USA > Connecticut > Fairfield County > Newtown > The story of two centuries, with an account of the celebration of the bicentenary of the Congregational Church of Newtown, Connecticut, October 18, 19 and 20, 1914, 1714-1914 > Part 7
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of revival; but if no fuel of zealous service were added, the fire would soon dwindle into smouldering embers. It is one thing to stuff the bin with hay; but if the horse be left in the stable and his muscles grow flabby through lack of exercise, there will soon be a dead animal on your hands. Young people had no appropri- ate exercise in their soul-life before Christian Endeavor was born. They had been preached to and prayed over; but their spiritual muscles were not hardened by use and all too early they were suffered to pass into invalidism. The story is almost classic of the young man, whose eyes had been opened to the light of the Gospel, who wished to claim a young man's part in con- tributing his zeal toward the upbuilding of his Church. He looked to the Church prayer meeting, as the place where he might joyfully speak of his newly found hope and tell of his desire to serve the Friend who was now holding the largest place in his life. He gave out his testimony clear and strong and shook the dry bones in the valley of death. He found the strength that always comes to one who has put forth strength; but he was soon waited upon by the pastor, who cautioned him that testi- mony in the Church prayer meeting was reserved for the pillars. Rather, it seemed to the young man that that delightful place of long silences was reserved for the pillows. A venerable dea- con, too, made audience with the young man to inform him that when the Church wished him to speak in meeting, it would let him know. This young man had plenty of red blood in his veins and the fire of his zeal was not put out even by the wet blanket thus thrown upon him. Thank God, this day when young people are to be seen in our churches, but never to be heard, when they are looked upon only as statues good for niches, has gone forever by.
Never did a movement in the history of the world have more distinctly upon it the impress of God's finger. When Professor Morse had succeeded in getting a wire from Baltimore to Wash- ington to flash forth a message, appropriately the message was, "What hath God wrought !" As we look back to-night over the path of conquest which the vanguard of Christian Endeavor has blazed around the globe, this is our thought. Christian Endeavor was no more man-made at the start than the children of Israel were led alone by Moses across the burning sands of the Sinaitic Peninsula. It was a time of spiritual declension. Movements
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were made here and there by pastors to break up the fallow ground; but they were only spasmodic and the Church did not awake from its stupor. This movement came as a new force. Enthusiasm and hopefulness and zeal, which are the inheritance of young souls, set a spark among the dry leaves and kindled the conflagration of devotion to things that are true and of good report. Three things Christian Endeavor has grandly done: it has conserved the native forces of the young people and trained them; it has maintained their buoyancy and enthusiasm; it has promoted the unity of the Church and aided in its world exten- sion. It has solved the amusement question in the Church. We no longer erect around our young people a palisade of "don'ts"; we open many conduits in which their abounding energy may run. We believe it is better to hold all the life of the young person within the Church than to give careful training to the soul and then turn it loose upon the world. Christian Endeavor has changed many a pastor's hardest task, the training and nurture of his young people, the directing of their full life into proper channels, into his chief joy. The pastor now knows his young people and loves them; in turn, they know and love him. I once rallied a minister who, in passing along the streets of his parish, met his young people in clumps and knots, boys now playing at ball, girls romping with their hoops. He could enter into their lives no more than to say to each and every one, in monotonous reiteration, "How do you do"? Under the happy workings of the Christian Endeavor every wise and faith- ful pastor ought to hear his young people grow in grace as you can hear the corn grow, on a hot July day, out on the Illinois prairie. Young people were not meant for straight-jackets or pillories. They were meant to grow and develop and expand in girth of chest and in girth of soul. Christian Endeavor has become a vast help in promoting missionary enthusiasm; the dry rot of lethargy toward missions has been scraped off. You cannot get the eye to melt in tears over the recital of the suffer- ings of the poorest castes in India until it has melted beside a sufferer's cot in a hospital near home. That which appeals to the eye finds a straight road through the eye-gate to emotions of the heart. You would think it a party of trained adults in Christian service; they go about it so systematically and they take it as such a serious business, something so well worth the
