The Washington herald., 1907-08-05
CHARITY And CHURCH
DR.. Van Schaick Points Out
Relations OF Each.
WORKERS NEED INSPIRATION
Pastor Declares All Denominations
Are Coming Together in Effort 10
Improve Work of Aiding UnfOr-
tunntes-One Social Improvement
Invariably Involves Another.


morning, Rev. John Van Schaick, jr., de-
livered the second of his sermons in the
series on The Charity Workers and the
Church"
He took for his topic, THE Need Of the
Charity Worker for the Church, and his
text was from Proverbs, xxx: IS: Where
there is no vision the people perish"
Last Sunday we spoke of The Need
Of the Church for the Charity Worker
! To-day of The Need Of the Charity
/ Worker for the Church
with all the world before her" said
/ the pastor, the charity worker also pay
Z become narrow. Upon her district-she
! concentrates. In her district she fights
/ poverty, drunkenness, infldelity, shiftless-
/ ness. and sin of every kind. II some
times seems as II she were all alone; as
if her efforts were insignificant and
worthless; as II she were attempting to
dip up the ocean with a pail.
The charity worker, therefore, needs
the church for vision. What she needs to
! see is the relation her work bears to the
progress of humanity and the place II
| occupies in the purposes Of God.
Church Has Limitations.
Il know of no theme more inspiring 20
all Of us than that Of the correlation OF
the social problems. In a broad way, this
is what the church ought to show. The
church cannot be a charities. The church
cannot run a Juvenile court The church
cannot ordinarily maintain a dispensary
or kindergarten OF a trade school Upon
occasion It has TO, Where there is need,
the duty devolves upon il until public
sentiment is aroused and the community
IS trained To do the work. But the great
service Of the church IN philanthropy is
to inspire. To inspire, it must have SYM
pathy and knowledge. And one thing Il
is best of all in position 20 know is the
relation social problems bear to one an
other.
For example. We throw ourselves into
one social movement and all at once we
Gnd ourselves in another. We start with
the problem Of poverty All at once Il is
the problem Of intemperance. Does the
wretched home make The drunkard? or
does the drunkard make the wretched
home? Neither is altogether cause
Neither Is altogether effect
No One Cure for All.
I'VE see that there is no one thing that
viii cure the social evil. We see that
the man with his one solution OF his one
panacea is apt to be a crank. But We
also see how many forces are at work.
Il is not only the Charity Organization
Society that Is attacking poverty. It is
Z ., & NIL
the Temperance Society that is attack
ing rum. II IS the Charity Organization
Society.
Thus every social problem resolves It.
self into several. and every apparently
Isolated social worker has mighty allies
whom he may never see.
." The problem of crime, said the mayor
Of Boston. in our large cities. Is q ques-
ton Of athletics. Fairgrounds are an
offset TO penal institutions Gymnastics
reduce the expenditures for prisons
In Washington. since the Inauguration
OF the public playground movement, the
truth OF this great proposition has been
strikingly illustrated.
All Crusades Revolve.
Doctors and laymen fight tuberculo-
sis Volunteer committees get laws and
tear down rookeries. But whoever fights
tuberculosis fights also the insanitary
tenement Whoever fights the insani-
tary tenement and lets in air and sun
light removes a great cause of the
spread Of tuberculosis.
Tt Is as If one were all the week down
in the valley said a charity worker and
on Sunday climbed a mountain and saw
not only the valley. but the world That
is what the church ought to do always,
for the charity worker. and every other
worker. It ought 10 be the lofty place
with the far view. and the uplift of soul.
In the lofty place, however. there is
another great thing that we ought TO see.
Il is not only the relation the workers
bear to one another-it is the relation we
all bear to God. In the Old-fashioned
sense of the word, the charity worker
needs theology, a doctrine OF God. and
religion, the life of God. in his soul.
Some Theology ParaIyzes.
Theology bears close relation to So
eial effort Some theology paralyzes;
other theology inspires. Whatever they
recite on Sunday. the successful charity
workers assume on Monday the funda-
mentals Of all the great churches.
This is not the DEVILS world 1t is
Gods world. We are not the children of
the devil. We are children of the Living
God
In every gathering of philanthropists
and charity workers that ever attended
I have heard members OF the old ortho-
dOx churches, with tremendous earnest
ness, talk about the divinity Of man
Catholics and Presbyterians alike assume
without question the possibility OF doing
something with ALL II that assumption
were not made reform schools would be
prison pens. Probation work would be
unheard of. Rescue homes would be blot
ted out. The mighty motive back of all
that we do-the lever of the universe, the
dynamic power of civilization-is what
Claiming and Bushnell and Ballou stood
for IN an age Of darkness-GOd is the
Father, man is the child. The relation
between them is a relation of love, and
love never fails.
All Must Have Creeds.
'In all real social movement there is a
creed. It is seldom stated. It is never
formally professed. 1t forms no part of
liturgy OF service. But It IS the creed
oftentimes unspoken. oftentimes unwrit-
ten, voiced best at one time by MazzinI,
the italian patriot, who said: I am yours
because I believe in the unity Of God:
yours, because I believe in the unity Of
mankind; yours. because I believe in the
educatibility Of the whole human race and
in law of infinite progression for all
1T is against the philosophy of despair
that the modern church In all its branch