CHURCH MEMBERSHIP.

Press, Volume L, Issue 14975, 23 May 1914, Page 16

CHURCH MEMBERSHIP.

STANDARD DEMANDED BY THE AGE.

A conference on "The Demand of the Age. Upon the Church Member" was the opening event of the annual meeting of thje Surrey Congregational Union, held recently. The Rev. E. W. Co'tman, B.D. (Farnham), one of the risin" young men in the Surrey Union, onened the discission in a, very able paper. The demand of the age oh the church member was threefold, ho said; spiritual, social, and intellectual. In epiritual and moral matters the age's ■ standards —for the professing Christian—were high. It was keen on'scenting hypocrisy; it despised the Church that was captured by its own commercial ideals. Its great demand was that the church member should live his own essential life — live as if he indeed had a peu'iar possession, a new birth. For examp'e: (t was tired oT the antagonism of the saints. It expected when a man I preached the duty of public worship 1 that he should not go to church once when >he might go twice. It expected a man who urged the sanctity of Sunday not to make labour him elf on tli3 ■slightest pretext.. The social demand of-" the age took the form of questions such as: "Is Christianity out of date? Has'it any gui-lance for "th>! complexity of. modern civuieation ? Has it more than a message to the individual soul?" If they, could not answer "Yes"' to those questions they had no right to be. MrColtman felt the difficulty of the attitude of the pulpit in relation to political and social questions, but the duty •of the church member was perfectly clear. He had to aoply his Christian principles to the life ne was bound to live, and to illustrate their application to all social relations. Thus, he could not receive big dividends if big dividends meant sweating; if he was;a master he must oay a living wage, and so forth. The intellectual demand of the age, though often shallow, could at least allow their ministers freedom to answer the age's questions in, the language of tho ago. This meant that tho old terminology must go. To break with terminology was not easy for people who expressed their own tich experience in the old- wav, But church members should patiently and freely allow their ministers to present the message from the modern standpoint and in modern laneuago so that th" man in their congregations should bo attracted by it.