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while. It is only a party of Endeavorers from Young Peoples' Society in Evanston, Illinois. They planned their work before they started out on Sunday morning. Two are to visit the desti- tute district. Two are to spend the day among seven Chinese Sunday Schools. Two, laden with flowers and messages of love, are to go, as Jesus sent out the Seventy, through the villages and towns of Galilee, from house to house seeking the sick and the shut-ins, those for whose souls nobody seems to care. Two are to teach the waifs, swept up from the alleyways into a great mission hall, just as the White Wings sweep the crosswalks and gutters. You make a mistake when you think that all young peo- ple like nothing but fun. They like to give the spikenard of their best heart's love in deeds of gracious helpfulness; but they like, in doing it, not to be manacled by perfunctory methods. Here they go, practically all the members of the Christian Endeavor Society from the Fourth Congregational Church of Hartford, out to a service in the almshouse on Sunday morning at nine o'clock. "I take Sunday morning for lying in bed." These young people do not. I know most of them. They are the busiest sort of folks you can find; not one of them is a young person of leisure. The bin is full of hay. The young colt is eating well; he is frisking about, but he is doing a lot of work, too. The Christian Endeavor movement is so grand, so catholic, so comprehensive, so broad, that the amazement is that my short lifetime far more than includes it all. The wonder is that it was not born in Boston, the suburb of Heaven.
I have suffered myself to make a mistake. Christian Endeavor was not born in 1881. Perhaps it was born that great day in Israel's history when the host of Philistia in a valley was set over against the host of Israel. All God's people were trembling until a young man, ruddy of cheek, his eyes dancing with the pure sunlight of the open fields, arrived just in the niche of time to save the day. The young shepherd boy, with his sling and five smooth stones gathered from the bed of a brook, brought down the defiant giant in crashing ruin to the earth. Before the advancing lines of Christian Endeavor I see the demon giant of drink already toppling and the great form of political corruption that has thrown its baleful blight over our American cities smitten by the conviction launched by our good citizenship com- mittees that our cities must be clean. David, the stripling, came
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to the field of battle not a day too soon and, methinks, the Christian Endeavor movement came in the fullness of time to save the Church of God from being moss-grown with inertia and being shot through and through with mouldering conserva- tism. A branch of Christian Endeavor was started down in Babylon. You think a society depends upon numbers to make things go and bring matters to pass. This society had four mem- bers upon its roll, Daniel and his three companions. There were just two articles in this society's constitution: first, we will not do that which is not right; second, we will not bow down. You remember what an influence that society had. Judah was car- ried captive into Babylon, dragging the taint of the worship of Moloch and Astarte with her. She had not gotten over the effect of the harsh reply of Rehoboam to the delegation of young men that came with Jeroboam. Jezebel's foul idolatry was still breeding its spawn. Judah went down from Jerusalem
smirched; it came back pure; and that purity in worship of God, started there at the fountain-headed by those four cap- tive boys in the Christian Endeavor Society in Babylon, twenty- five hundred years ago, has kept the stream flowing clear ever since. Yes, we can believe it, there is nothing new under the sun.
Christian Endeavor fosters growth. I like live things. I would rather have a live snake in a menagerie than a dead coil which cannot thrust out its fang. Did I say that, in Christian Endeavor history, I posed as a patriarch? Well, there is solace for my declining years, to see how the boys and girls whom, under God's grace, I started in their Christian nurture are grow- ing. They are growing sturdy in physical strength. They are enthusiastic for football. When, on Saturday, November twen- ty-first, the great game between Yale and Harvard will open the new Yale Bowl and 61,000 spectators, in mighty concourse assembled, will cheer for the sons of old Eli and the crimson as they contend in fierce combat, some of my boys and girls will be there to lend the full volume of their lungs to the deafening roar. I should like to stop to tell you the history of just one- not a Timothy. I well remember how, as a little girl, she stood with me on this platform, under the folds of Old Glory and united with the large congregation, on a beautiful Children's Day in June in singing :
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"Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war, With the cross of Jesus going on before !"
