THE EMPTY PEW

Evening Star, Issue 19797, 22 February 1928, Page 9

THE EMPTY PEW

A PRESENT-DAY PROBLEM The problem of the empty pew is among the subjects dealt with in characteristically outsjoken fashion by tho Bev. B. 0. Bourchier, of Hamj)steacl, in his volume, ‘Safety Last,’ just published. “Empty pews tell their own tale,” he says. “The moral bankruptcy of the churches to-day has become a by-word among men. And the reason P Because wo ministers, unlike the actor who speaks fiction as though it were fact, so often speak fact as if it were fiction. Tho churches, if they are to regain the respect of the masses, must begin by setting their own bouses in order, by submitting to a thorough and drastic process of reform, especially in the direction of up-to-dateness, and, above all, in the way of reality. A living church will never want for adherents.” He denounced “the kill-joy type of religion, which is working such irretrievable harm everywhere. The invocation of Christ’s religion to discountenance out-of-doors games on Sundays is the sheerest blasphemy. The utter aimlessness of our English Sunday is responsible for more wrongdoing than anything else. I was once asked ‘ Are non-churchgoers wicked?’ and replied bluntly ‘I do not know.’ All that I do know is that neither wickedness nor goodness can be said to be determined merely by attendance at church or chapel. People who regularly frequent a place of worship are often the reverse of good, while thousands who never cross the threshold of a religious building simply go through life irradiating kindness and doing lovely acts.” The author divides churchgoers into four classes:—

Those who are devout but unattractive. ■“

Those who are attractive, but not, strictly speaking, devout Those who are neither the one nor the other. Those who are both. “Take the first class. We ' know them. We meet them every day. We suffer from them. Yet how devout they are, and yet—and yet, so unattractive, so superior, so hard, so sanctimonious. They do religion incalculable harm, because they give a false view ol it and put others off. “The late war brought me into contact with thousands of the second class. The world is happily full of them today. They do not trouble church much, if at all. Do you blame them? I do not. We have put them off by some inconsistency, by some mannerism, by our melancholy kill-joy attitude towards life, by our sheer lack of humanity. ~ , , , “ Of the third, the less said the better. They are hypocrites and despicable. “Finally, there is the fourth class, the devout and attractive. Happy people are these, for their feet • are planted on the rock, and life for them moves, not' in the shadow, but in the sun. Why is it that we are not all kinder than we are? How much the world needs it. How easily it is done. Give pleasure. Never lose a chance.”