THE GOSPEL NOT PREACHED TO THE POOR.
The following article from the Atlantic Monthly needs no comment, save a few of the New-Testament descriptions of the state of professed Christians in the last days. See 2 Tim. iii, 1-5; iv, 3, 4; Rev. xiv, 8, &c. Men will admit, that all the characteristics which would pertain to a fallen Christianity, are visible in the popular churches of these days, and will even comment with great severity and sarcasm upon the fact, and yet, with a strange inconsistency, refuse to admit that they have fallen. “Is there any thing in America more peculiar to America, or more curious in itself, than one of our ‘fashionable’ Protestant churches—such as we see in New York, on the Fifth Avenue and in the adjacent streets? The lion and the lamb in the Millennium will not lie down together more lovingly than the Church and the World have blended in these singular establishments. We are far from objecting to the coalition, but note it only as something curious, new, and interesting. “We enter an edifice, upon the interior of which the upholsterer and the cabinet-maker have exhausted the resources of their trades. The word ‘subdued’ describes the effect at which those artists have aimed. The woods employed are costly and rich, but usually of a sombre hue, and, though elaborately carved, are frequently unpolished. The light which comes through the stained windows, or through the small diamond panes, is of that description which Mr. Verplanck, in an unfortunate moment, styled ‘dim religious.’ Every part of the floor is thickly carpeted. The pews differ little from sofas, except in being more comfortable, and the cushions for the knees are as soft as hair and cloth can make them. It is a fashion at present, to put the organ out of sight, and to have a clock so unobtrusive as not to be observed. Galleries are now viewed with an unfriendly eye by the projectors of churches, and they are going out of use. Everything in the way of conspicuous lighting apparatus, such as the gorgeous and dazzling chandeliers of fifteen years ago, and the translucent globes of later date, is discarded, and an attempt is sometimes made to hide the vulgar fact that the church is ever open in the evening. In a word, the design of the fashionable church-builder of the present moment is to produce a richly furnished, quietly adorned, dimly illuminated, ecclesiastical parlor, in which a few hundred ladies and gentlemen, attired in kindred taste, may sit perfectly at their ease, and see no object not in harmony with the scene around them. “To say that the object of these costly and elegant arrangements is to repel poor people would be a calumny. On the contrary, persons who show by their dress and air that they exercise the less remunerative vocations are as politely shown to seats as those who roll up to the door in carriages, and the presence of such persons is desired, and, in many instances, systematically sought. Nevertheless, the poor are repelled. They know they cannot pay their proportion of the expense of maintaining such establishments, and they do not wish to enjoy what others pay for. Everything in and around the church seems to proclaim it a kind of ecclesiastical club, designed for the accommodation of persons of ten thousand dollars a year, and upward. Or it is as though the carriages on the Road to Heaven were divided into first-class, second-class, and third-class, and a man either takes the one that accords with his means, or denies himself the advantage of traveling that road, or prefers to trudge along on foot, an independent wayfarer. “It is Sunday morning, and the doors of this beautiful drawing-room are thrown open. Ladies dressed19with subdued magnificence glide in, along with some who have not been able to leave at home the showier articles of their wardrobe. Black silk, black velvet, black lace, relieved by intimations of brighter colors, and by gleams from half-hidden jewellery, are the materials most employed. Gentlemen in uniform of black cloth and white linen announce their coming by the creaking of their boots, quenched in the padded carpeting. It cannot be said of those churches, as Mr. Carlyle remarked of a certain London one, that a pistol could be fired into a window across the church without much danger of hitting a Christian. The attendance is not generally very large; but as the audience is evenly distributed over the whole surface, it looks larger than it is. In a commercial city everything is apt to be measured by the commercial standard, and accordingly a church numerically weak, but financially strong, ranks in the town not according to its number of souls, but its number of dollars. We heard a fine young fellow, last summer, full of zeal for everything high and good, conclude a glowing account of a sermon by saying that it was the direct means of adding to the church a capital of one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars. “He meant nothing low or mercenary; he honestly exulted in the fact that the power and influence attached to the possession of one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars were thenceforward to be exerted on behalf of objects which he esteemed the highest. If therefore the church before our view cannot boast of a numerous attendance, it more than consoles itself by the reflection, that there are a dozen names of talismanic power in Wall street on its list of members. “But suppose the doctor should leave you?” objected a friend of ours to a trustee, who had been urging him to buy a pew in a fashionable church. “Well, my dear sir,” was the business-like reply; “suppose he should. We should immediately engage the very first talent which money can command.” “We can hardly help taking this simple view of things in rich commercial cities. Our worthy trustee merely put the thing on the correct basis. He frankly said what every Church does, ought to do, and must do. He stated a universal fact in the plain and sensible language to which he was accustomed. In the same way these business-like Christians have borrowed the same language of the world, and speak of men who are ‘good’ for a million. “The congregation is assembled. The low mumble of the organ ceases. A female voice rises melodiously above the rustle of dry-goods and the whisper of those who wear them. So sweet and powerful is it, that a stranger might almost suppose it borrowed from the choir of heaven; but the inhabitants of the town recognize it as one they have often heard at concerts or at the opera; and they listen critically, as to a professional performance, which it is. It is well that highly artificial singing prevents the hearer from catching the words of the song; for it would have rather an odd effect to hear rendered, in the modern Italian style, such plain, straightforward words as these:
‘Can sinners hope for heaven
Who love this world so well?
