USA > Connecticut > Middlesex County > Cromwell > History of the First church in Cromwell, 1715-1915; > Part 7
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It is for the churches of our faith to face squarely the great moral frontiers. Yonder in non-Christian lands, black men and brown men, yellow men and red men, await the influence of Christ's gospel ! Here in our own land if you
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"arise and go toward the south" you will find "a man of Ethiopia" waiting for some one to guide him as to the meaning of what he reads; waiting to be baptized into all the helpfulness of our Christian institutions ! Here in our own land also the ends of the earth have come together, massing themselves in all our great cities! The immigrants, having broken their home ties and their old religious affiliations, constitute one of our greatest problems. In the face of it all the church that is at ease is already accursed of God for not coming up to the help of the Lord against the mighty. It is for every Pilgrim church to build strongly and generously on that side of its four-square life.
III. THE TASK OF SOCIAL SERVICE.
The word social is in danger of being overworked. In some quarters the people show signs of weariness when the social applications of religion or the social activities of Christian service are being urged. The word had to be overworked to break up the fallow ground of a long-lying, contented individualism.
But the idea of social service is not something new and fantastic, a novelty that some clever man worked out over night. It has been one of the chartered rights and duties of the Christian movement from the very first. When Jesus made His first public address there in the synagogue at Nazareth He struck the social note fairly and firmly. "The spirit of the Lord is upon Me because He hath anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor. He hath sent Me to bind up the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and to set at liberty them that are bruised."
Those words might have been embodied literally in Lincoln's First Inaugural Address or in his Emancipation Proclamation. They are there in spirit. They might be engraved literally on the doorpost of Graham Taylor's house in Chicago Commons - they are there in substance. They might sound forth when Washington Gladden makes his social appeal or sings, "Oh Master, let me walk with Thee." They are there in the spiritual quality of this modern prophet's utterances. Social service is a part of the simple, original apostolic Christianity which we find in the New Testament.
How natural it has been that many of the pioneers in this form of Christian effort, both ministers and laymen, have been men of our Pilgrim faith! It has been in the line of a genuine, apostolic succession. Our predecessors, the Puritan pastors of New England, dreamed of a day when they would have a genuine theocracy, a life ruled from on high by the
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spirit of God; when all their interests, civic and industrial, educational and social, would be ruled by the will of God.
They showed this in the three-fold use they made of a certain substantial building standing usually on the center of the Green. Lumber was scarce and dear, so that economy was imperative. On Sunday this building was used as a meeting-house; on the five succeeding days as a school- house; and on Saturday as the townhouse. The same walls which had resounded under the mighty spiritual appeals of those sturdy preachers echoed back the voices of little children as they learned the multiplication table and declared the mysteries of English grammar; and then still later in the week the same walls heard the earnest debates of the citizens as they chose their selectmen and transacted the civil business of the community. It was a trinity of manifestation, one house revealing itself as meeting-house, schoolhouse, and townhouse. This served to bring their entire life under the power of a spiritual consecration.
The church, by the sheer strength of its spiritual influence, must still stand central in all the varied interests of our communtiy life. It is the business of the church to deepen that sense of economic justice which will lead to a more equitable distribution of the joint products of brawn and brain. It is the business of the church to stand for a more democratic spirit in the control of the great industries because the main office of those industries is not to make money, but to make men. It is the business of the church to permeate the community more thoroughly with that sort of intelligent good will which alone can serve as the informing and directing agent in the development of a type of life which is to replace the present social disorder. It is the business of the church to insist that there is a Will of God in all this buying and selling, employing and being employed, producing, trans- porting, and exchanging - and that men can only be right in their hearts when they enter upon these activities saying, "Thy will be done here as it is done among the stars." It is the business of the four-square church to undertake all this, knowing how insufficient it is for the high and hard task, but knowing also that its strength will be made perfect in weak- ness if it sets its heart upon those things which are right in the sight of God. * * * * *
We profess to have the words of Eternal Life in our keeping as a church of the living God. We profess to have the oracles of God which we are commissioned to tell to the world. We stand as the organized expression of the Christian
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impulse of the community. It is for us then to face all these social problems wisely, patiently, but squarely. It is for us to stimulate interest, to inspire action, to proclaim the full content of the Christian gospel until, in this troubled world of work which eats up six-sevenths of the time and strength of our people, we shall see the ideal social order which John saw, coming down out of heaven from God to be set in opera- tion here on this common earth.
