The Newtown bee., 1909-11-12

make it plain right here that l eia are talking can't, that 1 am not try- ing to pose as being altogether sue perlor to the salary question. The salary means as much 10 me as it does to the next man. And God for bid that l shold seem for moment to have no sympathy for those Of my fellow workers whose salaries are 0utrage0usly small. Hut honestly do not believe thtat doubling salar- les will make giants md that there fcre in that suggestion we have not any real answer to the question, what alls the church," But looN- Ing at the suggestion from another point of view 1 am not sure but that we eel an lnkling there of what 10 a large extent IS troubling the church, and 1t Is that everlasting matter of dollars and cents, that coh!- merclal conception of the whole thing, that idea that If you only had the money you could accomplish al- most anything. The church is only another kind of business. It must do as the railroads do, as this pastor from whom l have Guoted suggests, put up n0ney enough and get big men, Yes, and when you get them in that way they will damn tke church. What the church wants is good mon, good biz men if possible, but in any event good men. Speak ing of giants reminds me.
 In distant land and at a distant tine there lived a giant and he did a giants work for God and for man.
 have picture of him in my mind, il small nan, end none too sound physically. He is d traveller, travel ing i'll tho interests q his new fol nd
 Master. l can sec hiil at work. la-
 bGlOusly making he course goat hair fah.,c used for tents. 1 can see him in the synagogue. or by the river or down in the market place preach
 ing ] can hear hill say to a little
 group of persons al Ephesus as he holds out his rough bard hands, Yea, ye yourselves know that these hands have ministered Intt my necessity and to them that were with me-" And l can read in his letters state ments like these: For ye remember. brethren, our labor and travail, for labouring night and day, because we would not be chargeable until any tf you, we preached unto you the gospel
 of God" And again, Behold, the third time am ready to come to you, and l will not be Eurdensome to you,
 for l seek not yours, but you. And
 St Paul didn' know anything about salaries. There wasn't much money in his work, and yet he was what l should call giant.
 Now it is most unfortunate for the church that anything ever has 10 be said lbout salaries, and probably there was never more said about
 them than is being said just now It
 is most unfortunate for the church
 that money occupies such a promi-
 nent place in it's life and work. Of course as things are it is inevitable that it should A huge, complicated
 and costly system has grown out of
 that simple and beautiful beginning
 in Palestine, system which is far
 more complicated than need be prob ably to accomplish what it was de- signed to do, a system which uses more power than it generates. That
 was the trouble with the Jewish
 church when Jesus Christ came and lhundered against it. Its complexity
 was it's undoing, for it observed the
 essential things and exalted the non-
 essential. l wonder if Jesus, looking
 down the long vista of years, ever foresaw what His church would be,
 ever foresaw, that, that it would
 be what it is? At the risk of being
 unorthodox I must say doubt it.
 We'll, now we are struggling
 against this complexity. The great
 machine is ever in motion. All the wheels are humming. We are fas- cinated by Cheir rhythm. We marvel at their speed. We pride ourselves on their intricate working. We lose sight of the Christ in the maze of
 machinery. It is the machinery and not the Christ that we worship. That may be a hard saying, but isn't it perilously near the truth? l do not mean to say that we deliberately as- sume that attitude, but that it is the
 inevitable outcome of existing con- ditions. Therefore they sacrifice unto their net, and burn incense un- to their drag" The prophet Habak- kuk knew all about it, you see, and cried out against the worship of the tools. Rightly or wrongly, the church is what it is-a gigantic cor
 poration with it's numerous branches
 for I am not using the term !, church" in any restricted sense but as .conprehending all Christian ;, people, whatever descriptive title they may employ. Too many out side the church view 1t as such, and ], because they have no regard for the ,, kind of dividends it pays, or they think it pays, they Will lave nothing
 to do with it, save to hurl their fire brands of criticism. And their po' !. sition is not without reason. But oi t course they don't take sufficient ac' count of the tremendous power fol :, good the church is, and of how mucf greater it might be if their position : were one of active interest within . the church, rather than caption! ? criticism outside of it. What ail: the church." is real live question . It can't be dismissed as asked simpl. D in the spirit of fault-finding, by thos' who under no circumstances coult ever be brought within it's pale.