Objections to Free Churches Answered

“The rich and poor meet together: the Lord is the maker of them all.” — Proverbs xxii., 2.

LAST Sabbath I discoursed to you from these words, arguing in behalf of a free Christian church. I showed you, as well as I could, that it was a Scriptural idea; that it was the only practicable mode of city evangelization; that it appealed to a class of persons who would not otherwise be met; that, so far as we ourselves were concerned, all the Providential indications were in that direction; and then, lastly, that such an organization would enlist the sympathies of men of the world, as no other organization could. I resume the subject where I then left it.

What do you suppose Christ thinks of the present mode of conducting church finances? If Jesus were now to alight upon earth and build a church and assume its pastorate, would it be necessary for men to pay money in order to have seats in that church? From what you know of Christ’s treatment of the widow with two mites, and of Mary Magdalen, and of the poor man by the wayside, do you think that a man’s position in that particular church of Christ would be regulated according to the number of dollars that he could pay? No, says every man, that idea would be abhorrent to Christ. Well, then, I say it ought to be abhorrent to us. Do you wonder that there have been so many troubles in the churches — that many of them have fought like beasts at Ephesus, fought about the site upon which to build, fought about the architecture, fought about the choir, fought about the minister, fought before church, fought after church, fought all the week? Some of you know that the greatest conflicts of the last fifty years have been church troubles. If our churches were all regulated by the principles of Christ’s religion, do you not believe that there would be a cessation to such combat? “But,” says some one, “we must stick to the old plan, lest we shall not get on successfully in our finances,” as though the present mode in the churches of conducting church finances were a success. Far from it. Three-fourths of the churches of Christ in this land are in debt, and in three - fourths of them the income does not equal the outgo, and, at the end of the year, a few generous men have to come together and make up the deficit, or some general effort is made on the part of the congregation to regulate the indebtedness. Ay, the regulation of church finances by the past mode is a positive failure. Every body knows that churches are the poorest pay, and that if a bank or an insurance company were conducted in the same slip-shod manner, so thoroughly inefficient — that it would be discredited and wiped out of existence. If the old mode of conducting church finances in the religious organizations had been thoroughly successful, then we might be on our guard; but as the fact is, in nine cases out of ten, it has been a failure; I say there is no danger in floating off from it.

But this brings me to answer the first objection which can be made to a free church, and that is, that it can not he financially snjiported. You say that there is a great deal of expensive machinery in a church; there is the coal bill, and the gas bill, and the insurance bill, and the expenses of sexton, and music, and minister, and, as free churches ought to be conducted on a large and generous scale, there will be extraordinary expenses. Ay, we admit all this. In a free church the music should be of the very best possible character, every hymn storming the very gates of heaven. The church architecture ought to be plain but imposing, the people seated face to face in the great congregation. The preaching ought to be earnest. Indeed, it is a great deal easier to preach in such a church than in any other. If a man has been for a long time at a banquet, and five or six courses of food have passed before him, then when plain bread is presented he rejects it; but if you take that plain bread to men who for forty-eight hours have had nothing to eat, how they will clutch for it! Now I simply say that a vast majority of the people wdio have been attending our Christian churches have been stuffed for these twenty years with the confections of religion, and when we present them the plain bread of the Gospel, they do not want it; but if we should gather into our churches the outside masses who are starving for this bread of life, with what earnestness and with what avidity they would seize upon it. •’But,” you say, “the support of a church with such music, and with such architecture, and earnest preaching, would be very expensive, and how will you meet the indebtedness?” I answer: by annual subscription and by Sabbath collections. “But,” you say, “there will be mean men who will come and occupy the pews and pay nothing, and so the financial interests of the church will go overboard.” I acknowledge that there are mean men in churches. There are men with souls so small that fifty of them might dance on the point of a needle and have room to turn around without touching their elbows! I had in mj church at Syracuse, New York, a man of comfortable means who gave nothing for the support of the Gospel; but Friday night after Friday night I heard him pray that the pastor might be blessed in his basket and store, while all the time I was thinking, if I were dependent upon you, I would have a small basket and a veiy” poor store! The man is gone to a better country and where, I hope, he can live more economically. But while there are mean men in the Church,! want you to understand that the majority of people who come to the house of God are not of that class. In our tabernacle, which was conducted on the free principle, there were only three or four such persons.

