372 RELIGIOUS WORK 



So with the classes for instruction and service. The Gradgrind 

 theory of facts has not half the reason that the Squeers method 

 of practice has. You remember how Dickens makes the horrible 

 Yorkshire schoolmaster teach his boys how to spell " Wash 

 windows " and then send them to do the thing itself. He was a 

 rough specimen, and yet he had a crude grasp of truthful method. 

 " Everybody at work " is the marching order of a living church 

 to-day. To inspire with hunger the minds and hearts of people 

 is the best glory of preaching and ministering. Hence our innu- 

 merable agencies, our institutional churches, our actual forces 

 doing real service in every parish. You can't press them back. 

 They are done with the old-fashioned ways, and unless they are 

 well taught, as they are ready to be, they will soon be done with the 

 old-fashioned creeds. Fling out the folds of the forms of faith! 

 Let the breezes of God's pure air drive away the dust, and bring 

 each expression into the light of meaning, and there will be no 

 danger of faith failing. But work men will, and if the Church can- 

 not show how the creed sanctions and guides their w r ork, then the 

 Church has lost her inspiration! 



(2) Community work has to do with all the advances and re- 

 forms of the neighborhood. The Church has to lead in education, 

 in philanthropy, in slum elevation, in moral conflicts. She need 

 not assume control, but she must enter the army of toilers. Why 

 should men stand aloof and ignorant when the question of schools 

 and colleges is concerned? Why should great philanthropic en- 

 deavors like the Young Men's Christian Association and Young 

 Women's Christian Association, and the Charity Organization 

 Society, be left, if not without support, at least without recogni- 

 tion often? Why are hospitals and homes so largely separate 

 from any church interest, and frequently left without definite and 

 regular spiritual ministration? And in a far greater degree must 

 the morals of a community be the care of religion. The question 

 of temperance and the saloon must engage the church, or else 

 the church is doomed. Dishonesty and gambling must be fought 

 wherever and whenever found, as vigorously as heresy or esteemed 

 heresy was fought in the Middle Ages. If religion had always ex- 

 pressed its authority and acted thereon in connection with purity, 

 we would have no divorce question to puzzle our minds with its 

 problems and to break our hearts with its pagan ravages. Church 

 work implies a full and large meeting of these questions and evils 

 both intellectual and practical. Preaching and warning must unite 

 with personal endeavor and redemption, and religion must show 

 herself in the field. In fact, the divinely-given place as a leaven 

 in the community which religion holds demands a zeal which no 

 criticism, no ecclesiastical aristocracy, no dread of contamination 



