The Church's Picture Galleries. 



535 



can for a moment be compared with this oppor- 

 tunity of suddenly exploiting in the service of 

 religion 4,000 buildings, situated in the very 

 heart of our densest population, which are the 

 favourite assembling places of four millions of 

 our people? It is not a case where we have to 

 hunt for sites. Cleverer and smarter men than 

 we have selected them already. The buildings 

 are already erected. Their week-day congrega- 

 tions amount to millions. We have only to open 

 the Cinemas on Sunday with the right kind of 

 pictures presented as parts of an ethical, educa- 

 tional, and evangelical service to reach millions 

 who at present never " darken the doors of the 

 house of the Lord." 



AN OPPORTUNITY NOT TO BE MISSED. 



Is it not an almost inconceivable scandal that 

 an opportunity so great should be offered for our 

 acceptance, and that no one from Land's End • 

 to John o' Groat's seems to realise what might 

 be done if the Churches ran the Cinemas on 

 Sunday as part of their regular machinery for 

 reaching and rousing the people? 



There are one or two indispensable conditions 

 to be borne in mind before we consider the 

 practical possibilities of a Cinema Sunday Mis- 

 sion. The Cinema should be used, not for the 

 desecration of Sunday, but for its preservation. 

 That entails two things — first, that the Cinema 

 Sunday Services should never be permitted for 

 purposes of commercial or financial gain. 

 Whatever balance, if any, resulting from Sun- 

 dav Cinema shows should be handed over to 

 some recognised local public, religious, or 

 charitable use ; secondly, while it may be as 

 necessary and as unobjectionable to hire an 

 operator as it is now to hire an organist, no 

 operator already employed for six days a week 

 should be allowed to w^ork on the seventh day ; 

 and thirdly, instead of charging so much for 

 admission, as is done on week-days, admission 

 should be given only to those w'ho had bought 

 the Cinema Sunday Programme, which would 

 contain, for the information of the folks at home 

 and the refreshment of the memory of the 

 spectator, a popularly written description of th^ 

 pictures on show. By this means there would 

 be secured the regular distribution of interesting 

 reading matter to a wider public than is reached 

 to-day by any Religious Tract Society or 

 Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. 



CINEMA SUBSIDIES FOR CHURCH OBJECTS. 



The Sunday Mission being thus financially 

 possible, it is easy to see that a strong and 

 vigorous Church might find it possible to relieve 

 the financial strain upon its poor fund by a 

 subsidy from the Cinema takings. The next 



question is, whether it would be possible for the 

 Sunday Mission to run as popular, as drawing, 

 as fetching a show as that provided on the 

 week-day for the Cinema crowd. Let us admit 

 at once that there are many of those who go to 

 Cinema shows whom we could not hope to 

 attract by anything we could serve up in the 

 proposed Mission. Comic tomfoolery attracts 

 many, and pictures of crime or of conjugal dis- 

 cord would be ruled out. Those who go to 

 Cinemas solely as they buy a penny dreadful 

 would not attend the Mission. But then, if we 

 allow that they compose half the Cinema crowd, 

 there would still remain the other half who 

 would enjoy any show that had plenty of pic- 

 tures, even if the merely fantastic and sensa- 

 tional films were excluded. There is also, be it 

 remembered, a very large public which at 

 present goes regularly neither to church nor to 

 Cinema shows. It is not anti-Christian or 

 irreligious. It would enjoy a good heartv 

 religious service devoid of churchiness — we see 

 this in the Wesleyan mission halls — and it 

 would relish pictures which were seen to be 

 remembered, instead of being shown only to kill 

 the time. 



THE PICTURE GALLERY OF THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH. 



It would, I am convinced, be quite possible 

 to run a Cinema .Sunday show in many places 

 on lines as distinctly religious as the services, 

 let us say, in the Lyceum Theatre. Those who 

 prefer sticking to the old ways and limiting the 

 utilisation of the Cinema on Sunday to the 

 salvation of the souls of their people could do 

 so, and everyone would rejoice over their 

 success. But in putting forward this suggestion 

 of a Cinema Sunday Mission I am at least as 

 anxious to utilise the Sunday for ethical, educa- 

 tional, and evangelical purposes as I am to 

 exploit the Cinema halls which are at present 

 unused. The worst of services run on strictly 

 devotional lines is that no one attends them but 

 strictly devotional people. Now the great note 

 of the Cinema Sunday Mission should be the 

 excessive width and breadth of its appeal. It 

 should be the picture gallery of that universal 

 Church which Longfellow described as being — 



As lofty as the Love of God 



And wide as are the wants of man. 



It should adopt the motto of the Son of Man : 

 I come that ye might have life and have it 

 more abundantly." And as the heavens declare 

 the glory of God and the firmament showeth 

 forth His handiwork, as the world and all the 

 things that are therein were the work of His 

 hands, the Cinema would endeavour to set forth 

 before the eyes of the man in the street on 

 .Sunday some picture of the glories and the 



