The Cultural Challenge
W. Carl Ketcherside
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Every new truth which has ever been propounded has, for a time, caused mischief; it has produced discomfort, and often unhappiness; sometimes disturbing social and religious arrangements, and sometimes merely by the disruption of old and cherished association of thoughts. It is only after a certain interval, and when the framework of affairs has adjusted itself to the new truth, that its good effects preponderate; and the preponderance continues to increase, until at length, the truth causes nothing but good. But, at the outset there is always harm. And if the truth is very great as well as very new, the harm is serious. Men are made uneasy; they flinch; they cannot bear the sudden light; a general restlessness supervenes; the face of society is disturbed, or perhaps convulsed; old interests and old beliefs have been destroyed before new ones have been created. These symptoms are the precursors of revolution; they have preceded all the great changes through which the world has passed.--Henry Thomas Buckle, in "History of Civilization."
It doesn't require a great deal of ability to be an "armchair general." Any mediocre field captain can sit in the plush lounge of the Officer's Club and say, "He should have ordered an attack on the right flank." The same is true of a "grandstand quarterback." It is one thing to call the plays while shrouded in a warm blanket with a thermos bottle of steaming coffee by your side, but a totally different thing down on a soggy field with a throbbing black eye and an ear full of mud.
I'm saying this to let you know that I'm not seeking any praise for "calling the shots" after the game is over. A lot of us are like lightning-bugs. We have our headlights on the tail end and cannot see anything until we are already past it. One does not deserve particular credit for saying, while floundering through swamp-muck up to his belt buckle, "We should have taken that other road."
All of this leads up to the fact that I am again going to deal with a ticklish subject in this issue. Once more I'm casting myself as a critic of our status quo. Really, I have no aspirations to be a gadfly, which the dictionary defines as "an irritating, bothersome individual." It takes a philosopher like Socrates to make a genuine gadfly and I'm not qualified to be a philosopher. I even have difficulty spelling it. Moreover, I do not like hemlock. I've never quaffed a goblet of it, but I have a sort of prejudice against strong drink of any kind.
So I am not taking the part I would deliberately choose. I am simply moving into it because of conscience and inner compulsion. I do not consider it particularly daring but I am going to challenge our whole general approach to the life and needs of this latter half of the twentieth century. I am going to affirm that in many respects it is irrelevant, out-
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Whether you like to admit it or not the Enemy has us "punch drunk" and "hanging on the ropes." Some of the combatants who talked a lot bigger fight in college than they put up in the arena have already climbed through the ropes and staggered groggily up the aisle to watch some of us who have no intention of quitting, from a relatively safe distance. If all goes well and we reverse the tide, they will return in time to be in on the final banquet celebrating the victory. I'm not bothered too much by their "voices of concern" echoing from the twenty-fifth row of seats. I'm so busy flailing away that I haven't got time to count the spectators or to try and identify them. That's a good way to get knocked into the next county.
No, I am not ignorant of the fact that my thesis is wholly discounted in some areas of the great southland, notably the two T's--Tennessee and Texas. The information services from these two command centers indicate that we are winning on every sector and it is just a matter of time until every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that "the Church of Christ is right, and instrumental music is wrong." We are the "fastest growing church in America," and last year two Christian Church preachers were converted and are now working with "the Lord's church." A few more crusades, a few more exodus movements, and all that will remain will be little mopping up actions. Then we can move on to the conquest of the Jews, Muslims and Chinese Communists. All of this would be quite encouraging were it not for the credibility gap in "Church of Christ" reporting, and our proven ability to juggle figures, a talent which has landed some of our folks in prison when they applied the gift in the political and economic fields.
I am by nature as optimistic as a high school freshman on her first date, but in this case I am too much of a realist to paint a rosy picture of our prospects if we continue to track along in the safe and comfortable rut we have worn down while the rest of the world zips by on its way to the moon or Venus.
Let me here inject a candid admission that what we do now was once very appropriate and was adopted for that very reason. It was not original with us and we can claim no credit for discovering it. We developed it spontaneously because it satisfied longings and assuaged hunger. That is why the Baptists and Methodists also fell into much the same format. But we now live in a wholly different world. What amused our fathers as science fiction has now been relegated to a scrap-heap of discarded realities by surpassing knowledge. And we face problems of which our sires never dreamed even while riding their wildest nightmares.