My observation is, that if you take a common-sense principle and lay it before common-sense men, and say that is for the improvement of society and the bettering of the condition of the woi’ld, men will generously support it; and as nine-tenths of the people in a community can “understand the free church principle when it is plainly set before them, I believe that plan may anywhere and everywhere be developed. I have as much doubt of the existence of God and of a future world, and of the blessedness of the Gospel, as I have of the willingness of the people to support a free church in any town or city in all this country; in other words, I have no doubt at all. Sa3’S some one, “Is it right to put ministers of the Gospel in a way where they shall have an uncertainty of livelihood?” I reply by saying that if a man have a million dollars, and he give you a check for twenty-five dollars, when you go to the bank and present that check you know there is such a large margin between the man’s capacity and that small check, that you have no doubt that it will be promptly cashed. ISTow Christ says to his ministers, “Go and preach my Gospel; I am able to take care of you. I will take care of you. Lo, I am with you alway — even unto the end of the world. The cattle on a thousand hills are mine, all the treasures of the universe are at my feet. Go, work in my vineyard, and you shall want no good thing.” Alas, then, if we who are in the ministry fold our hands and begin to tremble and say, “Dear Lord, that is a beautiful principle, but where is my salary to come from?” Besides that, I want you to remember that the young men who will be willing to connect themselves with the free churches of this country — though they may not have large means now wnth which to help you — still they are, after a while, to shoulder the great church enterprises. Who are your poor men to-day? Largely, they who twenty years ago were in affluence. Who are your rich men to-day? Those who twenty years ago were in poverty, struggling up from the very foot of the ladder. I say these young men who are clerks in our stores on five hundred dollars a year, or a thousand dollars, or fifteen hundred, will after a while, under God, be the mighty men on ‘Change; and though now, when they connect themselves with your church, they may be of little or of no financial help, after they have made their fortunes, as they will, every dollnr of those fortunes will be consecrated to Christ. So that we may look in that direction and feel that there will be help.

My friends, unless the great masses of the people can be brought into our churches, what is to become of our cities? Do you know the fact that crime, and debauchery, and every sort of abomination are triumphing in our great towns? Just take out your pencils and make a calculation; it is only a question in common arithmetic — How long, if evil influences continue to increase at the same ratio, how long before the religion of Christ in our cities will be discomfited and our churches destroyed? In less than a century, as certain as two and two make four, unless some other plan is tried. Yet we know that religion is to triumph, and that sin is to go down, and that Christ is to reign in all our cities; but it will be by some other plan; it will be when the churches of Christ are thrown wide open, and the people told to come in, “without any regard to their financial qualifications, and hear the Gospel and get prepared for heaven. The possibility of establishing and sustaining such a church is strengthened by the idea that men will support home institutions rather than foreign. How many of you were ever kept awake at night because the Gospel does not prosper in Greenland? How many ever refused food because there is heathenism in Guatemala? None! But when you can bring before men the question. What is to become of Brooklyn? will the people who live over the way on our street, without the consolation of Jesus Christ, ever have his sympathy in their troubles? will those children who play on the sidewalk come up under the restraints of our holy religion? Then it is a question that appeals to every man’s heart — it is a home question — he can understand it, and will be willing to support it. I will illustrate: During the last war, in my church in

Philadelphia, one Sabbath we took up a collection for foreign missions — a most important cause — and I urged it with all my might, asking God for help. The collection was not as large as it ought to have been. The next Sabbath night, while I was in the pulpit, a man handed me a telegram. I opened it, and I read it to the people. It was an appeal from the army before Richmond, saying, “There are three thousand men down here bleeding to death. Send us lint, send us bandages, send us cordials, send us Christian men and women to bind up the wounded.” I had not long to speak. I read the telegram, and then I said, “Men and women, these are your fathers, and these are your brothers, dying before the gates of Richmond. Will you send them cordials? will you send them bandages? will you send them lint? Pass the baskets.” The collection was gathered, and the baskets came back burdened with the trophies. People took off their gold rings and their breastpins, and threw them into the contribution. It was a home question; it struck every man’s heart, every woman’s conscience, and the treasures were poured forth. Now I say when you can make the people of this country understand that the religious question is a home question; when we can make them feel that, while we have moral responsibility for the salvation of Hong Kong, and Pekin, and Madras, and Constantinople, we have a mightier responsibility for Brooklyn; when we can make them feel that in the support of a free church they not only contribute toward the religious education of their own families, but of all who come within the house of God — the generosity of the people will exceed any thing you have ever anticipated.

23i OBJEGTWXS TO FREE CHURCHES ANSWERED.

