THE MINISTRY AS SEEN BY A MINISTER.
THE following searching sentences are extracts from a sermon recently delivered before a fashionable congregation in Paris, Ill., by Rev. H. M. Brooks. Altho this minister classes himself among those whose laxity and disloyalty to principle he denounces, it seems that there is occasionally one who is not afraid to raise a warning voice. These extracts are not given here in order to "find fault" with a class, but that the reader may see the conditions as they are, and accept them as the warning they are intended to be: As a class, we ministers are the biggest cowards on earth. My brethren blame me for telling tales out of school, but I can not help it. We are cringing, cowering, timid slaves who are compelled to surrender our manhood, and be directed by men and women who belong to the church because it is fashionable, and would belong to an infidel club just as willingly, if it were equally fashionable. We are paid so much a year, not for telling the truth, but for telling what the people want to hear. It takes us four or five days of each week hard study to learn, not how to present the truth, but how to dodge it. We fully understand that, if we should happen to tell the truth, it is our business to apologize for having done so. We fully understand that no man can preach for a rich, fashionable congregation, and tell the whole truth, and hold his job. It is therefore the chief end of the preacher's life to know how to please his congregation, and hold his job. We know that greed has commercialized business men, mammonized the church, and hypnotized the clergy, but we dare not tell it. We know that we are run by rich men, many of whom have acquired their wealth by the most questionable methods, and fashionable fools who have neither religious conception nor conviction, but we dare not open our heads. We can preach about the latest novel, or the Sunday baseball game, but we dare not say too much on "righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come." We are permitted to preach that men and women must repent to an extent, and be converted to a degree, or they will be damned in a measure; but we must not say much about justice, mercy, and faith. In the presence of the church we are as truckling as ever a scullion was in the presence of a king. A preacher with a good place and a good salary was never known to have an original idea, or to enter a protest against the oppressor of the weak. We know that almost all crimes in the whole catalog are committed by church members, but we dare not speak with authority. We all know that the church is not looked upon as a place of worship, but a place of entertainment. Never in the history of the world was there a time when it meant so little to belong to church as it does now. The church is dying of unbelief. It is on the highway to infidelity, and the road seems greased for the occasion. Most church members would rather think that death ends all than to think of meeting a just God, and giving an account of the way they are living. It is very rapidly becoming materialistic. It knows very little, cares less, what Christ taught on anything. Indeed, the Bible is looked upon to-day as being out of date—an impertinence—and people are called "old fogy," who believe it. It believes, or admits for the sake of argument, that that part of the Bible is true that requires no sacrifice, but it has no use for that part of it that requires unselfish service for the good of all. Anything it can do to make a show, it will do at any cost, but doing right in the love of right is a thing that never enters its mind. Not long ago I read of a preacher in New York who was worth twenty-five million of dollars. Think of such a man being a disciple of Him who had not where to lay His head! I once saw a woman stand in a missionary meeting with five thousand dollars' worth of jewelry on, and heard her make a plea for the poor heathen. Christ was born of a poor woman. He was brought up by a carpenter; and if a rich, fashionable church member could see Jesus to-day going along the streets with His tools, they would turn up their noses at Him, and if He should come into any of our cities to-day, and say again, "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head," He would be arrested for vagrancy, and thrown into prison. He associated but little, during His personal ministry, with the rich, and, had He called His disciples from among the rich, He would not have been crucified. These are plain truths plainly told. Praise God, not every preacher is serving the devil in the "livery of heaven." There are men who are living up to the light they have, and are giving the message of God as far as they know it; and such men are turning souls into the path of salvation. But it is a sad fact that the statements quoted above do not, in general, overdraw the present situation. The "church" is drifting into infidelity; the "church" is fawning upon the world; as far as giving the warnings of God to the world is concerned, the Bible statement of the case corroborates the statement of the speaker above quoted—the fashionable, time-serving pastors are "dumb dogs" (Isa. 56:10); instead of feeding the flock, they are feeding upon the flock; instead of encouraging faith, they are propagating doubt by both life and teaching. This condition of "the church" should be a warning to every true child of God that the time of Israel's deliverance is near at hand.