LONGFORD.-The annual missionary services were held, March 19th and 21st. Sermons were preached on the 19th by Mr. Cantrell, and Mr. Gurden Smith, of Coventry. On the following Tuesday the missionary meeting was held. Dr. Buckley and Rev. E. C. Pike, B.A., were expected as a deputation. A letter was received from the former saying, that in consequence of illness he should be unable to be present. It was a great disappointment, for his visit had been eagerly anticipated. Mr. Hill, however, came in his place, and rendered valuable help. Mr. J. P. Gibberd, a member of the congregation at Longford, efficiently occupied the chair; and in addition to Mr. Hill, Mr. Pike, and Mr. Bottomley, of Vicar Lane, Coventry, gave effective addresses. Mr. Meadow led the devotions; and Mr. Withers, of Foleshill, was also on the platform. The report, read by Mr. S. Carpenter, was not quite complete, but showed an increase of several pounds in the contributions for the year. On the following Sunday afternoon Mr. Cantrell preached in the branch chapel at Walsgrove-on-Sowe, and about £1 10s. was collected for the Mission. E. W. C. SWADLINCOTE A GOOD HINT.-During the past year we have tried to interest our young people in mission work by having Juvenile Missionary Entertainments, the principal parties engaged being the juvenile collectors, assisted by the teachers, the proceeds afterwards being equally divided among the collectors, the dividend being put into their boxes or books on the following Sabbath. Our greatest difficulty has been in getting appropriate pieces for recitations, and as nothing in the form of dialogue bearing upon missionary themes could be heard of, we had to do the best we could. Missionary hymns, with music, we have in abundance. Now, if our churches and missionary societies really wish our juveniles to be more encouraged and interested in our Foreign Missions, one most effective way would be to provide suitable material in the form of recitation and dialogue for juvenile missionary entertainments which would be at once interesting, attractive, and instructive. T. C. WALSALL.-On Sunday and Monday, Jan. 23rd and 24th, our esteemed missionary, Dr. Buckley, visited us. We were much pleased with his visit, and our contributions for the Foreign Mission were £13 more than last year. This is the best year we have had for the Mission. In all we have raised £58 18s. W. L. FOREIGN LETTERS RECEIVED. BERHAMPORE-J. H. Smith, March 14. CUTTACK-W. Miller, March, 14. CONTRIBUTIONS -J. G. Pike, March 14, April 1. Received on account of the General Baptist Missionary Society from Subscriptions and Donations in aid of the General Baptist Missionary Society will be thankfully received by T. HILL, Esq., Baker Street, Nottingham, Treasurer; and by the Rev. J. C. PIKE, Secretary, Leicester, from whom also Missionary Boxes, Collecting Books and Cards may be obtained. THE GENERAL BAPTIST MAGAZINE. JUNE, 1876. WHERE ARE THE MEN? II.-How to reach them. KEEPING in mind the character and range of the FACTS described in last month's Magazine relative to the proportion of male and female members in our churches, we now proceed to consider the methods open to us for removing the deplorable alienation of men from the organised Christianity of our day, and attracting them to the gospel of Christ in loving and enthusiastic allegiance. Many suggestions have reached us on this branch of our theme: some we will pass in review; but those relating to the slovenly, slipshod, and quarrelsome way in which churches transact business will be better left in the hands of our "Live Deacon ;" and others based on the one man-ministry," and the like, are so well dealt with in an able paper by the Rev. W. March (which we hope to print next month), that we also omit them, and begin with the examination of a method least in accord with current teaching and established practise, viz., the OPENING OF THE PULPIT DOOR TO CHRISTIAN WOMEN. Taking that suggestion in its widest sweep, and as inclusive of the pastor's work of shepherding the flock, visiting the sick, reclaiming the erring, and quickening spiritual life, it is not so unredeemably trivial as to some it may seem. Indeed, very much that is sensible and biblical can be said in its favour. Of course the battalions of church opinion are against it; and they never cease to cannonade the advocates of pastoral work for women with the ancient shot obtained from the armoury of "the great bachelor apostle." But Frances Power Cobbe has shown in the last number of the Theological Review that with a whole Bible in our hands, and a little knowledge in our heads of the excited and tumultuous state of the Corinthian church and of the habits of Corinthian women, we shall be prepared to give a freer course to women in the ministry of religion than is our wont at the present time. Why shouldn't a woman preach? Why shouldn't a woman minister in holy things? Can anybody say? Is there a single reason against it that bears candid sifting and rigorous scrutiny? Can you say anything more in favour of locking the pulpit door against the whole of our sisterhood in the church, than can be advanced in favour of abstinence "from meats offered to idols, from blood, and from things strangled?" That first Encyclical of the Jerusalem church, dealing with local difficulties and temporary questions, was sufficient to make my grandfather (and many more like him, two generations ago) a total abstainer from the prohibited foods, however delicately prepared; and in like manner the tender, persuasive, and winning voice of woman is hushed in VOL. LXXVIII.