We are hearing to-day much about problems, one of the greatest of which is the evangelistic problem. There are those who protest against modern evangelism on the ground that it is not in accordance with the times. But evangelism is in the air. It is no longer in ill-repute.

      Until comparatively recent times, the evangelist was illiterate; to-day he is more often a D. D. or an LL. D. He used to be poorly paid; to-day he is generally far better paid than the average pastor. Once he was more often a freak, wore his hair long, or in some other way distinguished himself with eccentricity; to-day he may be as sane as a Wilbur Chapman or a Dr. Torrey or a W. J. [590] Dawson. In other days he was a ranter; but to-day he may succeed and be perfectly calm and didactic. Evangelism has become popular; if it is made big enough, the newspapers exploit it. It is expected to be successful. This very popularity and familiarity threaten the undoing of evangelism.

      The evangelistic problems of to-day are totally different from those of even ten years ago. The early Moody type of inspirational evangelism is impossible to-day in the average well-organized church. The revival is calculated with the nicety of a game of chess, and it is fast coming to pass that the best manipulator is considered the best evangelist. In olden days, churches were satisfied if there had been great spiritual uplift, even though there had been no great ingathering; but to-day only immediate "results" count. Pastors have a record to make, records to beat, or are going to leave, and the climax of a great revival is necessary to a complete report of the pastorate. So they want a man whose commendation is, that he can work up things quickly and get committals, whatever that may mean.

      The reaction from this somewhat deplorable condition will close the evangelistic doors of every church in America within ten years, unless better evangelistic ideals come into vogue. No other country would permit such folly as many of the features of modern evangelism. One reason for the chasteness of Gypsy Smith's vocabulary is, that one word of slang before any English audience would disqualify him as a preacher of the gospel of Jesus. You may call it conservatism, but if there were similar demands made by the American public, our evangelism would be free from the nauseating Billingsgate which seems to be the stock in trade of so many popular evangelists. There is necessarily a reaction from every form of abnormal evangelism. While the great Methodist Church is the offspring of the great Wesleyan revival, the hysterical excesses of those revival days nearly plunged this country into atheism.

      In the second place, our problem in particular is seven-fold:

      First: In common with others, we have the problem of the amusement-loving age. The public will not tolerate dullness, and the church is at its wit's end to know how to entertain its members. The young people go where they are given a "good time." The idea of worship does not seem to enter their heads. The average pastor, is almost distracted with this problem, and he needs the wise evangelist to meet it. In great union meetings it can be met temporarily, but in individual meetings it is a delicate proposition. The union evangelist is expected to discuss the question of amusements in a somewhat bizarre way, but the evangelist conducting a meeting under the auspices of one church will find that he has discovered the North Pole, if he attempts it.

      Second: There is also the problem of the money-craze age. Revivals are lean during fat times. During times of prosperity the revival breaks out in the Sunday-school, and takes in many of the brothers-in-law, all of which is good;

HERBERT YEUELL.

but it is not until times of adversity that the real sinners of the outside cry out, "What must I do to be saved?" Financial prosperity generally destroys religious conviction. There may be building of churches, and much going to church, for it is purely a social enterprise; but during times of prosperity money, and not the preacher or Christ, is king. The preacher may be sent by his moneyed members to a great convention, but he is not master of his church.

      Third: There is the problem of the materialistic age, with its counter extremes of mysticism and occultism. This form of unbelief is super-refined. We no longer have to meet a coarse Spiritualism, or the despotism of Dowieism, but we have the problem of an exceedingly delicate subjectivism. Materialism and occultism generally go Band in hand. There is the class that believes in nothing which can not be demonstrated to the senses, and there is the class which repudiates every [591] demonstration to the senses. And more and more do we find these two extremes forming the majority of almost any assembly.

      Fourth: We have the problem of the relegation of the Bible to a mere book of history and tradition. It is no longer taught in the schools, and the average young people rarely see a Bible, except on the pulpit. It is, therefore, in the popular mind, no longer a book of authority.

      Fifth: We have the problem of religio-scientific teaching. This is found the more often in universities, and seems to delight itself in showing strong antagonism to what it calls the orthodox pulpit. It has filled many of our churches with a doctrinally disgruntled ministry. A defiant challenge is thrown out to the foundations of the faith. Some of these scholars deny a personal God. They believe in the existence of a vague Deity. They account for all spiritual manifestations on grounds of psychology. With them there is no Holy Spirit; it, or He, is merely an emanation, whatever that may be. The idea of a prayer-hearing God is repudiated, a prayer-answering God is an absurdity, and prayer itself useful only because of its pious reflex influence.

      Sixth: Another problem is that of the impudently contemptuous attitude of certain of the secular press toward anything that bears the name of orthodoxy. To be popular with this class, one must be practically an atheist, parading as a priest. The orthodox preacher is too commonplace to be noticed. It delights in quoting the so-called scholars in repudiating all the great doctrines of the Bible.

