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2 THE PRESBYTERIA
THE CHURCH'S MISSION.
A recent address to the graduates of the Hartford
Theological Seminary, by President Woodrow Wilson,
nf 1 ^4-l- ? 1 - ? ? - * - 1
x.. * . .uvvivii, uuc ui me ijl'sl estimates anci
statements of the church's true mission that we have
ever encountered from a secular source. President
Wilson seems to have grasped the truth more fully
than most of the preachers themselves, and he has
expressed it with a precision and strength remarkable
for a layman dealing with religious principles and
doctrine. He thinks that the Christian Church in our
aire is temntpd ir? tliinlr /-?f ? -o--i ?
0 - ? j nuvii ao v-iitv?ii^ Cl Jilllltlllthropic
institution; at best, an institution for supplying
the spiritual impulse necessary for carrying on the
great enterprises which relieve the distress of the body
and mind which disturbs the world. He declares
that the business of the church is not to pity men.
"The business of the church is not to rescue them
from their suffering, by the mere means of material
relief, or even by means of spiritual reassurance. The
church can not afford to pity men, because it knows
that men, if they would take it, have the richest and
completest inheritance that it is possible to conceive,
and that, rather than being deserving of pity, they arc
to be challenged to assert in themselves those things
w - ? o ~
which will make them independent of pity. No man
who has recovered the integrity of his soul is any
longer the object of pity, and it is to enable him to
recover that lost integrity that the Christian Church
is organized. To my thinking, the Christian Church
stands at the center, not only of philanthropy, but
at the center of education, at the center of science, at
the center of philosophy, at the center of politics; in
short, at the center of sentient and thinking life. And
the business of the Christian Church, of the Christian
minister, is'to show fhp r<?ia
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the great world-processes, whether they be physical or
spiritual. It is nothing less than to show the plan
of life and men's relation to the plan of life. What
the minister has to do is to re-establish the spiritual
kingdom among us, by proclaiming in season and out
of season that there is no explanation for anything that
is not first or last a spiritual explanation, and that man
can not live by bread alone, can not live by scientific
thought alone : that he i? nnlu c^rvlnn: +
he knows that he is starving, and that digestion of this
dry stuff that he takes into his mouth is not possible
unless it be conveyed by the living water of the
spirit."
This conception of the truly spiritual end and mission
of the church seems to be growing amongst
thoughtful laymen and ministers alike. In a recent
symposium, in a popular magazine, on the problem of
the present condition of the church and on the alleged
failure on its part to meet the requirements of men,
several of the leading men of different faiths voiced
this nnc rarjl i n o 1 nr!n(?ir.1n ??'1 .? ?I ~ ' ?1 ?
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for a greater emphasis of it on the part of the ministry.
The world may glorify the practical, but when
it pauses to think it sees the power of the spiritual and
demands it. That church and that ministry will have
greatest sway over the hearts and lives of men which *
go deepest down into the springs of those lives.
Reformation can never do what regeneration offers.
N OF THE SOUTH. October 13, 1909.
MAGAZINE REFORMS.
It is a spectacular feature of the times, that a number
of the monthly magazines, pictorial and attractive
in many ways, have taken in hand to set the country
right on a variety of important subjects. Not only
Standard Oil and Trusts have been raked over the
coals, but such serious subjects as morality and religion
in the universities, and the condition and work of
the Churches have been discussed with a free hand
vrnivia vviupcitiii aim mcunipeieni. 3ome, it
not all of these papers, have been so extravagant and
sensational as to raise the suspicion that they were
intended, not for the high purposes of morality and
the protection of the people, but to advertise and sell
the magazines. They may all be read with discrimination
and a suspended judgment.
In the September number of one of these magazines,
: ^ ? * -
w.ic *ji 11iv investigators ana regulators ot tilings, a
well known writer for periodicals, has an article on the
"Faith of the Unchurched"; that is, what has come to
he 'the religion of the body of people outside of the
churches, a religion of humanity and temporal welfare,
which is not religion at all. Limiting his vision to
the city of New York, tiic writer affirms the failure
of the churches to meet the wants of the people, and
aucgcs a uecrcasc in attcnnance upon church services,
and a decrease in the money given by church people
for church and religious purposes. Those among
the rich who are professedly Christians, arc 110 longer
giving largely, lie says, to the great religious causes
which the churches promote, but to other causes?
education, libraries, hospitals, relief of the poor, care
of the dependent, medical research, and such like
things which have to do with the present condition
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New York is. the metropolis of a great and rich
country, the center of wealth and of money-getting
and power, of worldly fashion and pleasure. From
all parts of the country it becomes the resort, and
then often the home of the worldly and ambitious, the
mammon-worshipping and the pleasure-loving. Swarms
of men gather in the city who have no care for the
churches and their religion, to whom religious services
are irksome and profitless. Those of a religious surrounding
and profession in other places are there
drawn into the great current of worldlincss and pleasure
and immorality. Failing to form fixed church
relations, manv vield to tho atmn<snhprp atu) inflnonpp
around them and attend no church whatever.
Yet there is a great deal of religion in the great
city, and a large body of people, devout, godly, zealous,
charitable people who work and give and pray for
the extension of the Kingdom of God among men.
Great sums of money are given for religious work in
the city and for missions at home and abroad. I11
very large proportion the revenues for the Christian
service of the world, educational and missionary, of the
great churches of this countrv. come from ihe rlmrrhe*
of New Yorlc City.
It must be said that in the great cities, the influences
against the religious life are very powerful.
There is everything to divert attention, a thousand
things are appealing for interest and time, and it is
difficult to win attention for the Word of God, even
among those who profess the Christian Faith. Mor^
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