THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Marion K Morrow 
 
THE HONOR OF THE CHURCH 
 
THE HONOR 
 OF THE CHURCH 
 
 BY 
 CHARLES R. BROWN 
 
 Dean of the Divinity School 
 Yale University 
 
 THE PILGRIM PRESS 
 
 BOSTON CHICAGO 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1922 
 BY SIDNEY A. WESTON 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
 THE JORDAN & MORE PRESS 
 BOSTON 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PACK 
 
 I. HONORING THE CHURCH 1 
 
 II. BUILDING THE CHURCH 19 
 
 III. BELONGING TO THE CHURCH 37 
 
 IV. RECRUITING THE CHURCH 49 
 
 V. ADAPTING THE CHURCH 65 
 
 VI. UNIFYING THE CHURCH 81 
 
 370 
 
HONORING THE CHURCH 
 
Honoring the Church 
 
 IT is considered very good form and very 
 good fun in certain quarters these days 
 to maul the church. It is a chilly day 
 when some light-hearted newspaper reporter 
 does not make merry in a column or two over 
 what he regards as " the faults and failures 
 of the Protestant Church." He is careful 
 not to attack the Roman Catholic Church, for 
 reasons which we all understand full well. 
 And it is a very cold day when some minister, 
 like an ill-bred bird, does not foul his own nest 
 by criticising and even caricaturing the 
 church which originally gave him his oppor- 
 tunity to be heard. In my judgment it is 
 poor business all around. It gives aid and 
 comfort to the enemy. It amuses some, 
 wounds many, and helps none. I wish to 
 protest against it, and to say a word here as 
 straight and as strong as I know how to make 
 it for " the honor of the church." 
 
 We have been told in trenchant magazine 
 articles, written by ministers who were old 
 enough to have known better, that if the 
 pastors of the churches had not been " so 
 benignly dumb," I am quoting here from 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 an article in the Atlantic Monthly " so 
 hopelessly inefficient," the kingdom of God 
 might have been coming with power and 
 great glory. We are informed that millions 
 of the choicest young men in the land are 
 almost beside themselves " in their eagerness 
 to embrace Christianity," but for some subtle 
 reason, known only to the adept, " they are 
 bristling with hostility " toward the one 
 organization which for nineteen centuries has 
 done more than all other organizations put 
 together to make that Christianity a power in 
 the thought and action of the world. It is 
 all somewhat puzzling to the plain man who 
 walks with his eyes on the stars and his feet 
 on the solid earth. 
 
 When I read these slashing criticisms in 
 glowing magazine articles, I always wonder 
 where the essayists have been. My own 
 personal observation of the church in this 
 country has been neither brief nor narrow. I 
 am fifty-nine years old, and I have attended 
 church all my life. I was born in Virginia, 
 grew up and went to college in Iowa, received 
 my theological training in Boston, held three 
 pastorates covering twenty-two years in Ohio, 
 Massachusetts, and California; and for the 
 last eleven years I have been living in Con- 
 necticut. And in all that time I have never 
 heard, nor heard of, a minister preaching "a 
 
Honoring the Church 
 
 long evening sermon against the evil of drink- 
 ing sweet cider," or threatening people with 
 the wrath of God because they wanted to 
 hear Edwin Booth in " Hamlet," or 
 " causing nine-year-old boys to suffer tragic 
 torment because they thought they had 
 committed the unpardonable sin, and so 
 were lost." If these faults which the maga- 
 zine articles allege against the church were 
 common and characteristic, surely I would 
 have bumped against them sometime, some- 
 where. 
 
 The critics, with great vigor in their lit- 
 erary style, clamor for " courage, self-devo- 
 tion, fidelity to duty, unconquerable cheer, 
 loyalty, willingness to die for one's cause ' 
 quoting again from another article in 
 the Atlantic Monthly. They do well the 
 idea is altogether sound, though in no sense 
 new. And where are these qualities of cour- 
 age, devotion, fidelity to duty, and all the 
 rest to be found at their best and in largest 
 measure, not alone under the stimulus of a 
 great war, where of necessity the demand 
 for them will be limited to a brief period, 
 but in the give and take, in the wear and 
 tear, of a whole lifetime? 
 
 Here again my observation has not been 
 altogether narrow. For six years I was a 
 member of the Central Labor Council, made 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 up of the representatives of all the Labor 
 Unions in a large city. It met every Mon- 
 day night, and during those six years I came 
 to know intimately those men who were 
 striving to better the conditions of their 
 own class. I was a visitor for two years for 
 the Associated Charities in one large city, 
 and for ten years a member of the Board of 
 Directors of the Organized Charities of an- 
 other city. I have been in close touch with 
 the resident workers of well-known social 
 settlements, East and West, rejoicing in 
 and aiding in the good work they were doing. 
 I have been for eleven years a member of 
 the faculty of Yale University, and during 
 that time I have preached and lectured and 
 given addresses in one hundred and twelve 
 colleges and universities. I know person- 
 ally large numbers of these men and women 
 who are giving unstintedly of their best to 
 the great work of education. 
 
 And as a result of my observation I am 
 ready to maintain against all comers that 
 nowhere on earth is there to be found so 
 large and so constant a measure of self- 
 sacrifice, of Christlike spirit, of unflagging 
 devotion to the principles of the Sermon on 
 the Mount, and of patient fidelity to duty 
 on the part of those who walk the ways of 
 common life, as in the church of Jesus Christ. 
 
 6 
 
Honoring the Church 
 
 I will back the pastors and the faithful mem- 
 bers of these churches for sheer moral ideal- 
 ism against any group of people which can 
 be brought forward from any other one 
 organization to be found in our American life. 
 
 When the great missionary societies, for 
 example, want young men and young women 
 of sound health, trained intelligence, social 
 grace, and Christian integrity, to go forth 
 to all the spiritual frontiers of earth and there 
 display these qualities of ' courage, devo- 
 tion, loyalty, willingness to die for one's 
 cause " during all the working years of their 
 consecrated lives, where do they get them? 
 They get them, of course, from the churches 
 where these young people have been con- 
 verted, nurtured and furnished with that 
 spiritual impulse which carries them into 
 this chivalrous service. The missionary 
 boards would never think of looking anywhere 
 else for them. This sort of material is not 
 produced anywhere else. It cannot be found 
 in some lovely grass plot of spiritual produc- 
 tiveness lying quite outside of the much- 
 maligned church of Christ. 
 
 The social settlement, with all its excellent 
 qualities, if called upon for candidates to 
 swelter on the Congo, or to shiver in Alaska 
 or Labrador, or to face and relieve the dirt 
 and the squalor, the disease and the vice of 
 
 7 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 the crowded sections of the Orient, or to 
 brave the attacks of Boxers in China, or the 
 horrors of Armenian massacres, would be 
 swift to say, " It is not in me." The labor 
 union would speedily add, " It is not in me." 
 This army of the choicest young people we 
 know, enlisting for a warfare in which there 
 is no discharge, going out to minister to 
 people whose faces they have never seen, 
 whose names they do not know, whose lan- 
 guage they cannot as yet speak, but whose 
 needs they have already made their own in 
 warm, unselfish sympathy, comes forth stead- 
 ily from those churches which have, according 
 to the critics, become " so feeble " I 
 quote again "as to have no ethical en- 
 thusiasm for anything except negative ideals 
 of individual behavior." 
 
 The same sound principle holds in the work 
 of the kingdom here in our own land. I 
 was president for many years of the Cali- 
 fornia Home Missionary Society. It was 
 part of my duty to travel among the wide 
 wheat ranches and the lumber camps and 
 the mining towns of that far-flung state. 
 I have been in the homes and in the churches 
 of the self-denying men and women who are 
 rendering there an honored service as am- 
 bassadors of Christ. Their labor lacks some- 
 thing of the romantic picturesqueness which 
 
 8 
 
Honoring the Church 
 
 attaches to the work of those who are in 
 foreign lands with people of alien race; but 
 for heroism, unselfish devotion, patient 
 fidelity, and sympathetic interest in the 
 needs of their fellows, I know of nothing 
 finer in American history than the action of 
 those home missionaries as it bears upon 
 laying the foundations of the Republic on 
 solid rock rather than in fleeting sand. I 
 am confident that the home missionaries 
 of our country would yield as many bushels 
 to the acre of courage, fidelity, loyalty, and 
 willingness to die for their cause as any body 
 of people to be found anywhere. 
 
 It is not expedient for me to glory or to 
 think more highly of my fellow Christians 
 than I ought to think. The churches of 
 our day show no celestial perfection. They 
 cannot in the nature of the case be without 
 spot or blemish or wrinkle, or any such thing, 
 so long as they maintain the cheerful habit 
 of receiving human beings into their mem- 
 bership. They are made up of men and 
 women like ourselves, people whose mental 
 and spiritual limitations are instantly appar- 
 ent. And in almost every church there is 
 given unto us " a thorn in the flesh, a mes- 
 senger of Satan to buffet us," lest we should 
 be exalted above measure. But when the 
 returns are all in, the sheep and the goats 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 told off and counted up, is not the church 
 of Christ about the divinest thing we have 
 here on earth at the present time? Name 
 any other organization which can spell it 
 down in moral idealism and in useful conduct. 
 It is the one institution we have which is 
 bold enough to accept the social ideal, not 
 piecemeal in specialized lines of effort, but 
 in its entirety. It has the moral courage to 
 look up into the face of the Infinite Perfec- 
 tion of God and say, " Thy kingdom come. 
 Thy will be done here on earth as it is done 
 in heaven." 
 
 Have we not had about enough of this 
 wholesale abuse of organized religion? It 
 gives great satisfaction in certain quarters, 
 but they are not the quarters to which the 
 poor world looks for its spiritual help. Might 
 we not take a hint from the ethics of the 
 medical profession? The physicians are not 
 " stabbing each other awake " I quote 
 again from the Atlantic Monthly. They are 
 not bringing discredit on their profession by 
 casting widespread aspersions on their fellow 
 practitioners. In dignified fashion they do 
 sometimes warn the public against the 
 methods of ignorant and unprincipled quacks. 
 But that is not a case in point. The rank and 
 file of the Christian ministry is not made up 
 of quacks. It is upon the regular practi- 
 
 10 
 
Honoring the Church 
 
 tioners that these essayists (themselves oft- 
 times ministers of Christ) are bringing re- 
 proach by ill-advised and unjust arraign- 
 ment of their brother ministers. I commend 
 to their serious consideration the usage which 
 prevails among the apostles of the healing 
 art, so closely akin to our own cure of souls. 
 
 Now having made my protest against the 
 thoughtless, reckless impeachment of the 
 honor of the Protestant Church in America, 
 I would like to say three plain words about 
 the church life which we are set to lead. 
 There are churches, alas, which cumber the 
 ground. They are fruitless branches cling- 
 ing in desperate fashion to the True Vine. 
 It is high time they were either purged or 
 cut off. There are men in the ministry who 
 by reason of their listlessness and inefficiency 
 are actually doing more harm than good. 
 
 The young men in the theological schools 
 are to be trained and made more competent 
 as leaders in the church of Christ. The 
 pastors in active service are to show them- 
 selves " approved unto God, workmen that 
 need not be ashamed, rightly dividing the 
 word of truth." Let them all stand ready 
 to " endure hardness as good soldiers of 
 Jesus Christ," accepting loyally and gladly 
 all the disciplines, physical and mental, 
 social and spiritual, which may mean added 
 
 ii 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 efficiency. The end they seek is " charity 
 out of a pure heart and a good conscience, 
 and a faith unfeigned," with no sham, pre- 
 tense or make-believe about it. Let them 
 watch, then, in all things, and make full 
 proof of their power to serve aright the needs 
 of their fellow -beings. 
 
 We are to make the church of Christ inter- 
 esting. Jesus Christ himself is interesting. 
 Lift him up anywhere so that people can see 
 him as he is, and he draws men to him. The 
 gospel he preached is interesting. For spiri- 
 tual insight and for beauty of form, for 
 strength and delicacy combined, and for 
 sheer human interest, there are no words to 
 be found in print which surpass the words 
 of Him who spake as never man spake. 
 