-NEW SERIES, No. 78. obedience to an injunction occasioned by special circumstances in an exceptional Christian community. Misconception, prejudice, and false sentiment, are the three smiths who have forged the iron fence that bars Christian women from the pulpit of nine-tenths of Christendom. Clearly so. For it is certain women make most effective Sunday school teachers, write some of our sweetest hymns, deliver thrilling addresses on all kinds of topics, and have or might have (for no one denies that they are as capable of collegiate training as men) all the acquired qualifications necessary in a work for which they are naturally so well adapted. Their tender and ready sympathy, intenseness of religious fervour, power of pure self-sacrificing love, practical directness, and capability of forgetting themselves and dealing with the concrete and particular, as if there were no abstract and universal; above all, their glowing sympathy and penetrative spirituality make one unspeakably astonished that the church of the Son of Mary has employed in so few ways the rare gifts of redeemed woman. 66 Those sections of the church which have had the sense and courage to utilise woman's gifts in a wise way have found their reward. Amongst the Friends, Christian women are able ministers of the New Testament.". The "Dinahs" belonging to the Primitive Methodists turn many to righteousness. Martha Turner, the pastor of a Unitarian congregation in Melbourne, Australia, is possessed of such "great abilities and intense spiritual force" as to justify her being cited as a model pastor. Miss Smiley's brave work in the United States, and the successful labours of Miss Marsh, Miss Weston, Miss Robinson, and many others, amongst men in England, are worth a thousand bushels of the chopped straw of acutest logicians and dry-as-dust literalists. Moreover, have we not read of Miriam and Deborah, Esther and Judith? Was not Phebe a deaconess of the church at Cenchrea, and a succourer of many." Did not Mary bestow much labour on Paul, and was not Priscilla " a helper in Christ Jesus?" And does not even Paul himself command the aged women to teach the young women to be sober and to love their husbands? It is not therefore too much to hope that a larger use of the sanctified and cultured gifts of Christian women, in the pulpit and out, in public and private; for their own sex, but specially for mixed audiences also; in visiting the sick and the fallen, watching over the young and inexperienced, would largely contribute to increase the number of men accepting and obeying the gospel of Jesus. But all will agree that success in this direction may be immediately anticipated from special attention to the LADS IN OUR SUNDAY SCHOOLS, AND YOUNG MEN IN OUR CONGREGATIONS. Now we have the opportunity of attracting their sympathy, forming their convictions and habits, and shaping their future. If we let it go, it is most likely gone for ever. Wise, able, and sympathetic teachers of young men's Bible classes are of inestimable value in a school, and no pains should be spared to get them. Every church should have a young men's man, one who lays himself out for them, spends his money, his time, his sympathy, and arranges his home for them, and is known as always ready to give advice on anything, and to be a real friend to all young men. One? Nay there should be three or four on each side of the chapel, ready to take the young by the hand, and lead them to desire for Christ and the open avowal of Christianity. Get them to WHERE ARE THE MEN? * 203 take sides whilst you have a chance. Delay in fixing their position is dangerous; postponed, it may never be done. Once enrolled, never let them go. Keep them steadily in view. Watch over them. Let them see that you love them; and if they leave you, follow them with a letter, and get them introduced into a religious circle before they have time to drift into the motley and multitudinous army of godlessness. We must take care to show them that the religious life is manly, free, healthy, vigorous, and joyous; not a round of ceremonies or a battle for creeds, not hanging on a text or dependent on a theory; but a righteous, helpful, true life, drawn from the loving Christ by faith. We must not let them leave us to obtain recreation. Keeping the main thing in view, still we must make opportunities for social intercourse and friendly interchange of feeling. Get up a cricket or rowing club in the summer, and social meetings in the winter. Prove that you care for their young life, its pleasures, its recreation, its business, and its godliness. Set them to work early. Do not be afraid of making them conceited and officious. Experience will dry up their conceit, and grace will reduce their officiousness. Activity will attach them. They will become defenders as well as professors; partisans and missionaries as well as believers. Two or three correspondents lay the blame of the alienation of men from Christianity at the door of the church, and urge the necessity of rendering EVERY CHRISTIAN SOCIETY WARM, GLOWING, AND ATTRACTIVE with deep and tender human sympathies. This is too obvious to need many words. I know churches