CHURCHES AND ADVERTISING.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XXiX, Issue 7727, 22 February 1909, Page 4

CHURCHES AND ADVERTISING.

In religion, as in commerce", advertising (writes the New York Correspondent of tlie London Daily Telegraph), is the keynote of Success. Tho Rev Francis Poole, pastor of the Congregational Church at Garre, Vermont, is responsible for that maxim, and he tells us to-day that by means of care-fully-worded advertisements in the Saturday papers, telling people what the church is doing each Sunday, he has doubled the congregation in three years. The Rev W. J. Dawson, formerly of New York, is in complete agreement. He is having the same experience here way of a novelty, ho startled New Yorkers by a novel religious procession, preceded by & huge cross of incandes-cent-lights 10ft high. Mr Dawson and his entire congregation paraded the streets, singing in chorus the stirring strains of "Onward Christian Soldiers." Hundreds upon hundreds from the streets fell into line, and followed the fiery emblem. E\-en the occupants of three or four taxi-cabs ordered their machines to proceed slowly in the rear, and joined in th hymn-singing. Two i thousand or more thronged into St George's Church, where Mr Dawson conducted revival services, when the * blazing cross led the way through the church doors. Nothing but reverence and enthusi iasm greeted the procession along the line of march. Among the vestrymen of St George's are Mr Pierpont Mor- ; gan, the financier, and Mr Seth Low, formerly Mayor of New York, whose long, though unsuccessful, campaign to secure the honest administration of municipal affairs entitles him to a high place in the list of American municipal ■ reformers.