Golden Age, January 4, 1922

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Ja& 4, 1922, Vol. in, No. 60

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▼ftLtnta 8 WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 4. 1922 NuMBBB M

CONTENTS of the GOLDEN AGE

LABOR AND ECONOMICS British Workers’ Sunday....210 Coming to Armageddon....214

SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL

Drawing a House................197 C osition to Gambling....204

Opposition to Theatres 201 V\ uy Men Go to College....208

Opposition to Dancing

MANUFACTURING AND MINING

Erecting Buildings

FINANCE—COMMERCE—TRANSPORTATION

The Raising of Money......199 Not So Bad

POLITICAL—DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN

Peace and Solvency...........208 Will the Ruling Factors

Nations in Distress____________214 Heed

Disarmament _________

HOME AND HEALTH Feeding the World...... .......—

TRAVEL AND MISCELLANY Opposition to Fighting......205 Butterfly Facta and Fancies 212

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY

"Go to Church, Thou Fool” 195

Church of England Collapsing

Rutherford at the Hippodrome ________________

Interchurch World Move-Bient

Instead (poem)

Desire of All Nations

The Blessings Near

Studies in the Harp of

God .....

The Father’s Lave (poem) 223

Thoughts tor the New Year (poem)--u....„s_233

by WOODWORTH. HUD0ING8 aad MARTIN CLAYTON J. WOODWORTH ... . . » ROBERT J. MARTIN .... Rosiaaw «•» WM. F. HUDGINGS......S»e‘y aad T

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▼•fame III Brooklyn, N. Y., Wednesday, January 4, 1922 Number 60

“Go to Church, Thou Fool”—In Four Parts (Pan i)

milE Banner-Herald, of Athens, Georgia, in * its issue of September 21, 1921, contains a half-page advertisement bearing the above caption, indorsed by the announcements of the ten principal churches of the city, all denominations.

What other line of business would seek to draw trade by resorting to such methods of attracting attention ?

What are the rewards which would follow compliance on the part of those who are addressed ?

How do the advertisers know that only fools would be interested in their wares?

All these are the subjects of inquiry of this article.

We propose to make a dispassionate examination of the clergy business in the light of current history. There was no such business in the days of the early church. Our Lord and His apostles gave time and strength to the preaching of the gospel, but their evident motto was “Free Seats and No Collections”, and they did not expect to be compensated in this -world. But the “Twelve Apostles of the Lamb” have few followers and no successors among those interested in the clergy business.

Let us state our own position plainly at the outset. We are for preaching the gospel of Christ and His kingdom. We believe in it, and our lives are devoted to it; but we are persuaded that the motive for that preaching should be love for the truth, love for the Lord, His Word and His people, and that no man is fit to preach to others on Sunday -who does nothing but loaf or meddle in other people’s business during the remainder of the week.

The development of the clergy business occurred several hundred years after the Lord’s crucifixion and exaltation. It has now, among the Protestant representatives of the profession, a number of distinct lines of activity. We shall examine twenty-two of these, to see what is being aimed at and accomplished. The results are heart-rending.

Nothing in this article is intended as a criticism of the man who is honestly preaching the gospel of Jesirs Christ. Our purpose is to awaken those preachers who have departed from their high calling and to enable them to see themselves as others see them.

When we think of all the good that these men could do if they were wholly devoted to the Lord and His people, and were faithful to His Word, and when we think of them as they are, and as this article will prove them to be, we can but think of Hamlet’s soliloquy: “I could a tale unfold whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres. And each particular hair to stand on end. Like quills upon the fretful porcupine.”

As we examine the evidence we shall see that the activities of these men are wasted and worse than wasted.

We shall see them:

1. Straining the last nerve to obtain crowded houses, and using meaningless and silly phrases to attract the curious; but giving those who come no message of either hope or comfort, like lightless lanterns, set up in disregard of God’s Word and God’s ways.

2. Putting forth Herculean efforts to raise vast sums of money, which, when raised, accomplish little good purpose, but place these men under obligations to the wealthiest men of their congregations, the ones needing least the consolations of the true gospel.

3. Erecting beautiful buildings and running their congregations deeply in debt to build and maintain structures which, when built, are burdens upon the community and in many instances are centers of infidelity as respects the Christian faith.

4. Opposing theatres and attendance at the same, yet resorting to the same methods of advertising as theatrical people and in many instances copying theatrical methods of entertaining their audiences, 'with no thought in view except entertainment.

5. Objecting to dancing as a pastime inimical to the church and to Christianity, and yet in numerous instances opening and managing dancing schools and giving their support and influence to dances in church parlors for the purposes of raising money.

6. Going on record as opposed to gambling, on the principle that it is contrary to Christian faith and practice, and yet operating games of chance ostensibly for the support of the church; but making life itself the greatest of all games of chance, inasmuch as, according to their claims, eternity depends, for every human being, on “belonging” to some one of the two hundred conflicting cults which imagine and claim, each on its own behalf, that it is the one true church, the true exponent of the Christian religion.

7. Posing as opposed to prize-fighting as brutal and beastly; yet in many denominations and in many localities, since the war, the pastors are teaching prize-fighting, acting as referees, engaging in fistic encounters themselves, and even encouraging little children to pound each other brutally in prize-rings in the church parlors.

8. Standing as a unit in acknowledging that war is in open and utter contradiction to the tenets of the Christian religion; yet being a unit also in aligning themselves with those that are for Avar whenever signs of war appear on the horizon.

9. Being so zealous in support of whatever form of government happens to be in power that they offer themselves and are generously employed as government agents to spy upon the liberties of other men, seeming in their acts and words to place man-made rules and regulations on a par with the laws of Almighty God; yet the best of them have no heart in the matter and are ashamed of the activities of their fellows.

10. Standing for prohibition of the liquor traffic, and responsible for bringing it about (aided by fabulous contributions from the millionaires that have doped soft drinks for sale); yet with many of them the interest was more

Brooklyn, N. Tt J.

■ A £ apparent than real, as their appetites and their C * control over them are no better than those of gy other men. ?

