RELIGIOUS ACTIVITY.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1102, 15 April 1911, Page 9

RELIGIOUS ACTIVITY.

"ELEGANT PAGANS." CHUP.CU AND THE MASSES. An outspokou address was delivered on March 111 by the l<nv. A. 13. Collins, of J'iiiki-i.ie, South Australia, at the Austral'isian JJaptist Congress, hold in Melbourne, on "The Bapli;!. and the .Masses.' , He said the Baptist Church would not find the worst .sinners in tho shuns, but in the suburbs, when; elegant pagans played g:ilf on .Sunday morning, bridge on Sunday night, and on the other .six days of the week rode in imitur-ears to worship at the shrine of the geddos?, "Getting on." Tho ideal Church was when; rich and poor met together but th:;t was not the actual. There were chinches under the Southern Cross where, if members were passed through a'sieve, there would not bo found a dozen working men; ami there wore other churches where, if a r.till finer sieve was used, not a single representative of wealth and leisure would be caught. Tho Church and tho musses were at cross "purposes. Then; was no need to marshal an array of figures. The fact of alienation was not seriously denied. AYas it any wonder that the workers reproached tile Church which acquiesced in a .'system which made one class unwhobsomely rich and (loomed tho opposite class to wage s lifelong struggle against conditions that sapped the. physique, blunted the moral sense, r.nd embittered tho soul? Tho working-man needs to bo Christianised, ihe Church needs to be democratised. (Applause.) Tho Church should attract, hut not with buffoonery in the pulpit or vulgarity in the pew. The best class of working men hates to ho treated as a sentimentalist or a simpleton. Working men are repelled by weak, sentimental hymns devoid of. poetry, and sot to joggy tunes. If wo are. to save the masses, our Baptist Churches must needs crucify, prejudice, abandon antiquated methods, recast' time-worn phraseology, and, taking up the cross, go outside the camp, bearing the, reproach of Christ." (Loud applause.) The Rev. J. 11. Cioble, Footscray, said that ho was -i trades' unionist, and he hoped that God would silence him the day lie foveot that ho was a trades unionist. ■ The attitude of the Church to the masses was not to he one of patronage. Tho worker did not want ix-'of and blankets, lie wanted justice..

The Hav. James Barker, president of the New South Wales Union, said that Baptists had been atrociously maligned, and ho know no Baptist minister who played to tho rich or patronised the worker. He had no faivh in beautiful churches or any fads. At most ornate churches, one was afraid to put his hat beneath tho seat. One man could bring a horse to water, hut ten could not make him drink. Did those drink who came to institutional churches? (Voices: Yes; too many of them.) (Laughter. , ) Tho message of tho Gospel was what should be preached, and not treatises- on sociology by men who know little about the subject. The Rev. Grimshaw Binns (AV.A.) said that if tho preaching was up to the mark, thorn would be no need to scour tho stroots for tho hostile arid indifferent. If they were to win tho masse. , ;, they should have to recognise it was their duty to discover what wore the elements in the social system that were dragging men dowji, and then dostrov that evil. An energetic action in sceial affairs would remove the prejudices that the working men fool against the Church, because of its apathy.

Mr. J. Packer (New South Wales} thought that the Church : should not play down, .but play up, to men. Quito as much as_ tho poor did tho. wealthy need to strive to triumph over their environment. " ■