The Bennington evening banner. (Bennington, Vt.) 19??-1961, 1908-01-06
FRANK E. HOWE. Editor and Publisher
Empty PeWs Etc.

Empty Pews Etc.
"The venerable Sunday blue law
was enforced in Montpelier the first 1
day of this week. Every grocery, fruit
and shoe store, tobacco shop, lunch
room. ice cream parlor, dental office
and photograph studio was closed and
nothing except works of charity or
necessity was done. We had hoped
this law enforcement would offer The
st. Adams Messenger solution of its
Empty Pews problem by bringing
ABOUT an increased church attendance,
but no such result as that seems to
have followed. '-Brattleboro Reform
err
Doubtless the contemporary has al
ready reflected that the cause of the
empty pews lies deeper than this and
that the mere suppression OF counter
attractions will not increase church
attendance as long as the churches
themselves do not appear to realize
as keenly as they may some day that
the staying away in many instances
is quite as much an active expression
of conviction as 1t is in others mere
passive manifestation of indifference.
The sober truth Is that far more peo-
pie than some of our friends imagine
actually do not believe that 1t is mans
duty to go to church as they used to
be taught it was, and are now, for
that matter If the church can per-
suade them that they are wrong and
make them change their minds. then
the empty pews will be filled again.
II the empty pews are filed again and
they have not changed their minds, 1t
will be because the church has found
it necessary to make some change It.
self. Sunday laws do not enter into
the crux of the problem at all.-St. AL
bans Messenger.
Why doesn't the Messenger state
just what 1t means instead of limiting
at lot of things which 1t may or may
not mean? From what We have read
of the Messengers recent utterances
on the subject We take it that the
Messenger believes that people go to
church less than formerly because
they do not believe in the doctrines
taught there; that in former times
people were scared into the churches
by the fear of hellfire, ex-communica.
ton and other ecclesiastical clubs
held over them by the clergy and
that the removal or softening of these
terrors has resulted in less interest
in and respect for the churches.
II this be the Messengers view we
are not convinced that it is warranted
by the facts Is the decrease in
church attendance due to lessened be-
belief and interest in Christian doc.
trines or the lessened hypocrisy Of
| the present age which makes people
more open in doing what they always
wanted to do, but were deferred by
what they thought to be public senti.
| ment?
On the whole We believe that peo-
pie are even more interested in re-
ligious and moral progress than ever
before in the history of the world, that
more people give and more generous
ly to charity and public good than
ever before, in short that people are
more religious and actually, If not ap-
parently, more devout than in any
previous age and that the world Is
surely, If slowly, growing better.
In the dark ages religion and piety
manifested itself by Withdrawals from
the brutal, wanton, bestial and de-
graded life common in those days to
converts and monasteries where the
Christian spark was kept alive and
I! famed into the flame. that has since
warmed the heart of the world.
AS the centuries rolled by the ele-
ment of progressive religion and vir-
tue has manifested itself in many and
varied ways. There were the militant
conquests of the Spanish church,
hand in hand with the blood-drip of
the Spanish sword; there was the self
sacrificing martyrdom of the Jesuit
fathers, the bravest missionaries who
ever lived; there was the sincere and
earnest bigotry of the Pilgrim
exiles; there was the Christlike
meekness of the Quaker doctrine;
there was the era of cathedral and
church building; there was the eman-
cipation of women from the mental,
moral and physical thraldom of seven
thousand years of world history; there
was the bringing of education to the
masses; there was the tearing down
of the torture cell of the inquistion
and the planting in its place the doc
trine of the brotherhood of man. The
advance is still In progress, the chan
mel none of us may know.
People may not attend church as
they did in the past, but Gothic domes
of Wondering stone" are not the only
temples of the Almighty 1t cannot be
and it is not true that religion is less
because church-going is lax. Evil is
less than in any previous age-it is
merely more advertised by a wicked
ly sensational press.
We sometimes think that the people
are ahead of their pastors, priests and
elders. Church and religion is live
issue and not a volume of dead his
tory and forward, far and far from
here" is that universal good and ulti.
mate perfection which is the Divine
spark of hope with which all men are
endowed. We are on the road. and the
church of the future must adjoin that