 Religion is interesting. The human soul 
 in its relations to God in that great moral 
 order which enfolds us; the human soul in 
 its relations to other lives in that great social 
 order which enfolds us; the human soul in 
 its high privileges of self-realization through 
 all of those aids, human and divine, which 
 religion offers in the fullness of their power 
 there is no other single aspect of life 
 which can compare for one moment with all 
 that for interest. In the face of the challenge 
 which all this offers to our best powers at 
 their best, the man who allows his preaching 
 
 12 
 
Honoring the Church 
 
 to become dull, prosy, unappealing, lifeless, 
 ought to be cast out of the synagogue as a 
 heathen man and a publican. He has denied 
 the faith. 
 
 When Charles A. Dana was editor of the 
 New York Sun, he was a man in a thousand 
 in a newspaper office. He was, as one of 
 his honored associates has said, " a man of 
 scholarly attainments, of inborn refinement, 
 and of supreme ability to transfer his great 
 knowledge to every column of his newspaper." 
 He believed that the newspaper is a great 
 educator, greater as an educator of the masses 
 than the pulpit or the lecture room, because 
 it talks to such a wide audience. He believed 
 that its influence, read as it is by old and 
 young, by boys and girls as well as by men 
 and women, should be thoroughly clean and 
 wholesome. Then on that secure founda- 
 tion he was intent on building the structure 
 of a paper that people would take and read. 
 " Make the Sun interesting," he was forever 
 saying to his staff, " make the Sun interest- 
 ing. The people will not read dull, poky, 
 porous stuff hoot it out of the place." 
 Let ministers and laymen join hands to make 
 the church interesting, and people will come 
 to it; and what is still more to the purpose, 
 they will be profited by their coming. 
 
 Let the church be made vital. We are 
 
 13 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 not dealing mainly with Rehoboam and 
 Jeroboam, who are safely dead and buried. 
 We are not concerned chiefly with the mum- 
 mies of Egypt which Moses may have seen 
 when he was an unwilling resident of the 
 Nile Delta. We are dealing with men and 
 women, young men and maidens, boys and 
 girls, who are more or less alive. We are 
 set to make them alive at more points, alive 
 on higher levels, alive in more interesting 
 and worthy ways. We are the servants and 
 followers of Him who said, touching his own 
 fundamental purpose, " I am come that 
 they might have life, and that they might 
 have it more abundantly." Whatever else 
 it may or may not be, the church which bears 
 his name must be vital. 
 
 We cannot have a congregation of intelli- 
 gent Twentieth Century Americans on their 
 toes over some skilful defense of a particular 
 mode of baptism or over some particular 
 theory as to the sacrament of the Lord's 
 Supper. We cannot send " a thrill of life 
 along their keels "or " launch them out 
 into the deep ' by warming up some old 
 doctrinal squabble which may have caused 
 men to grow red in the face in the time of 
 Athanasius. We cannot stir them to action 
 by brandishing before their eyes the moral 
 shortcomings of the Hivites or the Girga- 
 
Honoring the Church 
 
 shites. Their reaction to such appeals will 
 never be such as to break out the ends of the 
 pews. But the sorrows and struggles which 
 those people are undergoing now, the duties 
 and temptations which they are facing now, 
 the opportunities and high privileges which 
 lie before them now in this intricate and chal- 
 lenging modern life of ours all that en- 
 nobled, enriched, and glorified by being shot 
 through with the truth and grace of the gospel 
 of the Son of God, will bring them out of their 
 chambers, rejoicing as strong men to run a 
 race. It is of the utmost importance that 
 the activities of the church in its worship 
 and in its work should deal with that which 
 is vital. 
 
 Let the church be made religious! This 
 might seem to go without saying. Alas! 
 would that it did! There are churches 
 you have seen them and I have seen them 
 which do not by the sort of service they offer 
 make men aware of their souls, aware of God, 
 aware of their high privilege in him and of 
 their capacity to wear increasingly h s like- 
 ness and image. In those dead-and-alive 
 churches there is not, as men used to say of 
 the service conducted n the city of London 
 by Frederick Denison Maurice, " the sense 
 of something which is not of this world." 
 The whole atmosphere of the place is of the 
 
 15 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 earth earthy, and the poor attendants at 
 that church seem to be buried in it, beyond 
 the hope of a resurrection. 
 
 Let me quote a single paragraph from a 
 recent popular and widely read novel. The 
 man who is speaking is a soldier who has 
 come back from the Great War, wounded 
 and maimed for the rest of his days. He is 
 blurting out to his chum what he feels in the 
 depths of his own soul : 
 
 11 What the world needs is the old God! 
 Man cannot live by bread alone, the churches 
 tell him; but the man says, ' I am living on 
 bread alone, and I am thriving on it.' Yet 
 away down in the crypt and abyss of every 
 man's soul is a hunger and a craving for other 
 food than this earthy stuff. And the churches, 
 instead of reaching down to him what he 
 wants, invite him to dancing, and picture 
 shows, and ' you're a jolly good fellow,' and 
 
 I religion is a jolly fine thing and no spoil- 
 sport,' and all that sort of latter-day ten- 
 dency. Damn it " I am quoting the sol- 
 dier and I must use the words he used 
 
 II Damn it, the man can get all that outside of 
 the churches and get it better. He wants 
 light. He wants God. The preachers call 
 it ' making religion a living thing in the lives 
 of the people.' ' Lift up your hearts to 
 God,' they say; but there is no God there 
 
 16 
 
Honoring the Church 
 
 that a plain man can understand to be lifted 
 up to." 
 
 The church above all else is a place to dis- 
 pense religion. It is a place of prayer. It 
 is the house of God. It is the gate of heaven. 
 It is the high office of the church through its 
 appointed services of worship to lift men 
 into the sense of kinship with the Eternal, 
 into a feeling of co-operation with their Maker, 
 into the joy of participation in an august 
 spiritual enterprise where God, the Father, 
 is above all and through all and in them all. 
 To know, to do, and to enjoy all this is to be 
 religious. 
 
 Let the church be made interesting! Let 
 the church be made vital ! Let the church be 
 made religious! The Lord will add daily to 
 that church people who are being saved. 
 
BUILDING THE CHURCH 
 
II 
 Building the Church 
 
 WHEN the Master was here he set 
 lame men on their feet and bade 
 them walk. He opened the eyes of 
 the blind and unstopped the ears of the deaf, 
 causing men to see and to hear what they had 
 never seen nor heard before. He sometimes 
 fed the hungry. He occasionally gave an 
 address to a crowd in the open air. But his 
 main interest during the last two years of his 
 public ministry is indicated by those familiar 
 words addressed to Peter, " I will build my 
 church." 
 
 He was building a church. I do not mean 
 a stone structure with a spire on it one can- 
 not build a church out of stone, or boards, or 
 bricks. With that material one can only 
 build the building where some church may 
 meet. The church itself is built out of men 
 and women, young men and maidens, boys 
 and girls, who have seen in Christ what Peter 
 saw in him, who have declared their loyalty 
 to him as Peter declared his loyalty, who are 
 undertaking to live in that same high mood. 
 Out of that sort of material and on that 
 foundation, he will build his church. 
 
 21 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 When I speak of the Master focussing his 
 efforts on the building of a church, I am not 
 thinking of anything intensely ecclesiastical. 
 He had almost nothing to say about polity 
 or ritual or creed statement. When men 
 undertake to discuss those questions which 
 have so often divided Christians into con- 
 tending groups, they do not find much ma- 
 terial for their mighty arguments in the four 
 Gospels. Jesus was bent upon gathering a 
 group of men and women it was never a 
 very large group in his day whose minds 
 were saturated with his ideas, whose hearts 
 were steeped in his spirit, who were striving 
 to live the life as he manifested it and im- 
 parted it. 
 
 He wrote no books; he created no endow- 
 ments; he led no armies. He never under- 
 took to change the form of government 
 under which his people lived, but he did 
 build a church. Then he stood back, ready to 
 stake the whole future of his cause upon what 
 that church would do and be. "I will 
 build my church, and the gates of hell shall 
 not prevail against it." Its influence was 
 to be like leaven permeating the whole lump 
 of human life. It was to go into all the world 
 and disciple the nations, baptizing them 
 into a new spirit. 
 
 The Master recognized the plain necessity 
 22 
 
Building the Church 
 
 for organized effort. One cannot sing an 
 oratorio all by himself, I care not how splen- 
 did his voice may be. He must merge his 
 voice in a chorus of voices. One cannot 
 render the Fifth Symphony, or the Ninth, 
 by himself, I care not how well he may play 
 on some single instrument. He must blend 
 his efforts with those of an entire orchestra. 
 The modern achievements in commerce and 
 in manufacture have only been made possible 
 because men have learned to unite their 
 forces and to act together. The same sound 
 principle holds when we come to sing the 
 Lord's song and to do the Lord's work. It 
 can only be done where men and women 
 come together, are agreed, and begin to act 
 in concert as members of the body of Christ. 
 It might seem as if all that would go with- 
 out saying. Alas, no! Would that it did! 
 We live at a time when in many quarters 
 organized religion is held in contempt. You 
 will hear light-headed and light-hearted 
 people speak in glowing terms of Jesus Christ, 
 and then with the last half of the same breath 
 speak contemptuously of the church. We 
 are often told in breezy fashion that it does 
 not matter the least bit whether one belongs 
 to the church or not, that it does not matter 
 whether he has been baptized or takes com- 
 munion, that on the whole it is rather 
 
 23 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 better, perhaps, if he has not done any of these 
 things! You will hear young men with 
 some measure of moral aspiration declaring 
 themselves after this fashion: ' I want to 
 do good in the world. I want to live a 
 Christian life. But I will not belong to any 
 church. I will not make any professions. 
 You see, I do not want to get my lines crossed. 
 I propose to stand out free and clear, living 
 my own life and doing my own work in my 
 own way." 
 
 It might be well to remind all such people 
 that this was not the attitude of Christ him- 
 self. The church of his day does not seem 
 to have been so sincere, so well-behaved nor 
 so well stocked with humane impulse as the 
 church of our day, yet he belonged to it. 
 He was a churchman. It was his custom 
 to enter the synagogue on the sabbath. He 
 observed the festivals of the Jewish church. 
 He utilized the opportunities it offered for 
 moral effort. His last act, almost, was to 
 celebrate the Passover with his disciples and 
 to take the bread and wine of a new covenant 
 as a member of the church. He did all this 
 because his life was ruled by judgment and 
 conscience. 
 
 We were at war the other day with Ger- 
 many. Suppose you had met some patriotic 
 young fellow in those days in civilian dress, 
 
 24 
 
Building the Church 
 
 but with a gun on his shoulder! Suppose 
 he had told you that he was on his way to 
 France. ' But where is your uniform?" 
 you would have asked. ' To what company 
 do you belong, to what regiment?" Then 
 he might have answered in this vein of modern 
 individualism, " Oh, I do not belong to any 
 company. I do not wear any uniform. I 
 do not make any professions about being a 
 soldier. You see, I do not want to get my 
 lines crossed. But I love my country and I 
 am on my way to France to see if I cannot 
 pick off a German or two on my own account." 
 His folly would have made you laugh. 
 No competent government on earth would 
 have allowed him to go. Had he been 
 allowed to go, his unorganized presence there 
 in any considerable numbers would have been 
 a hindrance to the work of the regular troops. 
 The man of sense fights always with the 
 army. 
 
 Now we are at war with the evil of the 
 world, and it is no child's play. We see lined 
 up against us not only huge masses of flesh 
 and blood headed wrong; we battle with 
 ' principalities and powers, with the rulers of 
 darkness in this world and with spiritual 
 wickedness in high places." The very vague- 
 ness of the apostle's language indicated his 
 sense of something mysterious, ominous, 
 
 25 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 deadly, standing over against us. In the 
 face of all that opposition to the divine pur- 
 pose, the victory for righteousness cannot 
 be won in any haphazard fashion, each man 
 going his own gait and way. The winning 
 of that victory calls for discipline and con- 
 certed effort on the part of all those who 
 believe that the spirit which comes not to be 
 ministered unto but to minister is Lord of 
 life, and that before it every knee should bow. 
 At this very hour the Head of the church 
 is reaching out for members of his body. 
 He would have us belong to him as my hand 
 belongs to me. He is building his church 
 out of such offered material. 
 
