No one minister could perform its offices; its servants would have to be in a manner consecrated to its work, and they should be men and women who have suffered, and therefore know, but who would find more reason for rejoicing than lamentation; who would possess gifts of music and oratory, and whose personal influence would be strong for righteousness.
There are great churches with scattered congregations, in Fifth avenue; there are a few poor churches, and small, for which no one cares, and which offer no attractions to the over-flowing population of Mott street. The spring and summer will soon come, and then these great churches will be closed, their pew-owners distributed over lake and mountain in all the different parts of the wide world. But the "people" will be here. People who work in foundries and shops, who live in tenement-houses; people who earn a hand-to-mouth living as clerks, book-keepers, seamstresses and petty store-keepers; people who have to stay in such homes as they can support because they cannot afford to break them up and go elsewhere.
For these people and their children there is only the street. The children occupy the street. For four or five months in the year they make life hideous, especially on Sunday, by noise and exhibition of vandalism that would disgrace the savages of any age or nation. The police acknowledge themselves powerless to prevent it. It is simply the exercise of undirected faculty which might be turned to account, but which has only noise, confusion, and street warfare for its opportunity for exercise.
There are possibilities in these congregations of the highways and byways, and when we have our people's church or churches, open all the year, and all the night as well as all the day, and the voices of the angels for sweetness, singing love and peace on earth, in an anthem that pierces the roof, and with the tones of a mighty organ to emphasize to all the world its message, and it is not a question of clothes, many people will be glad to listen, and will find an influence in the music, in the willingness, in the free-heartedness, in the sympathy, in the kindness, in the spirit of brotherhood, that they would not get out of preaching nor dogma.
Whom are we waiting for to build this church? Is it a woman? Surely it is an opportunity that carries the two-fold blessing.
Notes, Letters and Stray Leaves
A "free lance" is less free than the organs of a party. In one case it means at least the opinions of a group; in the other, the dogmatism of the one who wields the lance. Nothing is less free than the self-styled freedom of the individual.
Enthusiasm implies a certain narrowness of vision. When people can take a broad view they can see the elements of goodness or beauty everywhere, and they cease to be enthusiastic in regard to one. The great popular preachers are not university men, or those who are quiet and literary in style, but strong, dogmatic men.
Perhaps the most noticeable difference between the so-called new woman and the new man is this, that she is seizing every opportunity that opens up new avenues of individual employment, while he is discovering and storing energy to save himself from doing any work at all. The old man made other men, and women too, work for him, the new man is making the hitherto uncontrolled forces his servants, locking them up in such small compass that a twist of the wrist will start the crash of worlds.
The notes of the great god Pan, so "piercingly sweet by the river"—a far cry and a weary way from Pan to Handel and Beethoven; yet during all that time music has been the joy and the consolation of peoples,—all except the Quakers.