11. Displaying enthusiasm for the imposition upon all men of the observance of the first g day of the week as a day when men may do nothing but go to church, although there is not a hint in the Scriptures that God ever designed the first day of the week for any such purpose.

12. Taking an ever larger place in all manner of political activities so that there is nothing ” in which they are not interfering, contrary to the Word of God and in derogation of the Con- > stitution providing that church and state should be kept separate.

13. Posing as a unit in believing that peace is the most desirable thing for the human fam- y ily, and that peace among the nations is a thing . A of all others to be aimed at; yet when peace j

was in their grasp toward the close of the A

World War many of these men were advocates of more bloodshed than even the soldiers in the trenches desired — forgetful and neglectful of the peace which the angels declared should be the outcome of the Christian religion among men.

14. Having an active part in bringing about the Disarmament Conference in the interests of British big business and imperialism, and praying and working earnestly for it; yet the plan for the conference did not originate with them, but was thrust upon them by a man of war who shamed them into action when they were doing nothing.

15. Advocating in an increasing number the rights of labor, encouraging the application of the principle of collective bargaining and giv- i ing publicity to the atrocities committed against laboring men in the name of the law; yet largely -at fault for those same atrocities, because they have preached a false and hateful brand of patriotism, and have been unwilling to see that the governments of this world are part and parcel of Satan’s Empire.

16. Large numbers of them openly cooperating with big business in the enslavement of their fellow men, doing what they can to defeat the efforts of the workers to better their condition, and acting as mere tools to further th© selfish interests of those who have more of the world’s riches than heart could wish.

17. Aiming to make themselves the centers ' of all the social activities of the people; yet

these activities are the same as those of the .world in general, and often of the most worldly persons.

18. Aiming to promote the marriage of young people, a praiseworthy enough thing in itself; yet some of them being human vampires, taking advantage of the newly wed to take their last dollar from them and leave them stranded away from home, with not enough money for a meal of victuals.

19. Championing the cause of education, and undertaking the education of the young; yet the world is in its present disastrous condition largely because its educational activities in the past have been in the hands of this class of men.

20. Giving attention to the cause of charity; yet many of them being unwilling to make the slightest self-sacrifice in the interest of others, even of those things ■which, like tobacco, are harmful to themselves.

21. Advocating missions to the heathen, while the most heathenish people in the world are about them in their own lands; and, just as the Lord forewarned, when the heathen have been reached by them they are brought into worse condition than before.

22. Lastly, engaging in preaching, although having no consistency among themselves as to what should be their message; indeed, there is a well-founded opinion among some of them that they should not be expected to preach at all, in addition to all their other activities, a conclusion in which the public is coming more and more to share.

The conclusion of the matter is in plain sight. The clergy business, as a business, has had its day. The common people no longer have confidence in it and are withdrawing their support from it. Young men are no longer attracted to what they discern to be a useless and unprofitable profession and the older members of the fraternity are deserting it by the thousands for more lucrative fields of endeavor. In a little while ecclesiasticism, the clergy business, will be a thing of the past.

We will now consider the subject in the order in which we have outlined it.

Drawing a House

IN THIS theatrical business it is considered that the all-important thing is to draw a full house. This is not because of any interest in the theatre-goers, but because the actors rightly calculate that the more people can be induced to see the show the greater will be the chances of their keeping ahead of the sheriff. Is this the reason why so many people in the preaching business use such strange headlines to announce the subjects upon which they will “preach”?

In the Spring of 1921, the pastor of Elm Park Methodist Episcopal Church, Scranton, Pennsylvania, preached a series of sermons on Mother Goose Rhymes. Two of the topics were: “Ride a Jack-Horse” and “Rub-a-dub-dub; three men in a Tub”.

On June 9, 1921, the pastor of the Wesley Memorial Methodist Church of Jacksonville, Florida, preached on “Fainting Fits and Their Cure” and on the same day, in the same city, the pastor of the First Baptist Church preached on “A Visit to Henry Ford’s Factory”. Neither of the foregoing texts is prominent in any of the copies of the Scriptures to which we have access, nor are any of the following, alphabetically7 arranged:

A Big Hug.

A Case of Good Judgment.

A Joke on the Conductor.

A Lunch-Bo.x, Hand Mirror and Bath Tub in One.

A Jian with his Nose out of Joint.

A Wonderful Invention.

Ask Dad, He knows.

Don’t Skid.

Eventually, Why Not Now? ■

Halloween Tricks and Pranks. ,

Has God Got Your Number? His Master’s Voice.

Lopsided Folks.

My Mother-in-Law.

Psycheometric Readings.

Pulling out a Plum.

Pussy-cat, Pussy-cat, Where Have You Been?

Slip, Slips, and Slippers.

Street Car Ventilation.

Swat the Fly.

The Ass Tied at the Door Without.

The Dollmakers of Nuremburg.

The Flavor Lasts.

The Honeymoon.

The Man in the Moon.

The Sentimental Journey.

The Wild-West Man.

There’s a Reason.

Three White Mice-

Two Looks at Another Man's Wife.

Wobbling.

r. ~

The authors of these subjects are alleged to have been Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists, many of them well-educated college graduates and Doctors of Divinity, and all men of prominence in their respective denominations. It looks as though the Winnipeg Tribune must have it pretty nearly right when it says that men “often look upon the parson as neither man nor woman, but a sort of intermediate sex”; for we cannot think of a sensible man or woman endeavoring to attract the favorable notice of any other sensible man or woman by offering to "preach”—give a twenty-minute prattle—on any of these subjects.

Reading the foregoing list of subjects one ■ can understand the story now going the rounds of the press that Mary Agnes Vitchestain, ■ daughter of the publisher of the Labor Tribune,

Pittsburgh, Pa., has been preaching to packed houses in the Baptist ehuTcb.es throughout ’ Pennsylvania since she was nine years of age.

Those who would listen to adults preach on such subjects as foregoing would surely be well-seasoned to listen with attention to advice from a nine-year old girl on the most important subjects in life.