 The words of the Master emphasize also 
 the value of fellowship in a common task. 
 The Christian does not grow in isolation or 
 in a vacuum. He is a plant which the 
 heavenly Father planted and he is meant to 
 bear fruit. He must of necessity have soil 
 and atmosphere and climate suited to his 
 growth as a plant. The soil where the 
 Christian thrives, the atmosphere which he 
 recognizes as his native air, the climate 
 which best ministers to his unfolding, are all 
 to be found in the fellowship of the Christian 
 church as they are found nowhere else. Here 
 is the house of his habitation, the place where 
 the divine honor dwelleth, the atmosphere of 
 
 26 
 
Building the Church 
 
 devotion and the company of those who are 
 wont to call upon his name. 
 
 The longer I live and the more closely I 
 study those efforts which really count, the 
 more clearly do I recognize the importance 
 of putting one's life into some institution 
 which will continue when the man himself 
 is gone. The influence of the free-lance is 
 short-lived, I care not how sharp a lance he 
 may have been or what a merry time he may 
 have had for his brief hour upon the stage. 
 The work which will add up large in the Day 
 of Judgment is the work of the man who 
 merges and blends his efforts with the efforts 
 of other men in such a way that something 
 results which is massive, corporate, enduring. 
 The whole body fitly joined together and 
 compacted by that which every joint sup- 
 plieth becomes the dwelling-place of those 
 forces which are to realize the divine purpose. 
 
 " I am doing a great work," a young man 
 once said, " I cannot come down." He was 
 laying bricks. But every brick went into a 
 wall with thousands of other bricks. The 
 wall surrounded a city as its chief defence. 
 The city was Jerusalem, the capital of that 
 race which took the right of the line in the 
 moral leadership of the world for centuries. 
 When we remember that the Jews wrote this 
 book of final values for all who would live 
 
 27 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 nobly and that the Son of Man was born a 
 Jew in Bethlehem of Judea, we feel that the 
 young man did not overstate it. To lay 
 bricks in the wall of a city like that was a 
 great work. 
 
 11 I am doing a great work," some man says 
 now. He may be teaching Greek or geome- 
 try, but he is building his ideals and principles, 
 his methods and aspirations into the unfold- 
 ing lives of a whole generation of young 
 people who are just coming into their own. 
 He is making himself an essential part of an 
 institution which is to set its seal upon the 
 life of a nation. 
 
 " I am doing a great work," some man says 
 who is striving to transform business into a 
 profession, with its own high standard of 
 ethics, its own worthy objective. He is 
 striving to make his own business a social 
 utility, a place for the expression of good- 
 will, a local contribution to the solution of 
 that problem of industrial organization which 
 is so vast and so intricate. 
 
 ' I am doing a great work," some man says 
 in a lonely, struggling little parish in the 
 country. He is preaching sermons, calling 
 upon the sick and making friends with boys 
 and girls. But in doing all this he is strength- 
 ening the line of that institution which 
 reaches out into all the cities of the land and 
 
 28 
 
Building the Church 
 
 into all the lands of earth seeking to estab- 
 lish the rule of the divine spirit in the lives 
 of men. He has made stronger in its reach 
 and grasp the work of that institution whose 
 influence will continue long after he has been 
 gathered to his fathers. 
 
 There is something inspiring in that sense 
 of participation in any far-reaching and au- 
 gust enterprise. I have felt it in many parts 
 of the world touching this interest of public 
 worship. I have listened reverently to the 
 service of the Mass according to the Roman 
 Catholic ritual in St. Peter's at Rome, and I 
 have heard a choir of a hundred men and 
 boys chanting the service of the Greek church 
 in the Cathedral of the Kremlin at Moscow. 
 I have heard the call to prayer from the min- 
 arets of the Mosque of St. Sophia in Con- 
 stantinople and I have watched the faces of 
 devout Jews at the fragment of the old tem- 
 ple enclosure at the Jews' Wailing Place in 
 Jerusalem. I have studied the stolid faces 
 of the Chinese in their joss-houses in old 
 Shanghai, and I have seen the faces of the 
 Buddhist priests as they conducted worship 
 in the great Hongwanji temples in Japan. 
 And although in every case the mode of 
 worship and the language in which it was 
 offered were alien to me, I felt in my own 
 heart a sense of sympathy with it all. There 
 
 29 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 was in me, as in them, the same feeling of 
 dependence upon a higher Power, the same 
 sense of kinship with the Eternal, the same 
 hunger for a closer relation to the divine 
 Being who can minister to our good. How 
 strange and abnormal I should have felt had 
 I never shared in that hunger of the heart! 
 
 How much it means when we stand up as 
 Christians of every type and of all lands, say- 
 ing to that sordid materialism which is the 
 bane of so much of our modern life, " We 
 believe in God the Father Almighty and in 
 Jesus Christ his Son our Lord. We believe 
 in the Holy Ghost, the Author and Giver of 
 life which is life indeed "! How much it 
 means when we say in corporate fashion to 
 those petty individuals who are too blind to 
 recognize the value of associated effort, 
 " We believe in the Holy Catholic Church, 
 the communion of saints"! How much it 
 means when we say to that mode of life 
 which crawls when it might walk in high 
 places with its head up, " We believe in the 
 forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the 
 dead, and the life everlasting "! And into 
 all this richer experience we enter when we 
 become members of the body of Christ, shar- 
 ing in the confessions and the worship, in 
 the aspiration and the service of the church 
 of the living God. 
 
 30 
 
Building the Church 
 
 Here is the church of Christ also proclaim- 
 ing those standards which are ultimate and 
 final. " A new commandment give I unto 
 you, that ye love one another as I have loved 
 you." It is a final word. " Ye therefore 
 shall be perfect as your father in heaven is 
 perfect." It is a final word. " Because he 
 lives we shall live also and always." It is 
 a final word. " It doth not yet appear what 
 we shall be, but we know that when we see 
 him as he is we shall be like him." The 
 church would have every man wear nothing 
 less than the likeness of the Most High. Its 
 prayer is that we might all be strengthened 
 with might by his spirit in the inner man. 
 Its supreme interest is character. 
 
 Now you will all agree that the sorest need 
 of the world is to be found at this point. In 
 the summer of 1914 the countries in Central 
 Europe had brains enough, wealth enough, 
 brawn enough, to have ushered in the mil- 
 lennium if millenniums ever could be ushered 
 in by those agencies alone. They had enough 
 of huge armanents, of secret diplomacy and 
 of that spirit of competition which is supposed 
 to be " the life of trade." The sad fact was 
 that they did not have character enough, and 
 so what they did usher in was not the mil- 
 lennium but seven long, sad years of perdition, 
 - and the end is not yet. Wise enough, 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 rich enough, strong enough, but not good 
 enough to do what they ought to have done! 
 
 Here at this hour in our own land we have 
 resources enough, man-power enough, organ- 
 izing administrative ability enough, to cover 
 the country with peace and prosperity as the 
 waters cover the sea. But we have not char- 
 acter enough. We have not enough of the 
 sense of social justice, enough of respect for 
 the rights and interests of the other man and 
 the other class, enough of the spirit of good- 
 will in which alone our problems can be solved, 
 enough of the sense of obligation to the com- 
 mon good. So in place of peace and pros- 
 perity we have unrest and in many quarters 
 unreason, and a spirit steadily at work be- 
 neath the surface of our American life which 
 is a menace to the health of the nation. We 
 are not good enough to do what ought to be 
 done. 
 
 What an hour for an institution ordained 
 of God to open the eyes of the blind, to cast 
 out the devils of ill-will and to cleanse men 
 from the leprosy of sordid selfishness! These 
 vexed questions can never be solved on the 
 basis of some more skilful form of economic 
 organization or by some clever political device. 
 They can only be solved upon the basis of a 
 finer type of personal character and by the 
 steady expression of a more social habit of 
 
 mind. 
 
 32 
 
Building the Church 
 
 We are all members one of another, whether 
 we like it or not. If one member suffers, all 
 the other members suffer with it. The head, 
 in the great economic order which enfolds us, 
 cannot say to the feet, the highest cannot say 
 to the lowest, nor the lowest to the highest, 
 " We have no need of you." We can only 
 advance and prosper as we advance together. 
 And all this is only a roundabout way of say- 
 ing what the Master said in so much better 
 language, " This is the first and great com- 
 mandment, ' Love God with all your heart. 
 And the second is like unto it, Love your 
 neighbor as yourself.'* On these two hangs 
 all there is. 
 
 With all its present limitations I cannot 
 believe that the church is altogether blind to 
 that vision or indifferent to its obligation. 
 Many organizations honored and beloved 
 have done well. They have attacked the 
 evil of the world piecemeal. They have un- 
 dertaken some single item of human better- 
 ment, the outlawing of the open saloon, the 
 better housing of the toilers, better sanitary 
 conditions in the factories, better wages for 
 some group or class, the banishment of or- 
 ganized and profitable vice. All this is good ; 
 but the church is the one institution on earth 
 which has had courage enough to stand up 
 and accept the social ideal in its entirety. 
 
 33 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 It looks up into the face of the perfect God 
 and says, " Thy will be done on earth." 
 It will never cease to offer that prayer nor 
 to hold fast to that high resolve until that 
 sublime end shall have been achieved. And 
 it is able to hold true to that course because 
 it puts first that which is first it makes 
 character its supreme interest. 
 
 In any community there are many common 
 interests. Some of them are social, some 
 industrial, some political and some educa- 
 tional. High up among them stands the 
 church of Christ, pledged to the spiritual in- 
 terests of the people. It is there to deepen 
 their sense of the presence of God. It is 
 there to uncover for them profounder sources 
 of motive and stimulus, so that the zest and 
 relish of living may not fail when those years 
 come where so many people say, " We have 
 no pleasure in them." It is there to inter- 
 pret and consecrate all these social contacts 
 which furnish the raw material out of which 
 character is built. It is there to steady 
 and strengthen the common aspiration for 
 that which is just, true, and clean, for that 
 which is honorable, reputable and lovable. 
 It seeks for nothing less than to bring the 
 actions of men " up to the style and manners 
 of the sky." 
 
 It is a time for every church to be alive 
 
 34 
 
Building the Church 
 
 and alert. " Every branch that beareth 
 not fruit he taketh away." There is neither 
 room nor soil in the garden of God for fruit- 
 less lives. " Every branch that beareth 
 fruit he purgeth that it may bear more fruit." 
 During the last seven years the nations have 
 been clipped and pruned; they have been 
 purged and sprayed by the searching disci- 
 pline through which they have passed. Now 
 that " the staleness of those soft, sleek, sordid 
 years of low content " has gone, the hour has 
 struck for a spiritual advance. There is a 
 loud call for a more abundant supply of all 
 those fine fruits of the spirit. And it is the 
 task of the church which the Lord is building 
 afresh in these searching times to increase 
 the yield of fruit on every field of human 
 interest. 
 
 It is a sacred task to build a building where 
 some church may meet and minister to the 
 souls of men. When a group of people have 
 thus lodged in brick and stone, in stained 
 glass and carved wood, their abiding concern 
 for the higher life of the community, they 
 have achieved something upon which they 
 may well look back in thoughtful, reverent 
 joy. 
 
 But finer still is the high privilege of acting 
 with Him in building the church itself. To 
 have even the humblest part in creating 
 
 35 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 that body of people who are fitly framed to- 
 gether by a common purpose and are com- 
 pacted into a sacred fellowship by that which 
 every joint supplieth is the highest sort of 
 privilege. When that great work is in pro- 
 gress we have indeed a building of God, a 
 house not made with hands, a habitation of 
 the Spirit, eternal in the realm of those 
 values which endure. 
 
 " Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, 
 As the swift seasons roll, 
 Leave thy low-vaulted past, 
 Let each new temple nobler than the last 
 Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 
 Till thou at length art free, 
 
 Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting 
 sea." 
 
