PRELIMINARY 
 
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 Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church 
 New York City, March 27, 1894 
 
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 The Open 
 
 OR 
 
 Institutional Church 
 League. 
 
 Preliminary Conference, 
 
 HELD IN THE 
 
 Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, 
 New York City, 
 
 MARCH 27, 1894 
 
 " Non ministrari, sed ministrare.' 
 
 Boston : 
 
 The Everett Press Company, 
 47 Franklin Street, 
 
The Call for a Conference. 
 
 Early in March, 1894, the following letter was sent out to a 
 number of individuals and was also printed in some of the lead- 
 ing religious journals : — 
 
 New York, Mar. 6, 1894. 
 
 My Dear Brother: — 
 
 The time seems ripe for an organized advance along the lines of practical 
 church work. A number of churches, having experimented for several years 
 with some of the newer methods, have reached results which encourage us 
 to believe that the burning question " How to reach the masses " is practi- 
 cally solved. What we now need is co-operation and aggressive action on 
 the part of these churches. It has been thought that if a few of the pastors 
 and laymen who are interested in the " Free," " Open-door," or " Institu- 
 tional Church " methods could get together for a conference, much good 
 might result. Possibly a league might be formed for the advancement of 
 new methods. Knowing of your interest in the subject, we take the liberty 
 of asking you to join us in a conference to be held in the Madison Avenue 
 Presbyterian Church, Madison Avenue- and 53d St., New York City, on the 
 27th day of this month, at 10 A. m. The purpose is to devote the day to a 
 free conference, with a public meeting in the evening. 
 
 Believing that you will appreciate the importance of such a gathering, 
 and will do all in your power to assist us, we are 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 Chas. A. Dickinson, 
 
 Pastor Berkeley Temple, Boston. 
 
 Chas. L. Thompson, 
 
 Pastor Madison Avenue Presbyterian 
 Church. 
 
 F. M. North, 
 
 Secretary New York City Church 
 Extension and Missionary Society 
 (Methodist) 
 
PROCEEDINGS. 
 
 Tuesday, March 27, 1894.— Morning Session. 
 
 In pursuance of a call issued by the Rev. C. A. Dickinson, 
 pastor of Berkeley Temple, Boston, the Rev. Chas. L. Thomp- 
 son, pastor of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, New 
 York City, the Rev. F. M. North, Corresponding Secretary of 
 the New York City Church Extension and Missionary Society 
 of the Methodist Episcopal Church, about fifty ministers 
 and laymen met in the chapel of the Madison Avenue Presby- 
 terian Church at 10 a. m. The complete roll of those present 
 during the conference was as follows : — 
 
 ROLL. 
 
 Rev. Chas. A. Dickinson, Berkeley Temple, Boston 
 
 Rev. F. M. North, 
 
 Corresponding Secretary of New York City Church Extension 
 and Missionary Society of the M. E. Church. 
 Rev. C. M. Southgate, 
 
 Pilgrim Congregational Church, Worcester, Mass. 
 Rev. Howard Bliss, Assistant Pastor Plymouth Church, Brooklyn 
 
 Rev. E. R. A. Hiss, Woodlawn M. E. Church, New York City 
 
 Rev. H. B. McCauley, Fifth Ave. Presbyterian Church, Newark, N.J. 
 Rev. S. V. V. Holmes, 
 
 Westminster Presbyterian Church, Buffalo, N. Y. 
 
 Rev. J. Freshman, New York City 
 Rev. E. H. Sherwin, 
 
 Associate Pastor 23d St. Baptist Church, New York City 
 
 Rev. Donald McClaren, Chaplain U. S. Navy, New York City 
 
 Rev. Calvin Derr, First Reformed Church, Spring City, Penn. 
 
 Rev. Geo. W. Cooke, Follen Church, E. Lexington, Mass. 
 
 Rev. A. L. Shear, Congregational, Greenwich, Conn. 
 
6 
 
 Rev. W. C. Stimson, Plymouth Congregational, Providence, R. I 
 
 Rev. G. P. Mains, 
 
 Superintendent Brooklyn Church Society, M. E., Brooklyn 
 Rev. Joseph Pullman, First M. E. Church, Bridgeport, Conn. 
 
 John Spier, Layman, Calvary M. E. Church, New York City 
 
 Miss Etta Montgomery, Mariners' Temple, New York City 
 
 Rev. Chas. F. Hersey, City Missionary, New Bedford, Mass. 
 
 Mr. Henry C. Southworth, 
 
 Madison Ave. Presbyterian Church, New York City 
 Rev. Chas. L. Thompson, 
 
 Madison Ave. Presbyterian Church, New York City 
 Rev. Frank Russell, 
 
 South Congregational Church, Bridgeport, Conn. 
 J. A. Fomer, Christian Israelite Church, New York City 
 
 Rev. Joseph Vance, Presbyterian, Chester, Penn. 
 
 Rev. John L. Scudder, First Congregational Church, Jersey City, N.J. 
 Rev. John L. Campbell, Lexington Ave. Baptist Church, New York City 
 Rev. S. L. Loomis, Belleville Ave. Congregational, Newark, N.J. 
 
 Rev. C. A. Vincent, First Congregational, Sandusky, O. 
 
 Rev. Rufus B. Tobey, Berkeley Temple, Boston 
 
 Rev. John C. Emery, Waverly Congregational Church, Jersey City, N J. 
 Rev. J. G. Snyder, Olivet Chapel, Presbyterian, Brooklyn, N. Y. 
 
