WHAT OF THE CITIES? by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 28, 1888

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 14, No. 50.

WHAT OF THE CITIES?

By Editor

“WHAT of the Cities?” is the title of an article in the New York Observer of December 13, in which the needs of the cities, as set forth in a conference held recently in Chickering Hall, New York, is discussed at considerable length. Some of the facts brought out were the same as those presented at the Syracuse convention, referred to in these columns last week, under the title, “Iniquity Abounding,” but some are both new and startling, and relate not alone to New York, but also to other large cities in various parts of our country. “It appears,” says the Observer, “that while in the whole country one in five is a member of some evangelical church, in New York there is only one in thirteen; in Chicago, one in twenty-one; in Cincinnati, one in twenty-three; in San Francisco, one in thirty-seven.”

It was to consider these and other facts of a like nature, especially as relating to New York, that the conference was convened; and the paper previously quoted says: “It was undenominational, and met to consider the gospel needs of the city. It met none too soon. We have no more burning question to meet and solve than this.” “There are great masses of humanity in our great cities that are Christless. Could all the church bells in Christendom be rung at one time, these masses would be unmoved. The present means of sowing the gospel seed is utterly inadequate. Learned divines may thunder away at these non-church goers as sternly as they please. The church goers listen and approve, but the thunderbolts never reach their intended victims. They never come where the preachers are.” “They are just as likely to come into our churches as the heathen of the Congo, and no more. They must be reached in the same way. Somebody must take the gospel to them, and preach Jesus to them, or they will live and die ignorant and indifferent, indifferent because ignorant.”

Again the Observer says: “The saloon is rightly given as one of the antagonistic forces. New York has twenty saloons to one Protestant church, while San Francisco has sixty-five places for the sale of liquor, to one evangelical church. Multiply the sixty-five saloons of San Francisco by the number of hours per week they ply their business; then take the sum of hours per week in which the churches are in use, and the contrast is too painfully impressive.”

Such is the condition of so-called Christian cities; and it was plainly stated in the Syracuse Convention, before referred to, that “the proportion of non-church goers is as great in the country as in the city;” and yet we are asked by some to believe that the world is rapidly growing better, that the world will soon be conquered for Christ, and the millennium ushered in! But the facts do not warrant the belief that the world is improving in morals. On the contrary, the evidences thicken on every hand which show that we are even now in the last days, when the Scriptures assure us that iniquity shall abound. Surely iniquity does abound, and on every hand the hearts of thoughtful men are “failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming upon the earth.”