BELONGING TO THE CHURCH 
 
Ill 
 Belonging to the Church 
 
 HOW much is suggested by that easy 
 current phrase, " I belong to the 
 church." My hand belongs to me 
 as a part of my body. It sustains an organic, 
 vital relation to the body and to all the other 
 members of that body. It derives its sus- 
 tenance from the vital processes operating 
 in the body. It acts in the light of all that 
 stands revealed by the eyes of that body. 
 It enjoys the guidance afforded by the head 
 of the body. It shares in the hurt and loss 
 or in the honor and gain which belong to the 
 body. 
 
 In like manner, when tl I belong to the 
 church," I become a member of the body of 
 Christ. I belong to him who is the Head of 
 the church. I sustain an organic relation 
 to all the other members of his body. I am 
 cleansed, fed and renewed by the currents 
 of influence which are flowing through the 
 body of Christ. I stand at attention under 
 his eye, ready to execute the commands of 
 my Head. I find myself an heir of God, a 
 joint heir with Christ in all the high privilege 
 and lasting glory which are the portion of 
 his body. What finer thing can be said of 
 
 39 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 any individual than to assert, in all the full- 
 ness of meaning which the phrase denotes, 
 " He belongs to the church." 
 
 It was the greatest of the Apostles who 
 maintained that the church is the body of 
 Christ. It is the place where the spirit of 
 Christ resides. When Jesus was here his 
 mind and heart ranged freely across wide 
 areas of human need and up to the final 
 source of our help. But behind and within 
 that face and form, which his friends came to 
 know and to love, his spirit was at home, 
 resident, domiciled, established. Those early 
 Christians saw and felt the glory of the eter- 
 nal in the face of Jesus Christ. Likewise the 
 church, which is his body, becomes the abiding 
 place for his spirit. Where two or three, 
 where a thousand or ten thousand are gath- 
 ered together in his name as a true church, 
 there he is in the midst. His spirit is domi- 
 ciled in his church. 
 
 The church is the place where his spirit is 
 best revealed. When Jesus was here on 
 earth, men saw not his spirit no man 
 hath seen a spirit at any time. But in the 
 bearing and movements of his body, in the 
 deeds done in the body and in the expression 
 on his face, his spirit stood revealed. In 
 these days the spirit of Christ is revealed 
 mainly in the attitude and bearing, in the 
 
 40 
 
Belonging to the Church 
 
 deeds, the moods and the utterances of his 
 church. 
 
 The church is the main instrument by which 
 Christ works. When Jesus moved along 
 the lanes of Galilee and streets of Jerusalem, 
 the eyes of his body sought out human need, 
 his ears heard and reported the cry for help, 
 his feet bore him upon errands of mercy, 
 and his hand reached out to lift, to heal and 
 to bless. Here again the church as his body 
 becomes the main tool of his achievement. 
 Its members become eyes to see opportuni- 
 ties for service and ears to hear the words 
 of appeal. They become minds to frame and 
 lips to utter the gospel of hope. They be- 
 come feet to go upon his errands of recovery, 
 and hands, open, outstretched and ungloved 
 in their offer of help. 
 
 The church is the converting, transforming 
 agency whereby the raw material of his 
 kingdom is transformed into the living fibre 
 of his body. The body of Jesus took up and 
 assimilated the food offered him in Galilee 
 and in Judea, to transform that substance 
 into forms of energy which spake and loved 
 and lived in that benign presence. The 
 church reaches out and apprehends the prof- 
 fered material in all those unrenewed lives. 
 It transforms them by the grace given it 
 by the divine indwelling. This ordinary 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 substance of our common humanity, often- 
 times of the earth earthy, is thus changed 
 into finer forms of energy where one may see 
 the kingdom of God coming with power and 
 great glory. 
 
 In the face of all the high privilege, en- 
 nobling obligations, and exalted usefulness 
 suggested by the Apostle's conception of the 
 true function of organized religion, how 
 much it means to belong to the church! 
 The body is one and hath many members, 
 and all members have not the same office. 
 There are diversities of gifts, but the same 
 spirit. There are differences of administra- 
 tion, but the same Lord. There are varieties 
 of operation, but it is the same God who 
 worketh. The head cannot say to the feet, 
 the highest cannot say to the lowest, " I 
 have no need of you." The feeble and in- 
 conspicuous are necessary for his complete 
 design, as well as those members upon whom 
 he has bestowed more abundant honor. We 
 suffer or we rejoice together. We halt or we 
 advance as consenting and contributing mem- 
 bers of one common endeavour. We, as 
 " members in particular " of the church of 
 the living God, are indeed the body of Christ. 
 
 The Greek word in the New Testament 
 translated church means literally " the called 
 out." Called out from a sinful world ; called 
 
 42 
 
Belonging to the Church 
 
 out from the ranks of the spiritually indiffer- 
 ent; called out from the disorganized mass 
 of more or less aspiring souls! Called out 
 into a way of life which is life indeed, into 
 the path of an ascending and unending ser- 
 vice, into a mode of organized spiritual effort, 
 against which the gates of hell shall not pre- 
 vail " Called to be saints " at last, when 
 this age-long process of self-realization shall 
 finally express and embody the perfect will 
 of God. 
 
 The church is differentiated from other 
 useful but less worthy organizations base- 
 ball nines, fire companies, lodges of Elks 
 by three distinguishing marks. It is made 
 up of those who have been called out by a 
 certain agency, the spirit of God. There is 
 in the church something superhuman. They 
 have been called out for a certain purpose, 
 the establishment of the kingdom of God on 
 earth, the sway and rule of the divine Spirit 
 in all our human affairs. And they are 
 people possessed of a certain intent, to live 
 after the spirit and method of Him who is 
 the Head of the church. In their spiritual 
 immaturity the members of the church are 
 for the most part but taking the initial steps 
 in this endeavor, but they must be sincere in 
 their fundamental purpose. 
 
 I am a high churchman, in that I would 
 
 43 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 exalt the importance and value of organized 
 religion. It is not necessary to believe in 
 the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration or 
 in the Real Presence in the sacrament of the 
 Lord's Supper because one would emphasize 
 the value of associated effort in worship and 
 service. We have lost ground as Protestants 
 by minimizing in many of our moods and 
 phrases the value of the church. The Roman 
 Catholic priest urges his people to come to 
 the appointed place of worship, not only at 
 the stated masses on Sunday but for personal 
 devotion on week days, when they offer their 
 prayers. We have more commonly taught 
 our people to believe that it is just as easy 
 to pray in any sort of a place as in the House 
 of Prayer. They have come to believe, 
 many of them, that on the Lord's Day they 
 can " worship God in nature," as they put 
 it in high-sounding phrase, meaning that 
 they spend their Sundays habitually on the 
 golf links or racing about the country in 
 high-priced motor cars. The Roman Catho- 
 lic has emphasized the power of the stated 
 and customary use of the ordinances of wor- 
 ship. We find happy-go-lucky Protestants 
 who scarcely know what they are. The 
 Roman Catholic has emphasized the value 
 of the sacraments as channels of divine grace. 
 We have sometimes allowed the Communion 
 
 44 
 
Belonging to the Church 
 
 service to be so lightly esteemed and so awk- 
 wardly celebrated that followers of Christ 
 felt that they could " take it or leave it " 
 as they chose, without in any way affecting 
 the depth and strength of their spiritual lives. 
 
 How it lifts a man out of the sense of petti- 
 ness in a purely private and apparently 
 insignificant moral performance when he 
 belongs to the church! He gains at once the 
 sense of participating in an august and far- 
 reaching spiritual enterprise. He is now a 
 consenting and a contributing member of 
 that body of Christ whose mighty redemp- 
 tive ministry is destined at last to fill the 
 earth with the glory of God as the waters 
 cover the sea. He feels his own individual 
 will to be good and to do good now heavily 
 reinforced because it is merged and blended 
 with the infinite Good-Will of the living God. 
 He has openly formed an alliance offensive 
 and defensive with One who is out to win, 
 with One who has at his command all the 
 forces needed for a final and glorious victory. 
 
 Here was a private soldier in the Great 
 War. He was just one more Thomas Atkins, 
 scarcely to be distinguished from several 
 millions of other men just like him. What 
 kept up his morale? What made him strong 
 to do, to bear, and to resist? 
 
 He might be marching wearily toward the 
 
 45 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 front through rain or sleet. He might be 
 standing guard in one of the myriad trenches, 
 knee-deep in mud and filth. He might be 
 imperiling his life more directly in some lis- 
 tening post out in No Man's Land. He did 
 not know just how the campaign might be 
 going at every point, nor just how far his own 
 bit of courage and fidelity might affect the 
 final outcome. 
 
 But he was a unit in a great army made up 
 of just such insignificant units, utterly insig- 
 nificant if taken apart from the great whole, 
 yet mighty when viewed in a comprehensive 
 way. And he knew that in command of 
 that army and of all the armies there was a 
 man at Headquarters named Foch, who did 
 know how the campaign was going. He 
 knew that at Headquarters there was a man 
 in command of all those diverse forces and 
 that he was directing them with intelligence 
 and purpose. He, as a private soldier, might 
 or might not come back alive, but the army 
 would persist. His knowledge of this asso- 
 ciated effort made him feel sure that ultimate 
 victory was certain. His faith in Head- 
 quarters and in the total strength of the army 
 to which he belonged made him strong. As 
 one of those private soldiers in our own Amer- 
 ican army said in my hearing, " We did not 
 know much of the time where we were going 
 
 46 
 
Belonging to the Church 
 
 or what we were doing, but one thing we did 
 know, and that was we would beat them." 
 
 Hear, then, my parable! Here I stand in 
 some out-of-the-way spot in the great world's 
 life! I see the forces of evil everywhere, 
 active, potent, and threatening. I am not 
 wise enough to know just how the battle is 
 going at every point. I am not wise enough 
 to know just how far my own bit of courage 
 and fidelity, my own prayer and self-sacri- 
 fice may count in the final result. But I am 
 fighting with the army of the Lord of hosts. 
 I feel all the while that at Headquarters there 
 is One who does know all this and infinitely 
 more. I know that at Headquarters there is 
 One who is directing these forces, seen and 
 unseen, with intelligent purpose. He has at 
 his command energies adequate for a glorious 
 victory. When I am baffled or depressed I 
 can still feel that if I will but do my own bit 
 of duty in my own small sector of the moral 
 field, I can leave the final result with him. 
 And that sense of participation in a vast 
 spiritual enterprise with the army and with 
 him keeps up my morale. The very fact 
 that " I belong to the church " of the living 
 God makes me strong to do, to bear, and to 
 resist. 
 
 In thinking, then, of the church and of the 
 obligations of church membership, of the 
 
 47 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 activities and of the interests of some local 
 church, it is good to think one's way on 
 through to that which is fundamental and 
 ultimate. Do not stop at the little way 
 stations along the road your mind will traverse, 
 offering your conscience small excuses and 
 trivial evasions of duty; go right on up to 
 the end of the line When you thank God 
 for your daily bread and for all your other 
 mercies and privileges, do not stop with the 
 bread. Keep straight on until you are face 
 to face with the Giver of all good gifts, the 
 Author and Director of all the forces which 
 make for good. 
 
 " For back of the loaf is the snowy flour; 
 
 And back of the flour, the mill; 
 And back of the mill, the wheat and the shower 
 And the sun and the Father's Will." 
 
 48 
 
RECRUITING THE CHURCH 
 
IV 
 Recruiting the Church 
 
 THE care of a parish means a great deal 
 more than taking good care of the 
 church members turned over to the 
 minister by his predecessor in the pastoral 
 office. It was a meager ideal which a preacher 
 once announced when he said that his idea 
 of success was " to keep the pews full and a 
 smile on the treasurer's face." He might 
 easily have achieved that end and still have 
 had upon his hands a church as lifeless as 
 Lazarus was when the Master came. 
 