Do not think that The Golden Ace is the first to notice the strange titles that those in the clergy business take for their sermons. The Rev. Dr. S. Parkes Cadman, of Brooklyn, speaking before the Y. M. C. A. of that city in an effort to correct what he could see was a degrading practice said:

“Consult that 'chamber of horrors’. th«- ml vert isi ng column of Saturday’s papers which announces pulpit themes for the morrow; and after making the most liberal discounts, the conclusion is forced upon you • that many preachers are bogged in amateur perform

ances which have little or no religious meaning because ' those who perform have lost touch with God and with

■ the gospel, not as men describe it but as it actually is”.

The bishops are partly responsible for this effort on the part of the under-clergy to do something unusual. The bishops in the Methodist Episcopal church are virtually autocrats that rule those under them as only bishops can rule who can trace their origin no farther back than the year 1787, when the Baltimore Conference changed the title of Mr. Coke from “Superintendent” to “Bishop”. Accordingly, when “Bishop” Franklin Hamilton, at the annual conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church of West Virginia, September 30, 1917, said: “Ev-

ery minister should either preach sensational sermons and create a sensation in his church and town or get out of the business”, it was all the cue the men under him needed to try to do something out of the ordinary, to attract attention.

In other denominations there is more latitude. The Reverend John Roach Straton, pastor of the Calvary Baptist Church of New York City, has declared that he does not like to take orders from anybody what to preach or what not to preach, although this was attempted bhe time, at a meeting of the Board of Trustees. Dr. Straton explained that this meeting was held in the library of one of the trustees arid that those present sat about a table on which were a deck of cards and a game of sports. Dr. Straton could not see what there was in such an atmosphere that would endow anybody with authority to tell another person what to preach or how to preach.

This is the same Dr. Straton who jolted the thinking world in the summer of 1919 by saying, “Only a lingering sense of duty, altruism and service prevents the preachers of America from forming a union, calling a strike and telling the country to go to hell”. The remark was a sort of boomerang for the clergy business; for it led to a taking of stock as to just what would happen in the event of a clergy, strike. It was the general consensus of opinion that it would have the same effect as if they kept mi preaching—none at all.

Many well-meaning men, not knowing that the clergy business is an entirely unscriptural proposition, feel very kindly toward those whom they suppose to be in some special sense God’s representatives in the world, and at times offer advice which, if listened to, would do good. But it is hard for those who are freely offering their advice on twenty-two different lines of activities to accept advice from a plain newspaper man, and hence we fear that the following item by the conductor of a section of the Los Angeles Times has not received the attention which it merits. The gentleman speaks of his clerical friends in a critical but kindly manner :

“They are taking more and more all the time to preaching on texts that have nothing to do with religion in any way, shape, or form. The preacher who thinks that he can compete with the newspapers^ the magazines, the stump-speakers and the orators in pa

discussion of everyday topics is making a big mistake. Also, the preacher has a field that is infinitely more interesting and important. The greatest book in existence is at his hand from which to choose texts— the most fascinating book that was ever written or that ever will be written. And finally, when you come right down to it, there is in the heart of the average man a hunger for the consolation that only religion can give.”

Among the clergy there is here and there a real child of God, one who instinctively feels that there is something radically wrong with the efforts to draw worldly people into the church. Such a man, Reverend L. N. B. Anderson, writing in the Spokane Spokesman-Review, says:

“Nowhere in the Bible is there a command that even hints that it is the duty of a minister to draw a house. There would never have been an early Christian martyr had the followers of Christ permitted Him to be placed in the Boman pantheon on an equality with the Roman gods. The same is true today.”

Yet so fully has the idea taken root in the minds of many people that there is something obligatory upon all classes of people to crowd into a church edifice on Sunday, that a judge in Denver, in October, 1921, sentenced two gamblers to attend church for six months or to spend six months in jail. The gamblers attended one preaching service, and then lit out for parts unknown. At last accounts the police were looking for them, so that the sentence of the court could be carried out. In Chicago a judge sentenced four girls caught shoplifting to a term in church.

Some unusual means are taken to secure large church attendances. During the sugar panic in the fall of 1919 a pound of sugar was given to every regular member or visitor attending the meeting of the Men’s Bible Class in Holy Trinity Presbyterian church, Philadelphia, Pa. At Claverton, England, since February, 1920, the pastor has been giving free auto rides to and from the church to all who attend his church services. No doubt from a purely worldly point of view this would be a profitable jitney business, as what man or woman carried to and from church at the pastor’s expense would not give in return in the collection basket at least enough to amount to a good jitney fare each way!

The present method of securing new church members is not by conversion, not by the old Scriptural method of a change of heart and life, but in response to “drives”. New York has recently had such a “drive”, bo has Chicago, so has Wichita; and we have no doubt these “drives” have been prearranged and are virtually uniform over the whole country. The “drive” in Wichita took place on September 18, 1921, when 2,000 workers canvassed 23,000 homes, all denominations participating in the work and the results. The Methodist Church, by adding its new “cradle roll” scheme has added thousands to its membership.

The pastor of the Congregational Church, of Montclair, New Jersey, went the limit in January, 1921. Noting that the members of the Young People’s Society preferred skating to listening to him on Sunday evenings during the skating season, he announced that while the skating lasted the weekly Sunday evening meeting would be held on the ice. The “pastor” announced that he would don skates and lead the Society around the lake and that the “meeting” would conclude with hymn singing and the serving of coffee and sandwiches.

The Raising of Money

"VXTE WONDER how many of our readers, ’ ’ at some time in their lives, have heard the thought advanced that the only thing needed to evangelize the world is the obtaining of sufficient funds. It has been a common doctrine. It has been the claim by turns of the Evangelical Alliance, the Men and Religion Forward Movement, the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, and lastly it was the claim of the late lamented Interchurch World Movement.

All can remember the pretentious program of the Interchurch World Movement. The sum which it purposed to raise, distributed among the different denominations, ran to some fifteen hundreds of millions of dollars. Over one hundred million dollars of this amount was raised, and used largely in paying the salaries of the men who raised it, together with office rent, clerk hire, and huge travelling expenses. The movement finally collapsed, as all the others have done, because the movers of these enterprises were undertaking something not authorized in God’s plan, not attempted in God’s way.

