WHY PEOPLE DO NOT GO TO CHURCH.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 2504, 28 July 1888, Page 5 (Supplement)

WHY PEOPLE DO NOT GO TO CHURCH.

Notwithstanding the great and growing influence of Christianity, the proportion of people who seldom or never attend tho services of the church is large enough to excite grave concern. Exactly how large this proportion is it is impossible to diwcover, hut it is difficult to find any church in the colony whose average attendance h equal to its membership. Inquiry shows that out of the large number of persons who aro not regular attendants upon religious worship, many have come from religious families, and were brought up in habits of church attendance which they havo now abandoned. It would be unjuet to call thorn irreligious men, They undoubtedly are not very strict in the observance of Sunday, but in the main they are conscientious, honest, truthful, lawabiding, industrious and intelligent. They are very far from being thoughtless upon religious subjects. They recognise the ideal character of Jesus Christ, and admit tho binding force of his moral teaching, but with the popular theology they have little sympathy. Their creed i.-s a very simple one, and so far as the future is concerned, consists mainly in the feeling that " God will not be hard on a 1 poor fellow who has tried to do right." Their position toward the church is not that of hostility, but of indifference. Its services do not interest them, its teachings do not instruct, and its beneficial influence upon society they perhaps forget. Faults on both sides have occasioned this alienation of sympathy from the ehurch. On ouo side it ia partly that fatal conservatism which has so often retarded the influence of Christianity, so frequently antagonising accepted truths, so long insisting on doctrines that have lost their power to interest or save; partly it has been that still more fatal indifference—it must be culled so—to human welfare, which has allowed large classes to drift away without timely effort to recover them, and which has sometimes suffered irreat evils to remain unrebuked, while platitudes concerning conduct wero repeated until they became wearisome. There has been an atmosphere of dullness in many churches, which is in too great contrast with the activity of life outs-ide. While the piety (if the pulpit has been great, its practical judgment has often been obscured The pulpit undoubtedly affords the highest possible position from which to guide human thought. It surrounds a speaker with all the sacred influences of religion, gives him the wide field of human interests from which to choose hie topic, summons art and music to give variety uud charm to his ministrations, and attaches an exalted meaning to everything ho says. If in this high and favourable pesition he loses his hold of the public mind, if he narrows his vision aud repeats formulas and hearsays merely, he cannot be surprised if his congregation falls off. People will hear him for the sake of religion until they are intolerably weary, and then they will go elsewhere and drift, after two or three sinrilar experiences, out of sympathy with the ohurch.

Ou the other band, it has been forgotten that the church, whatever its faults or weakness, is still the great guardian of the morals of society; its aim ia the salvation of mankind in the highest sense ; and that its maintenance in every community is thoroughly in the interest of education, culture, morals, the rights of property and every other good cause; but it can nover do its worth adequately without the assistance of all good men. It is by uo means hopelessly stationary. Whatever it should be, but now is not, it is in their power to make it. There are many clergymen who would gladly see niuo tenths of their congregation go elsewhere if their places could bo filled by tho active, intelligent and inquiring men who have come to the hopeless conclusion that the church has no message for them. If they would mako a few experiments they would easily find that there are helpful voices, speaking in other tones than those .if the past, and trying to bring the religion of Jesus Christ into living touch with the lifo and wants of to-day. The work of winning back its alienated constituency should bo undertaken by the church at. once. It cannot be done by revivals, or missions here and there. It needs in large measure a reformation, [f Christianity were really Christ-like there would be no alienation. When the .Itarch is really helpful, men will turn to it,, and whunivcr large numbers turn ■ way from its ministrations, after once laving sought them, it is a sign that it is no longer fulfilling its office and affording men the help they crave.

It is estimated that the biggest guns, •iifj'-e on the Italian irouclads, and some (if the largest ISiielish guus, can throw i shot a distance of eleven miles with c:oiisiilewlile accuracy. London Society says that in five or six roars 18.0U0 Irish girls who had been i-isi-ted to emigrate »jnt home £240,000 ■ terliiiET, " ii uroat part of whio)i has gono ;n payment of impossible rents to absentee iandbnls." Tim Si-anNli committee having in lihirgi: the Christopher Columbus coleiirations olfVr* u prize of £2,000 for the 'ie<t. book in any language on the srcngraphiaal discoveries of Portuguese explorers prior to the timo of Magellan. Work on the ship canal to connect Manchester with the sea is being pushed with a rapidity that astonishes the British paper.", aul a great steam scoop that bites out four tons of soil at a mouthful is pictured as very remarkable. Twentv-two editions of the May number of the North American Review have heuu issued. It was Mr Gladstone's article on Colonel Ingersoll's idea 3 that caused this unprecedented sale. Isabella, the ex-Queen of Spain, has grown so stout that she has had to have a carriage made with an opening at the back that falls and forms a doorway to allow her to enter. It cost £1000. Ik Augusta, Ga., the other day, a tree was cut in the forest at 6 o'clock in the morning, and by night it had turned into printed papers, and the people were read« iog iq them the news of the day.