Or dream of future happiness
While on the road to hell?’” The performance, however, is so exquisite that we do not think of these things, but listen in rapture to the voice alone. When the lady has finished her stanza, a noble baritone, also recognized as a professional, takes up the strain, and performs a stanza, also, at the conclusion of which, four voices, in enchanting accord, breathe out a third. It is evident that the ‘first talent that money can command’ has been ‘engaged’ for the entertainment of the congregation; and we are not surprised when the information is proudly communicated that the music costs a hundred and twenty dollars a Sunday. “What is very surprising and well worthy of consideration is that this beautiful music ‘does not draw.’ In our rovings about among the noted churches of New York—of the kind which ‘engage the first talent that money can command’—we could never see that the audience was much increased by expensive professional music. On the contrary, we can lay it down as a general rule, that the costlier the music, the smaller is the average attendance. The afternoon service at Trinity Church, for example, is little more than a delightful gratuitous concert of boys, and man, and organ; and the spectacle of the altar brilliantly lighted by candles is novel and highly picturesque. The sermon also is the fashionable length—twenty minutes; and yet the usual afternoon congregation is about two hundred persons. Those celestial strains of music—well, they enchant the ear, if the ear happens to be within hearing of them; but somehow they do not furnish a continuous attraction. “When this fine prelude is ended, the minister’s part begins; and, unless he is a man of extraordinary bearing and talents, every one present is conscious of a kind of lapse in the tone of the occasion. Genius composed the music; the ‘first talent’ executed it; the performance has thrilled the soul, and exalted expectation; but the voice now heard may be ordinary, and the words uttered may be homely, or even common. No one unaccustomed to the place can help feeling a certain incongruity between the language heard and the scene witnessed. Every thing we see is modern; the words we hear are ancient. The preacher speaks of ‘humble believers,’ and we look around and ask, where are they? Are these costly and elegant persons humble believers? Far be it from us to intimate that they are not; we are speaking only of their appearance, and its effect upon a casual beholder. The clergyman reads,
‘Come, let us join in sweet accord,’
and straightway four hired performers execute a piece of difficult music, to an audience sitting passive. He discourses upon the ‘pleasures of the world’ as being at war with the interests of the soul; and, while a severe sentence to this effect is coming from his lips, down the aisle marches the sexton, showing some stranger to a seat, who is a professional master of the revels. He expresses, perchance, a fervent desire that the heathen may be converted to Christianity, and we catch ourselves saying, ‘Does he mean this sort of things?’ When we pronounce the word Christianity it calls up recollections and associations that do not exactly harmonize with the scene around us. We think rather of the fishermen of Palestine, on the lonely sea-shore; of the haunted fugitives of Italy and Scotland, we think of it as something lowly, and suited to the lowly—a refuge for the forsaken and the defeated, not the luxury of the rich and the ornament of the strong. It may be an infirmity of our mind; but we experience a certain difficulty in realizing that the sumptuous and costly apparatus around us has anything in common with what we have been accustomed to think of as Christianity. “Sometimes, the incongruity reaches the point of the ludicrous. We recently heard a very able and well-intentioned preacher, near the Fifth Avenue, ask the ladies before him whether they were in the habit of speaking to their female attendants about their soul’s salvation—particularly those who dressed their hair. He especially mentioned the hair-dressers; because, as he truly remarked, ladies are accustomed to converse with those artists, during the operation of hair-dressing, on a variety of topics; and the opportunity was excellent to say a word on the most important. This incident perfectly illustrates what we mean by the seeming incongruity between the ancient cast of doctrine and the modern people to whom it is preached. We have heard sermons in fashionable churches in New York, laboriously prepared and earnestly read, which had nothing in them of the modern spirit, contained not the most distant allusion to modern modes of living and sinning, had no suitableness whatever to the people or the time, and from which everything that could rouse or interest a human soul living on Manhattan Island, in the year 1867, seemed to have been purposely pruned away. And perhaps, if a clergyman really has no message to deliver, his best course is to utter a jargon of nothings.”