ENGLISH CONGREGATIONAL UNION

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1617, 7 December 1912, Page 9

ENGLISH CONGREGATIONAL UNION

THE CHAIRMAN'S ADDRESS. In his presidential address at the meeting of the Congregational Union at Manchester 011 October 15, Dr. Aileney said the question for a church was. not its size, but its efficiency; not its .numbers, but its powers. Was the Church in Christendom, he asked, making politics more just, international relations inoro pacific, trade more honest, recreation' more wholesome, social dealing more brotherly, homes more sweet and happy, lives more true and clean? Were . the towns and villages in which their own churches were planted marked by less drunkenness, less gambling, less impurity, less hard dealing-than would bo the case' if those churches were not there? If so,. • they were not failing. . ■ • In spite of shameful lapses, he dared to assert that, it was tho Church that had held up the torch of progress and led the world on towards the Kingdom of God through all the centuries. When people told him that the Church was an .anachronism,. a mass of worn-out apparatus only fit for the scrap-heap, he asked, What is to supersede it ?—tlie newspaper ? the day school? the science course? socialism? syndicalism? Since none of these things had yet accomplished the redemption of society, was it not a little hazardous to- name them in preference to tho society, which, with all its faults and failing's, had proved in the past to bo so. largely God's instrument to the saving of the race? Grant that the Church had often failed; what else had succeeded? "Do you say," asked the chairman, "that if we preached -better . we should havo these people at'our feet? The great preaclier can always command his congregation, although I am afraid that this is to a considerable extent at the expense of the. little preacher. My impression is that the average of preaching- is now higher than it ever .was before, both in'careful preparation and in conscientious effort. 1 do not believe that an ordinary congregation-to-day .would suffer patiently an infliction 'of the cheap rhetoric that passed for eloquence a' generation or two ago. But- while the preacher, is doing his work better, his hearers are becoming lrforo exacting. More than tii.it, even where the preacher is known to bo capable and sincere, tlio old authority of the pulpit has disappeared. .Congregations no longer sit under their minister; they are moTe inclined to sit on him—at least in exercising the privilege of free criticism. There is no question, that it is becoming increasingly ■ difficult .to induce people to listen to sermons. They.think they.have heard it all before—hundreds of times. Some of them will more readily resort to a lecturer on theosophy, imagining that he can give them something new, as though Plotinus had only .just ieen discovered. "I know what I shalK.be told in reply to this. It will be said that if we would .-fling -over rour. philosophy and our critic cism and preach-' the simple Gospel tlie'.' people would flock to hear us and readily' accept our 'message.- Now there .is a great truth, wrapped.up in- that admonition. I think' it possible that some of us may be. missing tlie markiby not dwelling with'sufficient emphasis on tho central truths of our message." Preaching did i much. If it > had. more freshness.' force,, and, fire, more soul, life, and inspiration, .no-doubt its ,-results would be greater. And yet the palpable facts' of the situation proved the futility of the hope that by means of preaching alone or mainly they would master their difficulties.

The method of exhortajtion proving to be inadequate,' lio submitted ,that they might do better with the niethgd of education. That meant that they, must concentrate -attention more assiduously on the proper objects of education and those spheres of life where it was most practicable. In other words,' tho main effort of the. Church in preparing, the way for the coming oij the Kingdom should be in the training of the young.