 The process of elimination goes forward 
 steadily in the visible body of Christ as in 
 every other organism. There are removals 
 by transfer to other parishes and there are 
 removals by the hand of death. There are 
 inroads from the world, the flesh, and the 
 devil which rob the church of some of its 
 members. Guard against this process as 
 best we may, losses will occur. The prudent 
 business man is compelled each year to 
 ' write off " a certain percentage for " the 
 depreciation of the plant." And in a less 
 
 Si 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 material but no less real way, so must the 
 man who deals with values of a higher sort. 
 
 This process of depletion is to be matched 
 and over-matched by the process of replen- 
 ishing. Unless the church is growing, it is 
 dying. The wise mother weighs her baby 
 every week. If there is no increase in weight 
 she knows that there is something wrong. 
 The enlistment of new members in the church 
 stands, therefore, in the very forefront of in- 
 terest. We may emphasize the importance 
 of " applied Christianity " in our social, 
 industrial and political life, but, if we are 
 to have that applied Christianity, we must 
 take steps to have an adequate, substantial 
 and constantly growing supply of Christianity 
 to be applied. Lincoln used to say, " If I 
 am to be President of the United States, I 
 must see to it first of all that there is a United 
 States to be President of." 
 
 There is a keen zest attached to the work of 
 recruiting members which no other section 
 of Christian activity can show in equal mea- 
 sure. It is carrying the war into the enemy's 
 country and winning victories over him out 
 of hand. It has the high significance which 
 must ever attach to the inducing of self- 
 determining lives to change their final alle- 
 giance. It develops in those who undertake 
 it a deeper consecration, that they may feel 
 
 52 
 
Recruiting the Church 
 
 themselves in some measure worthy to make 
 their appeals as ambassadors of Christ to 
 those whom they would see reconciled to God. 
 The recruiting of the church has in it all the 
 chivalry of Christian service at its best. 
 
 The very difficulty of it offers an effective 
 challenge to the powers of every one who 
 undertakes it, be he minister or layman. It 
 is comparatively easy to stand up, safely 
 barricaded by a high pulpit and by the sacred 
 conventions of a public service, at a safe 
 distance from the publicans and sinners, and 
 bombard them with texts and with well- 
 phrased appeals for them to undertake the 
 Christian life. It is quite another thing to 
 come down to the ordinary level of every-day 
 life and meet them at arm's length, man to 
 man, and there seek to induce them to make 
 Christian duty their supreme choice in life. 
 It is calculated to induce humility in the most 
 cocksure man who ever ascended the pulpit 
 stairs. Dealing with people where they can 
 talk back, seeking to awaken the indifferent, 
 to win the hostile, and to infuse new purpose 
 into the reluctant, sends a man to his Bible 
 and to his knees to renew his strength by 
 waiting upon the source of all strength. 
 
 The work of recruiting members keeps the 
 heart of the church warm and its life strong. 
 You may set it down as an assured fact that 
 
 53 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 the church which is evangelistic in spirit 
 and purpose is not falling to pieces from dry- 
 rot or spiritual coldness. The very process 
 of drawing in from the fringes of its influence 
 those who are not far from the kingdom of 
 God but still on the outer edge of Christian 
 life keeps the heart and center of the church 
 close knit and compact. 
 
 The unceasing effort of a faithful minister 
 to bring others to Christ attaches his own 
 people to him as nothing else will do. The 
 Christian woman who sees her pastor intent 
 upon inducing her husband to become a 
 Christian, or seeking to win her boys to Chris- 
 tian living, does not care two straws whether 
 or not he calls upon her at frequent intervals 
 to drink tea and hear about the health of her 
 canary birds. She sees that he is about his 
 Master's business, and she likes him amazingly 
 for this harder task he is seeking to accom- 
 plish. 
 
 The high and dry Pharisees twitted the 
 disciples upon the fact that their Master 
 ate with publicans and sinners. He replied 
 with those Parables of the Lost Sheep, the 
 Lost Coin, the Lost Boy, which will be known 
 and loved when the critics have been buried 
 in oblivion beyond the hope of any sort of 
 resurrection. He also remarked with deli- 
 cate but effective irony that he was a physi- 
 
 54 
 
Recruiting the Church 
 
 cian and that his business, therefore, was 
 mainly with the sick. " They that are 
 whole have no need of the physician, but they 
 that are sick. I came not to call the righteous 
 but sinners to repentance." How delicious 
 it was ! " Whole," indeed when they 
 were stretched out at full length on beds of 
 wrong-doing, unable to lift their hands or 
 their heads to the furtherance of righteousness. 
 " Not the righteous " when he knew, and 
 they knew, and all who heard him knew, that 
 those supercilious faultfinders were at the 
 longest remove from being " righteous"! 
 There was, as a matter of cold fact, more 
 hope for the publicans and harlots than there 
 was for them. It was the glory of his life 
 to go forth and enlist in the high task of 
 bringing in the kingdom of God, those who 
 had made moral failure. And in heaven 
 there was more joy over the repentance of 
 one such than there was over all the prudent 
 performances of those who esteemed them- 
 selves too good to need repentance. 
 
 The one who undertakes to recruit the 
 membership of the church will naturally 
 keep his purpose clearly in mind and actually 
 in sight. " Fishers of men " he is not 
 there just to pass the time of day with the 
 fish or to show them he is not afraid of deep 
 water because he, too, has learned to swim. 
 
 55 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 He is there to catch them if he can and enlist 
 them in a finer mode of life. He counts that 
 wise and warm spirit of evangelism as the 
 crowning asset on his trial balance as it is in 
 the make-up of any minister of Christ. 
 
 This high task of winning others furnishes 
 the most wholesome exercise available for 
 the membership of the church. If they 
 would " grow in grace," let them do as the 
 early Christians did. When Andrew had 
 found the Messiah, he at once found his 
 brother Simon and brought him to Christ. 
 Philip found the Messiah and then promptly 
 found Nathaniel and brought him. And 
 each " next man " passed it on to some other 
 ' next." So the Christian movement grew 
 by the immediate contagion of life upon life. 
 
 Once, and only once, do we read that the 
 One who was known as " a man of sorrows 
 and acquainted with grief " actually " exulted 
 in spirit." It was not in the hour when he 
 stood on the mount of the Transfiguration, 
 his face shining like the sun in its strength. 
 It was not when he stood on the Horns of 
 Hattin uttering the Sermon on the Mount, 
 to go echoing its way down the ages with its 
 serene message of help. It was not when he 
 rode along the streets of his capital city, 
 receiving the popular acclaim and having 
 hosannas showered upon him as a King who 
 
 56 
 
Recruiting the Church 
 
 came in the name of the Lord. It was in the 
 hour when " the other seventy " unordained 
 and unnamed disciples returned with an 
 encouraging report as to what they had been 
 accomplishing by the power of the truth he 
 had given them. " In that hour Jesus ex- 
 ulted in spirit " and cried out that he had seen 
 ' Satan falling like lightning from heaven." 
 The success of those modest disciples in 
 winning their fellows to a new allegiance 
 became to him an earnest of the glorious 
 consummation when every knee should bow 
 and every tongue confess that his mode of 
 life had the right to rule in the lives of men. 
 
 In the best sense every service of the church 
 may be made evangelistic. This does not 
 mean that on every such occasion the minis- 
 ter will undertake to declare the whole plan 
 of salvation, or that he will in set terms urge 
 upon his hearers repentance for sin, and sav- 
 ing faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It does 
 not mean that at every service he will ask 
 people to stand up, or to raise their hands, 
 to sign cards, or to come forward for prayers. 
 But every rightly ordered service may be so 
 conducted that in its steady outreach, it 
 will be urging upon the minds and conscience 
 of all who come the naturalness, the reason- 
 ableness and the winsomeness of the Chris- 
 tian life. It will hold before their gaze the 
 
 57 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 high privilege and the sacred obligation of 
 Christian living in such a way as to be mov- 
 ing them steadily in that general direction. 
 
 When a man falls from the top of a ten- 
 story building, the power of gravitation mani- 
 fests itself in one way. The body of the 
 man comes to the pavement in the twinkling 
 of an eye, and when it strikes the result is 
 tragic. The power of gravitation manifests 
 itself no less truly but in a very different way 
 in its steady pull upon the Muir glacier, 
 causing it to move only a few feet perhaps in 
 the course of a year. One's whole ministry 
 and the entire work of the Christian church 
 may likewise exercise a steady pull upon the 
 lives of men, drawing them into the Kingdom, 
 in ways less showy and dramatic, but more 
 effective oftentimes than the striking efforts 
 of some notable and noisy evangelistic cam- 
 paign. 
 
 When the work of recruiting is restricted 
 to a special series of meetings or to one par- 
 ticular season of the year, many people will 
 be missed. Like the Jews of old, they will 
 not be in the right mood at that particular 
 season to know the time of their visitation 
 or to recognize the fact that the kingdom of 
 God has come nigh unto them. In a rural 
 church near my father's home in Iowa, a 
 young man was once converted in the month 
 
 58 
 
Recruiting the Church 
 
 of July. It was much remarked upon, and 
 one of my father's neighbors made the 
 observation: tl I hear that Theodore Craven 
 was converted over at Zion Baptist Church 
 last Sunday night. I never heard before of 
 a man getting religion in July." He felt 
 that " getting religion " was something like 
 raising watermelons. It could only be done 
 at a certain season. " The tree of life," 
 however, bore her fruit of ministering to 
 human need " every month, " and the very 
 11 leaves of the tree were for the healing of 
 the nations." Any service and every service 
 may well be saving in the spirit it maintains 
 and in the atmosphere it creates. " Today, if 
 you will hear his voice. Now is the accepted 
 time. Now is the day of salvation." 
 
 Every service may be clearing up intellec- 
 tual difficulties and replacing mistaken con- 
 ceptions with a more valid interpretation of 
 the eternal verities. Every service may be 
 shedding light upon those moral confusions 
 where some people think that they are not 
 good enough to join the church, and others 
 feel that they are so good already as to need 
 no more vital relation to the spiritual forces 
 at work in the society where they stand. 
 Every service may be lifting up and reveal- 
 ing Him who is able to draw all men unto 
 him if they can only be brought to see him 
 
 59 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 as he is. The compelling vision of the liv- 
 ing Christ will awaken an impulse to be 
 ' like him " which will determine the issue. 
 Every service may be paving the way for 
 that supreme and final decision which carries 
 the soul from darkness into light, to go no 
 more out. 
 
 In this work of recruiting the church, I 
 would name as the first, the best and the 
 most effective method, the method of per- 
 sonal evangelism. There was one occasion 
 in the Early Church, the day of Pentecost, 
 when three thousand were added to the 
 church. But they were already " devout 
 men from every nation under heaven " 
 devout enough to have made the long jour- 
 ney up to Jerusalem to participate in that 
 great festival of the Jewish church. In their 
 case it was a theological rather than a moral 
 conversion. They kept straight on as ' 'de- 
 vout men," only now they had enrolled 
 themselves under the leadership of Jesus as 
 the Messiah. There was one such day that 
 men might hope and pray for the exceptional 
 outpouring of the divine spirit, but only one, 
 lest the church should entrust its entire life 
 to these wholesale efforts. 
 
 11 The good shepherd calleth his own sheep 
 by name and leadeth them out." He was 
 able to call them by name because he had 
 
 60 
 
Recruiting the Church 
 
 put himself in close personal relations with 
 each one. It was that intimate touch which 
 made his call effective. The drag-net takes 
 of every kind and all at once, but the results 
 are mixed. When the inevitable sorting 
 out has taken place upon the shore, there 
 must be entered up a substantial and dis- 
 heartening discount of the first impression 
 made as to the success of the effort, by an 
 actual appraisal of the net result. The hook- 
 and-line method is slower and surer when the 
 final returns are all in. 
 
 In my own ministry I find in looking over 
 my parish records that those years when I 
 made the most calls and talked personally 
 with the largest number of individuals were 
 the years which showed the largest number 
 of people added to the church on confession 
 of faith. This might not hold true in every 
 man's ministry the country over. I am glad 
 to believe that many ministers have proven 
 themselves better harvesters of spiritual re- 
 sults than I have been. Even so, the method 
 of personal evangelism has so much to say 
 for itself as to outclass and outlast all rival 
 methods. 
 
