PROBLEMS OF CHURCH WORK.

Waiapu Church Times, Volume I, Issue 8, 1 February 1908, Page 1

PROBLEMS OF CHURCH WORK.

" The Condition of England Question," once so volcanically insisted on by . Carlyle, has for ten years past been the most prominent and urgent of subjects m literature, m philanthropy, and m religion. And yet things do not greatly improve. The nation seems to yield more, and more to evils. What is the root cause of the trouble ? Is it because " the world hath lost its youth and the times begin to wax old," as the Apocryphal writer puts it ? (2 Esdras xiv., 10). And are we to believe that religion can do no more great works for the humiliating reason that the days of Christian chivalry are over ? God forbid. The first would be to forget that God is ever making all things new, and that " the best is yet to be." The latter would be odious treason to all that faith m God has hitherto done, and still stands pledged to do. The main cause of most of the ills from which England is suffering-to-day is the permitted reign of the Material. Our scientific men have assisted to enthrone the new power, for, as m the case of Darwin (vide his Autobiography), their exclusive pursuit of the tangible and the ponderable and the measurable 'dries up within them the once running spring of interest m the unseen and the ideal. Industrialism, too, has enlarged the kingdom of the Material. The workers, whose toil -fifty years ago brought them daily into contact with the freshest influences of Nature, are now represented by millions of their descendants, whose tasks year m and year out are performed amid clanking machinery, or m surroundings which deaden the soul. We find the same slavery to the Material m what are called the upper classes. Life to them has become m a vast number of cases a ceaseless round of feverish excitement, miscalled pleasure, which is not loved, and yet is clung to as indispensable.

If all this be so ; if materialism m its thousand forms is m possession of English life ; if men and women are under the ceaseless pressure of_ forces which seek to make them yield to the tangible and the visible, and the aural, and the intellectual, and the perishable as the sufficient ends of existence ;if the invisible and the eternal are thus crowded out of human life, it is not difficult to decide what method the Christian Church is to use. She must assert the invisible. Her divine weapon is the emphasising of the spiritual. Men and women must be made to learn the primal and the final lesson that they have souls. Once again the old words need to be sounded out full and clear, strong and persistent : "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." Looking back on the ages through which the Church has come, we find it written large that the ever vi> torious way to meet the Material, and to subdue it, has been to present the Spiritual. It was so at Pentecost. It was so on the breakup of the Roman Empire. It was so at the Reformation. It was s_> m the Evangelical Revival m the Eighteenth Century. It was so m 1833, when Newman met. a materialising Liberalism by rallying Churchmen to the old standard offaith m the Eternal and of self-sac-rifice for the unseen. It is still so to-day. " God is a Spirit." Man on his higher side is also a spirit.,. To bring the two together m mutually honoring relations is the officQ of all right religion. It is .because so much of our modern religion fail? just here that the materialism of the present day triumphs. Again it has always been a cause of wonder to us that the Church of England does not make more of her. country and poorer town, parish : work than she does. She has good reason to do so. It is m these that her hardest task waits to be done. It is m these that her ability to minister to the woes of humanity can be most seen and

judged. It is m these that some of her noblest .agents live and serve.. These are big things. They ought to rouse English Churchmen to enthusiasm. They ought to make the Church stronger m the country and m the poor and crowded parishes than m any other kind of parishes. But they do not. The Church wears out her Bishops, and kills some of her best clergy, by the cares which the needs of those parishes impose on them, and still she is not greatly disturbed. She feels no shame She makes no extra effort. What can be done to put this wrong thing right ? The Bishops ought surely to speak out more boldly to the well-to-do churches than they have yet done, telling both clergy and people m these churches how tremendous is the responsibility which neighboring poorer parishes mean for them. If the Bishops do not speak out, the clergy will not. And if the latter remain content with their present timid utterances on the subject, things will become worse. In regard to Home Mission Societies it is 1 said that it is becoming- the custom of certain suburban and, city churches to refuse sermons, but to o-ivc offertories for the Society's work. What does this mean ? It means that these churches decline to listen to the details of the Church's work m the country and poorer town parishes. Ts it possible that such details are regarded as too disagreeable or even-vul-gar ? At any rate the Church will find her most fruitful missionary field there, if she will but work these parishes with adequate provision and by spiritual means. Let it not be entertained that human life m these places is abnormally inferior to the common run of human life- It is not so, all things considered, it is above the average human life m the oualities of patience, kindness of neighbour to neighbour, willingness to work, affection, and responsiveness 'to good. We say this from no short or scant experience of the subject. Let it not be entertained that the Church has hitherto met with but little success m what are called working-class parishes. The truth is she has won some of her greatest triumphs m such parishes. It is m these that she gets her largest men's services. It is m these that she sees God's greatest moral miracles worked. It is m these that she finds the most beautiful of all the heroism of faith and love which His grace produces m the suffering and the poor. Why, then, does not the Chiirch turn her attention more to such parishes ? Why is her money held back ? Why are her sons and daughters not urged forward to go and serve among those

people The answer is once again— materialism. Too many Churchpeople have surrendered to thethings of time and sense. The worldly has passed into our blood.. Selfishness has become one of our crying sins. What, then, is the remedy? Our suggestion is— Revival. A word, it is true, which has been much misused and still more abused, but a word which exactly expresses what we feel to be the most .urgent need of the hour. Revival speaks of new, or rather, renewed life. The Living Christ is the life of the Church. The Holy Ghost is the Lord and Giver of Life. What, then, we most need is more of Christ m our services, m our sermons, m ourselves ; more of Christ as the centre of our worship, the substance of our sermons, the life of our lives. We want more of the Holy Ghost m our churches, m our homes, m our hearts ; more of the Divine Spirit m our churches, to purify the worship of God ; m our homes, to dignify the duties of life ; m our hearts, to sanctify the motives of work.