      Seventh: Our greatest problem, however, as a people, is the union meeting. There are vast union meetings that are only union in name. They are rather huge disintegrating machines, breaking down all loyalty to churches; and while their influence, for the time being, is seen in every possible moral reform and a general arousement of religious feeling, yet the conclusions of the average union evangelist are so vague, and his efforts to appear broad and unsectarian so evident, that the permanent results of great union meetings are seen in the destruction of doctrinal conviction. It is well that creeds and human formulas should be destroyed, but most of these union evangelists are men of creeds and human formulas, and strongly believe in the tenets of their churches. Still, their preaching is of such a character that people generally get the idea that one church is about as good as another, and that all doctrines, whether credal or Biblical, are unnecessary to salvation, and that if they only "believe" and lead "a good life," God requires no more of them. They make poor church-members if they ever join a church. Statistics show that, in the majority of cases, they take these evangelists at their word. The fact that our own people unite in these great efforts makes it necessary for them to drop their plea for the time being, and in their effort to show their Christian union spirit, they will go often to the extent of sacrificing the doctrines associated with their plea, and when they return to their own work again they have lost the sense of the distinctiveness of the plea of the Disciples of Christ. The result is, that when one of our own evangelists comes to conduct a series of meetings, he is entertained with a recital of the eccentricities and the abnormalities of the great sweeping revival, and is advised to conduct his meetings on the same plan.

      How meet the problem?

      First, by magnifying the dignity of our plea. We are a distinctive people. We are not a sect. We are often sectarian, but our great movement is not therefore a sectarian one. We are not a disappearing brotherhood, and never can be as long as the world is yet to be saved. Whatever may be the psychology of the times, the consensus of scholarship, our position among the sects in Christendom, as long as there is a church bearing a sectarian name, violating the ordinances of baptism and the Lord's Supper, our people will have a mission.

      Second, by conducting our meetings without regard to the customs of others. Our meetings must comport with our plea. In our studies of evangelism, we are often far more concerned as to how Gypsy Smith does, or Billy Sunday fulminates, than as to the manner of the apostle Paul's preaching and the simple methods of the apostles generally. There are meetings being held among us that [592] are weak, miniature imitations of union meetings, with the result that in six months hardly 10 per cent. of the converts can be found.

      There is a something about our plea which induces people to walk out in acceptance of it, without the pulling and hauling and general chicanery of a union revival. When our evangelists quit emulating Billy Sunday and Chapman and Torrey and Gypsy Smith, and conduct their own revivals in their own way, they may not count quite so many cards, but they will count more actual conversions, and in six months after the revival the majority of the converts will still be found.

      Third, by magnifying preaching. The craze for organization in the regular church life brings about a similar craze in revival meetings. Meetings are organized in such a way that certain results are absolutely guaranteed. There must of course be considerable organization where large bodies of people are to be handled, but, in many evangelistic organizations, every worker in the meeting, except the evangelist, is a part of a cunningly devised machine. All individuality is lost. There is an admixture of hustling and meetings and stunts and frantic exhortations and music, all calculated almost to the second, and a hot-house forcing process becomes the vogue. The idea of producing "conviction" is magnified, and every possible means is used to bring about a state of emotion, which passes for conviction, and few evangelists prepare their sermons with a view to convincing the intellect. Indeed, there is a general feeling that intellectual preaching should be discounted. We are developing a type of evangelist that is a travesty on the preacher, and even pastors are beguiled by a mongrel type of preaching into neglecting the proper preparation of their sermons on the grounds that it is not worth while to do anything better.

      The magnifying of preaching will not make less of personal work, but it will give personal work a different tone; it will dignify it. There is a pettiness about much of the personal work done at revivals. A lot of people are held in reserve, and, at a given moment, are hurled with tremendous force into an unduly excited throng, and when they come back they bring with them persons who are neither in a really penitent state nor under real conviction. It is obvious that when the meeting is done, if there has been nothing but this personal touch, that the regular services of the churches will not find these people in attendance. The modern hysteria on the subject of personal work is doing more to belittle preaching and preachers than any other influence. The preacher is nothing. A certain type of personal worker is everything. Stars in the eternal crown are counted on earth in proportion to the number of people dragged out to a front seat, but in the majority of cases I fear there will not only be no stars, but no crown.

      By magnifying preaching I do not mean that the preaching must take on

UNA DELL BERRY.

the tone of mere doctrinal discussion. But the thing that is most magnified is the thing that people respond to quickest. In meetings where I have magnified organization, people responded to that. Where I have magnified conscience to the sacrifice of intellectual teaching, people have responded to a death-bed story. Where I have magnified personal work, they have almost invariably waited for some one to lead them to the front. Wherever I have magnified the gospel of Christ, including the simple steps of entrance into the kingdom, people have responded without organization, without spurious personal work; and I am satisfied from my own experiences, my largest meetings being of that character, that it is not necessary to burden our revivals with a lot of methods more appropriate to the ward politician or the faker.

      W. R. Warren, Centennial secretary, was called for, but declined to speak, except to make an announcement. Wallace Tharp proposed a testimonial tour of Bible lands. Against Mr. Warren's earnest protest, a large number of subscriptions were made for that purpose. [593]

[CCR 590-594]