St. Paul recorder. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1934-2000, 1939-06-16
Here
and
There
Rv w NJ Smith

things, at least it seems so to me.
| Day after day come across
things I can neither explain nor
understand.
And yet / am constantly trying
to explain the things I so often
meet yet cannot seem able ever to
do so. One of these things / meet
each time l walk to town.
One of the best ways, / have
found, to meet them is to walk to
town. In that way you will meet
situations that will never confront
you if you make the trip by the
hurry-up street car or auto method.
Things which you meet as you walk
will impress in way they never
do in a rushing street car or motor
vehicle.
So this morning / took the leis-
urely method of the walk-again I
met conditions I have not as yet
been able to understand. But there
comes to me a possible explanation.
In the hurly-burly Of life there
come to me many things 1 can
understand no better. May it not
be then that recurrent things like
those / meet in my occasional
walks to town are intended to APP
ply to these other things which
can be understood only if given
enough thought.
In my walk to town I pass per-
haps a half dozen places never con-
tinually occupied and l wonder
why. I can't say they are on the
wrong side of the street. They are
on both sides. It isn't because they
are in the wrong kind of buildings
for some are in very good build
ings, while others are not. To say
they are used for the wrong bust
ness would be satisfactory were it
not for the disconcerting fact that
the same type of business is being
successfully conducted on the same
street, ofttimes in the same block.
But they are there and continu-
ally they fail. There must be a
reason if only can find it.
Once in a while one of these I'M
successful buildings is completely
demolished. A new building, more
modern, takes its place. The same
type of business occupies the new
structure. It succeeds from the
start. Whatever was wrong is gone.
It was not the wrong side of the
street evidently. It was not the
wrong type of business for the old
business meets a splendid success
in the new structure. Something
was wrong in the old building.
Whatever it was is gone and sue
cess follows the former failure.
I can only think of the man in
the scriptures who explains SINH
lar queer experience by declaring
81 once was blind, but now I see."
The church then changes blindness
into sight and that, I realize, is
the whole secret.
Many of our churches are like
the business places / pass in my
walks to town. They are not hav-
ing their full measure of success
because unlike the blindman of the
Scriptures they cannot say 81 once
was blind but now I see." For
blindness still affects them.
There is a reason why many of
the most forward looking men and
women of our communities never
set foot inside our churches. There
is reason why so many of our
people follow in the path of those
churches which do not follow the
accepted way of the regular
churches.
The people who go from church
to church and the people who are
induced to give their aid to new
church movements are not to be
blamed. They sense something
wrong in their present environment
which they are trying to escape.
Like the business places to which
have referred which is
wrong will not be corrected until
like those business places, they are
completely torn down and replaced
by new structures. New struc-
lures not in the sense of new
buildings, but new in the sense of
new methods to meet the old prob
lens which ever hold US back and
keep the church as an institution
from succeeding as it should.
TN q