ARE THE CHURCH PEOPLE ALIVE, OR DEAD?
By Rev. T. M. Thorpe
THE work of evangelizing the world, the church of God always presents to her children at the hallowed season of advent. A Saviour coming to us makes us anxious to seek out our brother Simon, and bring him also. How touching the words of Jesus: “Therefore saith he unto them, the harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few; pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth laborers into his harvest. Go your ways; behold I send you forth as lambs among wolves. Carry neither purse, nor scrip, nor shoes.” “He that receiveth you, receiveth me.” The field is the world! Taking even the corruptions of Rome, and the heresies of Unitarian and other like sectarian denominations as deserving the name of Christian, there are, notwithstanding, at this late day, after nineteen centuries, four Pagan and Mahometan infidels to one single nominal follower of Jesus of Nazareth. But when we reflect how many there are who only in the most general way “profess and call themselves Christians,” not being in any practical sense united to any branch of the church, well may we ask, “Are there few that be saved?” And when we reflect how many of those who are apparently joined to the Lord have rebelled against him, or, having itching ears, have heaped to themselves teachers in opposition to the true Catholic and Apostolic Church and ministry of sixteen hundred years, well may we tremble and add, “Many are called, but few are chosen.” Or, those other, “When the Son of Man cometh shall he find faith?” Luxury need never plead with her votaries. Every heart and every purse are open when the Devil presents his enticements. Civilized man drinks every year 30,000,000 bottles of genuine, and 15,000,000 of spurious, champagne; or nearly $200,000,000 worth. Yet the total expenses of Christian propagation may be roughly estimated at not more than that sum, if half as much. Tobacco is nauseous to every unsophisticated sense of man, a medicine as strychnine is a medicine; a concentrated drop of whose essential principle, if placed on the tongue of a dog, will cause him to die in convulsions; but, on the highest medical authority, the origin of nine out of every ten cases of real heart disease, original or inherited. It destroys the power of mastication by draining the salivary glands, and by its exciting properties is the gentleman-usher of intoxicating drink. So long ago as 1850, there were raised in the United States, 199,000,000 pounds, or what would now be equivalent to about $200,000,000 worth, and it is safe to say that the present consumption is nearly $300,000,000 worth. Suppose an ordinary case: A business man uses four, or sometimes many more, cigars a day, worth fifteen cents each, or fifteen or twenty dollars a pound; this, of itself, leaving out pipes, chewing-tobacco, lost time and lost opportunities, at the very lowest estimate is $200 a year. Now there is scarcely a parish that does not contain half a dozen such men, who might, if they would, give a handsome support to their overworked, uncomplaining clergymen. Do such facts as these indicate that so-called Christian men yet realize that “the field is the world,” and that they are sent in as laborers, to occupy till the Lord come? Even the little dove for Christianity is heavily loaded by Satan. All the money together that they contribute for foreign missionary effort, would barely commission one frigate for a month’s service. But pride and ambition use two or three hundred. It is, therefore, not to be wondered at, when we read that there recently sailed out of Boston a ship for Africa, whose principal manifest consisted of so many missionaries, and so many barrels of New England rum. The eagle recognized its own plume in the arrow that drank up its blood. Even so, Christianity is wounded by lukewarmness and schism in the house of its friends. Could this people be suddenly transplanted into the interior of Guinea, where men go naked and die as the beasts die; where life and property are not safe from a tyrant’s caprice for an instant; where virtue is unknown, and gratitude a word unrepresented in the language, they might honor their priests, and, as business men merely, liberally contribute to that conservative faith to which they are indebted for all that makes home dear. Zaccheus gave a half of his goods to feed the poor. So the Lord blessed him, and he was “chief among the Pharisees,” and a “rich” man. Even so now God takes away the one talent of the slothful and unfaithful servant, and gives it to him that hath two. You are “poor”? So you always will be so long as you neglect the “place of God’s honor.” Nine-tenths of the taxes of this country for the prevention and cure of crime, are paid by true Catholics and Protestants; nine-tenths of the expenses for the same are incurred upon Roman Catholics. So it will ever be. The world will sooner or later awake to the fact that even in a temporal point of view it is better to sustain our churches willingly, than to be forced to build State prisons. We squander $600,000,000 per annum on strong drink, receiving $48,000,000 “revenue.” But could you see on the other side of some great balance-sheet the crime, ruin, desolation, lunacy and poverty therefrom flowing, the $48,000,000 had better have been raised in direct taxes for God’s church ten, yea, forty times over. Truly saith the apostle, “The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.” Out of India’s 160,000,000 people, 213,182 are converts. And this is but a specimen of the fearful lack of Christian effort everywhere. Says St. Augustine: “The Old Testament Scriptures gave the promise of salvation; the New Testament Scriptures give us a Saviour.” And yet are we grateful? Let us see. The Jews, on the authority of Dr. Abel Stevens, gave at least one-third of all their property for benevolent purposes. And yet there never was a nation with fewer poor citizens. The Mormons, on joining their society, give up one-tenth of their actual property, and ten per cent. of their income ever after. We contribute $18 per year for each communicant. Allowing a due proportion to simple attendants, the rich might give ten times as much, or $180, and not feel the deprivation. Are we dead or are we alive? Do we read the Bible with simple faith, or do we merely glide over its surface? Does it penetrate our every-day life, or is it as “the face of strange children?” Let our hearts and lives answer. Suppose a congregation of even one hundred and fifty should average, as it easily might, fifty cents on Sunday in the plate collections. That would be $75 a week—enough to well support any parish, for a while, at all events. We shall have free churches and more of them when God sends us faith in him. As it is, our benevolence is, first, not of a conscientious, religious character; nor, second, “every first day of the week,” as the apostle has enjoined. “The field is the world.” With one fact, dear brethren, depart in peace. The expenses of our late war were about $5,200,000,000—that is, twice the present national debt, for every State, county, and family has a debt of its own. This would have built 520,000 plain, substantial wooden churches; costing $10,000 and seating 1,000 each, or 520,000,000 people—just one-half of the population of the globe, which would doubtless make the other half Christians also. “Pray ye, therefore, the Lord of the harvest that he would send forth laborers into the harvest,” for “the field is the world.”—Sermon by Rev. T. M. Thorpe, at West Hoboken, N. J.