A LITTLE SERMON.

Observer, Volume XXXIII, Issue 9, 9 November 1912, Page 2

A LITTLE SERMON.

Pew Rents and Conservatism

CHRISTIANITY was propounded byits Founder from the bow of a fishing boat, in the public street, on the sea shore, in a paddock, on a hill—anywhere. There was no "gate" and no uniform. The founder was a working man and the hardest subjects He had to deal with were the aristocrats of His period. Since that far off day it has become a cult, and oftentimes a business, and in innumerable cases the people who profess to be adherents of the Carpenter would on no account deign to meet Him on equal terms if He should appear among them. The primary idea of a universal brotherhood has been lost sight of and the outstanding Figure is too often viewed not as an entity

but as an idea useful as the basis of innumerable sectarian groups. The churches attach special significance to the buildings from which the messages of the Carpenter are delivered, and as it is necessary that their various branches should be financially strong, many of these branches are great flourishing institutions with much property, and wielding powerful influences among the classes from which the wealth comes.

It has been shown lately that the church does not always reach the kind of people whom the first message on "boats and seasands, and mountains and fields reached, and the atmosphere is, as everyone knows so well, carefully prepared. There is one small matter that has been discussed lately the rented pew. The facts are, of course, that the privilege of paying for a pew does not necessarily exclude those who can't pay from church attendances, and there may be something in the contention that people value these things most for which they have to pay the greatest price. But the pew-rent idea may also have the effect of making those people whom the churches affect to desire to "reach" view them as conservative class institutions, "social" only in a very limited way, in which they may enter by the condescension of those of "superior" rank. It is recalled with unpleasant feelings that in some Home churches — especially those where the patronage was aristocratic— that a few rows of seats in the worst part of the churches were set aside, and duly labelled "For the Poor" as if the Carpenter's message could only be delivered to people of His own rank as a special condescention. It is remembered, too, that these seats rarely had tenants. The meanest pauper does not like to be labelled and the idea always was and always will be cruel. • • Any system that will make any person feel that he is of any less account than the holder of the most expensive seat in a church is a poor system, and is in absolute antipathy to the intentions of the Founder of Christianity. A church nowadays—and always maybe—is what its individual pastor makes it. A brilliant man fills the seats, and it is only the mediocrities who blame the people who don't come to listen to them. The view that people should flock to hear mediocrities in the same numbers as they flock to hear a Campbell or a Spurgeon is, of course, only held by those who don't understand human nature and don't try. If pew-rent-ers regard their ability to pay rents as an indication of higher social standing, it may be held that the object of attendance is entirely lost. If the churches are to become the centre of the real social life of the people, the distinctions inferred by the pewrent and allied ideas must of coxirse cease. The churches frequently acknowledge that they have lost grip on the working classes, and it may be that it is because they do not know the workers and make no real attempt to understand them or their lives, their interests, their pleasures, and -their sorrows. * « • It is a little pitiful that so many devoted adherents to churches regard formalities as "goodness," and that deeds are not necessary if the outward symbols of adherence are sufficiently pronounced to attract the attention of one's fellow man. One might hold that the Carpenter's teachings may find ready expression in the life of a man who has never entered a church and has never paid a pew rent, but it may be believed that if the churches could sweep the conservative handicaps away and be churches just as much in the shop as in the ornate structure that is nearly always closed, in the street, in the field, and on the mountain—in the life of the people—there would be less occasion for clericals to blame the people for the faults of the clericals. The idea that abstention from formal worship is wickedness dies hard, and the other idea that repetition of formulae is goodness is equally difficult to kill. The "highways and

hedges" style of procedure might be more popular, a "good Samaritan" act equally acceptable as attendance at a choir practice, and the heroic deed of a blasphemous miner in the bowels of the earth of as sweet fragrance as the repetition of ritual by a pew-renter. An impression of warmth at other times than in church business meetings is not altogther undesirable ; but the essential fact to remember is that the founder of thte Faith was a poor workman, who in those aristocratic churches referred to above, would have been placed in a pew labelled "For the Poor."