Year: 1879

sNoozING.

 The proposed trial-perhaps we should say | the pending trial-of Mir. Talmage-of Brook 1 lyn for untruthfulness and charlatanry is an attempt of the church to deal with growing evil, namely, the tendency to make church going attractive by beuffe treatment of re. ligious subjects in the pulpit. It is not likely | to succeed. because to put down a bouffe preacher he must be attacked Tn the very be- ginning of his career, and none of the existing organizations of the Protestant Church ever prosecute minister at all if they can possibly avoid it, or prosecute him one minute sooner i than they can help. All ministers naturally receil from the task of holding up brother minister to public odium, and most church. members naturally dislike making church scandal, if for no other reason, on account of the discredit it is likely to bring on religion it. self. Then, bouffe treatment, too, is thing difficult of defn ton. In it's earlier stages the line which separatesit from merely picturesque or warm treatment may be very faint No preacher becomes markedly bouffe all of sudden. Consequently he may go on for years grieving the judicious and making the world lings laugh before there is anything positive enough in his performances to warrant an ecclesiastical court in laying hold of him. By the time It does make up it's mind to call him

 

 selection, collected a congregation who like him for his defects, and are prepared to stand by him, come what may, and who in fact, would not ''sit under him'' if he were not gull ty of the very otfenses with which he is charg- l ed. Under these circumstances he is, of course, prepared to defy the constituted au- thOrities and indeed comes into court not to plead but to rebuke them for annoying him, | Knowing well that their verdict will not be | ar,A ho Jxro he will heed. The trial, therefore, is apt to be a farce, in which the culprit plays the leading and popular part, and by which the church organization is made ridiculous

 The bouffe tendency is one result of the change in the minister's position wrought by the decay of popular interest in dectrinal the ology. When the minister was the trained and duly commissioned exponent of what was accepted as a science, the conclusions of which every man felt bound to ascertain from authorized sources the poorest preacher could rely with more or less confidence on his subject to secure him hearing Those who refused or failed to hear him because he was dull, felt that they did so at their peril. He was really In the position of a physician charged with the cure of souls, and his knowledge was his main qualification his manner of communicating it a minor consideration. With the decline of

 interest in dogmas and the growth of doubt l creed, the minister has become more of lec- turer on morality, and less an expounder of the law. In other words, he speaks with less authority than he used to speak and has to rely more than formerly on his natural gifts. This change in his position is strikingiy illus trated by the history of the practice or weak ness of sleeping in church. This is distinctly a Protestant weakness. It was unknown be. fore the Reformation, and is unknown now in I1>ls1 oI,D ges of posture, and the duty of praying him. self instead of following the priest, keeps the worshipper's attention aroused Drowsiness made it's appearance in the Protestant Church as the accompaniment of long extemporaneous sermons and prayers, which imposed upon the worshipper the simple duty of listening in one posltlon, and at the same time exposed him to that most soporific of all inf1uences-the sound of steady flow of words the sense of which does not excite eager attention. The result was that the difficulty of keeping awake in church was for two centuries among Prot estants one of the serious questions of relig- ious life and all sorts of artificial contrivances were resorted to, to combat il, such as standing up, ,and the application of ttillating substances to the mucous membrane, like fennel seed or ''meetin' seeds," lemon-p peel, add calamus or 'sWeet-fag," and at alater period pepper lozen- ges It furnished, too, the material for very | of the eighteenth and the earlier part of the present century. What was remarkable | about it then, however was that the blame of 1t was not thrown on the preacher. It was considered the hearers duty to stay awake, not the preachers duty to keep him awake. A minister was not liable to be dismissed for not rousing the attention of the somnolent, and people kept up without faltering, their attend ance at church where they knew that as soon as the sermon began, sleep would come upon 1 them as strong man armed. Under these l circumstances there was little temptation to pulpit eXtravagances or oddities of any kind or anything like what may be called infamma- tory treatment of sacred subjects. The idea that the Gospel could not be made an amusing theme never entered any ones head. A minister's main concern was to avoid flaws in his theology and defects of logic in his argu- ment, and sermons had good many of the characteristics of the oratery listened to by judges sitting in 5anco.

 | In our time, however, great change has come over the churchgoer's spirit He has thrown away his ''meetin' seed' and pepper lezenges, and has imposed on the preacher the task of keeping him awake. If he finds himself sleepy in church he either goes off to another or gets up an agitation for the pastors dismissal on the ground that he ''doesn't interest the young people" or stays at home altogether. He un- l pOUul1r | lecturer on slavery, or on temperance CT on the Holy Land who has withia the last forty years made practice of visiting him every winter. If he lives in the city, he compares him with his neighbours pastor, who has filled l all the pews at high rates and set the trustees to talking of building further uptown. The | consequence is that the pressure on the clergy for popularity of method among us is at this | moment, such as has never been known in TA AL | churches into competing lyceums or places of entertainment, and the competition is not con- 1 fined to particular groups or denominations. l Every church, no matter of what denemina- l tion. compctes with every church of every oth- | CT denomination, because denominational ties now sit so lightly that Presbyterian has little | difficulty in becoming an Episcopalian, Meth | Odist, or Baptist in order to get the benefit of l a more attractive service; and the Episcopal ian, Methodist, or Baptist, in his turn, is equally facie. 1t is but just to the cOngrega | tions to say that they are very ready to help | the minister ont in the struggle with costly ar l chitecture and music and other external attrac- tions In fact nothing is left undone to make the church place where people shall not only find it easy to stay awake, but shall be enliv- ened and entertained, and have their senslbili- ties touched by the most effcacious methods l Of course this pressure operat,s very differ l SutLy HI ullIcItut CaScS. It Has pTODdUly fnaQo d good deal of change in all preaching. It has made doctrinal sermons, properly so called, very rare, and in fact made nearly all pulpit oratery didactic rather than exege:ical. The l pulpit's prevailing themes are the duties and temptations of everyday life. It devotes. it. self mainly now, as has been said, to touching morality with the fire of emotion. It discusses politics good deal under the name of ''ques- tions of the day." It has always done so, per- haps good deal more so formerly than now, but with this difference, that the old preacher discussed politics distinctly as theologan from the point of view of authority, and judged men and measures c prio,f by the aid of Scrip | tural texts. The modern minister, on the oth- CT hand, does not hesitate to meet the utilitari- an statesmen on their own ground, and to dis pute with them over their own tests and stand ards, and to put temporal happiness in the | foreground as the reward of wise legislation The amount of preaching of this kind one can l haar nowa6avc ic vor% rrco+ T,, fact +ho