Belford's Magazine, Vol II, No. 10, March 1889

by Various

VACANT PEWS AND WORRIED PULPITS.

The homes, so called, of our larger cities are in a majority of cases without comfort, and in nearly all instances without refinement. The class upon which we once so prided ourselves, made up of families possessed of a competence, and enabled through a reasonable income from steady work to have about their homes some comfort and a few luxuries, is rapidly disappearing. We have left us two classes only, made up of the very rich and the poor. The merchant, the mechanic, and even the common laborer, who once could boast of a humble home of his own, and enough steady employment to make that home comfortable, is rarely met with. We believe indeed that he exists only in the imagination of Senator Edmunds. Well-authenticated statistics inform us that we have a larger percentage of tenantry to our population than any people on the face of the earth. This not only includes our great commercial, mining, and manufacturing centres, but the rural regions as well. We learn that, throughout the agricultural regions, while the farms lessen in number, the farmers increase.

We know what this means. We recognize at a glance that the growth of our country in national wealth, which is claimed to be amazing, is not a healthy growth. For that is not healthy which gives prosperity to a few and poverty to the masses.

This has been so long and so generally recognized that it has come to be commonplace, and people weary of its reiteration. We indulge in this weariness for the purpose of calling attention to a consequence that is not so familiar.

It is remarked by observant lookers-on from abroad that our laboring classes are thoroughly ignorant of art, and take no pleasure in contemplating works of art, as do the like classes in the towns of Europe. The reason given for this is that we have no specimens in our highways, and few in galleries. The latter are closed against the laboring classes on the only day a laborer can have to visit them, and that is Sunday.

The wrong done our people by this can scarcely be overestimated. A taste for art can generally be cultivated. It is quite impossible to educate a people in science and literature, for this depends on intellectual faculties that our heavenly Father, from a wise purpose to us unknown, has been very sparing in distributing. But almost every man is capable of being taught to admire, if not love, the beautiful in art. What an element in the way of social improvement or progress this cultivated taste is we all recognize, and what happens to a race that neglects it we all know.

Now, it is possible for a people to possess the highest appreciation of, and admiration for, art and yet be semi-barbarous, for the Christian element is necessary to bring about real civilization; but it is quite impossible for a race to be without some cultivation in the way of art and be civilized at all.

It is not strange, to a thoughtful observer, to note that as a nation we are on the down-grade. Such an observer from abroad cannot cross Broadway, for example, without learning that life and limb are in peril from a community that has more law and less order than any people the world over. He is prepared to learn then that our galleries of art—such as exist—are closed against the poor, and he is ready to receive without wonder the further fact that our churches also are closed against the poor.

It is this last truth that is somewhat new in the way of being recognized, although quite old as a matter of fact.

At a convocation of Protestant ministers held at Chickering Hall last November, on behalf of the Protestant community of New York, the following was officially stated as to the religious condition of the city:

"The population of New York City has for years been steadily and rapidly increasing, while at the same time the number of churches has been relatively decreasing. In 1840 there was one Protestant church to every 2,400 people; in 1880, one to 3,000; and in 1887, one to 4,000."

Now, to this startling admission could have been added another, no less deplorable, and that is that the attendance has decreased more rapidly than the churches, and, in such as now remain open a seventh part of the time, there is an exhibit of empty seats quite depressing to the minister. If we consider the Protestant population only, not one-tenth are church attendants—and not a tenth of these are true believers.

The reason for this deplorable condition was much discussed by the good men making up the clerical convention, and the prevailing opinion seemed to be, as gathered from the utterances, that this disheartening result came from the active interference of the Catholic clergy—or papists, as our friends termed them.

There was much truth in this. These zealous "papists" are certainly making great inroads upon our population; but, admitting that they take large numbers from the Protestant churches, there yet remains a vast population of non-going church people that the so-called papists have not influenced, nor indeed as yet approached. What then is the cause of this irreligious condition?

We believe that we can help our clerical friends to a solution of this religious mystery. It comes from a lack of consideration for the masses they seek to instruct. There is a want of sympathy for the poor, that not only shuts the galleries of art from the laboring classes, but closes the Protestant churches also.

These structures, while scarcely to be classed as works of art,—for they are carefully divested of all that appeals to good taste,—are yet luxurious affairs at which the rich and well-born, in purple and fine linen, are expected to attend. They are more social than religious affairs, and there is no place for the ragged, even if such appeared from a public bath, duly cleansed of their offensive dirt. To make this exclusiveness complete, the churches are filled with pews that, like boxes at the opera, are the property of subscribers able to pay for such luxuries. True, certain pews are reserved as free seats for the poor; but the class sought thus to be accommodated are averse to being put in their poverty on exhibition, as it were, even for the luxury of hearing a solemn-toned clergyman whose theological gymnastics are as much beyond the comprehension of the hearers as they are beyond that of the reverend orator himself.

To realize our condition in this respect, let our reader imagine, if he can, our blessed Saviour and his apostles entering bodily, to-day, one of these edifices built to His worship. Weary and travel-stained, clad in the coarsest of garments, the procession would scarcely start along the dim-lit aisle before that austere creation of Nature in one of her most economical moods, the sexton, would hurry forward to repel further invasion of that most respectable sanctuary of God. Our Saviour would be informed that somewhere in the outlying spaces of poverty-stricken regions there was a mission-house suitable for such as He.

We must not be understood as intimating, let alone asseverating, aught against this form of Christianity. It is so much better than none that we feel kindly toward it. The religious evolution that develops a respectable sort of religious purity, that builds a marble pulpit and velvet-cushioned pews, is all well enough if it quiets the conscience and soothes with trust the death-bed of even a Dives. We regard a Salvation Army, that makes a burlesque of religion as it goes shouting with its toot-horns and stringed instruments, as to be tolerated, because it is better than the Bob Ingersolls. We only seek to inform the well-meaning teachers of the religion of to-day why it is they preach to empty pews.

Few of us are aware of what we are doing when we close our galleries and churches, and open our saloons to the poor. This last, so far, has proved impossible. But let our hot gospellers, whose creed is based on "Be-it-enacted," visit any one of the poor abodes of the laborers denied admission to innocent places of amusement on the only holiday they have for such recreation. Such investigator will descend to a subterranean excavation dug in the sewer-gas-filtered earth, where the walls sweat disease and death. These are homes for humanity. Or he will ascend rotten stairways to crowded rooms, heated to suffocation by pestilent air poisoned by over-used breath from men, women, and children, packed in regardless of health, comfort, and decency. These are the so-called homes of thousands and thousands: and the wonder is, not that they die, but that they live. We send millions of money with missionaries to foreign shores: to our own flesh and blood we send—the police. Loving care and patient help are bestowed on distant pagans: poor-houses, prisons, and wrath are the fate awarded to our brothers at home.

A little way from these abodes of misery and crime the saloon is open, with its gilded iniquity, warm, cheerful, and stimulated with liquid insanity in bottles and beer-kegs. Do we wonder that the churches are empty and the saloons crowded?

The advent of our blessed Saviour was heralded by the anthem of the heavenly hosts, that sang "Glory to God on high, and peace and good-will to men on earth." The few sad years of our Redeemer's life among men were passed with the poor, the sinful, and the sorrowing. We have to-day much glory to God on high, and no good-will to men on earth.

Your churches decrease in numbers as the population swells, O brethren, because of your lack of Christian sympathy!