The idea of raising these millions of dollars was doubtless born of the experiences of the governments of earth in raising money for the prosecution of wars. Those engaged in the der-gy business, not having any regular employment, such as fills the waking moments of most people in this busy world, were available for use, and were very widely used for the securing of the war funds. They supposed, because the people subscribed for war loans, that the same people would subscribe as quickly and as generously to the plan of bringing about some arrangement whereby all the inhabitants of the world could be forced to go to church on Sunday. But they were mistaken, and the big church drive was a failure.

If there is any virtue in compulsory going to church, then the most praiseworthy and virtuous people in the world are the denizens of our jails and prisons; for in those institutions it is the custom to compel every person to attend the Sunday services, whether he wishes to do so or not.

The St. Louis, Mo., Republic, April 6, 1920, had this to say regarding the church of today:

“The Church today is not preaching the gospel of that Christ who drove the money-changers from the Temple. The money-changer is being chased into the Temple amid paeans of joy and escorted by smiling, ingratiating preachers of the Word- He is an ornament of the Church under the new Dollar Divinity. Go out Sunday and hear what he is preaching. You will find carefully rounded sermons dealing with sweet abstractions and so worded as not to offend. You will find interpretations of Christ’s Word that would astound the Savior if he heard them, you will find the Writ perverted so as to disinherit the Meek and to make the passage of the camel through the eye of the needle a matter of great ease and facility . Preaching [perverting] the Word has become a business instead of a mission.”

The following advertisement appears in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle for December 12, 1921:

“The seats in the Central Congregational Church, Hancock St., Brooklyn, will be publicly rented for the year 1922 on Monday evening, December 12, commencing at 7: 30 o’clock. No postponement on account of the weather. Possession on January 1. Each pew has a fixed valuation, and the choice of all in the House is offered to the highest bidder. The Church will be opened on the evenings of December 13 and 14 (Tuesday and Wednesday only) to rent such pews and sittings as remain undisposed of. By Order of Trustees.”

What motive prompts Billy Sunday’s evangelistic work? The meetings held in Cincinnati, February, 1920, were insured against failure both financially and by poor attendance, the amount of the policy being $20,000.

The following is taken from the Atlantic City Press of January 7, 1921:

“Binghamton, N. Y., January 6.—Among the contributions to the building fund of the Orthodox Greek Church of Endicott, near here, the fund committee announced a quart of bonded brandy, which sold for $60.”

Suppose the drives for many millions to carry out the Interchurch World Movement program had been successful? Who would thereafter have directed the energies of the Movement? Those who were the largest contributors, most assuredly. The largest contributors would necessarily have been men of great wealth; otherwise the large sums could not have been obtained; and men of large wealth rarely let any money pass completely out of their controL And what possible advantage could accrue to the inhabitants of the earth in having religion more fully commercialized than it is at the present time?

There are a few incumbents of the clerical profession that do not feel altogether easy in their minds about the prominence given to money by the churches of nowadays, especially when they reflect that neither our Lord nor the apostles ever had anything to say on the subject. Canon Peter Green, rector of St. Philip’s, Salford, England, has refused the bishopric of Lincoln because he is opposed to bishops living in costly palaces and receiving big but too-small salaries.

Others are not uneasy about large sums of money being raised in the name of religion, but they are uneasy about some of the methods of raising it. Thus the Bishop of Chelmsford, England, barred money raised from whist drives and dances from a fund of $1,250,000 which the people of Essex were trying to collect for church extension work. His objection was that although these might both be legitimate forms of recreation they were not the methods of the church for raising money, as he had never heard of either of them being opened or closed with prayer. ,

Erecting Buildings

ALTHOUGH there is no record that either our Lord or the apostles ever had anything to do with the erection of a church, parish, athletic, and amusement buildings, and although the Scriptures make no mention of th© improvement of church property as religions work, yet much of the most approved activity of the men in the clergy business is along these lines.

A prominent preacher in New York, proclaiming in the public press his ability to produce such results as are supposed to accompany successful effort on the part of one in the clergy business said:

“Calvary church under my leadership has paid out of debt and does not owe a dollar for the first time in ten years. There is no mortgage on our magnificent property, worth at least $1,500,000, nor is there any outstanding obligation against our endowment funds.”

Another pastor of a prominent church in Atlantic City announces that he took the pastorate of a congregation of 39 members and a church property on which there rested a burden of $32,000 indebtedness, and in ten years so increased the membership and so improved the property that at the close of the period the value of the property had increased to more than $100,000, and with only $28,000 indebtedness standing against it.

But why multiply church buildings when the people as a whole do not care to go to church? The Columbus, Ohio, Ledger says they do not, and the Ledger states the truth. It says:

“A majority of the membership of the average church is found in the pews only on the occasion of a fashionable wedding or some other special event in the way of a musicale, etc. And even then they are somewhat miserly when it comes to a contribution. As a rule they will drop a nickle or a quarter in the basket when they will think nothing of paying one to three dollars for a similar musicale at the opera house.”

Writing on the same subject the Florida Times-Union says:

“Churches costing thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars to build, and thousands more to maintain, are provided in every city in the country. They are made architecturally attractive. Capable clergymen are employed. Music that delights and elevates is provided. Services are made as interesting as possible. And yet the fact is that empty churches proclaim the indifference of the people who are not in attendance on those services. Why, in churches provided with accommodations for hundreds of worshipers, should there be empty pews by the score ? Why should clergymen, striving to do the best that is in them, be compelled to speak to vacant space? Why should they be humiliated with the mockery of religion, such as is indicated by vacant sittings ?”

And then the writer of the article seemed to think of something having a relation to the subject in hand. Possibly he remembered seeing some reference to the sermons recently preached in his own city entitled, “Fainting Fits and Their Cure” and “A Trip to Henry Ford’s Fac-, tory”; for he followed his first remarks above quoted with the observation:

“True, these clergymen do not depart from established and orderly forms of worship. Perhaps for that they are neglected, their churches practically vacant. But better so than that preachers should become sensationalists, mountebanks, as in some instances, in order to draw crowds, largely composed of those to whom Christianity is a stranger.”

