“ARE CHRISTIANS DESERTING LOWER NEW YORK?”
DEAR BROTHER RUSSELL:-I send you herewith a page taken from the New York
Herald, Jan. 8th, the principal part of which is devoted to-
“A STUDY OF A REMARKABLE CHURCH SITUATION IN LOWER NEW YORK
CITY.”
The array of facts showing a steady and uniform surrender of ground by the
churches, notwithstanding the increase of population, should indeed prove an
astounding revelation to the “Christians” appealed to. And the fact that these
matters are promulgated by one of the eminent leaders of the New York pulpit,
and are verified and added to by the Herald’s investigations, makes the
statements well nigh indisputable.
It seems to me that the “study” of the conditions here presented lies not
so much in the apparent, surface truth presented, namely, that south of 14th
street the “church” would appear to be doomed to practical extinction, as it
does in an inquiry into the results which may be expected from this moving and
movable church in its later surroundings.
The mistake of abandoning this field can and may easily be remedied, if
the conscience of the powers that control the situation be sufficiently deeply
pricked. But the causes which suggested, and eventually accomplished, such
sweeping changes are still at work in their new abode, and are accomplishing
still other changes.
It is to be noted that the new field of these old “churches”
is to-day the fashionable quarter of the city; and of course it is to be
expected that these old “churches” are called upon to cater to the new
requirements. Accordingly we are not surprised to learn that one such
requirement is EXCLUSIVENESS.
In the old abode, the idea would not have been tolerated; but conditions
are now changed, and the new environment is such, that what before
seemed to be sinful may now be regarded as an aid to the upholding, if not the
upbuilding, of the edifice.
Pursuing this thought, it would be interesting if there could be
collected, for purposes of comparison, the subjects discussed, and texts preached
from, in these older edifices, in days gone by, and those now made use of in
the new fields. I am convinced the relation would be as startling, almost, as
the facts here given.
When we reflect upon these things, can we wonder that our friend, Mr. Moody,
in his last evangelizing work in New York city, told its ministers and people
that if Jesus Christ should appear in person in one of their “churches,” he
would be driven out, because they would not recognize him!
Since reading the statement of facts alluded to, my attention has been
called to another ministerial occurrence, which has its bearing on this
particular line of “study.”
An eminent D.D. of the metropolis, with a big church, fat living, well
liked, and ostensibly doing a good work, is offered a professorship in one of
our seats of learning. Rumor has it that he wants to accept it. Meeting a
friend of the aforesaid D.D., I took occasion to allude to this call and its
probable acceptance. “Yes,” said this friend, “you know __________ is not
patterned after the old style preacher; he is a club man, something of a
sportsman, can take his little toddy, and is ‘hail, fellow, well met’
generally. He is very popular, and is beloved by his congregation, which is
fighting hard against this call. But he has literary aspirations, and
consequently favors it.” Thus we see at work the same underlying evil which
succeeded in driving the “church” out of the down-town vineyard.
The student of history, noting such potent and disturbing events as here stated,
discovered to-day in New York, sees them to-morrow reflected in London, events,
though peculiar to a locality, having at the same time a universal
significance; he hears the alarm sounded, not by the pessimist, but by the
brains and conservative judgment of the church as it is understood to-day, and
cannot fail to see the inevitable trend of events.
Can these conditions be changed? Reason answers, about as easily as the
heathen are to-day being changed or converted. It must be obvious that the powers
which now obtain are as impotent to work the desired change (if indeed it be
even desired) in the one case as in the other. What a profoundly sad outlook
must the array of facts, which give rise to these and cognate thoughts, produce
in this, the closing year of the century.
Sad must they be to the student of events, unless indeed he be also a
student of God’s Word, and can discern his times and seasons, and their
peculiar events. Then what a change! As one season alternates another with
precise regularity, each doing the work allotted to it, so he sees the
conditions now prevailing fulfilling their purpose, only to give way to still
other conditions in a later development of God’s plan.
He looks ahead to that future great epoch in the history of time, which is
to take the place of the present, and by faith he realizes some of the changes
then to be established. Among these changes, he is assured that “an highway
shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called, The way of holiness;” and
“the way-faring men, though fools, shall not err therein.”-Isa. 35:8.
