The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 18??-19??, 1909-07-27
IN THE RELIGIOUS WORLD
the Church Folk Are Thinking About and Doing.
Religious News From Elsewhere

furnished unless 1t has a great array
of knives and forks and spoons and
curious implements, until one has
| more pity for the state of mine which
has so burdened itself with useless
e~ncumbranceS Of an unreal Journalism
than with the CONSERVATION of the
country visitor who finds himself help
less anmong this array of table ac-
cessories.
The Good Among the Bad.
Beneath all this Overlay of fOllish
and needless extragances which char
acterize the modern city life there yet
remains, even as Paul found in Co
rinth, a thirst for religion. Recently
a Young Woman's Christian Associa-
ton worker was making a Bible talk
to a ompa Of young people in a
training SchOO1. By chance, a wealthy
woman and leader in aristocratic \so-
cial circles entered the meeting and
heard her. She requested that the
i association secretary spend the next
Sunday at her home, a palatial resi-
dence suburban to New York. There
the visitor found that she was called
upon to meet some thirty of her hos
tess's neighbors men and women of
wealth and position, some of them
known the wcrld around as social
leaders. To this gorgeously arrayed
company she was asked to teach the
Bible. So real was their interest that
they urged that she come every week
to teach them in a Bible class which
they would form. Instances are not
wanting to illustrate that even the men
and women who are dizziest with the
perpetual our of pleasure-seeking
and the observance of social forms
still hunger for the bread hat salts
fieS.
The Good Man i'm a Bad Place.
Face to face with the modern city,
as Paul was face to face with Corinth,
the question arises for the Church,
Has Christianity a word for the ime?
Is it equal to these new hard tasks?
Must it fee from the crowded, feted,
polyglot downtown, to the more con-
genial atmosphere of prosperous up
town districts? Is Christianity, after
all, a select society Of the morally
good and socially correct? Or is the
first business of the best with the
worst? Is Christianity's mission pri-
marily to the part of the society which
never has it's doings chronicled in the
society columns of the newspapers?
Pau1'S xampl answers these Ques-
tons. He plunged into h thick Of
the genial alliances with his fellow
craftsmen and with the Jewish syn
agOgue. At every point he made him
self count as "a factor for the city's
uplift. He was what the modern
slang would call a good mixer" There
was not an ounce of consciousness
or p~harisaism about him.
l. Jug VI Idul liz III I'D
when with a friend my attention was
called by some small boys to a sup
posedly n man, lying a short
distance DOWN the road among the
grass. We went toward him., and
while I was wondering how decent1y
to approach the recumbent figure, my
friend had quietly and naturally and
sympathetically, as if he himself were
accustomed to sleeping by the Dad
side every few days, talked with the
man, found out whether he was sick
or intoxicated, and proved himself an
unaffected and interested friend.
The art of brotherly touch is the
supreme. gift Of the Christian worker.
/ recall how this same man, who does
a noble service among the Italians in
one Of u big cities, was sought a
few years ago as counsellor by a wild
madcap of an Italian girl for whom
the police were hunting because of
some boisterous escapade. Her family
and friends were distracted and af-
frightened This man took the little
elf to his own home. His wife and
he cared for her there for a time,
and they lave always kept their in
f%uenece strong upon her. Today she
is an ernest Christian young woman
and a worker in the Italian mission.
When a Leader Gets Blue.
There came a point in PauFs Co
rinthian experience when he grew
greatly cast down. The blue devils of
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT beset him solely.
The mood is more common among
Christians workers and men who are
regarded as great leaders than the
public ever dreams. In the face of a
great usefulness, men are tempted of
ten to consider the worthwhileness Of
it all. The Lord heartened Paul by
a vision giving him that old, old word
of nope, Il am with thee" and assur-
ing him that even in wicked Corinth
there were many who named the
Name. So it proved. Paul had to
undergo persecution at the hands of
the Jews and be hailed before the
Roman p~rOconsul, and to devote
himself exclusively to the Gentiles;
but in spite Of it all he saw great tri-