She used to come down from Hawleyville with her father and mother in our gospel wagon, a part of the church machinery of which we were so proud then. Her father was a cog in the interlacing system of the Consolidated Road. He held a humble position here; but, joining with a relative in the real estate busi- ness in Canada, he surely struck "ile." The pretty girl, too, struck "ile" in finding a young man to be her life partner who, though not to the manor born, was clean, honest, and a good standard to which to look up. The last I heard from this child of my training, she was in the far away province of Saskatche- wan in the city of Regina, which, like Jonah's gourd, has grown up in a night, in a country where vast areas of wheat fields stretch towards the shores of Hudson Bay, where the days are so long that the hens lose all track of time, and, as in the old rhyme, lay two eggs a day and on Sundays lay three. As she wrote, this child of the King was fondly looking upon the sweet- est bit of humanity in all the world, folded away on a bed under a snowdrift of feathery down. These boys and girls have been growing in all the years I have known them. They are pace- makers as well as peace-makers; thirty, sixty, one hundred fold is the step of their progress. They are members of the best Progressive Party I know. Often in the twilight, as the length- ening shadows thickly fall, their forms steal out from the dim corners of the past and speak to me a kindly word of thanks for the small influence for good I have cast upon their lives. They owe their growth largely to what Christian Endeavor did for them.
Growth comes in religion from having a healthy experience. Formerly young people were lassoed and corralled within the Church fold by entertainments, pink teas, games, oyster suppers. Young people need something more virile than these. Milk is good for babes; but strong meat makes bone and tissue. A robust Christian experience is not out of elbow touch with healthy boys and girls. I heard Miss Frances E. Willard, in 1888, at the Seventh National Christian Endeavor Convention in Chicago, where she almost apologized for speaking as a woman, to so mighty a throng, narrate her Christian experience. This sweet picture came out of her life when she was a small girl.
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Her family was of good Vermont stock. Her father had much of the iron and granite of his native hills in his makeup. When Frances was still little, the family moved to Oberlin, Ohio, which seems to have the right atmosphere for making noble souls; and do you know that, after all it is the atmosphere, not the garniture of the room or the frescoing of the walls, that makes a Church? The question is not what is the costliness of the furnishings, but how does the barometer rise and fall that indicates devotion to the Master's cause. When this particular experience came, it was a Sunday morning. Mother had gone to church. This was a thoroughly democratic family; no one had any soft couch of ease set aside, everyone bore his part of the burden; father and mother went to Church by turns. Father, this morning, took down his hymn-book, set little Frances upon his knee and said: "I have a hymn to teach you which you will not understand now ; but you will when you are grown up.
"A charge to keep I have, A God to glorify, A never-dying soul to save And fit it for the sky."
That is the way we get Christian experience. A child learns to breathe by breathing; we learn to do by doing. We learn to roll away great stones from the mouths of sepulchres by going to the sepulchre's mouth. Miss Willard also beautifully told how she first made confession of Christ. She was reared a Methodist, yet it was not easy for her to speak in public meeting. Her heart beat like a trip-hammer; but a voice, sweet and holy, whispered: "My child, he that confesseth Me before men, him will I confess before My Father and the holy angels." She wanted to be of that company, so she confessed. Christian Endeavor encourages a young man to confess Christ and every time he speaks that name in consecrated devotion, he lifts him- self up toward that great ideal of character and grows.
A final thing I have to say in favor of Christian Endeavor; it is bringing the Churches together. Oh! the sad divisions among us. In this terrible cataclysm of war which is upon us, the confused reports of which trickle their way to us when leak- ing out from under the pressure of heavy censorships, what has become of the much-praised brotherhood of mankind? Is it all
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a dream, an old woman's fable, a will-o'-the-wisp, a mirage? There is only one solvent for the world's difficulties, only one poultice for the world's sore: Not less of Christ, but more of Christ. Yes, it is true, the dogs of war are unchained, and gaunt starvation steps, an unwilling guest, into thousands of homes, because Christianity has not been tried. The Hague Conference, we blissfully dreamed, was beginning to try it out; but the big howitzer siege guns have blown the treaties into shreds and pounded back into the dirt the good will that had just begun to lift its noble head. Civilization seems set back one hundred years. The day when the dove shall build her nest in the can- non's mouth and the spear shall be ground into the pruning hook seems long postponed. In some good day coming, we may have a real brotherhood, and things which now burden the nations will be looked back upon and thought as archaic as the old one- horse shay. Then a small international army will police the land to keep the world at peace and a small international navy will police the sea. Until that millennial day dawns let the Church of God show the way.