If I can revert, like Paul, to the vernacular of the ring, we must either "roll with the punches," or we will be battered into oblivion. We must adapt our strategy to the style of our opponent or we will be sent into orbit, to land in the lap of the timekeeper, to the tune of imaginary birds twittering in our ears, and galaxies of stars floating past our glassy eyes. For quite awhile we have been "beating the air" and mistaking the training dummy which we created and stuffed with straw, with the real foe.
But the one body was not intended to become a cadaver. The one, who at the time had the power over death, tried that on its Author. He swathed Him in grave-clothes, rolled a stone over the door of the sepulcher, and set a watch. But angels
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I can already hear the hue and cry which will be raised over the statement that "the body of Christ must change." Our brethren are notorious for reporting things that others neither thought nor said, so I must take a little precious time to explain. Obviously the body must never sever itself from the head nor cut itself loose from the Spirit. Either of these would bring about its demise, and our argument is that it must live--vibrantly, powerfully, irresistibly. Somehow I think it is fairly well off as long as it holds to the head, and is motivated by the Spirit.
The change must come in our approach to life and the environment in which destiny has placed us. We are still acting and reacting as we did fifty or a hundred years ago. It may or may not be a sin that we do so. It is not a sin to continue to drive a horse and buggy down the highway as do some of my good Amish friends, but it may encourage those who have to follow in automobiles to sin in word and in deed when they cannot get around them.
And yet we cannot ignore the fact that moral issues may be involved. For instance, if a child is choking to death, it might be a sin to take it to the hospital in a horse-drawn vehicle when a high-powered automobile stands ready to perform the task at our bidding. So it is with the institutional church. When life and death are involved it may be criminal to plod along in a "business as usual" attitude when means are available to get the job done and relieve the crisis.
Our hang-up stems from the fact that we are still part of a relatively new movement, although we divided into more factions in a century than did the Roman Catholic Church in a millennium. Of course they only had one pope at a time, with few exceptions. That makes a great difference. We had our inception primarily as a rural movement and we have not outgrown our bucolic background. But our world has shifted to an urban culture, and this makes some of our methods as outmoded as a scythe in a thousand acre wheatfield.
Generally whole families went home with others for dinner and after the visitors had helped with the evening chores, and the youngsters were worn out from playing "Anthony Over," they gathered back at the community center to talk and visit and have another meeting. This provided a good chance to sing lustily together and listen to someone who was able to read. Many of the attendants were illiterate. They needed such outlets.
Since there were few newspapers or telephones, and no radios or television sets, it was a long time between Sundays to go without news, so a midweek meeting was scheduled. Most families lived in small cabins and cramped quarters. They saw no one but their own circle day in and day out. They needed respite from the family, for they often worked, ate and slept together in a couple of rooms. Wednesday evening broke the monotony and the religious structure became the social center. Women exchanged recipes, talked about their gardens and compared statistics on their laying hens. Men discussed crops, farm implements and current events. They also had "religious services." It was a change from the quiet, uneventful life.
Unfortunately, this became a fixed and formal pattern. It is now a wee bit ridiculous in a lot of places. Take for instance, the Wednesday night meeting in a large city. Men drive to work on crowded highways, inching along in
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They do not need the stimulus of the crowd as did our pioneer ancestors, for they are a part of a shoving, pushing mass of humanity all day long. They work in crowded factories, eat in crowded cafeterias, and drive on crowded thoroughfares. They do not need to get the news by word of mouth, because the happenings of the world are brought into kitchen, bedroom and livingroom by radio and television. They need not go and listen to a preacher because he can read, for many of them can read with greater skill than the preacher.
Actually, what men need to do in our day is to stay at home more and become better acquainted with their families. Our fathers were almost constantly with their families. All of them ate together and worked together. Now, in a shift work economy, the family is seldom together as a unit. Instead of drumming up more meetings to further exhaust "the faithful few" we ought to eliminate every such meeting with no relevance to real life and urge members to stay home and do things together as a family. I know of a preacher who attended so many meetings to save others that he lost his own son.
Do not think me sacrilegious when I say that God may be as pleased when fathers stay at home on Wednesday night to help the children with their homework, or aid the boys in making model cars or airplanes, as when they go to midweek services reluctantly, out of a sense of duty or fear, and answer such questions as how many times the word "the" occurs in the first chapter of John. The fact is that we "go to church" so much we haven't time to serve God. There is nothing else quite as meaningless as some of the Wednesday night meetings I have attended--or conducted--when worn out physically and so tired I could hardly move.