As one of those who are quite ready and willing to note the signs of the
times, though more especially because he is assured by the Word of truth that “weeping
may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning;” and confident in
the comforting assurance that in that day (Millennial morning) pauper
“churches” will be unknown and unnecessary, because the way of holiness
shall be open to all, and all shall then know the Lord from the least unto the
greatest (Jer. 31:34), I remain, in the common faith,
Faithfully yours, JOHN W. ALEXANDER.
Extracts from the Herald are as follows:-
“ARE CHRISTIANS DESERTING LOWER NEW YORK?”
“Dr. Peters says so in a sermon, and the Herald here shows that
twenty-three churches have been abandoned or moved from below Forty-eighth
street in the last ten years.
“‘The church, instead of adjusting herself practically to the changed
conditions in civilization in New York, moves up town and puts on style....A
church is located with reference to clientele. So much money must be paid to
support it, and it must locate where the rich live, and, as a result, those
needing the saving influence of the Church most are neglected;’-says the Rev.
Dr. Madison C. Peters.
“This is a startling arraignment of the church in New York; yet the Rev.
Dr. Peters quotes statistics which bear out what he says. The church in the
Borough of Manhattan is moving up town, and the lower part of the island is every
year becoming more churchless. An investigation made by the Herald shows
that within the last ten years seventeen houses of worship have moved up to the
less thickly populated parts of the city, where the wealthy live, and six
churches below Fourteenth street have gone out of existence. In the region
from the Battery to Forty-eighth street twenty-three churches have in ten years
either moved up town or have become extinct, and little has been left in their
place.
“‘The Christian forces at work below Fourteenth street,’ to again quote
the words of the Rev. Dr. Peters, ‘with a population of 700,000, are not as
much as they were twenty-five years ago. Although during that time over
200,000 persons have moved in below Fourteenth street, twenty churches have
moved out. One Jewish synagogue and two Catholic churches have been added, so
that if we count the churches of every kind there are seventeen fewer than
twenty-five years ago.’
“It will be seen by consulting the table of churches which have moved up town
that all of them belong to Protestant denominations, with the exception of one
Catholic organization. There have been from time to time utterances from
various pulpits denouncing the lack of fervor shown by the Protestant
churches. It is not an optimistic view of the work of the church among the
masses who live in the lower part of the city which is drawn from an analysis
of the uptown movement of the churches.
“There are many who maintain that the churches are doing missionary work
in the fields which they have left. With the exception of the efficient work
of Trinity Parish, of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and the work of the
Catholics, this field in the lower part of the city is practically left to the
sower of tares. ...There is no escape from statistics. The majority of those
who dwell in the lower part of the island are churchless. South of Fourteenth
street there is one church to every 4,732 persons. In that section there are
districts where there is one saloon to every 111 persons.
“In discussing the causes of the movement of the churches, Dr. Peters, the
pastor of the Bloomington Reformed Church, told me that the fashionable
churches were becoming fashionable clubs.
“‘Let me give you two examples of what I mean,’ said he. ‘A man who
belonged to one of the uptown churches told me recently that in his church
there was only one poor man, and “he a Scotchman who could not be snubbed into
leaving.” Another man, a member of a church of the exclusive uptown kind, told
me that in his church the pew rents were made so high that only a “certain
class” could come.’...
“‘Statistics show that in comparison with the growth of population here
the Presbyterian Church in this city has lost eighty per cent. in the last
twenty-five years. The Methodist Church, supposed to be the most aggressive
force in Protestantism, has in the last twenty years increased only twenty-five
per cent., whereas in proportion to the increase of population in the borough
it should have increased eighty-five per cent. The Dutch Reformed Church has
in the same proportion lost ten per cent. The only Protestant church doing
anything like holding its own here is the Episcopal Church. That is largely
owing to the fact that much of the enormous wealth of Trinity Corporation is
used in work among the poor. The census of 1890 gave the Catholic population
of the then city of New York as 380,000. If the Catholic Church had held her
own she should have had 900,000.”
* * *
Some one failing to grasp the situation will perhaps say or think-“Well,
you criticize others, but what are you doing in the line of mission-work?”
We reply that it is not the actions of these “churches” that we
find fault with, but the inconsistency of their actions and professions.
These denominations, one and all, profess in their published creeds that they
exist for the very purpose of converting the world; and that all not
converted by them will suffer a horrible eternity: and straightway they leave
the world to what they say is its fate, to meet for essays, lectures, music and
social pleasures-as “social clubs,”-called “churches.”
