Thoughtful Moments

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 154, 12 September 1941, Page 2

Thoughtful Moments

SMITH AND THE CHURCH Who is Smith? He may be one of three types of individuals. He may be a working man. He is hard at it during six days oi\ the week, reads the newspapers and little eise, unless it be the 'Referee,' attends the football and cricket matches on Saturdays, looks in at the pub on his way home, has a gossip, or maybe a bet, with cronies over a pint of beer. On Sundays he sleeps late, rises, shaves, shuffles into a clean shirt, gets out into the verandah, communes with his pipe jtill lunch time, or maybe cares for the kiddies while his wife goes to church-—one of that crowd of whom it has been said: Who in the world's broad field of battle, In the bivouac of strife. You will find the Christian Soldier Represented by his wife.

That is Smith the working man —o decent, well-meaning, unimaginative fellow, "journeying between two eternities through a world of tragical meaning, to the significance of which he seems destined to be blind." Or Smith may be a business man, a merchant in a large or small way, busy in his office or behind his counter all the day and every day. When Sunday comes he feels the need of rest,, so he is off, on his bicycle

or motor car or excursion train, to the country, to a picnic en the hills or a lounge by the seaside. Oi again, Smith may be the student, the professor, the professional man, who. has read or heard of the higher criticism and its work upon the Bible, who has got a smattering of science and philosophy arid psychoanalysis, and who,, believes, or tries to believe, that these have knocked the bottom out of the ark of religion and left the churches, suspended, like Mahomet's coffin, in the air. These three classes, broadly speaking, keep up the supply of -the Smiths who don't go to church. Now let us hear what the Smith type has to say for himself.

One of Smith's commonest excuses for not going to church is that the preacher is not interesting. He lacks pep. He would like sometimes to stick a pin in him to make him look alive. Someone asked Beecher what he would do if he saw

a man asleep his congregation. Would he wake him up? "No, I would wake up the preacher." We have all heard preachers as dull a. c the one Sunday Smith tells about— So dry that if you bortyJi s in him sawdust would come out—. preachers who did not seem to beiieve what they were saying, nor

OUR SUNDAY MESSAGE (Supplied by the Whakatane Ministers' Association).

did they seem to care much whether their audience believed it or not. David Hume, the philosopher, ivas one of the Smith family. But once hearing John Brown, of Haddington, he said: "That is the man for me. He means what he says; he speaks as if Jesus Christ was at his elbow." There may be other excuses for a preacher's dullness, but none in the subjects given him to preach about. He has got the profoundest, the most beautiful, the most mysterious, the most romantic themes to deal with, and if he cannot make them attractive he had better qui I and clear out. Dr Johnson, meeting Fox at the club, the latter started talking—of all things—about Cataline's conspiracy. So Johnson calmly says "I withdrew my attention and thought of Tom Thumb." Preachers may often see Tom Thumb thinkers in their audience. It will be well for them, then, to find out where the blame is. If it is in themselves, as it often is, the Tom Thurno thinkers should be a warning. But it is not always the pulpit that i.? at fault. The pew must take its share. Smith himself ,must at least look interesting if he is to be interested. It is the audience makes th? actor. There are people and congregations that would stifle an archangel. You can't be interesting to ■ tombstones. If we are to have friends we must show ourselves friendly. If we are, to have interesting preachers we must ourselves be interested. Moreover, Smith must remember the different stages of culture that are always present in a congregation. There are the educated and the uneducated, the saint and the sinner, the young arid the oid, the merchant and the worker, the logic-lover and the im-agination-lover. How can one interest all these at once? It is. hardly possible to deal with difficulties that beset the student and the educated without being unintelligible to the dull and simple-minded. So Smith should give weight to this consideration. Moreover, he dees not go to church tc hear a man preach; he goes to worship. If the preaching js uninteresting that in itself is no reason for staying away from church. For the rationale of tise church is that it is a place where men go to "hear what the Lord will say to me." If the preacher helps to this it is so much to the good. If he does not, the duty of worship still remains the fundamental thing —a duty from which no dull i>reaching can ever abso;lve„. And at the worst Smith may remind himself of George Herbert's admonition: If all want sense, God takes a text and preaches patience. (To be continued)