 Hand-picked fruit keeps better through the 
 long winter than does the fruit which was 
 shaken from the tree and picked up from 
 the ground. Hand-picked converts have 
 
 61 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 a way of holding out and of being found in 
 their places five years later to an extent not 
 always to be realized among those who were 
 brought in by the more miscellaneous effort 
 of shaking the tree in a mighty, monster 
 aggregation attempt at the wholesale evan- 
 gelism of an entire city. 
 
 Fewer sensitive souls are hurt and repelled 
 by the quiet method of evangelism than is 
 likely to be the case where the rough-and-ready 
 methods of a professional evangelist are im- 
 posed upon the community. When the work 
 is done in this apostolic way, Andrew find- 
 ing Peter, and Philip making himself res- 
 ponsible for Nathaniel, the taste of the peo- 
 ple is not coarsened and vitiated, which is a 
 common result of those bizarre methods of 
 some evangelists which are deemed impera- 
 tive for the hasty filling of a huge tabernacle 
 with a crowd eager for another thrill. 
 
 In the less showy method of evangelism 
 there will commonly be less of the loose and 
 dogmatic statement carelessly but often suc- 
 cessfully employed for the sake of some im- 
 mediate effect and leaving some ugly prob- 
 lems for the patient pastors who stand by 
 to pick up the fragments which remain. 
 The ethical teaching put forth by settled 
 pastors and by faithful laymen in their work 
 of recruiting is likely to be better balanced, 
 
 62 
 
Recruiting the Church 
 
 and the Biblical interpretation is apt to be 
 more competent, than is the case when fer- 
 vent and dramatic exhorters, lacking both 
 the thorough training and the cultural back- 
 ground for such a sacred undertaking, come 
 swiftly upon the scene for a brief and incon- 
 clusive effort. 
 
 We cannot blind ourselves to the fact that 
 in the last twenty-five years the educational 
 forces in this country have been gaining 
 steadily upon the ecclesiastical forces. We 
 recognize this gain in the larger amounts of 
 money which they are able to secure from 
 thoughtful people for the prosecution of their 
 work; in the larger hold they have obtained 
 upon the popular esteem, and in the number 
 and quality of the young men and women 
 they can enlist in their service. These edu- 
 cational forces have emphasized " the pro- 
 cess " rather than " the crisis." They have 
 rested their entire weight upon the value of 
 the slow, steady, well-considered process, 
 rather than upon the jerks and spurts of some 
 showy crisis. In the light of their experience 
 in making this splendid gain, we may well 
 believe that the way of Christian nurture 
 in its best and broadest sense, the way of 
 pastoral and personal evangelism, is " the 
 more excellent way." If the churches had 
 been steadily doing their best along these 
 
 63 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 lines, the demand for those other swifter 
 but less worthy methods might never have 
 arisen. Why not do this great work in the 
 best way that is, in Christ's way? 
 
ADAPTING THE CHURCH 
 
V 
 
 Adapting the Church 
 
 THE form of church life in the matter 
 of polity, of worship, of activity had 
 best spring from a careful survey and 
 an intelligent recognition of the needs of 
 the field where the church is doing its work. 
 We shall find along that line a surer guide to 
 spiritual effectiveness than in any sort of 
 blind reliance upon some preconceived notion 
 of what the church should be and do. 
 
 It may be that the early churches de- 
 scribed in the Book of Acts were congrega- 
 tional in their polity. I use the term not in 
 any sectarian sense, but merely as indicating 
 that simplest and most democratic form of 
 government adopted by several branches of 
 the church of Christ. It is my own per- 
 sonal belief that those early churches were 
 congregational. But this is not a matter of 
 large significance. If a church governed by 
 elders like the Presbyterian Church, or a 
 church governed by bishops like the Epis- 
 copal and the Methodist Churches, or a church 
 governed by a pope like the Roman Catholic 
 Church, shows itself better suited to serve the 
 
 67 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 spiritual interest of a community, a state, 
 or a nation, as determined by years of in- 
 structive experience, then it would have high 
 warrant for claiming the divine sanction upon 
 its particular kind of polity. 
 
 The church, whatever its form of organiza- 
 tion may be, is never to be regarded as an 
 end in itself. The church is just a tool in 
 the hands of the Holy Spirit, to be employed 
 in the establishing of the kingdom of God on 
 earth. The tool must of necessity be shaped 
 with reference to the work to be done. It 
 is pathetic always to see some ecclesiastic 
 expend his time and strength in forging, 
 polishing and sharpening his tool according 
 to some dogmatic conception of his own, 
 without ever asking himself in any definite 
 way what he is to do with it. The man of 
 sense does not whet his scythe all day he 
 cuts grass. The wise pastor is not merely 
 intent upon keeping the wheels of his eccle- 
 siastic machine polished and turning his 
 eyes and his mind are upon some worthy prod- 
 uct fit for the garners of the Lord. 
 
 In appraising the usefulness of any church 
 the idea of usefulness cannot be conceived 
 in any narrow sense. The long-drawn-out 
 discussion as to the respective value of " in- 
 stitutional " and " inspirational " churches 
 has been in the main a waste of words and a 
 
 68 
 
Adapting the Church 
 
 beating of the air. It is so easy and so futile 
 to claim that the first type of church is 
 " practical" and the other type only "theo- 
 retical." The church which has evening 
 classes, men's clubs and boys' clubs, a gym- 
 nasium and a swimming pool, a sewing 
 school and a day nursery, and all the other 
 activities belonging to full-orbed institutional 
 religious effort, is sometimes put down as 
 " a practical, useful, serving church." But 
 there may be a community where no one of 
 these forms of activity is " indicated, " as 
 the physicians say in their careful diagnosis. 
 The church which receives into its doors on 
 Sunday morning a congregation of men and 
 women, young men and maidens, hardened, 
 coarsened, disheartened, paganized by a week 
 of rough contact with the world, the flesh, 
 and the devil, and by its appointed services 
 sends them back to their homes and to their 
 toil renewed and enriched, ennobled and 
 sweetened, ready to take up all their tasks 
 with fresh zest and relish and do them better, 
 carrying on serenely that church has done 
 something intensely practical. 
 
 The church which takes a company of 
 cold, hard, proud, self-satisfied people and 
 humbles them, softens them, leads them to 
 become as little children in their Father's 
 house, has done a great piece of work. The 
 
 69 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 church which takes a set of rigid, uncom- 
 promising individuals, who pride themselves 
 on standing each one on his own two feet, 
 neither asking nor giving odds, who are 
 saying by their mood and bearing, if not in 
 so many words, " Every man for himself and 
 the devil take the hindmost " the church 
 which takes them and produces within 
 them by years of patient, heroic effort the 
 social habit of mind and the readiness to 
 fix their hearts upon social ideals as the only 
 worthy object of spiritual aspiration, has 
 given a good account of itself. The church 
 which in the course of a winter converts one 
 strong young man from a life of wrong-doing 
 or of spiritual indifference to a life of sus- 
 tained and conscientious Christian effort 
 has written its name on the walls of the City 
 of God. It has paid for itself for all time. 
 It may well reap royalties of spiritual satis- 
 faction during all the rest of its history from 
 the splendid service of that man who was 
 there brought out of darkness into light. 
 
 The power-house does not move about the 
 city in a hurried, restless desire to be " use- 
 ful." It does not carry laborers to the fac- 
 tories, merchants to their stores, children 
 to their schools, or worshipers to the church. 
 The power-house stands there in stolid fashion, 
 some would say, upon its own appointed 
 
 70 
 
Adapting the Church 
 
 plot of ground, leaving all these practical 
 lines of usefulness untouched. But it fur- 
 nishes power to the street-cars as they carry 
 people about the streets. The church which 
 is steadily recruiting the supply of Christian 
 impulse in the community, so that moral 
 dynamic flows evenly, steadily, and strongly 
 along all the wires which stretch out through 
 the life of the community, is rendering a ser- 
 vice unspeakably precious to the higher life 
 of that city. Inspiration is usefulness. 
 
 There are churches which would do well 
 to adapt their activities to the situations where 
 they find themselves. Some churches are 
 dying because of their unwillingness to read- 
 just their methods to the task at hand. 
 They could learn useful lessons from the 
 study of biology. There was a time, we are 
 told, when the highest forms of life here on 
 earth were water-breathing marine animals 
 with fins and gills. It may easily have been 
 that some of these forms of life found them- 
 selves stranded on the beach by some un- 
 usually high tide, or that some of them in an 
 ill-calculated spurt of energy may have 
 flopped out of the stream upon the bank. 
 
 Now there were three courses open to them 
 in the unusual situation where they found 
 themselves. First, they could give up and 
 die because the environment was strange 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 and difficult. Second, they could try to 
 flop back into the stream or into some adjoin- 
 ing pool, or wait for another high -tide to 
 restore them to an environment with which 
 they were familiar. Third, they could enter 
 upon a desperate struggle for readjustment, 
 many of them dying in the attempt, perhaps, 
 and thus finally learn how to live under these 
 changed conditions. By a long process of 
 adaptation the fins became flippers and then 
 the flippers became legs; the gills became 
 lungs, breathing air instead of water, and there 
 emerged upon the scene a new form of air- 
 breathing land animal able to make its way 
 on solid ground. 
 
 However accurate or inaccurate in detail 
 this brief account of the evolutionary process 
 may be, it will serve as an illustration. Here 
 is a down-town city church The removal 
 of the substantial families which once filled 
 its pews has left it in a difficult situation. 
 The new environment of stores, tenement 
 houses and apartment hotels, with their 
 transient population, threatens its very exis- 
 tence. It, too, may sell its property to some 
 moving-picture enterprise, and die this 
 is always a simple, easy solution of the prob- 
 lem, if indeed it be a solution. It may, on 
 the other hand, sell its property and flop off 
 into the suburbs and build there a new place 
 
 72 
 
Adapting the Church 
 
 of worship in the sort of environment to which 
 it was accustomed in the early decades of its 
 history. It may explain its change of base 
 by the fact that " so many foreigners had 
 moved in " and (as is often the case) ease 
 its conscience by taking up more generous 
 offerings for missionary work. It is some- 
 times easier to deal with foreigners religiously 
 at the end of a long pole, and if the pole is 
 seven or eight thousand miles long, all the 
 better. 
 
 Or, as the last and best alternative, that 
 church may readjust its organs and its func- 
 tions by heroic effort and painful self-sacri- 
 fice, and thus learn to live a new life under 
 these changed conditions. This effort may 
 involve a severe struggle and a great many 
 bad half -hours, but where it succeeds it will 
 mean also the emergence upon the scene of 
 a higher form of church life. 
 
 Here was the Madison Avenue Presby- 
 terian Church in New York City! There 
 was a time when its pews were filled from the 
 pulpit to the front door with people of wealth, 
 of culture, of social position. But there came 
 a shifting of the centers of wealth and of the 
 higher social activities. Madison Avenue 
 was no longer " The Avenue/' The plain 
 people, who live in thick layers like a choco- 
 late cake, came surging up the East Side 
 
 73 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 with their swarming tenement houses. With- 
 in three or four blocks of this Madison Avenue 
 Church there was to be found the most 
 thickly populated section of New York City. 
 This church did not die and it did not sell 
 out and move to an easier environment. 
 It stayed right there in its appointed place 
 and on its job from the rising of the sun on 
 Sunday morning to the going down of the 
 same on Saturday night. 
 
