The Harvest of New-York

Theke are some evils wTiicli belong to all great cities as such. The vastness of population brings ignorance and irreligion into greater proximity, and so to speak, congests them within narrow compass. Hence we find poverty, sickness, sloth, intemperance, mendicity, and fraud, on a larger scale, and with less surprise, than in other localities. Depravity is the same, indeed, “in the void waste or in the city full;” but in a metropohs sin is more crowded and more overt. The love of money, which is a root of all evil, operates more actively where so much wealth is in perpetual, large, and rapid circulation. Cupidity, fraud, and violence exist wherever man is found; but in cities they have a wider field, and come up to our notice every day of our lives. This familiarity with evil clearly tends to its propagation. It is just as true of vice as of contagious disease. The forced and unnatural nearness of man to man, renders it more easy for evil principles and practices to diffuse themselves, by precept and example. Crime and its provocatives are kept in countenance by the number and consequent boldness of transgressors. The same density of human actors renders easy every sort of associated action and combination. Idleness and luxury and love of pleasure are evil every where; but who does not know how violent a stunulus they receive in cities? For example, the wealth and voluptuousness of the great are continually working downwards, and corrupting the humbler classes. No man needs to go in search of means of intemperance; the invitation is at every corner. Few are the great towns in which the example of Sabbath desecration is not held out, almost ostentatiously, thus producing its like in the careless and the young. The public amusements of cities are not rare and occasional; their flames are kept up, night after night, as a perpetual sacrifice. Their invitations arc blazoned on every wall, and that is a happy parent who can keep his children from coveting the forbidden gratification, almo-t before they have left the nursery. The streets may be called an ever-open school of vice; and there are hundreds of errant children of both sexes, whose whole education may be said to be that of the kennel. It is in cities that we naturally go to look for the extremes of pauperism, filth, and domestic misery; for cellars and garrets unventilated, unwashed, and overstocked with human inmates; for lofty buildings, swarming at each new flight with improvident, noisy, unhealthy creatures. Nowhere but in cities does the phenomenon occur, of scores, hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands, who seem to be totally unrecognized out of their narrow circle, who live as they list, and who sink with every successive year into a more malignant corruption. In London, for example, the recent labors of Mr. Mayhew have revealed what may be called an underground population, numbering its hundreds of thousands, of whom multitudes know no marriage-tie; and of whom the great majority attend no place of worship. There would seem to be a nation growing up in the heart of Christendom, within daily sound of its church-bells, utterly destitute of the first rudiments of Christian instruction. And of these a large number, already mature and inveterate in evil, find their way to ur shores, and to our very thresholds.

It is truly wonderful how many comfortable and well-doing persons live and die with scarcely any knowledge of these things. They sit in their drawing-rooms, or roll in their coaches, with scarcely a thought of the masses of ignorance, misery, and vice, which are almost touching them. Amidst purple, fine linen, and daily sumptuous fare, we forget the Lazarus at our gate, who is chiefly recognized by the dogs that lick his sores. These things are in all populous cities, but men of comfort see it not, or see it with vacant and abstracted gaze. To learn the details of this frightful reality, citizens must begin to observe and enumerate the squalid creatures that cross their path; must diverge into shaded and obstructed streets and alleys; must follow the mendicant and the chifPonnier to his attic or his hovel, and comprehend the nights of those who lurk about our thoroughfares by day. There is not a great city in Christendom, in which it is not true, that a large proportion of these classes is absolutely uncared for, in regard to true reli-ion. And it adds to our alarm, that we need not go so far down in the scale of society, to find hundreds who are heathenish in their repudiation of all Christian observances, on Sabbaths or other days. All that has thus been said of cities in general, applies with full force to the city of our abode; while there are other considerations, somewhat peculiar to ourselves, which point us out as beyond question a ripe and suffering harvest-field.

