Los Angeles herald., 1907-07-15
LOS ANGELES HERALD: MONDAY MORNING, JULY 15 1907.

letter; he was standing before these men,
and the gesture threw the outspread
hands before the hearers. They were not
professional hands; they were not white
and graceful, with fingers slender and
delicate and womanish; they would not
ornament modern pulpit, resting with
symmetry and grace on the purple velvet
of pulpit cushion; they were the hands
or tent maker, rough with handling the
harsh cloth of goats hair, punctured by
the needle, scanned by the cutting of the
heaVy thread, callnus with his work,
grimed with the dust of his toll Had
ne said no word the hands would have
spoken the message for him, and the eld-
ers of the church would have recognized
the apostle of toll, of grace and eloquence
even as the doubling disciple recognized
mis- Lord; not by the soft hand of the
rabbi, but by the mangled hand of the
savior Of men.
You hear the question discussed in re-
ligious magazines, religious papers and
the pulpit all over the country why
have the workingmen left the church,
Few Toilers In Pulpit
Il will tell you-because we have so few
Workingmen in the pulpit Here a boy
is sent to kindergarten when he is years
old; enters the primary department at
6 years. he is graduated from the high
school at IS or 10; gets his diploma at
Berkeley or Stanford when %; closes
post graduate course at Harvard at %;
year in Europe; then he speclalizes for
year; and at %, having spent twenty-one
years of his life-ever since he was
weaned-in school, study and class
room, among students, professors, inves-
tigators and theorists, he steps upon the
rostrum or climbs into the pulpit.
Now I will teach men. Now will
get at the hearts of men who have moist
ened their brows with the sweat of toll
since they were Is years old; who began
their apprenticeship of life when they
were years old; who have earned their
own living since they could sell news
papers. polish shoes or run errands.'
Then he breaches or lectures to people
brought up like himself and wonders
why the workingmen have drifted away
from the church. 1 tell you, learned pro-
fessor, these things that have made you
the great teacher, the wise man, the
learned scholar that you are, do not open
way into the hearts of men. l tell you,
Jesus Christ could not so have drawn to
himself the hearts of the common people
who heard him gladly, the thronging
multitudeS that followed him gladly out
into the Wilderness; the poor and the
wretched, the homeless and the penni-
less had not clustered about him. blind
not brought their little ones to him. lep-
ers in defiance of the law had not burst
through the multitudes to cast them
selves at his feet; had he not been the
son of a carpenter even as he was the
Son of God.
"Ts not this the carpenters son.? asked
wondering unbelief And like the answer
to the question of the multitude thronged
and pressed around him to hear the
- hot foil
Have any of the rulers and the pharisees
believed on him.? asked supercilious crit
csm. Today the fear is lest they be the
only ones who do profess to believe on
him. Why do not the working people
come to hear us preach? Partly, 1t seems
to me, because they do not care for the
things we so often preach about, and
again, because they do not like the way
we preach what they might like.
Too Much Education
"There is a great cry today for an edu-
Gated ministry. No man living has a
warmer or a deeper or a more profound
respect and reverence, If you will, than
l have for the wisdom of learning, Tor
| the wisdom of the school. Yet we read
that when the son of the carpenter en-
tered upon his ministry, the distance be-
tween the ignorance of the people and the
| learning of the priests was not rift; 1t
I
was a chasm, an abyss. The priesthood
overcrowding the temple had gone mad
with study of the law. Yet even they
themselves were drawn into the SWEEP
of the multitudes that made the wilder
ness a populous city, drawn from temple
and synagogue to hear the preahcing of
John the Baptist by the Jordan, and to
follow Christ into the solitudes by the
thousands
"Education of the head and neglect of
the education of the hand is only half an
education, and half an education Is as
useful as half a pair of scissors. You
can scratch with it; you can cut and
haggle with it; man can dig ms way
through the walls of a prison with it;
man can dig his way out of the prison
of doubt and unbelief with 1t; but it
never does the perfect work of whole
pair of shears. Which is really but one
scissor"