We see a very simple and practical remedy for this difficulty. When a city already has more hotels than it can fill with guests, it should stop building hotels and build something else. When a city has enough railroad stations it is folly to build any more. The same is true with stores, town halls, factories, office buildings, apartments, homes, and churches. Why go beyond one’s means and beyond one’s necessities to build something that is not needed and that will not be used after it is built? And if more have already been built than can be used to advantage, they can be used for something else. Is it a pious thing—when the whole land is crying for homes for its people— to go on multiplying unnecessary church buildings?

Opposition to Theatres

rpiIF apostle James defines true religion in terms which include the expression that the child of God is “to keep himself unspotted from the world”. It is a pretty well substantiated thought that if one wants to get well spotted mentally and morally the average low playhouse is a good place to go. The play which does not abound with broad, salacious remarks is a rarity: and many of the situations are anything but helpful to those who are trying to keep themselves clean and pure in mind and heart.

For this reason the founders of many of the Christian sects looked askance at the playhouse. The Methodist Church was one of these, but it has strayed far from its moorings. In the Book of Discipline, paragraph 280, ministers are forbidden to attend theatres, indulge in alcohol, dancing, card-playing, or gambling.

The subject came up at a meeting of 150 Methodist ministers in Chicago in the Fall of 1919; and when resolutions were passed asking that paragraph 280 should be abolished, there was not a dissenting vote. The general sentiment of the ministers present was voiced by

twelve spokesmen who argued that the law did not help the church, that it kept people away who might otherwise “belong”, and lastly as ministers they admitted that they appreciated and enjoyed plays — and other things. The “other things” mentioned in the paragraph in question are listed foregoing. It is a wonder that those who enjoyed these “other things” failed to name them openly in their arguments.

Medford, Oregon, comes in for some special attention along this line. It was in this city, on April 12, 1918, that E. P. Taliaferro was mobbed and chased out of town for preaching the gospel, and George R. Maynard was stripped, painted and driven from town for permitting Bible study at his home. Accordingly we look for something special in the religious line at Medford, particularly in view of the fact that it was a crowd of ministers that procured the outrage upon inoffensive Bible students.

In this same town of Medford, in November, 1920, the Reverend J. R. Sasnett, pastor of the First Methodist Church of that city, was conducting evangelistic services. At one of these "services” the Reverend Sasnett, who is something of a magician, balanced a bottle on his head while two silver forks penetrating the sides of a cork were balanced on the point of a needle on the top of the bottle. With the forks thus balanced and revolving like a merry-go-round, the Reverend Sasnett descended to his knees — not for purposes of prayer — crawled across the platform, and rose again to his feet.

We do not know what part, if any, the Reverend Sasnett had in connection with the assaults on Taliaferro and Maynard, nor what part such stunts have to do with modern “evangelistic services”, but we can see how they would operate to create a certain professional jealousy as between the clergy business and the theatrical business, and some of the opposition of the clergy to the theatres is of that sort.

A town where this jealousy came to light is Tulsa, Oklahoma. At Tulsa, in February, 1919, despite the provision of the United States Constitution that all citizens shall be unmolested in their right of petition, C. M. B. Claus was arrested for the circulation of a petition for the release of Bible students unjustly sent to prison.

In the same city, on March 1,1918, Mrs. Alta Randall’s home was entered by officers and others, who confiscated Bible study textbooks without any warrant, accompanied by abusive, threatening, and violent language. Nine days later, in the same city, O. R. Covey -was arrested, his home and garage entered and searched anil property seized—without warrant; and on the same day, in the same city, Mrs. Elva Thomas’ home was entered by other alleged officers in plain clothes who confiscated Bible stud}' textbooks without warrant. All these acts were violations of the provision of the United States Constitution that citizens shall be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects.

The clergy of Tulsa were at the bottom of these outrages. It becomes a matter of interest to take note of the present activities of the clergy of Tulsa therefore and to see how they react toward the theatrical profession and other similar institutions which they think, as with the Bible students’ teachings, tend to interfere with the business in which they are engaged.

It seems that the city of Tulsa voted for and arranged municipal band concerts for the Sunday evenings during the past summer; and the concerts were attended by about seven thousand people, largely no doubt because the summer evenings are very pleasant in that climate. While these concerts were on, the preachers were haranguing empty pews, and straightway made an attempt to have the municipal concerts stopped. Thus the Reverend W. 0. Anderson, Pastor of the First Baptist Church and President of the Ministerial Alliance of Tulsa, voiced the complain:

"Our churches have but a few hours out of the one hundred and sixty-eight of the week in which to do their work. If our city sets up counter attractions at those very hours to which the work of the churches ia limited, it evidently speaks in no uncertain way of its disregard of the work done by the churches, and unmistakably forwards a pagan rather than a Christian civilization.”

The Tulsa World thought that the clergy were making a mistake in trying to put an end to the band concerts and that the trouble was one for the churches to regulate within themselves. It admitted that the church membership was sufficient to fill the church auditoriums, but that it preferred the band concert or the automobile. It concluded with the observation that:

“The fault must be in the administration of the churches, or attributable to the impenetrable designs of an omnipotent God. In any event the arm of the government is as powerless to afford relief as it is improper for an appeal to such a source to be made.”

Some of the clergy of Tulsa apparently see ways of upholding the clergy business no matter what the competition. Thus the Reverend Harold G. Cooke, D. D., advertised that on and after June, 1919, the religious hymns would be sung to jazz music in his church and that during the summer months red lemonade would be dispensed to the congregation after service.

At the Tigert Memorial Church in the same city, on a Sunday evening in September last, the “sermon” consisted of advice to young people how to make love to each other, and the hymns for the evening were as follows:

Annie Laurie.

My Old Kentucky Home-

Silver Threads among the Gold.

Way down' upon the Suwanee River.

When You and I Were Young, Maggie.

Tulsa is not alone in peculiar hymns sung to the praise of Almighty God in the temples that are alleged to be set apart to His praise and adoration. Denver, Colorado, is not to be outdone by Tulsa; it has as its Chamber-pf-Com-merce motto, “Denver First in Everything”.

