The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1927-01-26
THE CHURCH IN THE WORLD TODAY

WYE NEED a Christianity which keeps
M prominently before the attention of men
its genuinely spiritual quality We need
not so many wheels but "the spirit within the
Wheels The tendency of recent years. particu-
larry since the craze for efficiency came in with
the war, has been to make the machinery of re-
hgion more and more complicated and to have
that machinery driven by technically trained
men and women who keep it going by humanity
generated forces such often startlingly
foreign to the spirit of Christ. The craze for
up-to-date Church organization, with a multitude
of societies to enlist the energies of men, wo-
men and children, ramifying in every direction
from the congregation to the nation, claiming
the attention of hosts of secretaries and business
agents, turning the pastor into a bewildered dir
ector of an administrative system, perpetually
engaged in inaugurating, sustaining, reviving,
and galvanizng into appearance of life multi
phclty OF unnecessary organizations, has done not
little, while stimulating the physical energies
of the Church, to diminish its real power and
Influence in the community
Not little of the disbelief of the world to-
day comes from the consciousness of Church
which in its lust for competitive organization in
its foolish habit of depending upon the reputation
for statisticalized greatness, in its employment
of methods more ingenious than religious to
of self advertisement, must surely be an offense
against God and blasphemy against Christ.
AS turn the whole force of our
ministry and the love and activity of our con-
gregations into the task of spirituaizing the at
mosphere of the communities in which we dwell
men will not be slow to appreciate the SAVIOR of
our witness. To withdraw from the noisier
world into the secret place wherein power is
generated for the whole worlds uses is not to
renquish the service of an active life 1t is
rather to manifest that and higher type OF
activity which is the less real for being pri-
mary spiritual.-H. H. Gowen, in the Universal
Faith.
LOOKING FOR IMPROVED BANKING
" HERE has been introduced in the Mime
sofa legislature a bill providing for sub
stantial increases in the required min
imum capital of state banks to be chartered here
after.
The purpose is to help raise the genera
level of state banking standards, to better safe
guard stockholders and depositors, and to reduce
banking competition to something like a ration
al limitation.
To many banks in a given community or 8
bank in community not prepared to sustain ON.
as it should be sustained, is poor policy, and
mder-capitalIzed banks with insufficient sur
pluses as ill-advised as under-financed mer
camille and industrial concerns
1t seems to be no longer a matter of contro
versy that there have been too many banks il
the northwest and particularly too many tina
were financed on small scales. That is matter
that has been undergoing some self-correctiol
in IRE very nature OF things. The weeding-ou
process, though having its unfortunate aspects
has placed the state banking systems of Min
nesota and the Dakotas on q stronger and NOR,