Again, some have objected to a free church because it destroys the home feeling and it is a forcible objection; it is so mighty an objection, that if I can not meet it, I will surrender the principle advocated. Destroy the home feeling! Father sitting here in the church, mother sitting there, children somewhere else; or if the church be crowded some Sabbath, you can not get in at all. “We want our families beside us in the house of God. Seated with them here, we hope to worship with them in heaven.” To this objection my answer is. In every free church let the pews be formally assigned without reference to the dollar question, priority of application giving priority of choice, pew not to be forfeited except in the event of bad behavior or non-attendance. Then a man seated in it with his family has a home feeling — more so than in the other style of church. If disaster come to him, and his fortune is gone, and he can pay nothing, and he has to bring his children home from the school, and move from a fine house into a smaller one, and put on plainer apparel, he sits down in the house of God, and says, “Here is a house from which I am certain not to be turned out; here we will be prepared for heaven.” If, in the one case, there is a home feeling when the pew-rent system is in force, and men may be driven out because they lose their fortune and can not pay their pew-rent, I ask you if there is not a better home feeling in that church where a man feels that no earthly disaster shall affect his occupancy? If home feeling is found in any church on earth, it will be found in a free church — the seats formally assigned and occupied.

But there are others who may oppose the free church principle on the ground that it obliterates social distinction.

It is an objection oftener thought than spoken, but it is a really solid objection. It is an important question, “What shall be the social influences amidst which my family will be placed if we go to that church?” I believe in good blood, and that there is such a thing as bad blood. I believe in royal blood. In some families the tide seems all in the wrong way; in other families the tide seems all in the right way. I have known a father and mother mean, and their children mean, and their grandchildren mean, and the rule going on to the tenth generation — perhaps for all eternity. In another family I have seen father and mother good, and their children good, and their grandchildren good — the tide of virtue and generosity going on through all generations. Therefore, I believe in family blood. I admit that God never calls a man, if he is intelligent, to associate with ignorance, or if he be elegant, to associate with boorishness, or if he be virtuous, to associate with vice.

“Why,”says somebody, “I am afraid to go to such a church as you are describing, because there may be some that come to that church whom I would not like to associate with; and how would I feel if some of my family should marry a scavenger!” Ah, my friend, we might have the Board of Trustees resolve that no one need marry a scavenger unless she wants to! In every free church, just as in every pew-rental church, you will pick your own society. While your Christian heart will dictate kindness and courtesy to all whom you meet on Sabbaths, you will not be obliged to run to those who sit in the same church and tell them all your family affairs, or invite them to your house. That is not requisite. If there be in a pew -rental church fifty sociaJ circles, then in every free church there will be fifty social circles. I can think of only one class of persons that will be very much offended with that style of church. I admire a man who has made a large fortune honestly, and who holds it usefully. I admiie the perseverance, and the pluck, and the ingenuity, and the tact. I rejoice in his success, and I pray to God that the hand of commercial disaster may never dethrone him. But men who, by some freak of good fortune, are thrown to the top, and who use their means for the purpose of fattening their own vanity, and of wounding the feelings of those who are not as fortunate as themselves, excite in me such unbounded loathing and contempt that I dare not trust myself to speak of them. They are in my nostrils like the stench of summer carrion, and if the hand of commercial disaster shall tear off from them their gold and their diamonds and their trinkets, it will take one of M’Allister’s best and most powerful microscopic apparatus to make visible to the naked eye the noxious insects. Their wealth equaled by their stupidity and their iojnorance — such men will abhor the idea of a free Christian church; but rich men and poor men, high and low men, educated men and ignorant men, who believe in the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God, will accept the principle laid down in the text, and rejoice when in any church it is illustrated: “The rich and the poor meet together: the Lord is the maker of them all.”

Now, my friends, I have answered these objections to a free church, not because my own congregation make them — they do not make objections — but thinking that there might be some who are about to connect themselves with us who do not know the principles upon which our church is to be founded. I will saj that my soul is absorbed in this idea. It has been a matter of personal sacrifice to me that I have pleaded for it, and I say to all ministers of the Gospel who may be in the house to-night, if their idea is a large salary and magnificent income, they had better never plead for a free church; but if, on the other hand, their idea is to bring the Gospel of Christ to the masses of the people who are without Christ and without God in the world, then it is a very satisfactory idea, and will give them a reward now in their own consciences and in the joys of heaven. I commit the principle first to God, and then I commit it to the masses of the people. I came out from among them. I know them altogether. I am in sympathy with them. My father and mother toiled with their hands until old age stooped their shoulders and made their eye-sight very dim, and then they died, leaving us a glorious legacy, not in dollars and cents, but in prayers and Christian example that this world will never rob us of In the hand of the God that loved them, and that I love, I trust this principle. I tell you plainly to-night that I would rather fail in this attempt to give the Gospel to the masses than to succeed in any thing else. Living or dying, in prosperity or in sorrow, in good report or in evil report, in the name of my Lord Jesus Christ, my hope in life, my peace in death, my triumph in eternity, I consecrate to-night, body, mind, and soul to this one enterprise. Considering what God has done for us in the past, we would be cowards now to distrust him. Oh, young men of my church, buckle on the whole armor of God. Do you know that if you start life in the service of Jesus Christ, you start well? I point you to-nigbt to a field of usefulness than which God never opened a grander. Do you know that into your hands are to come the mighty destinies of Christ’s kingdom very soon; and I look you in the eye and I ask you if, when in this battle these older men shall fall, you will catch up the standard? Quit you like men! Be strong!