On December 21, 1920, Reverend G. S. Lackland, pastor of Grace Methodist Episcopal Church, Denver, installed a negro jazz band in his church. Among other like songs the audience listened to the following religious music:

“Ohl Deacon Johnson was a preachin’ man, The black sky pilot of old Dixie land;

Had never missed a Sunday, rain or shine;

Was always in his pulpit right on time.

One day a dark-skin damsel biow’d in town, Somebody started scandalation ’round;

Next Sunday morn they found the church door locked. This was the only word the deacon left his lonely flock:

chorus:

It takes a Long, Tall. Brown-Skin Gal

To make a preacher lay his Bible down.

For twenty years I’se passed ‘Joy’ by—

. But now I’m goin’ to get mine till I die.

I always thought that preachin’ was my line, But since I met this gal I changed my min’. It takes a Long Brown-Skin Gal to make a preacher lay his Bible down.”

These innovations apparently meet with the favor of Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein, ■who is credited with the following utterance:

“We ministers of the gospel must realize that this is an era of the fox trot, jazz band, ultra feminism, and other twentieth century eccentricities; and unless ire keep up with the times religion will be lost in the shuffle. If I knew that by putting a jazz band outside the temple it would bring in thousands of people who never attend the synagogue, I would have no hesitancy in doing so. It makes little difference what forces or agencies we use to get men and women to attend church. All we need worry about is to get them there. Then it is up to the minister to keep them coming.”

The old game of keeping the people coming and keeping them awed was by means of plenty of gilt braid and brass buttons, tassels, lace and other stuff such as one may now get in the five-and-ten-cent stores anywhere. The Episcopal High Church crowd are very strong for that sort of thing. We quote The Nation in a humorous article May 21, 1921, describing briefly a great Episcopal function in New York:

“On May 11 the Rev. Dr. William T. Manning was consecrated tenth Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New York. The procession was a most imposing one.”

“Apse, altar, architrave,

Chasuble, rochet, pyx, chimere, Clerestory, n<w,

Throne, mitre, incense, sheer Surplices like snow,

Choir caroling like throstles;

It was not so

Wi/A, Jesus and the twelve apostles.”

It is not just clear what these brethren in the ministry have against the theatres. Aren’t the theatres doing the very same things that they are themselves doing? And if it is religious when done by one set of actors, is it not equally religious when done by another set?

Take that infantile marvel, Frederick Huts-lar, Jr., who led a children’s choir in the Christian church at Palo Alto, California, when he was only three years of age. Have the theatres anything better, or anything worse, than that to show as respects children on the stage?

Then take those colored lights which since October, 1921, are being played upon the worshipers—or perhaps we should say the churchgoers—in St. Mark’s Church-in-the Bouwerie, New York. Yellow lights are used during prayers, changing into soft pink. Throughout the entire service there are ever-changing waves of colored light, like those which play upon the surface of Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies on a day in July. Is this not regular theatrical business? Why, then, should the clergy find fault with their brethren in the theatrical business?

Then there is the Reverend Henry R. Rose, D. D., of the Church of the Redeemer, Newark, N. J. For years he has made his Sunday evening “text” one of the plays current in New York, ill listrating the various scenes with slides. Why should his hearers have to take a rehash of these plays? If they are sufficiently important to be thus reviewed, why not leave out the review and the place where the review is held and go to see the show itself? And that is just what thousands of nominal church-goers do.

This matter of the hostility of the clergy to the theatrical business is getting on the nerves of some actors. In May, 1921, Burr McIntosh, the actor, replying to some aspersions against actors, challenged John Roach Straton, D. D., pastor of the Calvary Baptist Church, New York, to a debate on the morality of the stage, and in his challenge said:

“I will at that time prove that at the present time, and for the past fifteen years, for every actor in our prisons there are ten ministers of the gospel”.

Occasionally one of the clergy oversteps the boundaries entirely and invades the camp of his opponents. Thus the Reverend Charles Carver, pastor of Christ Episcopal Church of New Haven, recently acted the leading role in nine performances of “The Divorce Question” at one of the theatres of that city. Surely Doctor Carver does not want the theatre business ended.

Reverend Dr. George Stoves, pastor of the West End Methodist Episcopal Church, of Nashville, Tennessee, frankly admits that his aim is to have the church take over the theatre business bodily. He should be made to understand that combinations of competing lines of business, such as this would imply, are conspiracies in restraint of trade, and are illegal. After saying that if offered a celestial crown he would refuse it, Dr. Stoves said:

“If I had the power I would go out here in this town, and I would build me a church that would seat at least 2,100 people. I would make it the most attractive place in town. I would have plenty of lights in it, and the very best music that we could get. And there would be somthing doing in that church every night; there would be a picture show or something that would draw the crowds; it would be their entertainment.”

We do not think Dr. Stoves need worry about ever being offered a celestial crown; we do not see how he can ever get the chance to refuse one. The movies which he would use are made by regular actors; and if their use in the church is to make up the entertainment of the people it follows that the only logical result is a union of the theatrical and clerical professions.

As indicating the trespasses of the clergy profession upon the theatrical profession we note in the New York Evening Telegram, for Friday, November 25, 1921, the following advertisement—which we publish, free, as usual for the clergy:

“Motion Pictures. Rev. Clarence J. Harris, recognized expert, criticizes and reconstructs photoplays, stories ; class and private instruction. Interviews by appointment. Apply for terms 45 Pinehurst Avenue.”

Opposition to Dancing

DY THEIR creeds all evangelical churches oppose dancing and lead their parishioners to believe that they should not indulge in dancing. Yet we fmd the clergy encouraging, attending and holding dances.

The Reverend A. E. Cowley, Baptist minister at Columbus, Ohio, has made the statement that the churches should not place a ban on dancing, because men cannot be made good in that way. The Reverend J. J. Phelan, Baptist minister of Toledo, Ohio, has gone a step farther and said that in his opinion all modern churches should be equipped with bowling alleys and provisions for dancing. But when, a year or two ago, the rector of the Episcopalian church at Pontiac, Michigan, rented the biggest dance hall for one night in each week, and organized a community dancing club, the Baptist churches of the city denounced dancing as an improper amusement for Christian young people. Evidently our Baptist friends have not yet come to an agreement as to their dancing program.

