But the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. This mercenary policy fails by the very measures to which it resorts. When the wicked see no distinction between the Church and the world they cease to respect the Church. Even the hypocrite finds his occupation gone when a profession of religion means nothing, just as the counterfeiter stops work when the bank fails and its notes are no longer current. Thus the cunning of men overleaps itself. On the other hand, the Church that boldly joins issue with sin wins moral power with every blow, and secures the respect even of the enemy. Thus they who feebly seek to save their lives lose them, while those who are ready to lose life for Christ's sake and the Gospel's find it.
The principle stated is of infinite importance, and we must neither forget it nor distrust it for an hour. All who fear God will confess that we are not to withhold the truth nor compromise with sin, even if the multitude desert our altars to crowd where the cross is lighter or its offense has wholly ceased. But is it true that worldly craft and policy will fail even as a policy? Let another question answer this. Other things being equal among rival denominations, have not the purest in doctrine and the strictest in morals always been the most successful? Churches grow weak by lowering the standard of morals. When there is no discoverable difference between the Church and the world, the Church is no longer loved, or venerated, or believed. It becomes powerless to pull down the strongholds of sin; it can no more stir the heart, nor rouse the conscience, nor reach the mysterious depths of our nature; it ceases to meet the religious wants of those whose hearts God has touched, and men turn away unsatisfied from its shallow waters. The scorner will be loud in his denunciations of religionists whose vows are but the breath of the moment, and whose professions mean nothing. Even the soul convinced of guilt and danger will be afraid to trust to the guidance of a Church which has in it so little of the divine, so little of the power of God.
Methodism took at the beginning, and has held to this day, what some might regard as extreme positions on the subject of slavery, worldly amusements, and the drinking customs of the times. What is the verdict of history? Have we damaged ourselves by our fidelity to the right? Some timid, half-convicted people have doubtless been repelled from our communion by the strictness of Methodist discipline and the boldness with which we have assaulted the wrong, but who believes that the Church would have grown more rapidly by compromise and cowardice? Who believes that it would be wise, even according to the wisdom of this world, to compromise with evil now? Zion is not "lengthening her cords and strengthening her stakes" in a Scriptural manner when she "stretches the curtains of her tent" to shelter dancing, card-playing, and wine-bibbing converts. If these should come in crowds, offering on these conditions to join us, we could not receive them. To do so would be to act as madly as would the general who, in an enemy's country, commands his soldiers to throw away their arms, call in the sentinels, and level the intrenchments, in order to gain a few timid recruits who would not wear the uniform an hour if they thought that it meant war.
Nor is our argument disproved by the history of modern ecclesiastical organizations which have been less rigid than our own Church. In an intelligent community, where the Bible is read, their laxity is always against them. And in those very denominations the really pious, whose influence and example are the very salt of the body, to preserve it from putrefaction, and without whom it would hardly be recognized as a religious body at all, do not join in these questionable practices themselves, nor do they advocate them in others.
The way in which the world reasons about a facile Church is well illustrated by a conversation which actually took place not long ago between a sort of a minister and a shrewd, irreligious rich man, whom he wished to get in his little fold.
"Mr. B——," said the clergyman, "almost all your family have joined the Church, and I think it is about time for you to do the same."
"O, I am not fit to join the Church. I am not at all pious, you know," was the reply.
"But", said the minister, "you are aware that we are not very strict. Our Church does not require as much as some others."
"But I am not right," said Mr. B——. "I sometimes get angry and swear, and that will not do for a member of the Church."
"O, well," answered the minister, "you do not mean any harm by it, do you? That need not hinder."