Then I see in this audience men in middle life, from thirty to fifty years of age. What think you of giving a free Gospel to the masses? If you wlant to make up for lost time, here is the chance to do it. You have been down in the world. You know what it is made of You have deliberately concluded that it is a most unsatisfactory portion. Fall into line, oh ye men in mid-life — men between thirty and fifty years of age. The battle may be hot, but I am not afraid to lead you, and I wave the sword in front of the host, crying. Forward! Let cowards fly! Act ye like sons of God!

But there arc others here who linger by the banks of the river. They know that because of old age they must soon go over. You have had many a good time. Every wrinkle in your face ought to be a hallelujah. By what blood you have been bought! By what mercy you have been defended! You can not sing these hymns with as firm a voice as once you sang them; and you came to this house to-night with trembling step — not as once you came to a religious assemblage — and you look around, and your comrades are gone, and your best friends are on the other side of the river, and you feel that soon you must go and join them. You feel just like a farmer on a summer-day in the harvest-field, who says, “Now, boys, it is almost night, and the wind is from the east, and it will storm before morning; let ns get in a few miOre sheaves.” For you the hoar is coming in which no man can work, and what you do you must do now. There are yet two or three or four sheaves for you to reap for the Lord’s garner. Oh, give us your prayers, aged men. Give us what strength there maybe still remaining in your arm; and then, when you are gone, we will tell our children how well you served in the temple, and, like Elisha, we will crj as when Elijah went up, “My father, my father, the chariots of Israel, and the horsemen thereof I”

What I say to one I say to all — from those who sit beneath to those who rise above me in the galleries — what you do for Christ, do quickly. The field is white, the sickle is sharp, the reward is grand, the time is short, the judgment is near! What thy hand fiudeth to do, do it now.

Let me say that you ought to toil with great buoyancy. This whole earth is to be saved, and the cities are to be evangelized. I sometimes hear Christian people talk as though the Church of Christ is to be defeated; as though it were to be like one of those steamers, the City of Boston or the President that went out with a large cargo and with many passengers, and has never come to port, and never will come to port. Some of you may have had friends on some of those steamers, and you waited and watched, and said, “I wonder on what iceberg they shivered! I wonder in what fire they burned! I wonder where they went down!” and you cried out in your soul, “Oh, treacherous sea, give back that ship! give her back! though it be with shivered mast and scarred bulk-head, and pumps all working to keep out the leak, and passengers with faces wan with hunger and eyes hollow with woe. Give her back!” The ocean answered not. It only moaned to the beach, and moaned to the sky. “Ah!” says some one, “it will be just like that with the Church. She will never come into harbor.” I deny it. She has had a rough time, and been caught in many a hurricane, and driven against many a rock, and sometimes her commanders have been at their wits’ end, and have cried out, “We shall go down! We shall go down!” Christ stands at the helm, and she shall outride the gale; and when she drops anchor on the beach of pearl, all heaven will throw out signals of delight, and the standards will wave and the bells will ring because the voyage is over, and “the “wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.” In that day of triumph, will you be one of the victors? Are your sins pardoned? Are you ready for Christian work? Will heaven be your home? As I was entering the gates of this building to-night, a man stopped me and said, “That man you saw last night at eight or nine o’clock is dead.” I said, “It can not be possible.” I was there at nine o’clock, and said, “I will soon see you again” — for he was here last Sabbath. Now they tell me he is gone! Are we all ready? We can not alwa3’S be here. It can not be that all these people will meet each other again in this building.

When the Atlantic struck Mars Head, you read a good many telegrams, going all over the country through the associated press, but there was just one telegram that struck me as no other telegram I ever saw. It was sent by some man whose friends were in Detroit. He had escaped from the wreck, and, amidst all that gloom, and amidst the dead bodies that laid around him, he wrote out a telegram of one word, and it thrilled all throuo-h this land. That word was “Saved!” Oh! what good news it must have been when the friends got it. And I think there are some here to-night who have made shipwreck of their earthly prospects, and they have been driven against the rocks of disaster, and I cry out, Oh that now the strong hand of Christ might be reached down to pull them up on the eternal shore, and that the tidings might thrill to the throne, Saved! and that watchmen standing on the ramparts of heaven might cry to people in the temple, “Saved T^ and the news run from street to street, until all the city of the sun shall ring with the glorious announcement, “Saved, saved!” for there is joy among the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.