I wonder how long men will tolerate being censured and condemned for not coming thrice weekly, by a man whose house is furnished by the very ones whom he lambasts, and which house joins "hard by the synagogue." It isn't too difficult to walk next door and judge those who have to drive twelve miles through a snowstorm to come and sing "O Happy Day," and listen to what you have prepared to hand out to them about "the Patriarchal Age."
Why do we perpetuate that which is so incompatible with our need? There are several reasons. One is that we have come to assign undue importance to what we do inside of so-called "holy places." Too, we have done certain things in a certain way for so long we are afraid to change. Because we have made thrice-weekly attendance a criterion of loyalty, we would prefer to drag ourselves out of our homes and into our cars and go maintain our little rituals, than to have other congregations question our faithfulness, or imply that we have "gone modern."
I know of an elder who moved to a large northern metropolitan area from the south, and who insisted that the brethren have what he called "a prayer meeting" like "we do down home." As he put it, "I'd rather meet on Wednesday night with a dozen loyal souls than to have people think we had forsaken the house of God." He missed the very first
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Do not misinterpret what I am saying. I am not opposed to brethren getting together any time they want to and can serve a real need. They can do so on a regular or sporadic basis, and that is fine. What I am saying is that dragging weary people across a city to demonstrate their faith by a nose count in a "hallowed structure" is not at all a vital fulfillment of our pledge of allegiance to Him!
But with the coming of the fall months and the gathering in of the harvest there came a surcease from rigorous labor and there was time to think life through again in its broader aspects. There was a great round of gospel meetings involving all of the surrounding congregations. Every night there was some place to go. It was made to order for visiting, courting and spiritual growth. There was an air of excitement and intensity in the community. A "big meeting" might last for three weeks. Every day groups of people gathered at the home which was host to the preacher for the day. There were discussions, questions, and even sometime interesting political arguments.
In our humble home the only books were the Bible and the Sears-Roebuck catalog. Our only source of information of the wide world was Grit or Copper's Weekly. Anyone who had been a hundred miles from home was regarded as an authority. We lived and planned for the occasional visit to the county-seat. In such a social structure, the preacher who came from another state by train was regarded as a man of stature and renown.
Now that we are in a complex situation for which we have coined the word technopolis, such an approach is ineffective. Why is it necessary to move two or three hundred people across the city every night for a week in order to get two or three unsaved persons into a house to tell them about the love of Jesus? Each one of the three hundred saved ones will pass ten thousand unsaved ones on the way to the meeting. If each one just "peeled off" out of the traffic pattern and stopped to tell one person about Jesus they would reach more people in one night than they would in a month of "protracted meetings" as we used to call them.
I have attended a good many "gospel meetings" conducted by my brethren the last couple of years. I go to all of them when I can regardless of which clique, clan or circle arranges them. But I confess that I have been utterly astounded at the caliber of the messages. Men from "down home" have been brought in to conduct meetings and have been given a build-up in the "church bulletin" and it is apparent they are wholly oblivious of the problems we face in the city.
It is difficult for me to believe that in this enlightened age so fraught with major crises that men will be imported from a thousand miles away to deliver childish, inane addresses so completely out of tune with life all about us. I watch those brothers and sisters who are paying for it, sit stolidly and sleepily through these exercises in futility, and I have a deep compassion for them. It is no wonder that educators and professional men tell me that the only way they can remain "in the fold" is to tune out a lot of what goes on and become so busy personally they do not have time to think too much about the inutility of the average sermon.
As the "down home type of revival" loses its appeal for even the country folk who have migrated to the big city, there is a frantic effort by the preachers to promote something which will salvage a little of the former influence. I have known them to rent a lavish ballroom in a big
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But outside the ballroom, in the foyer, the lounge, the restaurant and the street, life flows by untouched, untapped and unaffected by the revival which does not revive. And a few blocks away a baby screams out as the fangs of a tawny rat sink into the flesh of its tender cheek, a drunken man grunts and gasps as a switchblade tears into his vitals, and a woman screams obscenities in a room filled with half-crazed addicts. "The land is full of blood, and the city full of injustice; for they say, 'The Lord has forsaken the land, and the Lord does not see.'"
The fact is that the preacher is no longer an authority. In almost every aspect of life which is throbbing through the world's arteries today, the preacher is a layman, if you will pardon my borrowing the expression. He is often ignorant and uninformed about the subjects the world is discussing. He cannot communicate. In our simple rural life he was on a pedestal. His word was law. People who could not read brought him the letters which they received, and he deciphered them and answered them for their recipients. He knew more about what was going on in the world than anyone else except the schoolteacher. Often he was the schoolteacher.