Our views of the divine plan for human salvation are very different from
theirs: and hence the question is not, are we following their theories more
consistently than they follow them? but, are we following our own conception of
the divine plan consistently?-are we practicing what we preach and profess to
believe, faithfully? We trust that every regular WATCH TOWER reader can answer
promptly,-I am doing with my might what my hand finds to do, in harmony with my
understanding of the divine will concerning me. And if any cannot so answer,
promptly, we trust he will begin at once such “reasonable service.”
We hold that none are in danger of eternal torment -that the very thought
of such an unjust punishment for sin is in antagonism to God’s revealed plan,
rightly interpreted, utterly repugnant to “the spirit of the truth,” “the
spirit of Christ,” “the holy spirit.”
We hold that ignorance neither justifies nor condemns-either in New
York or Africa or elsewhere; but that knowledge alone brings blessings and
corresponding responsibilities. Nor do we understand that all knowledges bring
grave responsibilities and are savors of life unto life or of death unto death;
for but one knowledge, one science, is thus made a test in the Scriptures-the
knowledge of the way, the truth and the life; the knowledge of the true
God, the God of Justice, Wisdom, Love and Power.
We hold that the masses in down town New York, not possessing this
knowledge, but being blinded in their minds by the “god of this world”
(2 Cor. 4:4), are not on trial now, as are we who have this knowledge,
but will have their trial by and by, during the Millennial age, at the same
time with the “heathen” millions of Asia and Africa;-after Satan has been
“bound” and deceives the peoples no more (Rev. 20:1-4), after the Lord and his
elect Church have begun the reign of righteousness. And we hold the same to be
true of their polished and wealthy and better educated neighbors who have moved
up-town; and who, “blinded,” mistakenly call themselves “churches.”
We hold that the Lord’s Church, the only one to
which the name ecclesia, body or church, is properly applicable, is so
insignificant, so unostentatious, and comparatively so poor in this world’s
riches, that it is not recognized nor recognizable from the worldly standpoint.
It is neither man-made nor man-ruled; nor are its members enrolled on earth,
but in heaven. (Heb. 12:23.) Its head and bishop is the Lord, its law is his
Word: it has but one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism; and it is built upon the
testimonies of the holy apostles and prophets-Jesus Christ himself being its
chief corner-stone.
We hold that, while neither the masses of lower New York nor
the classes of upper New York constitute this Church, some in both may
be eligible to its membership and blessings-“even as many as the Lord our God
shall call,” and no more. And we hold that in New York, as elsewhere,
many more have been called than will be chosen;-because the call being to a
very high post of service and honor, God has made the way to it narrow-so
narrow that few find it, and fewer still care to walk therein after they have
found it; a way of self-sacrifice, self-denial.
In harmony with this our faith and knowledge respecting the divine plan,
we are neither sitting in the seat of the scorners, drawing nigh to God with
our lips, while our hearts are far from him (rebelling against him as
monstrously unjust and unloving-as blasphemously misrepresented in the creeds
of Christendom), nor are we excitedly and frantically with drums and
tambourines and “War Crys” striving to save from eternal torment fellow
creatures-under a theory that God would horribly and unjustly misuse them, but
for our efforts.
On the contrary, we are endeavoring to do as Jesus and the apostles and
the early Church did, before the errors (“tares”) of false doctrine were planted
by the great Adversary. We are striving to find those who are not wholly
blinded by the god of this world;-the “called,” those who have “ears to hear,”
among the “masses” and among the “classes;” we are seeking to find, and to
explain to them the way of the Lord more perfectly. And whether they hear and
obey, or whether they forbear, we doubt not for a moment that all the gracious
purposes of our all-wise God will be accomplished,-that the foreordained number
of the “copies of his Son” will be completed, and that then these as the body
of Christ, “the Seed of Abraham,” as God’s glorious Kingdom, shall rule and
relieve from blindness all mankind and bless and uplift all willing to
obediently return to God’s favor through the great Redeemer.
Above all we are seeking now, because it is the “harvest” time, the time
of preparation for the marriage of the Lamb, to prepare ourselves, and each the
other, for that great event which shall complete our joy and usher in the
world’s blessings;-that we may be in heart (and as nearly as attainable in the
flesh also) “without spot or wrinkle or any such thing.”- Eph. 5:23; Rev. 19:7.
Additionally, we are sympathetic toward all secondary influences of our
Light-moral reforms.