The newspapers frequently contain notices of dances and card parties to raise money for the erection of Roman Catholic church buildings. Apparently the Roman Catholic Church has taken no position whatever against dancing. The Los Angeles Express tells of the bazaar at the Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, in a suburb, where the young people of the congregation are “kept in line” by movies, jazz bands and dancing. All over the United States dances are held in church parlors.

Opposition to Gambling

THE church is opposed to gambling, or is supposed to be, but there is a great deal of gambling done by those who are intimately interested in the church’s welfare. At a meeting of the Camden District of the New Jersey Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church,

held in Atlantic City, September 26, 1921, Reverend A. B. Carlin, referring to the almost universal use of gambling devices in the form of wheels at firemen’s fairs said:

“I made a round of these fairs, and every one was being looked after or operated by members of the seven churches of the town. In fact, a member of the official board of one church ran one of the wheels, and one of the Sunday school teachers spent money there.”

Some months ago an advertisement appeared in the Pas, Manitoba, Herald, containing the announcement that there is an opening at Atho-papuskoa for a minister who is also a good poker player. The advertisement stirred up a considerable amount of controversy pro and con among the clergy of Canada: and the job was finally taken by a young minister of Columbus, Ohio, who had the necessary qualifications. In the Canadian discussions it developed that the pastor of St. Stenhen’s Presbyterian church at Winnipeg, Reverend C. W. Gordon, was one of those in favor of a minister being able to play a good game of poker. Why not? They are doing everything else. .

The authorities in the Church of England are not just agreed as to where to draw the line on this gambling question. Dr. Wakefield, of Birmingham, Bishop of the Diocese, at a church congress held in his city urged the church to consider carefully how much bridge playing should be done by the members, and !:oir much racing and dabbling in stock-' and si.'ares, so that they might be able to <ii -tmguisli between a vicious propensity and “the harmless backing of a formed judgment”.

That is pretty rich. If your jud.'nnent is good and vou win your bets, you have shown Hint you have “the harmless backing of a formed judgment”; but if you have not had ecoo'-h exneri-ence to obtain a ni'-oly mon! led judgment respecting the thing"- about vbi-h you gamble, and you try desperately and c.Yp->nsively to get that experience, then you have a “vicious propensity” for gambbng that would make you a fit subject for discipline. The older and more seasoned gamblers would seem to have all the best of it in the Church of England if the Bishop’s program goes through. It ill becomes this sect, however, to comment unfavorable on gambling in view of “Old Trinity”, New York, with her eye on Wall Street.

Baseball is not exactly gambling. It used to .be. considered the cleanest of sports because so many men wore involved in the plays that it was considered impossible for gamblers to control it, until it developed that some of the players were deliberately making misplays in order that their sides might lose and certain gambling friends might win. Under the circumstances one can but wondei- just what force and effect in heaven would follow the prayer of Reverend Frederick McMillin, pastor of Walnut Hills Presbyterian Clmreh, Cincinnati, Ohio, who publicly offered the following prayer for victory for the Cincimulti Reds:

“Grant to our pitch -rs stnmgth and speed, control and d<•(•■•ptive curves, that the opposing batsmen may make few runs. Grant to our noble hitters many hits. May we all cheer and encourage our faithful players until the pennant is assured.”

Opposition to Fighting

OF COl'RSE the clergy are opposed to prizefighting: for it is very evident on the surface that this sport has nothing to commend it. In order that he might be able to describe to his congregation just how brutalizing a prize-fight is, the Reverend John Roach Straton, Pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, New York, and Regulator of All Thing", obtained a choice seat at the ringside in Jersey City when the Dempsey-Carpentier fight for the championship of the world was recently pulled off there. Dr. Straton described the audience in the following language, which is remarkable for the intimate knowledge it implies of the personnel and of all the devious ways of the under-world:

“It mount not simply th” presence, of one class of our defectives and moral due rerutes, but it gathered all the poison elements of our modern society. The gamblers li-'d the horse-racers and 1b” touts, the ‘lighthouses’, the home negbvt"rs, the baby-killers and the pug-dog nttr-es. the burglars. th - pickpockets and the strong-arm men. th-.- promoters, th” plutocrats and the profiteers, the I,'nnorites, the Anialckites and the painted Amazons. the double-livers, the society divorcees, and the polygon i bt movie stars (whose coming was heralded across the continent), the vaudeville performers, the proprietors of the degraded theatres, and all the other women-exploiters. the Sabbath-breakers, the church-scoruers and the God-defiers-”

Dr. Straton has a facile pen. He pictured the Dempsey-Carpentier fight in language which has made him famous. A part of his description follows:

“When we find multitudes of small boys betting even their pennies on a brutalizing fight; and when we see little girls in short dresses present in the arena taking up a collection for ‘charity’, while two big brutes right before them are pounding each other black and blue, Until one of them, gashed and broken, is finally knocked insensible; and when we see a world-famous society belle and church woman promoting a ‘charity’ prize-fight, attending it herself, and then coming out in the papers and glorifying it all, then, I say, it is full justification for the assertion that we have ‘hit the bottom with a thud’.”

Yes, the clergy business is at the bottom— down and out. However, tin* clergymen of Jersey City made a strenuous effort to prevent the Dempsey-Carpentier fight, but without avail. Charles W. Ervin, writing in the New York Call of the efforts which these men made to prevent the fight said:

“I am not defending the spectacle. I will not be at the ringside. But if 1 had my choice between being seated there with the followers of this sport and being aeated with the churchmen who are trying to stop it, after having supported the horrible game of murder named war, I‘would a thousand times rather be with the followers of the prize-ring. They arc veritable children of the light compared with the hypocrites who pretend a mercy they do not practice, and who are today what the Carpenter of Nazareth said of them two thousand years ago—‘whited sepulchres which indeed appear beautiful outwardly but are within full of dead men’s bones’.”

