The Church should lead, and not follow, the great dreams of the world. In the midst of our new national life we are sending all over the country for the best-trained help and thought in every department of government influence and control. Our problems of the day are preëminently spiritual ones. Colonial control is not a question of material ascendancy—it is a rule over the minds, hearts, and ideals of men. Its moral significance is patent. We are called upon, not only to import provisions, clothing, and household and industrial goods into our new possessions; we are called upon to develop a higher sense of honor, truth, honesty, and every-day morality. Scholars, working-men, business men, farmers, and merchants are being consulted in regard to different phases of our national advance, and every idea which their insight and experience furnish is seized upon. But who is consulting the Church in these concerns, except in reference to mere technical points? Who is looking to the intellectual, moral, and spiritual standards of the Church for guidance? We are to-day ruled spiritually, as well as intellectually, by laymen, and in a way which is quite outside the organized work of the Church.
2. The Church needs a more business-like organization and way of work. It needs a more military spirit and discipline. The Church is diffuse and loosely strung. There are in the United States alone about two hundred and fifty-six kinds of religious bodies. There is no centralized interest or work; there is no economic adjustment of funds; there is no internal agreement as to practical methods. The result is a most wasteful expenditure of force. Movements are not only duplicated, but reproduced a hundred times in miniature, in one denomination after another; special talent is restricted to a narrow field; buildings and church-plants are multiplied, but lie largely disused; sects and communities are at loggerheads on unessential points; all this—and the world is not being saved! The Church fails to see openings for aggressive work; it fails to seize strategic points; it does not carry a well-knit local organization, with a husbanding of economic force; it does not front the world in dead-earnest; it is not proud and honorable in meeting its local debts; it loses progressive force, from lack of knowledge as to how to judge men, and train them, and set them to work.
It also lacks greatly in office-force and in supplies. The gospel itself is without price, but in the nature of things it cannot be proclaimed, nor church-work efficiently carried on, without financial outlay. There should be a more adequate equipment for this work. All other enterprises need, without question, stationery, stenographers, literature for distribution, office-rooms, office-hours, and a general arrangement looking toward enlargement and progress. A busy pastor should have an office-equipment just as much as a business man, and it should be supported, as a business office is, out of the funds of the business organization, i.e. the local church.
There should be, first of all, a united spirit, and a general reorganization throughout the whole of evangelical Christendom, not necessarily destroying denominational lines, with a view to quick mobilization of energy in any direction most needed. What would a general do, who, in looking over his troops, should find two hundred and fifty-six provincial armies, not at ease or at peace with each other, and yet expected to make war upon a common foe? Shall we not endeavor to share in some broadly planned, magnificently executed scheme of world-advance?
The Church has reached a point where a vast constructive work is to be done. Its scattered parts must be knit into a powerful and aggressive whole, to turn a solid front upon the evil of the world. The times are ripe for a successor of Peter the Hermit, of Luther, Knox, Calvin, Zwingli, Savonarola, Whitefield, Finney, Moody. Whether a great preacher, theologian, or evangelist, he will certainly be a business man, a man of vast energy and executive capacity, who shall perform this miracle of organization of which many dream, and who shall set the progress of the Church for a full century to come!
This united spirit should prevail, not only through the smaller bodies, but between the Roman Catholic and Protestant communions. There has been a distinct division between these two bodies, much mutual suspicion, jealousy, and antagonism: it is only quite lately that Protestant and Catholic leaders have been willing to work amicably together for great common causes.
A new situation has arisen. In our new possessions we are confronted with a large population who, whatever may be the reason, are unquestionably not, as a whole, progressive, enlightened, educated, or highly moral. The problem now is, not for Catholic and Protestant to waste energy and spiritual strength in contending for mastery over each other, but for them to unite in changing and bettering the condition of our island peoples. What is past is past. Our present duty is to bring peace, industry, intelligence, high ideals, and spiritual living to our new countrymen. This is a work to fill the hands and heart of both churches, and perhaps, in a common task, each may learn to understand and regard the other as those should understand and regard each other who have one Lord, one hope, one heaven.
3. The Church needs stronger and more gifted leaders. In every business or intellectual enterprise to-day, there is an effort to place at the head of each organization the most powerful and resourceful man whose services can be obtained. Nothing in this age works, or is expected to work, without the leadership of brains. A primary step, in a far-reaching ecclesiastical policy, is to endeavor to draw into both ministry and membership the most active and intellectual class. All earnest souls can work, but not all can work equally effectively. Particularly in the ministry, north, south, east, and west, men are needed who are really men. This does not necessarily mean the men with the longest string of academic degrees, the men who can write the best poems or make the best speeches on public occasions; it means the thinking men who are brave, talented, spiritual, and warm-hearted.
In the Report of one of the missionary Boards, I have recently read the following stirring words. They refer to the work of missionaries in the far north, one of whom has lately travelled a thousand miles over the snow in a dog-sled: "He who follows that mining crowd must be more than the minister, who would do well for towns in the west or elsewhere in Alaska. He must be a man who, when night overtakes him, will be thankful if he can find a bunk and a plate in a miner's cabin; he must travel much, and therefore cannot be cumbered with extra trappings—must dress as the miners do, and accept their food and fare. He must be no less in earnest in his search for souls than they in search for gold. He must be so 'furnished' that, without recourse to books or study-table, he can minister acceptably to men who under the guise of a miner's garb hide the social and mental culture of life in Eastern colleges and professional days."
It is far from that land of frost and snow to the beautiful island of Porto Rico, washed by tropical seas, through the streets of whose capital there passes every day the carriage of the Governor, with its white-covered upholstery and its livery of white. But I add this word: The missionary sent to Porto Rico, be he Catholic or Protestant, must be a man who can stand among statesmen and society men and women, as well as one who can live and work among the humblest folk who lodge in leaf-thatched huts along the roadside or far on lonely hills. Representative men of ability, health, culture, and courage are being chosen to carry on governmental work: it is idle to send provincial men to the Church. What is locally true of the Church in Porto Rico is fundamentally true all over the world, at home and abroad. Each ministerial post to-day requires an imperial man. Not every post requires the same sort of man, either in regard to general heredity or education. Men are needed of the Peter-type, of the John-type, of the Paul-type; it suffices that, they be men of unusual power, and well fitted to their individual work.