 It has had for years a gifted pastor, a man 
 who came from a New York family of wealth 
 and social position, one who received his 
 college training at Yale and his theological 
 training at Edinboro, a man who believes 
 that the ideal church is to be found where 
 the rich and the poor meet together on the 
 basis of Christian democracy and the Lord 
 is the maker of them all. This church abol- 
 ished its pew system as a hindrance to Chris- 
 tian democracy and instituted free seats. 
 It has, along with a few trained and gifted 
 singers to lead the several parts, a large 
 chorus choir of voluntary singers selected 
 from its own congregation. The people of 
 large means and wide culture count it their 
 joy and privilege to furnish a generous mea- 
 sure of the sinews of war and a large share of 
 the talent for leadership ; but all the people 
 give according to the measure of their ability, 
 
 74 
 
Adapting the Church 
 
 that the supply may be full. The senior 
 pastor has a staff of devoted men and women 
 co-operating with him in the varied minis- 
 tries of the church and in the activities of the 
 parish. The Sunday school reaches out a 
 warm hand, open, ungloved, inviting, to the 
 children of all sorts and conditions, that they 
 may come in, assuring them that " of such is 
 the Kingdom". In the absence of the pastor 
 I once supplied the pulpit of that church on 
 a rainy, windy Sunday in mid-winter, and 
 there were ten hundred and eighty persons 
 present in the Sunday school that day, boys 
 and girls, young men and maidens, men and 
 women, studying that Word which makes us 
 wise unto salvation and furnishes us thor- 
 oughly for all good work. 
 
 The church has built a large parish house 
 next door, eleven stories high, with all manner 
 of well-appointed rooms, for its constant and 
 varied ministry to human need. This parish 
 house has, as its crowning feature, a roof 
 garden where outdoor services are held on 
 hot summer nights, the worshipers lifted 
 up from the dust and heat of the noisy street 
 into the upper air of high privilege and look- 
 ing out upon a horizon bounded by nothing 
 nearer than the stars and the being of God. 
 This Madison Avenue Church is alive to its 
 finger-tips. The vigor and promise of its 
 
 75 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 work causes many men to thank God and 
 take courage. 
 
 The demand for adaptation in some coun- 
 try church may be no less exacting. The 
 conditions in rural life have changed less 
 rapidly, perhaps, but no less decisively. The 
 telephones which are ringing everywhere, 
 the rural mail delivery, the swift flight of 
 the automobile which has replaced the old 
 reliance upon the slow movements of Dob- 
 bin, have made country life another thing 
 altogether. My father was a farmer for 
 more than fifty years in the state of Iowa. 
 He lived two hundred and fifty miles west 
 of Chicago and five miles from the nearest 
 railroad. In former days we got the mail, 
 if the roads were not too bad, on an average 
 about once a week. For the last twenty 
 years of his life the Chicago morning paper 
 was delivered at my father's front gate at 
 eleven o'clock. The people all but univer- 
 sally are taking and reading daily papers and 
 magazines; they have entered into wider 
 contact with the world's life. The rural 
 church which once satisfied them satisfies 
 them no more. 
 
 The church in the country has a clear 
 chance to point the way to more wholesome 
 forms of recreation in communities where 
 there is little or nothing for the diversion of 
 
 76 
 
Adapting the Church 
 
 young people between the public dance hall, 
 with its undesirable associations, or the 
 " movies," with many a questionable film, 
 and the Christian Endeavor prayer-meeting. 
 " It is written," not in the Bible but in the 
 equally authoritative book of life, that young 
 people shall not live by sermons and prayer- 
 meetings alone. They live by all the great 
 words which proceed from the purposes of 
 God. 
 
 The social life of the church is no mere 
 incidental. " The Son of Man came eating 
 and drinking " he was intensely social 
 in his habit and method. He began his 
 public ministry at a wedding, and when the 
 refreshments gave out he helped his hosts 
 to get some more. He did it so successfully 
 that the general feeling among the guests 
 was that they had never tasted such joy be- 
 fore. The most prominent and sacred article 
 of furniture in the church is a table, the place 
 where we find things to eat and to drink. 
 The Master would have social interest cul- 
 tivated and consecrated as a means of grace. 
 He would make the fellowship of old and 
 young nothing less than sacramental in its 
 higher possibilities. The function of the 
 rural church is not to stand aloof, consum- 
 ing its zeal in scolding and denouncing the 
 less wholesome methods of social contact 
 
 77 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 it is there to point the way and to lead in the 
 direction of more wholesome means of social 
 contact. 
 
 The rural church may well provide, in its 
 own appointed services and by its co-opera- 
 tion with other agencies, a larger measure 
 of intellectual stimulus. The summer Chau- 
 tauqua, a child of the church, which owes 
 its wider introduction to the co-operation 
 of the Christian churches, brings a season 
 of privilege to thirsty areas of our American 
 life. The well-to-do farmers here and there 
 are moved to unite in providing endowments 
 for lecture courses which shall bring each 
 winter to the community some of the best 
 minds of the nation. This action has been 
 prompted mainly by the influence of the 
 church. In those communities which are 
 not blessed with public libraries, the organ- 
 izing of book clubs and magazine clubs 
 which are located in and administered by the 
 church brings wholesome material before the 
 eyes of the many when they have finished 
 their day's toil in the fields. 
 
 The rural church which allies itself with the 
 extension work of the State University and 
 brings within the reach of its people instruc- 
 tive and stimulating lectures and conferences 
 on better methods of agriculture and horti- 
 culture, better methods of dairying, of poultry 
 
 78 
 
Adapting the Church 
 
 raising and of home management, stands 
 in the apostolic succession which reaches 
 back to the One who went about doing good 
 in all the ways he could. It may well adopt 
 for its motto his own words, " I am among 
 you as one who serves." His service reached 
 all the way from the healing of an unsightly 
 leper to the utterance of the words of eternal 
 life ; from the opening of the eyes of the blind 
 to the manifestation of the glory he had with 
 the Father before the world was; from the 
 washing of the feet of those tired disciples 
 to the redemption of a sinful race by his own 
 blood. 
 
 The church was made for man, and not man 
 for the church. It was made for that part 
 of the man which most suffers neglect else- 
 where. It need not, it had best not, dupli- 
 cate lines of effort which are already in suc- 
 cessful operation through other agencies. 
 It must be sure that the activities upon which 
 it enters are calculated to meet real needs. 
 The sensible people speedily draw away from 
 that which is merely perfunctory. It is 
 never worth while to hold meetings just for 
 the sake of holding them, or for the sake of 
 keeping up certain religious gestures which 
 can no longer be called means of grace, just 
 because " we always have." The best pro- 
 gram for the life of a local church springs 
 
 79 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 from a careful and intelligent survey of the 
 needs of the community, of the other agen- 
 cies at work to meet those needs, and of the 
 resources available for meeting those needs 
 in some generous and satisfying manner. 
 And wherever the church life is thus adapted 
 to the demands of the environment it may 
 well become the crowning glory of all human 
 institutions. 
 
 The true church may well aspire to an 
 imperial place in the life of the community. 
 The Roman Catholic Church was right in 
 its purpose but, as we believe, mistaken in 
 its method. It undertook by its own official 
 authority to crown kings and to control 
 education, and by its confessional to stretch 
 forth the hand of authority into all the most 
 intimate relations of our common life. Let 
 the true church strive, not by the method of 
 lordship and dominion, but by the pathway 
 of leadership and service, to make the spiritual 
 interest in our total life indeed supreme. 
 
 80 
 
UNIFYING THE CHURCH 
 
VI 
 Unifying the Church 
 
 THE minister preaches to a congrega- 
 tion, but, if he knows what he is about, 
 he builds a church. The congrega- 
 tion may have only one, and that a fleeting, 
 interest, the desire to hear a certain gifted 
 man talk or a silver-tongued choir sing. 
 When the service is ended, all sense of unity 
 in the mere congregation vanishes. There 
 is no more cohesion than would be found 
 among the men who go to a baseball game 
 or who sit for a few hours as fellow passen- 
 gers in the railroad train. Alas for the poor 
 parson who has merely gathered a congre- 
 gation. 
 
 There are eloquent men in the pulpit who 
 never advance from congregation-gatherers 
 to become builders of churches. The preacher 
 may be a sensationalist and the people assem- 
 ble for the sake of a new thrill. He may be 
 a clever lecturer on current events, and the 
 people come for some more skilful appraisal 
 and interpretation of the news of the week 
 than would be found in the ordinary daily 
 paper. He may be gifted in striking resound- 
 
 83 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 ing blows on behalf of certain social reforms, 
 and the people interested along those par- 
 ticular lines gather for the immediate feeling 
 of assurance which his utterance will occasion. 
 
 In a large American city with which I was 
 familiar there was a certain popular preacher 
 whose congregations were always good. His 
 church was full. When he resigned he had 
 been preaching in that church for ten years 
 to crowds of interested and admiring people. 
 The Sunday following his resignation was a 
 beautiful day in the springtime. The pulpit 
 of that church was supplied by one of the 
 ablest ministers in the state. And by actual 
 count the congregation in the morning num- 
 bered fifty-seven and in the evening fifty- 
 three. It was made up of that faithful nu- 
 cleus of devoted people who are the final 
 dependence and hope of any Christian church. 
 This was all the former pastor had to show 
 for his ten years of work, so far as numbers 
 went. This was what he was able to turn 
 over to his successor. It had been a personal 
 following, with little or none of that spiritual 
 cohesion which belongs to the true church. 
 
 We had a dramatic illustration of the 
 difference between a church and a congre- 
 gation some years ago in the City of Brook- 
 lyn. T. DeWitt Talmadge and Theodore 
 Cuyler were both Presbyterian ministers. 
 
 84 
 
Unifying the Church 
 
 They worked under the same polity, declared 
 their allegiance to the same creed and preached 
 in the same city. Talmadge preached hab- 
 itually to a large congregation. The pews 
 of the great auditorium were almost uni- 
 formly full. But when he resigned at the 
 end of a long pastorate, the church did not 
 have sufficient vitality to continue its work 
 or even to maintain its existence. The church 
 was disbanded and the property sold and the 
 organization came to an end. It was the 
 testimony of other pastors in the City of 
 Brooklyn that no appreciable additions were 
 made to their churches at that time by the 
 transfer of members from the disbanded 
 church. The Lafayette Avenue Presby- 
 terian Church, on the other hand, where 
 Theodore Cuyler had been engaged in con- 
 structive Christian work for many years, 
 abides to this hour in strength, in devotion, 
 in generous service, and in splendid promise 
 for the future. One of the men had gathered 
 a congregation and the other had built a 
 church. 
 
 It is not enough to develop in a body of 
 people the spirit of adhesion to an attrac- 
 tive preacher. It is not enough to develop 
 the spirit of personal loyalty to Him who is 
 the Head of all the churches. There must 
 come also the sense of cohesion as fellow 
 
 8s 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 members of the body of Christ. The nec- 
 essity for a warm, intelligent, close-knit 
 and effective fellowship is instantly apparent 
 when we study the marks of a true church. 
 
 How this truth is emphasized and illumi- 
 nated in Paul's letter to the Ephesians, 
 which is the outstanding classic on the doc- 
 trine of the church in our Holy Scriptures 1 
 The church is an organism, and there is to 
 be found in all of its members that common 
 unifying principle which gives it stability 
 and strength. Now the apostle approaches 
 that central truth from one angle and now 
 from another, working it over under varied 
 figures of speech. 
 
 Now he phrases his truth in terms of bi- 
 ology. The church is a body, the body of 
 Christ, the residing place of his spirit, the re- 
 vealing place of his divine nature, the instru- 
 ment and agent of his holy will, as he dwells 
 within it for the accomplishment of his good 
 pleasure. 
 
 Now he phrases his truth in political terms. 
 He addresses the members of that church 
 in Ephesus as citizens in the kingdom of 
 God. " Ye were once aliens from the com- 
 monwealth of Israel!" Strangers from the 
 covenant of promise! Ye were outsiders, 
 not under the flag, without God and without 
 hope in the world! But now " ye are no 
 
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Unifying the Church 
 
 more strangers and foreigners, but fellow 
 citizens with the saints." 
 
 Now he phrases his truth in terms of archi- 
 tecture. Ye are builded into a holy temple 
 in the Lord, fitly framed together and com- 
 pacted by that which every joint supplieth 
 according to the effectual working in the 
 measure of every part. " Ye are built upon 
 the foundation of the prophets and apostles, 
 Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner- 
 stone," as a permanent habitation of God 
 through the Spirit. Every stone as a consent- 
 ing member of the structure was mortared 
 in by the sense of fellowship and held in 
 position by the pressure of the entire wall. 
 
