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Show A Spicy Picture of Church-Going. The Rev. Dr. Mark Trafton, a well-known well-known Boston Methodist clergyman of pronounced views, appeared at the Methodist Meth-odist ministers' meeting and made a plea for non-church-goers. He took the ground that the seeming falling off in attendance in Protestant churches in Boston was due largely to the increase of . the Catholic population and the increase also of Hebrews. He-brews. The rapid growth of suburban cities the bedrooms for Boston also took away thousands of church-goers from the city churches. High pew-rents were another bar to large congregations the speaker said, and he cited Tremont Temple and the People's church (both free) to prove his assertion. " Let me start out, now, to go to church to worship God, ' he went on. "At home we have had our private devotions. We come to the church door I'm saying what took place, exactly and we see plenty of vacant seats. We ask one of the youri" snipper-snappers, with a rosette in his botton-hole, for a seat. He says, 'You wait awhile, and I'll see.' By and by when the hell stnna i;r k i I - r waxing, niC man says : I guess you can find a seat in the gallery.' In the gallery vou see four young persons talking and laughing. Suddenly the organ starts, and then as suddenly the four grow solemn, jump up and begin to squall. You can't understand a word they say. Thev sing a hymn you never heard beforehand never want to hear again. You can't sing with them. Call that singing God's praise' It s not only folly, but its blasphemy You ve no business to introduce such trash as that and call it devotion. Well it was at last over and then the man read the Bible. Here the speaker read in imitation imita-tion in a monotonous, low and "sin-son'" way a passage from the Scriptures! Now 1 said to myself: 'What a fool you are to think that reading the Bible in that way has anv other effpnf. then tn I I disgust. There is a way to read the benpture by which you can fix the attention atten-tion of the people.' m "hen our hymns," continued Dr. Trafton. "Reread them so carelessly that the people don't get the sense of the words. Then the prayer-in the old times the minister used to pray, to supplicate, sup-plicate, to implore, just as if he expected something would come, and something did come Now, this brother who praved delivered a homily, an address to the people, a strained effort. It wasn't pray- ! "ig. I confess it didn't touch me at all I kept saying to myself; 'O, nonsense! fiddlesticks.' I say this ought not to be'. ! He ought not to go away disgusted, as I do. I won't say that; I ought not to. ! inere is too much caste in our churches i What we want is the real old fashioned i sociability; that will reach the people." -V I. Tribune. |