THE CONDITION OF CITY CHURCHES.
THE following is from the report of a sermon by W. A. Gardner, pastor of the West Side Christian Church, San Francisco, as reported in the daily Examiner, some months ago. The subject, we gather, is on how to reach the masses in our cities. Certainly, the picture drawn by Mr. Gardner does not argue converted cities or a converted world. He said among other things:— “Thousands of our modern churches are costly club houses, which serve no earthly or heavenly purpose save for three hours on one day of each week. “The spirit of the modern church is not Christ-like, and it has developed a class of Sunday Christians,” he continued. “There is no doubt that modern Christianity is suffering from dry rot. We have Sunday churches devoted to a sermon, earnest and polished, to singing, artistic and cultivated, and that is all there is to it. In San Francisco, at an expenditure of $118,700, our 15 leading churches have made 385 conversions annually. Our 4,161 operating saloons have an annual revenue of $14,500,000. There are, as a direct result of these saloons, 13,363 arrests for drunkenness. “Conceding that all crime is the indirect result of drink, we have 8,000 annual converts to the saloon, 385 to the church. My figures I quote from Chief Crowley’s report.”