Now the "located minister" may have an inferior education to many in the congregation. Before him may sit men with advanced degrees in sociology, history, linguistics, medicine, science or microbiology. There are brilliant and erudite men and women who are active in the educational or business administrative fields. Some are psychologists, counsellors, or medical doctors, daily working with human beings with problems. They are able to detect the trite and shopworn sermon outlines which enable men to talk without saying anything. And it is all they can do to stay with it. Many of them come on Sunday morning to remember the Lord's death and return home to forget the preacher's platitudes.
1. We need to re-evaluate our meetings to determine if we are simply maintaining a tradition which is no longer meaningful. Holding meetings for the sake of holding meetings, or to secure celestial "brownie points" or "heavenly merit badges" for the number of times you show up, is unworthy of the name we wear or the cause we espouse. Our real task is not to get our brethren into our monasteries but to get them out of them. If you wear soldiers out going to lectures until they are too tired to fight, they become "sitting ducks" for the enemy.
It might be very helpful in our day to turn Wednesday night into "home night" and urge everyone to stay at home and have a family devotional sharing period. In such a setting the time spent at the evening meal might be extended with everyone who is old enough saying a sentence prayer at the table. Each family
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Of course, it is very important to avoid a rigid structure or program for such a family night. It need not always be on Wednesday night. Sometimes another family might be invited to come over and share in it. It is not necessary that the Bible always be read. Occasionally, a stimulating contemporary article, or poem can be read and discussed. Room must be left for spontaneity. The Spirit must not be stifled or smothered.
2. We must play down the idea of church and recapture the idea of a divine family. Of course, the word "church" never did translate ekklesia, the called out ones. Now it has a flavor about it which makes it almost impossible to convey the nature of the body of pilgrims who are sojourning in an alien world. The institutional church is often cold and aloof, preoccupied with forms and structures, interested in its own image.
The term "family" speaks of warmth and acceptance, of understanding and compassion. A good illustration of the difference between church and family is seen in the attitude toward the grievously ill and hospitalized. When announcement is made to the "church" that an aged sister is in the hospital, it hardly registers on the consciousness of those in the pews. They forget all about it before they get to the parking lot. It is taken for granted that "the minister" will keep in contact. He is the "hired hand" to carry the charity of the church and dispense it where needed. He is the front man, the organizational representative. The motto is, "There he is, Lord, send him!"
But when a member of the family is ill, every other member is concerned. Work becomes secondary, recreation is forgotten, and all seek means of ministering to the needs of the stricken one. A canopy of personal love (the only kind there is) is thrown about the sick one, which is probably worth more than all of the drugs prescribed by the doctor. The family would not think of ignoring the one who was ill. They would not go about their routine business and send the chauffeur to the hospital, "because we have him hired to run our errands."
Nothing is more important in a large metropolitan area than to again become "the household of God." Only by this means can we alleviate loneliness and heartache. We must once more realistically enter into a state where "the body should work together as a whole with all the members in sympathetic relationship with one another. So it happens that if one member suffers all the other members suffer with it, and if one member is honored all the members share a common joy." We must come to literally bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.
How can we recover this sense of family in the organizational church of our day? The answer is that we probably cannot do so. Our very structures defeat any such attempt. Our meetinghouses are not family gathering places. No one would think of lining up chairs in straight rows in the living room at home so that most of the children were doomed to see only the back of the heads of the rest of the members of the family. No one would think of putting a raised platform to be mounted by the father or mother while "laying down the law" in matters of discipline.
If we recover the family concept we will have to do it in a family context or environment. Large congregations will find it impossible to function as a household so they will be forced to organize as business concerns or big industrial plants. But there is an answer to their problem. Let them break down into cell groups where the members have a sense of closeness and intimacy. All may gather on the first day of the week at a central location, but they may meet from house to house in their various areas, districts or suburbs. There was but one congregation
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3. The meetinghouses should be put to use to serve real needs. They are tools to get a job done, and they are expensive tools. They can be used as food and clothing depots for distribution of needed commodities to the helpless. Here women volunteers can sort and repair the clothing contributed, and here application can be made for it.
