WHY THE LABORING MAN DOES NOT ATTEND CHURCH.
By W. E. Cornell
THERE is a marked class distinction between the rich and the poor in the popular churches of to-day. The equality of the gospel, which the Master proclaimed should exist between his followers, is there only in theory. The working people of the middle classes are losing their interest in the church, and the church is fast losing its hold on these people. The natural result is just what we see about us on every hand,—a disposition on the part of the professed Christians to compel these people to do unwillingly what they will not do of their own free will. A case in point occurred in Milwaukee, Wis., lately, where the pastor of the Farwell Avenue Methodist Church invited Ex-Congressman Smith, as a leading representative of the laboring classes of that city, to state his opinion freely as to why the laboring men were not in sympathy with the church. The congregation was four times its wonted size. The meeting was opened by the pastor, Rev. Naylor, who read the sermon on the mount, and then introduced Mr. Smith, who said:— I have listened with pleasure to the reading of that wonderful sermon on the mount, and the old question has come to me, as it comes to the working people daily, and as it has come to me whenever I've read that—for I read it often, I assure you—Why has the church not lived up to the teachings of that sermon? It is strange, is it not, that, after preaching the Nazarene for 1,800 years, the church has to ask why the laboring men are not in sympathy with it. My friends, the laboring classes have not left the church, but the church has left the laboring classes. I've been in the church myself. You may not think it true, but I have taught a Sunday school class in this city, though for thirty-five years I have not attended church. Fifty years ago, when I first came here, we all attended church on an equal footing. After a few years, when some men grew wealthy in the churches, this equality disappeared. I felt myself gradually shoved to the wall and finally out of the church door. The laboring classes know this spirit of inequality exists, and they have little respect for the results of your churchly (I say churchly instead of Christian) teachings. What are the results? I'll tell you—here Mr. Smith held up his left hand and with his right he dramatically counted off the results on his fingers—they are a Rockefeller, a 36-foot gun, and the tramp. It is not in this country alone that these results of churchly teaching were seen. In Europe there are 10,000,000 men training for war, learning how skillfully to take the lives of their fellows. Is that following the teachings of the Nazarene? When Peter smote off an ear from the servant of the high priest, Christ bade him put up his sword. He did not teach war and bloodshed; but with every regiment of those armed nations there is a clergyman who prays that his side may be successful in murdering the enemy. It is plain that the church has gone far away from the teachings of its Master, and in so far as they have, they have got out of sympathy with the laboring man. And thus for nearly an hour Mr. Smith poured hot shot into the camp. At its close the pastor said that he could not agree with Mr. Smith in all he said, but must admit that he had pointed out some existing evils; and he hoped his church would meet the laboring man on the equality that was the ground of simple Christianity.