It is to be expected that the largest city of the Western world should hold forth prominently those characteristics on which we have touched. Its very greatness just so far multiplies the occasions for religious endeavor. We begin to talk again and truly of the spring and buoyancy of our trade, the expansion of our commerce, the rise of property, the accumulations of capital, the magnificence of dwellings and equipage. These things should make us humble and thankful. But what if these blessings should be accompanied with increase of sins and famine of the word of God? Wealth breeds luxury, pride, and forgetfulness of the things of eternity. I was just now speaking of the poor; but here are causes which operate upon the rich, and in some cases upon ourselves. Read what the prophecies say of great cities in the old world; of Tyre, of Sidon, and of Damascus. In a very observable degree, the unparalleled growth of our city has tended to moral and religious decay, by change of residence and rapid fluctuation of people. We appear to live in a perpetual tide, which sweeps away in its course not only the mansions of former times, but the very sanctuaries where our fathers worshipped. Justifiable, nay, inevitable, as these mutations may be, they can not be accomplished without leaving large spaces more or less destitute of the means of grace. And already the whole southern portion of our Island presents a spiritual desolation, which affects the hearts of God’s people, and in regard to which every one of us has a responsibility and an obligation. It is not enough that we secure the means of grace for ourselves and our happy children, who could obtain them even if suddenly left unsupplied; what is to become of the myriads who care for none of these things? Shall we say to them, from out these established houses of worship, ‘• Go, serve other gods”? Many of our churches present the appearance in a great measure of repositories for sliQaves already garnered; while on every side of us the fields are covered with luxuriant crops, which no husbandman is cutting down.

The influx of strangers from remote regions, and of emigrants from abroad, is giving a peculiar character to our city population. Gf these, the great majority are without evangelical religious means. I am persuaded that very few among us are awake to the transformation which is passing upon us, from this single cause. The living cargoes, which are poured in upon us day by day, from Ireland and the European continent, and of which the worst dregs and sediment are arrested just here, and abide among us, are increasingly making their influence felt, on our manners, our morals, our religion, our elections, our municipal government, our police and prisons, our hospitals and our bills of mortality. We” are in the midst of a gradual and silent, but tremendous revolutionary movement. Of Grermans alone, the accession has been such, that you may walk through whole streets, if not wards, in which their type and signature stand out with all the colors of transatlantic towns. Romish churches, convents, and 175 schools are rising with incalculable rapidity. A nation of people owning spiritual, if not temporal allegiance to a sovereign beyond the seas, is consolidating itself in the midst of us. Kot to assault or abridge their religious rights do I say this, but to indicate the greatness of the home-field, which calls for our zealous exertions. But we are not sure that this is the worst part of the foreign immigration. Protestantism has lost its glory in the land of Luther. Those subtle but dreadful forms of infidelity, which were broached by philosophers in their closets and professors in their chairs, became popularized, and worked their way downward through the strata of society, until they at length became intelligible to the lowest minds, and popular among the turbulent rabble. As in the French Revolution, so in Germany, these doctrines of the ‘’ Friends of Light” connected themselves with a passion for liberty, and with reformatory agitation. Ever since the outbreak of 1848, the convulsed masses have been heaving with equal violence against the altar and the throne. In any great movement towards emigration, it is obvious that none will be so ready to forsake their country, as those who after entertaining 17G

STicli sentiments have been disappointed. Many of the ringleaders in these commotions have reappeared in our land.

Turning to the indigenous population, with which we are more familiar, we find untold multitudes of the laborious as well as the unthrifty classes, who never enter a place of worship. “We find a juvenile throng, growing up without the knowledge of morality and salvation. We find large tracts of closely settled people, wholly unsupplied with the means of grace. And here I may let the curtain fall; for we have observed enough to demonstrate, that in whatsoever direction we turn our eyes, the fields are white already to harvest.