But, marvelous to tell, not all of the clergy are opposed to prize-fighting. Some of them are, as for example the three clergymen of Clinton, Massachusetts, who brought suit for an injunction restraining the selectmen and janitor from renting the town hall for boxing-bouts.

But Bishop MeLaglen, of Claremont, South Africa, is not opposed. How could he be when he had an advertisement inserted in the London All Sports Weekly challenging any bishop to box five rounds for a fund for the benefit of disabled soldiers? ,

Father Marnell, of St. Joseph's Church, Paterson, N. J., is not opposed. At one of the smokers recently held in the church-hall of the church with which he is connected he arranged a program calling for the services of sixteen trained pugilists to carry it out.

Dean Charles 1?. Brown, of the School of Religion at Yale University, is not opposed to fighting. In an address at Chicago, in May, 1920, he made the statement, “In every real man there is the instinct to fight. For centuries men have been willing to pay more to see a good prize-fight than any other form of entertainment."’ A Connecticut woman commenting on this remark said: “It must be disappointing to Dean Brown that there is such a meager account of the first fight on record (Genesis 4: 8), and that Jehovah was so unsportsmanlike as to rebuke the winner”.

There are plenty of other “Reverends" that . are not now opposed to fighting. On May 24, 1920, Alfred E. Smith, then Governor of New York State, signed a bill allowing and regulating boxing and sparring matches, and in his reasons tor signing the bill said: “Over a thousand clergymen of all denominations, who might be expected, if this bill did not deal cleanly with a legitimate sport, to oppose it, have written me urging my signature”.

In England the attitude of the clergy toward prize-fighting is so neutral that a speaker at a congress of the Peace Society, held at Westminster, in October, 1921, made the following remark:

“Since the war there have been no clerical protests against prize-fights. I do not wonder. The prize-fight is a clean, scientific thing compared with war. What did the churches do to prevent the war? What have they done to prevent reprisals in Ireland ? They have done nothing.”

In America the clergy seem determined to try to convince the world that they have no different standard of conduct from other men. When, in Columbus, Ohio, in December, 1919, the Reverend Angus Claphan, pastor of St. John’s Episcopal Church, engaged in a wrestling match with a local candy-maker, an Irishman, he explained to those present, before the bout started:

“We have come to the point where we can’t eternally damn the man in the street because he does not go to church. We have got to go chasing him in the street, and this is part of the chasing.”

Reverend James Campbell Ray, pastor of the Church of Christ, Disciples, Danbury, Connecticut, is not opposed. He recently acted as one of the seconds in a prize-fight in his city, having previously trained one of the boxers in a room in the church.

Reverend J. II. Jones, pastor of the First Congregational Church of Rosedale, a suburb of Kansas City, Mo., is not opposed. In May, 1920, he conducted a fighting and wrestling match in the basement of his church for the benefit of a building fund. The first event of the evening was a fight between two six-year-old boys, in which one of the little fellows waa

u. ' &■-

&r

badly hurt and cried—as what baby of six would not under such circumstances. In the next fight an imported pugilist, Tommy Murphy, drew blood from the nose of one of Reverend Jones’ flock. Subsequently the “Reverend” and the Sunday School Superintendent sprawled together on the floor in a wrestling match.

Reverend Earl A. Blackman, pastor of the First Christian Church of Chanute, Kansas, is not opposed. He instructs a class in boxing in the basement of his church, and is altogether what might be called a “live bird”. After refereeing a prize-fight one Saturday night in Wichita, Kansas, he flew back by airplane from Wichita to Chanute early Sunday morning so that he might be on time for the morning preaching service, which he later conducted.

Reverend Blackman is credited with having said that if he had his way half of Chanute’s fifteen church structures would be turned into dance halls, community centers, recreation rooms, gymnasiums, reading rooms, and billiard rooms. Here is a suggestion for the con-Bideration of those anxious to keep church buildings full of some kind of people at all hazards.

Reverend Blackman has also made another interesting remark, which is that if it was proper and legitimate for him to be known as the fighting parson when he was on the battlefield of France, it is equally proper and legitimate for him now to be known as the parson of the prize-ring. Reverend Blackman is quite right. If one is proper so is the other.

This breeding of a new type of “pastor” is bringing results. In Hobart, Oklahoma, a ticket agent was slow in selling a half-rate ticket to the Big-Church Representative that was waiting for it, whereupon the “Reverend” kicked open the door of the ticket-office and beat the agent. He did not make much by the transaction ; the judge fined him $17; the price of his half-rate ticket would have been $4.27.

Life now is not so dull even for the “Reverends” around New York. One of them, Reverend Ernest Whitcomb, pastor of the Evangelical Church of Jesus at North Bergen, N. J., a blind man> was dragged out of the pulpit by his successor, the Reverend Harold M. Ross, assisted by the Reverend A. Thompson and six other brave and strong men.

BREVITIES

Why Men Go to College By Charles Senior

OUR M. E. minister advertised his subject for Sunday 8.00 P. M. as “Why Men Go to College”. In his remarks he said they go “to get out of work”; and I believe him, at least as far as the M. D.’s go. Take away from the average M. D. his Latin and his power of suggestion and require him to tell the people the truth in plain English, and what would be the result? We would not have many M. D.’s.

Prescriptions are written in Latin, to hide from the people the fact that spiritus frumenti is just plain whisky, aqua is water, adeps is lard, allium is garlic, amylum is starch, capsicum is cayenne pepper, saccharum is sugar, etc. If the M. D.’s did not use Latin a good many of the little papers which we take to the drug stores, and for which the druggist charges 75c to $2, could be filled in our own kitchens for a cent or two.

About the first thing many doctors do when they are called, at $2 to $4 per call, is to try to get the patient into a hospital so as to get from $50 to $200 more. In some respects they are as bad as the preacher class.

Not So Bad

THE recent figures published by Bradstreet’s on the percentage of failures to the total number of concerns in business give the quietus to the superstition started two decades ago and still repeated, that 95 to 97 percent of the people that go into business fail. The facts regarding American business failures are as follows:

…