Facilities can be provided for counselling so that distraught adults and young people can find a sympathetic ear into which to pour their problems. There can be tutoring classes for those who otherwise would become school drop-outs, film sessions dealing with alcoholism, dope addiction, and other problems of society. To these the people of the community should have welcome access. In a rural society the meetinghouse was actually the social center, although this would probably have been vehemently denied. It should become a life clinic in our day rather than just a place for the membership to assemble for its own satisfaction-- or dissatisfaction!
4. We must stop the brain-drain and the talent waste by drawing upon the intellectual resources of the whole body of believers. If a justifiable case could be made for one man addressing a group all of the time in a pioneer culture, because he was the only one in the community who could read or who had a meager library, the argument breaks down in an intellectual age such as ours today.
It is unrealistic to have one man speak month in and month out, filtering his thinking, prejudices and predilections to those who are just as perceptive and brilliant. Our gatherings should be devoted to sharing actual experiences and showing how Christ helps us to meet them. This is what happened in the primitive community of believers.
"After their release the apostles went back to their friends and reported to them what the chief priests and elders had said to them."
"Peter, however, made a gesture to them to stop talking while he explained to them how the Lord had brought him out of prison. Then he said, 'Go and tell James and the other brothers what has happened.'"
"When they arrived there they called the church together and reported to them how greatly God had worked with them and how he had opened the door of faith to the gentiles."
"These words produced absolute silence, and they listened to Barnabas and Paul while they gave a detailed account of the signs and wonders which God had worked through them among the gentiles."
Notice that the key to these passages is found in two statements: "tell what has happened," and "how greatly God worked with them." These must all have been interesting sessions. Why should not a returning Vietnam veteran report to the saints on the situations he faced and the conclusions he reached? Why should not college men from the congregation speak on the campus rebellion and the witness for Christ, when they are home for special holidays or at the semester break?
Why should not school administrators or teachers share their thinking about the Christian role in education? Or attorneys and brethren elected to public office discuss our relationship to the powers that be? Why muzzle sociologists in the family who can help us all to understand the problems of population explosion, hunger and poverty? Why not listen to our black brethren describe the feeling of those who grow up to realize that they are regarded as "different" in a country which affirms that all men are created equal? In short, why not take advantage of the great reservoir of knowledge which is tapped and utilized everywhere else on earth except "in the church"?
Of course one reason for our tragic waste is that we have been made victims of a concept which promotes an institu-
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Nothing can be farther from God's design, or more drastically opposed to the very essence of the Way. It is argued by the ignorant that when one is sick he should call for a graduate physician, and when he has car trouble he should secure a factory-trained mechanic. On the same basis it is contended that when he needs an exposition of scripture he must seek a factory-trained theologian who is a professional gospel dispenser or a diplomate didactic.
All of this overlooks one thing. The revelation of God is given to all and all are expected to digest it and witness to it. The word of God is the bread of life and you cannot arrange for another to eat for you. Truth is as the air which expands our lungs and you cannot turn your breathing over to another. The Christian armor is for every soldier to wear. It is not designed to fit only an elite corps. The sword of the Spirit is not a fencing foil, to be waved and swung about by a professional in an entertaining demonstration of dexterity. It is to be gripped by every soldier and employed in constant warfare.
It is not the purpose of God that some saints prepare to be doctors, others mechanics, others nurses, others university teachers, others truck drivers--and others ministers, that is, servants of God. Instead, it is His design that doctors, nurses, teachers, garbage collectors, meter readers, lawyers, farmers, fishermen, mechanics, and truck drivers, prepare to minister. Of course, not all are qualified to minister in the same way, but all can do so in some way!
Now we have to be very realistic about our predicament. We are simply not going to get anywhere by suddenly demanding that professional preachers resign as "the ministers" and allow all of the saints to start in functioning in edification of the one body. In the first place, some ministers are still jealous of their position in spite of the fact that it is wholly unknown to the new covenant scriptures. They resent others intruding upon the "sacred desk" and usurping the functions for which they are paid. They do not realize yet that the very system we have devised usurps the privilege of the other saints.
Moreover, the saints have not been trained to edify one another. Instead, they have been taught not to do so. That is why men with doctoral degrees in vital disciplines are forced to sit and listen to a mere stripling whose inexperience often shows through his homiletics. It would not be to our credit in trying to regain the ideal of God to destroy the faith of many and plunge the congregations into a welter of confusion and disgust. It took Rome a long time to convince the saints that they were not priests of God and it will take us a long time to convince them that they are.
