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Show MEN DON'T GO TO CHURCH. That Is, the Protestant Church The True Church Still Retains Them. (From the New York Sun.) "The average American business man has outgrown the average preacher," says the Chicago Inter Ocean, in undertaking un-dertaking to explain why men are, not going to church in these days to the extent they did in former times. The specifications of the Chicago paper pa-per are that "in trying to formulate religion by the rules and in the terms of science, many preachers have cut loose the ship of faith upon a boundless bound-less sea of mental speculation;" that "many preachers appear to think that men can be led to do right without having any" definite principles by which to do right"; that the "business man" "sees many preachers and churches repudiating all appeals to fear and trying to maintain themselves by love alone." - It may be true, nay, it is true, that there are these deficiencies in modern preaching, but do they explain men's staying away, from church? Is it not true also that the very churches in which there is this sort of preaching are those most largely attended, that is, of the churches in which the single element of attraction is the preaching? Diminished church-attendance, where there" is such a diminution, is not fairly attributable to the preachers. If the people are earnest in their religious beliefs and crave spiritual food they are not critical of the preacher, so long as he is in earnest like themselves. When they set to carping at his sermons ser-mons it is a sign that. they are not hungry for the food. In times of religious re-ligious revival the humblest, the plainest plain-est preacher inspired by an ardent faith is, eloquent enough for them. If there is in their hearts the demand, the supply is sure to come. At the time of the great awakening in 1857 the preachers in New York were not abler men than their successors are now, and- not greater pulpit, orators, but the fire of religious belief in them kindled a responsive flame of religious emotion emo-tion in the hearts of the people, for the crowds who listened to their appeals were already burning with a desire for the word of salvation. As it is now, the churches which make their appeal to religious sentiment, senti-ment, to devout emotion, and hold up before men the idealism of religion are about as full as ever. It is only those pulpits which -depend on insufficient insuf-ficient intellectual ability simply to draw the people, or are not clever enough adepts in clap-trap, that have' been "outgrown" by the "average American business man." . When the clap-trap suits vulgar tastes, it is novf a greater drawing card than ever, as the example we have mentioned illus-. trates. The fault is absence of religious faith in the pulpit and in the pe6ple who otherwise would fill the pews. Wherever Wher-ever that faith is found the churches are full of people who have other thoughts and emotions than of criticism criti-cism of the sermon and carping at the preacher. The lire that warms them is in their own hearts. The magnet which attracts them to the .church is not the expected eloquence of the preacher, but the eloquent religious faith with which their own hearts are charged. Only when men really believe in the world to come and that all other profit is a snare and a delusion so long as they lose their souls in its pursuit will the churches be as thronged as are the marts of trade and the stock e'x-changes. |