpers. Like at
tracts like. But if he enters the sane
tuary to be taken up and made mucn
of simply because he is there to stay
no one knows how long and to do no
one knows what, he is likely to be dis
appointed. The common instinct tends
towards the Methodist idea OF propa-
ton. The newcomer must prove his
way like those who stood the test OF
the %Shibboleth. If he cannot or Will
not meet that test. the doors OF the
church will not hut in his face but
assuredly the private doors OF the
church members will be slow to open.
THAI many men, like our correspond
emit. mark a certain discrepancy be-
tween preaching and practice among
church members, goss without the say
ing. That comes of looking for perfect
nature which has never been embodied
in but one human form. Getting re-
ligion is largely a matter of trying to
be better than nature designed one to
be, or of not becoming worse. All
Christians feel a conviction of sin. The
Pope confesses to his chaplain, a priest.
The prayer book of the Episcopal body
classes the communicates as "miser-
able sinners" Evangelical worshippers
plead for the forgiveness Of sins. No
rational church-member thinks himself
perfect, but he fnds to his dismay that
his human faults are held up by the
outsider as proof of his hypocrisy as
a professor of the faith. The personal
test is essentially unfair unless it re-
veals him Enthusiastically as a man OF
bad life and when that is shown the
church expeIs him.
The question is not what this or that
church-member does but what inf1u-
ence churches as a whole have on the
life of the community. 1t must be adj
mitted that where the church sentiment
is strongest, there families find the hap
piest. surroundings, crime the least in
centiye, schools and charities the most
support, law n order the greatest
observance and respect. The Roman
Catholic church is one of the strongest
police powers in the world and one OF
the foremost in%culcators of domestic
virtue; the Protestant churches are be-
hind the form of civilization which
shows brightest in Protestant countries
Just as the sun is behind the morning,
bringing the light, and as the wine is
ehind the ship, urging it onward To
sustain these worldwide agencies of
good is the duty of every citizen, ac-
cording to his faith. What matters it
that here and there are men and wo-
men who fall from grace? Shall one
refuse to be a citizen of the State and
to pay its taxes and fight it's battles
because here and there is a disrepu-
table Congressman, a treacherous COM
mander or a Doodle alderman?
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