Fortunately we have the example of Paul as a guideline in working with a congregation. At Thessalonica he said that he adopted the dual role of a father and a nursing mother. As the latter he exhibited gentleness and tenderness. Again, he wrote, "You will remember how we dealt with each one of you personally, like a father with 'his own chil-
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The first goal of a nursing mother is to bring her children to the point of weaning. One who would refuse to wean them would be considered eccentric. Good parents are those who work themselves out of a job. They train their children to stand on their own feet and to become independent. That Paul fulfilled his task is evidenced by his words, "Wherefore comfort yourselves together and edify one another, even as ye also do" (1 Thess. 5:11). He wrote to the Romans, "And I myself also am persuaded of you, my brethren, that ye also are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish one another" (Romans 15:14).
In a more modern frame of reference the preacher should be a coach, with the congregation regarded as a team. The coach does not carry the ball. He trains and disciplines each member until he responds automatically to the openings and opportunities which are presented. The coach inspires the players, provides incentive, and makes an aggressive force marching toward a goal. He does not do the running for the whole team.
But what happens if the preacher is successful and trains the whole body of saints until they can carry on the regular activities without the necessity of his presence? Must he leave the congregation and move on? Of course not! He may remain there for life and should be supported by the brethren to do the work of an evangelist. Actually, this is the work of the preacher.
He is not expected to be a pastor or shepherd, but a proclaimer. One cannot evangelize saved persons. The evangel is for the lost. You cannot proclaim the gospel to the saved. You can remind them of what you did proclaim unto them and urge them to live up to its implications in their lives and the commitment they made to it. Preaching the gospel is not for the church but for the world.
The problem is that we have called the evangelists from the field into the church. We have tied them down with detailed administrative work and record-keeping in the packing-shed until they have no time to labor in the vineyard. We condemn them to the thankless task of threshing over and over the same grain. Let the preachers become recruiting agents and take them off of "kitchen police" duty.
If it is argued that this will require a complete tactical change as to the nature of the ekklesia, the argument is correct. It will, but we must someday choose whether we can afford to continue interminably as we are or become what God intended for us to be.
It is rather ridiculous to follow a system of force-feeding babies who are never allowed to exercise and have no intention of ever growing up. God never intended for us to tend a perpetual incubator. How long will we continue to lecture enlistees who are never entrusted to use their weapon? We can never fulfill our mission on earth by our present procedure.
We must either change our approach or we will continue to produce inept and helpless brethren who, in spite of their eagerness and sincerity can never defend the faith. We are not so much bringing people to the new birth as we are hatching out birds which will never grow beyond the fledgling or pin-feather stage. Please permit me, in closing, to share with you this lengthy quotation from Alexander Campbell, taken from page 77 of The Christian Baptist. It was very unpopular when first written and the passage of time has not increased its popularity.
"This everlasting sermonizing! What good is in it? It resembles nothing that is rational in all the compass of thought. A. B. professes to teach arithmetic; he gets a class of forty boys from 12 to 15 years old, we shall say. He tells them to meet once a week and he will give them a lecture or a sermon on some important point in this useful science.
The first day he lectures on the cube root for an hour. They sit bookless and thoughtless, heedless, and, perhaps, often drowsy, while he harangues them. He blesses them and sends them home, toreturn a week hence. They meet. His text is arithmetical progression. He preaches an hour, dismisses as usual. The third day of the meeting up comes vulgar fractions: the fourth, rule of three; the fifth, addition; the sixth, notation; the seventh, cube root again.
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Now in this way, I hesitate not to say, he might proceed seven years and not finish one accountant. Who ever thought that a science or art could be taught this way? And yet this is the only way, I may say, universally adopted of teaching the Christian religion. And so it is that many men have sat under the sound of the gospel (as they call it) for forty years, that cannot expound one chapter in the whole New Testament. And yet these same Christians would think it just to prosecute by civil law that teacher who would keep their sons four or five years at English grammar or arithmetic, and receive their money, and yet not one of their sons be able to expound one rule in syntax or arithmetic.
They pay the parson--they are of maturer minds than their children, and they have been longer under his tuition, and yet they will excuse both the parson and themselves for knowing just as little, if not less of the New Testament, than their striplings know of grammar or arithmetic...
They can never be taught the Christian religion in the way of sermonizing. Public speeches may be very useful on many occasions; but to teach a church the doctrine of Christ, and to cause them to understand the Holy Scriptures, and to enjoy them, requires a course essentially different from either hearing sermons or learning the catechism."