THE CHURCH'S GREAT FOE.
By Dr. A. T. Pierson
THE greatest foe the church has to fight is spelled with five letters: C-a-s-t-e. In India the system of caste is so rigid that, no matter what a man's qualifications are, he cannot rise above the circle in which he is born. In England the caste is not so strongly marked. Anyone there may rise to be a member of Parliament even. He may be favored to lift himself from the trough of the sea to glitter for a moment on the crest of the waves. The church has not got the caste of India, but she is getting to have the more contemptible aristocracy of mere money. The rich and poor, indeed, meet together, but it does not seem as if the Lord were the Maker of them all. People belong together in the same congregation, but one does not know the other, and indeed does not care to know. I remember a woman who came into a mission one evening with four little children, and while there became converted. Then she went home to her drunken husband. What church could that poor woman go to? If a poor man looks into some of our rich churches, with a magnificent ten-thousand-dollar minister in the pulpit, and a five-thousand-dollar choir in the gallery, it is enough. He knows it is no place for him. Is the pride of the poor wholly ignoble? Is it strange that the manhood of man protests against such caste in the churches? There are splendid Pullman palace cars, but the common people are not expected to ride to Heaven in them. The Earl of Shaftesbury was once offered an official position in the church of which he was a member, but he refused to accept it, lest it should hurt his influence with the workingmen. It is said of that noble Christian that he once met a convict who had been a great trouble to his friends, even after his term of imprisonment had expired; but after that meeting there was a great change in the man. He supported his family, and soon came to be admired by all his friends. When asked the cause of this change he said, "The Earl of Shaftesbury is responsible for that." "Why, what did he say to you," someone asked. "Ah!" he answered, "he laid his hand upon my arm and said, 'Jack, we shall make a man of you yet!' It was not so much what he said as the touch of his hand that helped me." My friends, we cannot go out and work for the poor and destitute unless we love them. The caste spirit makes love for souls impossible. Love is a great leveler.—Dr. A. T. Pierson.