The Church for the People [pp. 134-139]

THE LADIES' REPOSITORr.
very eaves of our temples are multitudes as
godless and as essentially heathen as the Brahmins of Hindostan. The Church must go out
to them. A score of godly men and women
might be sent out every Sunday from every
Church in every city, bearing a simple, practical Gospel to multitudes who never bear a discourse on spiritual things. Can we not learn
fiom the Great Master the power of direct personal appeal to the erring and the outcast?
More religion of the common, most practical,
every-day sort, is the sovereign need of the
mass even of intelligent people to-day.
There must be no "eclipse of faith" in the
Church, however dark may be the eclipse in the
world. She must prove her faith in the unseen,
eternal, and divine, by her more earnest spiritual life; by using the world, but not abusing
it; by visiting the fatherless and the widow in
their affliction, and keeping herself unspotted
from the world.
This is a high standard of Christian life and
activity, but it is the only standard consistent
with the grandeur of the Gospel; any thing
less than this seems a contradiction to the Gospel and gives the lie to our profession. It is
only Christianity realized and in earnest, the
only Christianity which can impress the realistic and earnest age in which we live. We hail,
therefore, every movement that looks like bringing Christianity practically and earnestly forward into the necessities of human society. In
this practical, humanitarian age, the Church
must show herself of practical value, of essential and indispensable need to society, or society
will place but a small estimate upon her. She
must be the leader and director of the progressive and reformative movements of the age, especially of every movement to ameliorate and
improve the condition of men and nations, or
these movements will go on without her, and
she will be left standing in the background of
society, an obsolete and effete thing of the past.
WWhat is true, and right, and wise, and Christian in all these movements, she must assist;
what is unwise and unchristian, she must expose and correct. She must be felt everywhere
and in all things that affect society as a great
moral power, and a power always on the side
of man's best interests, on the side of wisdom
and goodness.
Christianity has had to bear the burden of
the unhappy history of a Church which, through
many centuries, occupied~a position of hostility
to every discovery, every advancement, every
reformation. Discoveries in knowledge had to
be fought out against her authority and influence, and reformation had to be carried forward
in despite of her violent opposition and persecution. Earnest and far-seeing spirits found
her generally in the way-the immovable barrier to every advancement of the race. Nearly
every earnest spirit of European history has
had to cry out against this terrible incubus,
pressing down every aspiration of humanity,
and impeding every movement toward the liberation of nations and the emancipation of men.
Thie secret of half the infidelity-of Europe
and Great Britain to-day, is the mistake of even
earnest, thinking men attributing to Christianity the wrongs and oppressions of Romianism,
and mistakirng the aristocracy, and exclusiveness, and immobility, and millinery of the
Church of England for the religion of Jesus
Christ. The Church of the nineteenth century,
the only Church that will have power, and influence, and success, the only Church that will
win the hearts of the people, and rise above the
contempt of earnest, thinking men, is the
Church that will embody in her life the spirit
and life of Christ, whose doors are open to all
for whom Christ died, whose felt mission is to
all whom Christ redeemed, and that is in sympathy with every thing that pertains to the happiness, the welfare, the elevation of all whom
Christ loves, the Church that is with the people
and for the people-rthe Church of humanity, as
Christ is the Redeemer of humanity.
The Christianity for the present and the future, for the city and for the country, is a Christianity that carries with it the demonstration of
its own divine origin and power in the holy,
earnest, and spiritual lives of those who profess
to believe it. The most powerful and convincing argument for the nineteenth century will be
the argument presented by a Church whose life
is the visible exemplification of the doctrines
and principles of the Gospel; a Church that
lives and works after the manner of Christ; a
Church that exhibits an activity and earnestness commensurate with the sublime truths
which she teaches, with the momentous issues
which she presents, and the immortal destinies
of men which she professes to believe.
Let us have a Christianity full of Christ, full
of the Holy Ghost, fresh, and strong, and fearless, in all its supernatural and heavenly characteristics, with no concessions, no compromises
from the high and divine standard set up by
Christ and his apostles, and a Church full of
faith, whose life realizes the doctrines she believes, and whose zeal sends her forth to all
men, the rich and the poor, the high and the
low, as the embassador of Christ, bearing in
one hand the revelation of the righteous indignation of God against sin, and in the other the
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