IV. THE WORK OF EVANGELISM.
Here we touch upon that which is fundamental to all the rest. Thesplendid workof Christian education is an expression of Christian impluse already begotten in the hearts of men and women who are Christians. The work of missions is carried on with the money and by the consecrated manhood and womanhood of those who are already enrolled in the service of Christ. If we are to have that glorious thing called "Applied Christianity" in all these forms of social service we must have some Christianity to apply. Lincoln used to say, "If I am to be President of the United States I must first see to it that there is a United States to be Presi- dent of." Our first concern, therefore, underlying all these other interests I have named, is to see that we have an increas- ing supply of Christianity which may find expression along these varied lines.
The Master never allowed this simple, primary interest to be obscured. "Follow Me," he said, "and I will make you fishers of men." He sent His disciples out as good shepherds to find the lost sheep - the shepherd was not to come back until he could lay that lost sheep on his shoulders and bring it home rejoicing. Jesus breathed on His followers and said, "Receive ye the Holy Spirit! Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted. Whatsoever you loose on earth shall be loosed in the realm of moral permanence." They were to make full proof of their ministry by doing effectively the work of the evangelist.
Our Pilgrim churches have not been lacking at this point. The Great Awakening which did so much toward furnishing the necessary moral fibre for the War of Independence was ushered in by the mighty evangelistic preaching of Jonathan Edwards. The spiritual passion in New York State, in Pennsylvania, and in the Western Reserve of Ohio, which aided so grandly in freeing the slaves, owed much to the great revivals initiated by President Finney of Oberlin. And the whole world knows that the greatest evangelist of the nineteenth century was Dwight L. Moody, a sturdy, conse-
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crated, Congregational layman. The work of these Congrega- tional evangelists was not mere noise and froth, creating a nine days' wonder and then leaving the community cold. It was the honest, thorough, effective enlisting of great numbers of thoughtful men and women in the open, active service of Jesus Christ. We cannot have too much of that type of evangelism.
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Here then you have the picture or these four main interests in the four-square church! There are three gates on every side through which Christian impulse may find expression on all these fields of effort. It is not wise nor right that any one of the four should belittle either of the others in the supposed interests of its own great ends. Let all stand together and build together, - Christian education and world-wide missions, the great work of social service and the supreme task of Christian evangelism! Then our church life will rise solid, substantial and symmetrical. The winds may blow, the rains descend, and the waves beat upon that house, but it will stand secure, firmly founded on the rock of obedience to Christ.
The address of Dr. Brown was followed by a Musicale under the direction of Miss Marion E. Hastings, Dr. Charles A. McKendree and Mrs. Edward W. Johnson.
The renditions were:
Male Quartet, Selected
Dr. R. H. Stow, Dr. C. A. McKendree, Mr. Daniel Wilkins, Mr. Thomas B. Barbour
Mialin Sala, "Legende," Carl Bohm, Op. 314, No. 7 Marcus H. Fleitzer
oprana Sala, (a) "Absent," - - Tirendell (b) "I wait for Thee," Hawley -
Miss Anne Robbins
Melody in Ff, - Rubinstein Christian Endeavor Orchestra
Minlin Sala, (a) "Aria," - - C. B. Pergolesi, (1710-1736) (b) "Deutscher Tanz," W. A. Mozart, (1756-1791)
Marcus H. Fleitzer
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Soprano Solo, "Down in the Forest," Langdon Ronald Miss Anne Robbins
Male Quartet, Selected
Organ Hostlude, "Finale " from Seventh Sonata
These numbers were much appreciated by the large audience present although it appears that the Endeavor Orchestra had "its hopes and fears"expressed by one of their number in the amusing jingle:
"Eight little orchestrians feeling kind of blue. Fleitzer has played his solo And now they must play too. Eight little orchestrians sighing with relief Never mind how bad it was, They didn't come to grief."
With this blending of the Secular and the Spiritual in the up-building of the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven - we, as God's people crossed another invisible line in time called a Century with a Divinely deepened consciousness that it is ours to proclaim visions of the Truth, as God's prophets bearing men's burdens as His cross-bearers, comforting lonely lives and forgiving sinning hearts until we shall work out what we pray and pray out what we sing blessing others even more than we are blessed with -
* * the music rolling onward Through the boundless regions bright, Where the King in all His beauty Is the glory and the light, When the sunshine of His presence Every wave of sorrow stills,
And the bells of joy are ringing On the everlasting hills."
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