Christian Endeavor is a mighty force in this. Through its glad working dissevered Methodism is consolidating and fed- erating. The Presbyterians, who once cleaved asunder are now cleaving together. The federation of churches is not something worked out only in committee rooms. In Hartford a moving- picture house was running a burlesque. Its moral tone was bad, at least that was the report. We will see about this, said the federation of churches. No longer does the preacher think he is discharging his full duty to God and man by pounding the sacred desk for one hour one day in the week, while the Devil pounds the soul-life out of the people six days of the week. Christian Endeavor promotes union because both young men and women come together in hearty accord. Mrs. Gen. Logan tells of visit- ing an Old Soldiers' Home. She met a veteran broken and worn, hobbling about with greatest difficulty. You would have thought that his mind would be solely bent on the miseries of his own sex. The home was most charmingly situated, so Mrs. Logan said, "You must be very happy here." "No," the poor fellow murmured, "I am not happy because there are not women here." Christian Endeavor joins heart and hand, and then there is the union in the home. If the complaint sometimes
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urged be true that this meeting becomes a mating, let me say I know no better rose-garden where a young man of promise may pick a precious bud.
Christian Endeavor promotes union because it is a Christian Endeavor Society. There may be differences of denomination but one spirit runs through all, spirit of devotion to one Master. One flag is above every State and National emblem, the blood- stained banner of the cross. A little pickaninny had been con- verted. Holding up his New Testament, his eyes snapping with joy, he exclaimed, "It's sweeter than 'lasses!" He lived in a 'lasses country and that is the way it looked to him. David lived in a honey country and contemplating the delights of God's Word, he wrote, "It is sweeter also than honey and the honey- comb." It all depends on what is your point of view, what emphasis you will give to the particular phase of truth for which each denomination stands. You may live in a 'lasses country and I may live in a country where bees sip the nectared sweets. Methodism may seem sweet to you and Congregationalism may seem equally sweet to me; but, after all, the sweetness that is in both of them comes from the character of Him who is the lily of the valley and the fairest of ten thousand to my soul. Yes, the great thing is not that we cry any denominational shibboleth but that we are thoroughly loyal to our Divine Lord. You have heard of the man who went to the Naturalization Office in New York to be made a citizen. "What is your nationality?" he was asked. "I do not know," he replied, "I wish you would tell me. My father was English, my mother Spanish. I was born at sea on a French ship flying the Dutch flag. I don't care par- ticularly what I am, but I want to be an American citizen."
I don't care a snap of my finger under what denominational flag I fight so long as mine shall be the honors in the Grand Review. I want to be on the winning side at last and Christian Endeavor is to have a mighty part in bringing the world to Christ. Its constitution and iron-clad pledge have found their way into sixty languages and eighty denominations. From Point Barrow, the most northerly projection of North America, to Invercargill, the most southerly city of Australia, its legions have tramped their victorious way. I trace the course of progress from the first national convention in 1882, when repre- sentatives from a score of societies were gathered to Atlantic
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City, with its hosts fifty-thousand strong, as many as were the Sherman's bummers who sang the chorus from Atlanta to the sea. Christian Endeavor is a force to be reckoned with to-day. Roughly speaking there are 200,000 places in this country where the laboring man, to-morrow morning on the way to his work, can get a glass of grog. The handwriting is on the wall: these lights must no longer flare up from these pits of Hell, these dens of infamy must go. One billion dollars are invested in this iniquitous traffic. It costs the gigantic sum of one and one-half billion dollars a month to carry on this holocaust of European war, an amount equal to one and one-half times the interest- bearing debt of the United States; and I know not which is the greater waste. It takes one-fifth of a million men to carry on this business which damns body and soul. We want these men to sow our wheat and plant our corn. The Christian Endeavor army writes large on its banners now: We vote for the candi- dates of no party which does not make battle to the death with the American saloon. Yes, I wish to be on the winning side at last and so with my latest breath, I'll speak the glory of Christian Endeavor's name. There are two memorable pictures in the Doré Gallery, once in London. In one the thorn-crowned Saviour is leaving the Prætorium on the sorrowful way to the cross. In the other Jupiter, with affrighted countenance, is looking at the broken Olympian crown at his feet. The gods of Egypt, Greece, and Rome are fleeing in wild dismay. The gods of your ancestors and mine are put to rout, pursued by the helmeted Cherubim and sworded Seraphim, and above all, in the everlasting light of Heaven is the once thorn-crowned Saviour directing the celestial combat. And He shall reign forever and ever and to Him shall be brought of the gold of Ophir. All kings shall cast their crowns at His feet. His dominion shall be from sea to sea and from shore to shore. Hallelujah !