that no prize you could name would ever get me to join. They are frigid as the grave. More caste-bound than Hindoo life; less social than an English funeral. The members go in and out, speak to nobody, care for nobody; lounge at their ease while they hear; give their money as they pay their income tax; pay an organist to praise God for them, a preacher to offer prayers for them, a missionary to visit the sick for them, and if they could they would pay somebody to die and go to heaven for them, while they stayed here and enjoyed the good things of this life. They have artistic singing, chaste preaching, a beautiful building; but no heart, no humanness, no genuine brotherly feeling for men. Love attracts and holds. It is earnest and inventive. It looks a welcome to a stranger, if it does not speak. It makes its seats" free," and loans books with a generous hand. It goes out and compels men to come in; and when in, it makes them feel and say, "It is good to be here." Even a child knows whether it is wanted or not; and men are not less sagacious. Left standing in the aisle for two or three minutes, or to seat himself tremblingly in another's pew, or to the vacancy of no hymn-book in time of song,-the stranger concludes, these people do not care for me. Never shall we succeed in bringing the men of England into our communion in large numbers, until the "fellowship of saints" is seen to be a real and living experience, and the brotherhood of men in Christ an unquestionable bond of sympathy and guarantee of help. Akin to this is the idea that our churches should heartily sympathise with and help the SOCIALLY AMELIORATING MOVEMENTS of the time. In a large town, where the percentage of males in six churches is low, that one ranks the highest that most strenuously devotes itself to *Cf. "Standing their Ground," page 216. temperance work. Most of the preachers whose audiences are largely masculine are men who never fail to show the bearing of Christianity on the social questions of the day. Men know what their foes are, if they do not confess it. Englishmen understand that the beerhouse is their enemy their worst enemy; the enemy of purse and peace, of character and home; and in their better moments they appreciate the men who unselfishly help them to war with and conquer their foe. Give them society, the pleasures of intercourse without the drink, and "British Workman Public-Houses" prove, many will be glad of the deliverance; and once free from ensnaring Bacchus, they are ready for the Christian appeal, "Come with us, and we will do you good." A great cloud of witnesses might be cited to show that Christ's method of ministering to the lower need first-the need of body or intellect,-is the surest way of conferring an effectual blessing upon heart and life. There is but little space left for the last point; MORE MANHOOD IN THOSE WHO HAVE THE PREACHING MONOPOLY. Three things are needed in the preacher to attract men-Fire, Freedom, and Force. A cold logic engine, though regulated with faultless accuracy, is of little avail. Christian preaching begins with men on whom rest tongues of fire. The Holy Ghost proves itself fire in the speech of apostles. "First, and above all things, a minister should be intensely religious." Preaching to men must have earnestness, intensity, enthusiasm, soul-fire. But it must also breathe the spirit of love and of freedom; and know nothing of brawling dogmatism and hard intolerance. Men appreciate the ringing tones of firm conviction, but fiercely hate the narrowness that sees only along its own line, and hears nought but its own voice. The rigid and inflexible literalism of the pulpit has bred a host of sceptics. Lastly, force of thought, of style, of appeal, of character, is the supreme necessity for laying hold of men. A writer in Blackwood says, There are far worse dangers to be apprehended in the matter of pulpit oratory than familiar illustrations and honest, plain-spoken English. Firing over the heads of a congregation is a far more common fault, and much less excusable, than firing point blank into their consciences, even at some slight risk of falling into the coarse and grotesque. Rowland Hill (who certainly did not himself sin on the side of over-refinement) was right enough when he said, 'I don't like those mighty fine preachers who so beautifully round off the sinner's conscience.' When I preach,' said Luther, 'I sink myself deeply down: I regard neither doctors nor masters, of whom there are in the church above forty; but I have an eye to the multitude of young people, children, and servants, of whom there are more than two thousand.' It is hardly too much to say that two-thirds of every sermon that is preached is practically unintelligible to an audience of working-men. Neither the words, nor the ideas, nor the formation of the sentences, are what they are accustomed to. It is quite true that such audiences by no means object to fine language, if it be sonorously delivered; and there are plenty of stories current as to the imposing effect of a sounding polysyllable, or even a scrap of Latin, upon ignorant hearers. But if the pulpit trumpet is to call to the real battle of life, it must at least utter an intelligible sound. Sermons, even more than prayers and catechisms, must be in the 'vulgar tongue,' if they are to have any practical effect on the masses.' JOHN CLIFFORD. |