What the Church Means to Me | Page 5

view, has always been the fact that so many other
churches say, "If you are not one of us, you are against us." It is almost
too personal to illustrate this from my own somewhat sad experience in
my early days, but every worker in wide fields must have felt it. Jesus
had specially to rebuke his own disciples for forbidding any man from
casting out devils. For whatever his opinions, he must be on our side.
Thank God there is a new spirit entering the churches, a larger spirit!
Only those can survive eventually who cultivate it. A spirit that wants
to use every effort to raise humanity, and seeks a return for its
outstretched hand, solely in the fact that it thereby grasps more of those
of "his brethren."
THE ONLY RIGHT WAY TO GROW
This is the way for a church to grow. The more it exercises its muscles
in pulling men out of their pits, the more dexterous, powerful, and
altogether desirable it will be, because the world will need it, and it will
no longer appeal only to those who prefer its form of worship or have a
bias towards its particular church polity. The law of demand and supply
should be recognized as applying equally to the church as to other
agencies. The desire to be needed, to find work, and not merely to be a
big party product can alone develop communions able to remove the

stigma of being either parasites or fads.
If a church is really anxious to fulfil its functions as set down in the
only book of instructions for each of them; if it wants to call forth latent
energy, as a Washington from his homestead, or a Lincoln from his
farm, it must cease to lay stress on orthodoxy and get to work where
the world really needs it. A surgeon may be ever so correct in his
knowledge of operative surgery, but he must find a practise or he is
useless. It is not so much for holding services, as for rendering services,
that the world is looking to the Church today.
HUMAN NEED THE TRUE OBJECTIVE
Today the Church should not only have a message for the strong and
well. In Christ's day it had a message for the sick and suffering also. I
admit that the medical profession has neglected too much the influence
that mind has over matter. It therefore frequently endeavors to treat a
human being as if he was nothing but a conglomeration of material
cells. But the Church, it seems to me, is making an infinitely more
serious mistake in entirely abandoning the valuable aid it can give the
physician when he has found that no organic cause accounts for the
symptoms of his patient. What is known in America as the Emmanuel
Movement has my entire sympathy. It is an honest effort of sane men to
bring to the aid of physical sufferers demonstratively valuable spiritual
influences.
THE MINISTER ONLY A SERVANT
The priest or minister is the navigating lieutenant of the Church ship.
He is the tactician of the army. He is the specialist whose experience is
invaluable. He is not called to be one whit holier than I am, but being
on a lofty pedestal he will possibly be more closely watched. His,
indeed, is a pitiable condition if he has not the spirit of his Master. His
creed may seem infallible, his faith most orthodox, but for my part I
would rather not be so sure of what I did believe, and pray with "the
man after God's own heart," "Teach me to do the thing which pleases
thee." This is a sure step on the road to the answer of, "Lord, I believe,
help thou mine unbelief." I am convinced there would be no lack of

worthy candidates for the ministry if only the churches would lay more
stress on the infinite privilege of human service it opens up. There are
more medical students than are needed.
THE FUTILITY OF THE INTELLECTUAL TEST
Is it then a necessity, or an advisable thing, that before a man can
become a worker with the Church he must pass an intellectual test? Is it
imperative for him to find exactly what he does not believe? That
makes it almost impossible for him to get back afterwards. The effect
on the unfortunate heathen of warring messengers, all calling for
different faith tests for membership in Christ's Church, has always
seemed to me little short of disastrous. The theory of Christianity
wouldn't convince the heathen of the Congo that religion is desirable,
or make a Russian Jew wish to adopt Russian Christianity. The same
applies to the Turkish views of Austrian Christianity, or the attitude of
the Indian of South America towards Christian