The Social Idea in the Church.
By Presbyterian Review
It has come to be asked often whether a church is "social;" and the meaning is that to merit this character it must be given to encouraging merry-making of one sort or another. These entertainments run through all grades, from the so-called "sociable"—which is generally anything but really social—to the dancing party or the full-fledged dramatic representation. Then there comes the fair for raising money, a device too often perilously near substituting gain for godliness, a combination of sham business and sham charity, which would be ridiculous if it were not sad. The tendency of all this is to drive out the spirit of devotion. The desire for merry-making and the religious spirit cannot be successful partners in business. We do not mean to say that social life is not desirable, nor that social entertainments should not be sought. We do not deny that, within wise limits, the church may make a legitimate use of social forces. The church does not build its success upon a social foundation, but upon its religious worship and religious work. This is very different from expecting the church, as such, to furnish either distinctively social life or social amusements. It is never found that amusements, or other forms of social life in a church, are much sought during a revival season. While this by no means stamps legitimate social pleasures as evil, it is clear evidence that the proper work of the church, and the work that should absorb its energies, is that which in one way or another tends to the promotion of religion. There are many ways of promoting the influences and the power of the church in a community, which are not yet by any means worked for what they are worth. They might far better call out the energies of church people than the various entertainments which so often ask for so much labor to so little profit. Another evil tendency here is to put into undue and unwise prominence the young when they ought to be learners, and the more light-minded and frivolous when they ought to be kept under the control and care of the wise and earnest. Is it not about time we ceased running our churches distinctively in the interests of "the young people"? Let us not be misunderstood here. There is a plain difference between being interested in the young people, profoundly and absorbingly interested, and running the church simply with a view of keeping them engaged. The young are indeed the hope of the church; but it is only as they are grounded in the faith and set their faces toward active life with true principles as their motive and guide. The catering to their uninformed and youthful ideas does not tend to ground and settle them in principles which will stand the shock of life. They do not know as much as they will later. Their parents and elder friends have more wisdom than they, and ought to have more voice in the control of things. To provide for their best possible development is a very different thing from submitting to the dictation of their immature judgments. The church will hold them best by doing for them that which is wise, and not necessarily that for which they may clamor. And this course will help to make men and women of them rather than overgrown children. And is it not time that we recognize the fact that if the giddy and worldly are not attracted by the real graces and solid worth of religion, they are not likely to be captured by church entertainments? The offering of social entertainments as a bribe, "to make religion attractive," is too much like the gift of a chromo in a tea shop to every purchaser of a dollar's worth of goods. In the church and all that concerns it, let the full, strong throb of vital religion be felt, and then we shall not need to depend on entertainments for a meretricious display of prosperity and of false ideas of success.—Presbyterian Review.