 Now he phrases the same truth in terms 
 taken from vocational life. " Ye are called," 
 he says, l in one hope of your calling." 
 He beseeches them to walk worthy of the 
 vocation wherewith they are called. He 
 recognizes the presence of a great variety of 
 gifts -- some men are best suited to be 
 prophets and some apostles, some evangel- 
 ists and some pastors and teachers. But 
 they are all called " in one hope " of their 
 common calling for the perfecting of human 
 life, for the work of ministry, for the build- 
 ing up of the body of Christ, until all shall 
 come, in the unity of the spirit and in a grow- 
 ing knowledge of the Son of God, unto the 
 
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The Honor of the Church 
 
 stature of perfect manhood, according to the 
 fulness of Christ. 
 
 Now in a yet more intimate way he likens 
 the fellowship of the church to the spirit of 
 the home. ' I bow my knees unto the 
 Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom 
 the whole family in heaven and on earth is 
 named." Here the unifying principle is a 
 common love of all for each and of each for 
 all. He would have them strengthened with 
 might by the spirit of Christ in the inner man. 
 He would have Christ dwell in their hearts 
 by faith. He would have them so rooted 
 and grounded in the practice of good-will 
 that they would ultimately comprehend the 
 length and the breadth, the height and the 
 depth of that divine love which passeth 
 knowledge and be filled with all the fulness 
 of God. 
 
 How far this apostolic conception of the 
 church stands above the temporary aggre- 
 gation in some miscellaneous crowd which 
 can be readily gathered to hear some clever 
 man talk or some sweet- voiced singer sing! 
 This superficial assembling of ourselves to- 
 gether may have some slight value it is 
 better than nothing at all; it is better than 
 having these people spend the entire day 
 appointed for worship in hurried, thoughtless, 
 social dissipation or in unseemly forms of 
 
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Unifying the Church 
 
 recreation, but it stops far short of a true 
 church. 
 
 This sense of intelligent and affectionate 
 cohesion which belongs to the church is made 
 its distinctive mark. " By this shall all 
 men know that ye are my disciples," not 
 that you all declare your acceptance of a 
 certain system of theological belief; not that 
 you have all been baptized in some particular 
 way; not that you all observe some stated 
 form of liturgy ; not that you all are governed 
 by one particular form of polity. All these 
 tokens of Christian life have a certain value, 
 but they are all secondary. " By this shall 
 men know that ye are my disciples, if ye 
 love one another." It was remarked of the 
 early church, " How these Christians love 
 one another." The church which lacks this 
 fine sense of fellowship is unable to stand in 
 the true succession of the church of Christ. 
 
 It must be a comprehensive fellowship. 
 The esprit de corps becomes an ugly thing 
 where it is employed to cement more closely 
 the men and women of a single social class. 
 If the church should be used to promote and 
 intensify class feeling it would be profaned. 
 This would be equally true whether the 
 particular class which took over the church 
 was rich or poor, cultured or simple, high or 
 low in its social status. The rich and poor 
 
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The Honor of the Church 
 
 had best meet together, not as the givers 
 and receivers of alms, but as the children of 
 one Father in the house of their God. The 
 employers and the wage -earners need the 
 sense of spiritual contact as they meet to- 
 gether around one table to eat the bread 
 and drink the wine of remembrance, as they 
 meet to pledge their loyalty to him in mutual 
 love and respect for one another. The people 
 who are well endowed, well-trained intellec- 
 tually and the unprivileged, untaught many 
 have a mutual ministry to render to one 
 another. It will be good for the college pro- 
 fessor to come to closer grips with men who 
 earn their bread by the work of their hands. 
 It will be good for the toilers to enrich their 
 lives by contact with trained minds. It 
 was a joy at St. George's Church in down- 
 town New York when Seth Low, the Presi- 
 dent of Columbia University, was teaching 
 from Sunday to Sunday a large Bible Class 
 made up exclusively of men who wrought 
 with their hands. 
 
 The fellowship of the church may well be 
 comprehensive in a theological sense. It is 
 unfortunate where all the extreme conserva- 
 tives flock off by themselves and become all 
 the more tense and rigid in their conserva- 
 tism by their lack of other association. It 
 is equally unhappy where all the more liberal 
 
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Unifying the Church 
 
 and more progressive minds in a religious 
 community take French leave of those who 
 have the deeper sense of values already 
 gained they are likely to become self- 
 conscious and heady in their new views. 
 Where the motive which impels men to enter 
 the church is kept deep and strong, the 
 door of entrance may be kept wide open, so 
 far as theological conformity goes. The 
 unity of the church is to be found in the last 
 analysis in " the unity of the spirit " rather 
 than in any precise agreement touching the 
 details of our interpretation of those eternal 
 verities which are confessedly too vast for 
 any sort of final statement. 
 
 It was my good fortune once to serve a 
 church where two of the deacons stood poles 
 apart in their theological opinions. They 
 were noble men and they have both gone 
 to their reward, so that I venture to give their 
 names. Edwards C. Williams was born in 
 Northampton, Massachusetts, and was named 
 for the great Jonathan Edwards. He was 
 more orthodox and conservative on the whole 
 than was the famous theologian whose name 
 he bore. He was no ignorant narrow-minded 
 dogmatist. He knew what he believed and 
 why he believed it, and was prepared to give 
 a reason for the faith that was in him to any- 
 one who asked, and to give it in clear-cut 
 
The Honor of the Church 
 
 terms. He read the best books. He took 
 the trouble to learn the Greek language after 
 he was fifty years old so that he might read 
 his New Testament in the original and combat 
 his pastor's heresies, if such there should be, 
 on something like equal terms. His sturdy 
 righteousness was like a sample of some old 
 Hebrew prophet brought down to date. 
 
 Wallace W. Lovejoy was a poet and a 
 dreamer who had been a theological professor 
 in his earlier life. He was a man of deep and 
 lovely piety, but he lived in the clouds. 
 Even when he spoke in prayer-meeting his 
 utterance was sometimes puzzling to the 
 uninitiated. The people listened with affec- 
 tionate interest, for, while they did not always 
 understand what he was talking about, they 
 felt so sure that he understood it all that 
 they were happy. He was almost, if not 
 altogether, a Unitarian in his estimate of the 
 person of Christ and in other theological 
 positions which he held with great tenacity. 
 But the stated invitation to the communion 
 service in that church, which bade " all those 
 who love Our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity 
 and truth " to come to the Lord's table, 
 took in both deacons alike and they came 
 with equal loyalty to Christ in their hearts 
 and with genuine love and respect for each 
 other. And as they passed up and down 
 
 9.2 
 
Unifying the Church 
 
 the aisles of the same church with the bread 
 and the wine of remembrance, the people 
 received the sacrament from their hands 
 with gratitude and satisfaction, thanking 
 God for the presence among them of Edwards 
 C. Williams and of Wallace W. Lovejoy. 
 
 It always reminded me of a scene in one 
 of Ian Maclaren's stories where a rigid 
 Scotch elder and a young minister fresh from 
 the University of Edinboro had fallen out 
 over the doctrine which was being preached 
 from the pulpit of the little kirk. The young 
 dominie had much to say about " Semitic 
 environment " and the latest conclusions 
 of the " higher criticism," while the elder 
 sat back in sturdy anxiety lest the Ark of the 
 Covenant should be upset by unholy hands 
 and the Ten Commandments all spilled out. 
 They argued it out one night at great length, 
 keeping nothing back for fear or for con- 
 science' sake. They were both too thoroughly 
 Scotch to abate one jot or one tittle of their 
 convictions, and the discussion, which lasted 
 until midnight, brought them nowhere. But 
 before they separated they clasped hands in 
 honest affection and engaged together in a 
 season of prayer. And when they were on 
 their knees before their Maker it was noticed 
 that the only difference in their prayers was 
 that the young man prayed that they might 
 
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The Honor of the Church 
 
 keep the faith once delivered to the saints, 
 and the old man prayed that the Spirit of 
 Truth might lead them into all truth. 
 
 Doctrinal discussion and personal pref- 
 erence in the matter of ritual and polity 
 may divide us, but we all come together in 
 prayer and praise. Here is a hymn-book 
 where the saints and the singers of all ages 
 and of all churches have lifted up their 
 hearts to the one God and Father of us all 
 in grateful worship. Here in a single hymnal 
 in constant use in almost any one of our 
 churches are " Blest be the Tie that Binds " 
 and "I Need Thee Every Hour," written 
 by Baptists! Here are " Holy, Holy, Holy, 
 Lord God Almighty " and " The Church's 
 One Foundation is Jesus Christ Our Lord," 
 written by Episcopalians! Here are " Love 
 Divine All Love Excelling " and " Jesus 
 Lover of My Soul," written by a Methodist! 
 Here are " Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus " 
 and " I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say, Come 
 Unto Me and Rest," written by Presbyte- 
 rians! Here are " Lead, Kindly Light " and 
 " Jerusalem, the Golden," written by Roman 
 Catholics! Here are " A Mighty Fortress 
 is Our God " and " Now Thank we all Our 
 God," written by Lutherans! Here are 
 " Nearer, My God, to Thee " and " In The 
 Cross of Christ I Glory," written by Uni- 
 
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Unifying the Church 
 
 tarians! Here are " My Faith Looks Up 
 to Thee " and " O Master, Let Me Walk 
 with Thee," written by Congregationalists ! 
 
 Why should it not be so? All things are 
 ours, whether Paul or Apollos or Peter; 
 whether John Calvin or John Wesley or 
 Adoniram Judson; whether Jonathan 
 Edwards or Alexander Campbell or William 
 Ellery Channing; whether Francis of Assisi 
 or the Archbishop of Canterbury or General 
 William Booth. All are ours, for we are 
 Christ's and so were they, every man of them. 
 Ours to know, ours to revere, and ours to 
 love. 
 
 The sense of fellowship in any single church 
 may well extend far beyond the boundaries 
 of that immediate parish. Let it include 
 the past history of that local church, the 
 sweet memories of the noble men and women 
 who have lived in it and loved it in days 
 gone by. Let it gather up into itself the 
 recorection of the crises through which the 
 church has passed, the great sacrifices which 
 have been made on its behalf in times of 
 stress, the varied and heroic service it has 
 been privileged to render to the interests 
 of the Kingdom. I have been told that in 
 the Old South Church, Boston, there is a 
 family whose ancestors have worshiped in 
 that church for seven generations. Their 
 
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The Honor of the Church 
 
 sense of high privilege and their joy in their 
 church relations reaches far beyond all that 
 they receive from the ministrations of its 
 gifted and devoted pastor. The Lord has 
 set their feet in a large place. 
 
 The sense of fellowship must include all the 
 distinctive values contributed to our total 
 Christianity by the particular denomination 
 in which it stands. Let every section of the 
 church of Christ write its own Eleventh 
 Chapter of Hebrews! If it cannot quite 
 bring forward from its own roll of member- 
 ship honored names which will match up 
 with those of Abraham and Moses, it can 
 surely offer many which will average up better 
 than Gideon and Barak, Samson and Jep- 
 thath, as they have wrought righteousness, 
 subdued kingdoms and put to flight the armies 
 of evil. Let there be written and cherished 
 a book of remembrance touching those who, 
 in one particular part of the vineyard of 
 our Lord, " thought upon his name " and 
 gave a good account of themselves in the 
 use they made of the abilities with which he 
 had entrusted them. 
 
 The sense of fellowship must in its farthest 
 reaches include the Holy Church Universal. 
 It all belongs to us wherever we may find 
 ourselves, if we are indeed members of the 
 body of Christ. We are joint heirs in all 
 
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Unifying the Church 
 
 the rich heritage which has come down 
 through the history and achievements of 
 the whole church of the living God. It is 
 good to get that sense of a vaster fellowship 
 in the common worship of all the members 
 of the body of Christ. It will not destroy 
 the loyalty of men to their own particular 
 group, but it will lift them out of the narrow- 
 ness of a petty sectarianism into the feeling 
 of participation in an august spiritual enter- 
 prise. " Let the people praise thee, O God. 
 Let all the people praise thee!" Let them 
 rejoice in their common fellowship in the 
 Holy Church Universal, in the communion 
 of saints. 
 
 97