THE CHURCH THAT STANDS FOUR-SQUARE
REV. CHARLES R. BROWN, D.D., Dean of the Yale School of Religion
When John had his vision on the Isle of Patmos he saw an ideal social order descending out of heaven from God. It stood four-square, facing directly on every conceivable human interest and activity. It had three gates on each side, inviting "the kings of the earth," the ruling forces of human society, to "bring their glory and honor unto it." It stood for the consecration and interpretation of all human activities at the hands of the spiritual forces there resident.
The Christian church in similar fashion undertakes to stand four-square. It seeks to illumine the entire life of human society so that it will shine like a cluster of jewels. It also faces in every direction, fronting squarely on all the essential interests of the race.
How far have our own Pilgrim churches measured up to its comprehensive ideal? When I study their history I find that they have faced these four great interests with splendid effectiveness.
I. The interest of Christian education. The Pilgrims landed at Plymouth in 1620. Sixteen years later, out of their penury, they founded Harvard College, which abides to this day as the leading University on this continent. Then followed Yale in 1701, with Amherst and Dartmouth, Williams and Bowdoin, Oberlin and Beloit, Colorado and Whitman, Mt. Holyoke, Wellesley and Smith and more than a score of other colleges founded by the people of our faith and order. The Pilgrim church has borne upon its heart throughout the great interest of Christian education.
II. The cause of Christian missions. The first Foreign Mis- sionary Society in America was organized by Congregationalists.
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The young men in their Hay Stack Prayer meeting at Williams College knelt down saying, "We can do it if we will." They rose up saying, "We can do it and we will."
Some of the most eminent names in missionary service on all the fields of earth are the names of men who caught the fire of missionary zeal at our altars; Hiram Bingham and Titus Coan in Hawaii, Hamlin, Riggs and Barton in Turkey, Arthur H. Smith in China and John H. DeForest in Japan, Robert A. Hume in India, and a host of others. These men have written their names in the postscript to the eleventh chapter of Hebrews. They, too, have wrought righteousness and obtained promises. They have subdued kingdoms and turned to flight the armies of aliens. As a result of their eminent service we have seen the Kingdom of God coming in those non-Christian lands with power and great glory.
III. The task of social service. The early Puritan fathers dreamed of an industrial and civil order which should be ruled by the spirit of God. It is in the line of a genuine apostolic suc- cession that so many of the leaders in modern social service should be men taken from the ranks of our own Congregational membership; Washington Gladden and Graham Taylor, Ray- mond Robbins and Fred B. Smith, with a host of pastors and laymen who have furnished competent leadership for the appli- cation of Christian principles to modern conditions.
IV. The work of evangelism. Here we touch that which is fundamental. The work of Christian education and of Christian missions are expressions of Christian impulse already begotten in the hearts of men and women. If we are to have that glorious thing known as "applied Christianity," we must have an abund- ant supply of Christianity to apply. The first great concern of the church is the open enlistment of men and women, young men and maidens, in the active service of Christ.
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