IV
“My church home” is an old phrase one still hears in communities whose social life is not yet wholly divorced from the church. There is something pleasant and reassuring in the sound of it; and I do not believe we shall ever have in America an adequate substitute for that tranquility and peace which are still observable in towns where the church retains its hold upon the larger part of the community, and where it exercises a degree of compulsion upon men and women who find in its life a faith and hope that have proved not the least strong of the bulwarks of democracy. In wholly strange towns I have experienced the sense of this in a way I am reluctant to think wholly sentimental. Where, on crisp winter evenings, the young people come trooping happily in from the meetings of their own auxiliary societies, where vim and energy are apparent in the gathering congregation, and where one sees with half an eye that the pastor is a true leader and shepherd of his flock—in such a picture there must be, for many of us, something that lays deep hold upon the heart. They are not concerned in such gatherings with higher criticism, but with cleanness and wholesomeness of life, and with that faith, never to be too closely scrutinized or analyzed, that “singeth low in every heart.”
One might weep to think how rare those pictures must become—one might weep if there were not the great problems now forced upon us, of chance and change, that drive home to all thinking men and women the great need of infusing the life of the spirit into our industrial and political struggles. If, in the end, our great experiment in self-government fail, it will be through the loss of those spiritual forces which from the beginning have guided and ruled us. It is only lately that we have begun to hear of Christian socialism, and a plausible phrase it is; but true democracy seems to me essentially Christian. When we shall have thoroughly christianized our democracy, and democratized our Christianity, we shall not longer yield to moods of despair, or hearken to prophets of woe.
The Smith for whom I presume to speak is not indifferent to the call of revitalized democracy. He has confessed to me his belief that the world is a kindlier place, and that more agencies of helpfulness are at work, than ever before; and to restore the recalcitrant Smith to the church it is necessary first of all to convince him that the church honestly seeks to be the chief of such agencies. The Young Men’s Christian Association, the Charity Organization Society, and the Settlement House all afford outlets for Smith’s generous benevolences. And it was a dark day for the church when she allowed these multiplying philanthropies to slip away from her. Smith points to them with a flourish, and says that he prefers to give his money where it is put to practical use. To him the church is an economic parasite, doing business on one day of the week, immune from taxation, and the last of his neighbors to scrape the snow from her sidewalks! The fact that there are within fifteen minutes’ walk of his house half a dozen churches, all struggling to maintain themselves, and making no appreciable impression upon the community, is not lost upon Smith,—the practical, unemotional, busy Smith. Smith speaks to me with sincere admiration of his friend, the Salvation Army major, to whom he opens his purse ungrudgingly; but the church over the way—that grim expensive pile of stone, closed for all but five or six hours of the week!—Smith shakes his head ruefully when you suggest it. It is to him a bad investment that ought to be turned over to a receiver for liquidation.
Smith’s wife has derived bodily and spiritual help from Christian Science, and Smith speaks with respect of that cult. He is half persuaded that there must be something in it. A great many of the Smiths who never had a church tie, or who gave up church-going, have allied themselves with Christian Science,—what many of Mrs. Eddy’s followers in familiar talk abbreviate as “Science,” as though Science were the more important half of it. This proves at least that the Smiths are not averse to some sort of spiritual food, or quite clearly demonstrates a dissatisfaction with the food they had formerly received. It proves also that the old childlike faith in miracles is still possible even in our generation. Christian Science struts in robes of prosperity in my bailiwick, and its followers pain and annoy me only by their cheerful assumption that they have just discovered God.
Smith’s plight becomes, then, more serious the more we ponder his case; but the plight of the church is not less grave to those who, feeling that Christianity has still its greatest work to do, are anxious for its rejuvenation. As to whether the church should go to Smith, or Smith should seek the church, there can be no debate. Smith will not seek the church; it must be on the church’s initiative that he is restored to it. The Layman’s Forward Movement testifies to the awakened interest of the churches in Smith. As I pen these pages I pick up a New York newspaper and find on the pages devoted to sports an advertisement signed by the Men and Religion Forward Movement, calling attention to the eight hundred and eighty churches, Protestant and Catholic, and the one hundred and seven synagogues in the metropolis,—the beginning, I believe, of a campaign of advertising on sporting pages. I repeat, that I wish to belittle no honest effort in any quarter or under any auspices to interest men in the spiritual life; but I cannot forbear mentioning that Smith has already smiled disagreeably at this effort to catch his attention. Still, if Smith, looking for the baseball score, is reminded that the church is interested in his welfare, I am not one to sit in the scorner’s seat.