Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 January 1883 — EMPTY CHURCHES. [ARTICLE]

EMPTY CHURCHES.

Xfhy Certain HlnUtan Fail to “Got at* Their Congregation*. [Prom the Now York Tribunal The number of churches throughout the country that are invariably full, not to say crowded, on eaoh reQurring Sunday is not large. We doubt if it reaches onc-quartor of one per cent, of the Aggregate. The majority of ohnrohes are never more than two-thirds full. A great many are never more than a third full. Not a few are uniformily as “sparsely settled" as a very new country. Yarions explanations have been suggested to account for this state of things, all of which are plausible. But it oocurs to us than one of these upon which no unusual stress has ever been laid is worthy of the serious consideration of the ministry.. We mean the explanation which refers the smallness of the average attendance upon church-ser-vices to the fact that sermons are either entirely read or are preached from more or less copious notes. The lawyer addressing a jury, a politician on the stump, are not confined to notes; why should ministers be ? Is not the method employed by lawyers and stump-speak-ers better calculated to engage and hold attention ? Obviously so. It is a human instinct to believe that when a man is earnest, when the message he has to deliver comes from his heart as well as from his head, he will find any but the most casual and infrequent reference to a manuscript impossible, since be realizes that it can only be accomplished by breaking the chain of attention that connects the pulpit and the pew. A well-known lawyer onoe said to a friend: “When I was young in the profession I was assigned to the defence of a man who was indioted for murder. Whep I came to sum up, being profoundly impressed with the importance to my client of what I had to submit to the jury, I departed from oustom and read a carefully prepared speech. No sooner had I done so. than I regretted that I had not thrown aside my notes. I found that I could not get at the jury.” Soores of ministers are constantly complaining that they cannot “get at" their congregations. They are not ministers who are independent of their manuscripts. Show us a minister who is reckoned the most successful and we will show you one who preaches without notes. There is muob sense in the eulogium passed upon a popular divine? by an old hunter. “I like him," said Nimrod, “because he shoots without a rest.” The preaching that is philosophic, reflective, metaphysical, possibly without serious disadvantage may be done from the closely followed written page. So, too, may that preaching be whiph is to interest a cultivated audience as a fine lecture would. But the preaching which is calculated to arouse and quicken must fellow not that method nor yet the extemporaneous method, which, except in rare instances, has its outcome in loose and inconsecutive thought, but a method which leaves th% preacher as free to come into personal, persuasive relations with his hearers as if he were a lawyer or a stump-speaker. We are aware that some ministers say that they cannot trust themselves to get up in their pulpits without a firm reliance on their notes. The implication of course is that they hold that they had better preach with notes than" not preach at all. But it is a question whether poor preaching, preaching that does not take hold, is not worse than no preaching. No man would feel that he had a call to be a jury-lawyer who found that he could not “shoot without a rest” in court. Why should a man with similar limitations feel that he has a call to address for his fellows in relation to matters of the first importance? A few weeks ago a minister in a neighboring • city who preaches to more empty than occupied pews, took for the subject of bis discourse the decline of religion. He proved the decline by reference to a mass of suggestive statistics and concluded by an earnest appeal to his hearers to join him in supplication to the throne of grace for a revival. The matter of the sermon was excellent, but the manner ? From first to last the speaker was closely confined to his notes, and the urgent appeal with which he concluded was shorn of nearly all its force sincff it came from the lips of a man not leaning toward bis hearers, but bending over his desk; not looking into the eyes of those whom he desired to touch, but upon the printed page. The sermon ought to have produced a deep impression. Apparently it produced none. There was no magnetism in it. A poet of the florid school was once criticized as having nothing to say but saying it magnifioiently. The trouble with so many ministers is that they have much to say but thoy say it with distressing effect. If a public sentiment could be organized intolerant of the relianoe of ministers upon notes, the effect would doubtless be to exclude some very worthy men from the pulpit. But it would eertaifily lead to the survival of the fittest. And in this field above all others none but the fittest ought to survive. -*■- —- Too Active. —Your little son is perhaps troublesome. He is never quiet, and is constantly demanding attention. How shall you abate this nuisance? You may try to destroy these bad habits by scolding him, by rebukes, by lectures, by punishments. That is one way) but not the best. These bad habits often spring from an instinct of activity, and intense desire to do sometliing, which the Creator has given the child as a means of mental and moral growth. In trying to pull up the tares you are in great danger of rooting out the wheat also. If you succeed by force in changing his disagreeable torment of perpetual activity into a dull quiet, you havo changed a bright boy into a dull one. A better way than destroying tliis tendency is to fulfill it by giving him plem ty of occupation of an innocent kind. Give him a heap of sand to dig, blocks of wood to build houses with, a box of tools and boards to saw. „Set him at some work, useful or interesting, or, at least, harmless. He will like all this better than he likes mii- • chief. All his irregular activity was a cry for something to do. Give him that, and you will have no further trotible.