My beloved fellow-Christians, the theme is too grave, and the affair too urgent, for me to use any circuit in arriving at the practical conclusion. We must do something, and that without delay, or these evils will increase beyond our power of control. “The King’s business requireth haste.” While we slumber the enemy is coming in with fearfal strides. And what are we doing, in our staid, respectable, and wealthy churches? What breakwater are we erecting against such a flood? Are we meeting the demands of our responsi- 177 bilitj, of OTir very safety, by maintaining the proper and decorous service of God in our several sanctuaries? No man will pretend it. Yast harvests require extraordinary and immediate labor. But where is it put forth among us? At what point, or on what day have the united Christians of New- York arisen in their strength, jealous for the Lord of hosts, and determined to carry the torch of light into these dark places? “Where is the concerted effort of evangelical laymen, to set up Gospel means in the deserted lower wards of this city? This harvest will not come in of itself, but must perish on the open field. To meet this exigency is our appropriate business as Christian churches. Life is short; and when after a few years some wanderer shall pick out our names, upon the marbles of a cemetery, what traces shall we have left behind us of our zeal for Christ and souls? It is for such efforts, and such self-denials, and such sacrifices, that God has bestowed on us our talents, our influence, and our means. Let me take it for granted without argument that the Christian Church was not founded solely for itself, and for promoting its own spiritual comfort and advantage; and further, that every particular clmrcli is called upon to diffuse blessings around its limited circle. This is especially true of churches which, have outlived the precarious and struggling period of existence. There is a stage in church-life, when every effort is needed to fill up its vacancies, sustain its service, and secure its continuance. But when this is past, and providence smiles upon its temporalities, assuredly it has arrived at the crisis of outward activity. The genius of Christianity is not simply that of conservation, but of aggTession. It must not merely live, but increase and cover the earth. It is not an outpost garrison, fixed and stationary in its defenses; but an army, burning for conquest and going on by rapid marches and increasing victoiies. And this has been most signally manifest in every age of Church history, in which believers have evinced the true life of the body. Equally true is this of particular churches. They must break forth in action and increase, or they must dwindle and die. And let me affirm it with emotion, when any religious society has reached the point in which its complement has been made up, its forces oi’ganized, its seats filled, and when accordingly it 179 can not longer hold forth wide invitations to the multitudes to come in, the conjuncture is solemn, I had almost said alarming. ISTor is it matter of doubtful speculation, what a church in such circumstances should do. It should break out on the right hand and on the left. It should enter into the Lord’s harvest. It should go out into the highways and hedges, and compel men to come in. It should have compassion on the ignorant and the outcast, who surround it. It should provide the means of grace for those who are destitute. There is work enough to be done, and there are means to do it. Let me add with profound satisfaction, experience has shown in New- York, that so far as the contribution of worldly means is concerned, there has never been any backwardness. But there is a want of enlightened zeal, as to the special mark of evangelizing the

suffering population amidst which we dwell. And there is a want of concert and cooperative endeavor, in the right application of instruments. The case is this: the harvest is ripe, but the laborers are few. The Gospel must be preached by more voices among the ignorant and needy. They will not supply this want themselves, but will in- 180 falliblj go from bad to worse. Here our intervention is needed. The cliurcli must be carried to those who will not come to the church. It never was the intention of Christ, that his word should be sustained among people of competency alone. Wher Christianity is vital, the poor have the Gospel preached unto them. A wise and vigilant survey must descry the points in our great city, from which as centres the assault may best be made on the forces of unrighteousness and error. The message of life must at such points be proclaimed at once; freely at first, until men shall have learnt the necessity, the economy, and the delight of sustaining the church for themselves and their children. One such station, well manned, will become the ipoint d’’aip]yid for successful operations all around. The best nucleus for a church is often the Sunday-school. It naturally connects itself first with smaller meetings, and then with the services of the Sabbath. It may be new to many, that in carrying out this simple and effective plan, the greatest difS.- culties sometimes insuperable have arisen from the want of a ‘place in which to gather the uninstructed youth. Scholars teem, in 181

1-i THE HARVEST OF NEW- YORK.

our overcrowded tenements, by hundreds and thousands. Teachers, upon due summons, are not found altogether wanting. The purse of religious beneficence has been found constantly open to every well-judged summons. And yet our schools have been known to knock in vain at the doors of every sufficiently capacious public edifice. Now, I desire my readers to show cause, why it would not be a proper outlay of our ample means, for liberal Christians to secure ground before it is too late, and erect substantial and fitting edifices, with ample apartments for Sunday-schools. These might be occupied, during the week, by good schools, in which the Bible and religious doctrines should be taught. They would resound with the voice of prayer and praise, in social meetings, to which the surrounding poor would be invited. They would imperceptibly grow into places of Sabbath-service, where the Gospel should be preached to the perishing. In process of time they would be organized, and perhaps self-sustaining. But this is only one of many means which might be employed. That some means should be speedily used, is as clear as day. Let us pray to the Lord of the harvest, that he would thrust forth laborers into his harvest. But while we pray, let us not forget to labor ourselves. The times are favorable for Gospel effort. The mighty mass is as yet unformed and ductile. Souls are perishing every hour. The evil is not in India or Africa, but at our doors. And our time of action is very soon to have an end.