 Rev. Asher Anderson, First Congregational Church, Meriden, Conn. 
 Rev. J. C. Thoms, Mariners' Temple, New York City 
 
 Rev. W. M. Paden, 
 
 Holland Memorial Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia 
 Rev. E. L. Fox, East nth St. M. E. Church, New York City 
 
 Rev. Edward Anderson, Danielsonville, Conn. 
 
 Rev. Josiah Strong, New York City 
 
 Rev. Clarence Greely, 
 
 Secretary International Law and Order League 
 Mr. Wm. E. Dodge, New York City 
 
 Rev. J. H. Hoadley, Faith Presbyterian Church, New York City 
 
 Rev. Robt. Barber, jv ew York City 
 
 Rev. James M. Bruce, 
 
 Associate Pastor Judson Memorial Baptist Church, New York City 
 Rev. Horace Porter, Brooklyn 
 
 Rev. James R. Day, Calvary M. E. Church, New York City 
 
The meeting was called to order by Rev. Chas. L. Thomp- 
 son, at whose request Rev. Edward Anderson offered prayer. 
 After reading an appropriate Scripture lesson and, as pastor of 
 the church and one of the signers of the call, extending frater- 
 nal greetings, Rev. Mr. Thompson asked the pleasure of the 
 conference. The Rev. Chas. A. Dickinson was thereupon called 
 to the chair, the Rev. C. A. Vincent was chosen secretary, and 
 the roll was made up. 
 
 The chairman briefly stated his conviction, touching the 
 importance of the convention ; and suggesting that the order 
 for the morning exercises be an informal conference con- 
 cerning methods of work, he called upon the Rev. C. M. South- 
 gate, of the Pilgrim Congregational Church, Worcester, Mass. 
 
 Mr. Southgate described the development of his work during nine years, 
 from a little upstairs school house to a church with a large number of 
 departments which has become a central place of influence to a large com- 
 munity. His plan is never to start a department without some person or 
 group of persons who will make it a special work. The church now 
 embraces in its Sunday school six different departments, from the kinder- 
 garten up to the adult Bible class. There are, besides, three Endeavor 
 societies, industrial classes for girls and boys, gymnasium, men's club, 
 where discussions, semi-political and literary, are conducted, a printing 
 outfit, cadet organization, etc. There are in the building twenty-one rooms. 
 He expects some one to be the head and heart of every one of these forms of 
 work. This he believes to be the mission of the Church of Christ. He finds 
 no difficulty in the matter of financial support. Everything pays for itself 
 now, though the amounts needed for the building and for establishing the 
 work were originally largely provided by one man. The present property 
 is appraised at $120,000. The Sunday school is the largest in the city. The 
 secret of the success lies in the devotion and self-sacrifice of each individual 
 member. 
 
 Rev. Howard Bliss, assistant pastor of Plymouth Congregational Church, 
 Brooklyn, spoke of the many-sided work carried on in the various branches 
 of that church. He emphasized the value of the work among the sailors 
 and lodging-house men. The organization of thirty or forty ladies and gen- 
 
8 
 
 tlemen as Friendly Visitors had proved a remarkable success. This visiting 
 is difficult if it is difficult to be friendly, easy if it is easy to be friendly. He 
 had found the Knights of King Arthur, an order started in Providence by the 
 Rev. Dr. Forbush, a very effective agency among the boys. This society 
 avoids some of the military features of the Boys' Brigade. It is founded 
 upon the principles of reverence, purity, and temperance. 
 
 The Rev. Edward Anderson, of Danielsonville, Conn., represented his 
 efforts to apply broader principles to the work of a typical New England 
 village church. He had moved in the direction of benefiting the community 
 by village improvements, — parks, fountains, free library, etc., — and in 
 securing for the young people opportunities for physical culture. 
 
 The Rev. C. L. Thompson spoke briefly of the development of the Madison 
 Avenue Presbyterian Church as a free church. Two years ago the church 
 was simply marking time — paying preacher, sexton, quartet, etc., and open 
 three hours in the week. He visited Berkeley Temple and gained some ideas 
 and methods. First of all, the church was made a free church — the principle 
 of absolute equality in the house of God was asserted. The church has a 
 beautiful chapel on the east side, in a population which might be described 
 as the sub-middle class. Here various kinds of work are organized. The 
 effort is constantly made to keep the spiritual idea uppermost. 
 
 Rev. Joseph Pullman, of the First Methodist Episcopal Church, Bridge- 
 port, Conn., described the transformation of the church in New Britain 
 where he was formerly pastor, from a small frame structure with rented pews 
 into a beautiful and commodious stone edifice with free sittings. The 
 financial gain was very marked. 
 
 Rev. F. M. North, of New York, spoke briefly of Calvary Methodist 
 Episcopal Church, of which he was the first pastor, where the system of 
 free sittings has obtained from the outset. The present edifice has the 
 largest church auditorium in the city, and the income from voluntary offer- 
 ings is over eighteen thousand dollars per annum. The church has never 
 known, in the ten years' history, a " deficiency collection." 
 
 Rev. C. F. Hersey, of the City Mission, New Bedford, Mass., spoke. He 
 had been formerly connected with Berkeley Temple. In a former charge 
 in the country had been able to turn the country store into a reading-room, 
 and the loungers into readers. Is aiming at institutional methods in connec- 
 tion with his mission work. 
 
 Rev. Rufus B. Tobey, associate pastor of Berkeley Temple, Boston, spoke 
 specially of the relief department of that church. He said that the growth 
 
of the work had been such that while six years ago he had himself been able 
 to do it all, it now requires two clerks, two messengers, two visitors, and a 
 janitor. The people about the church belong to the middle class. In his 
 judgment, as much of the work as possible should be done within the four 
 walls of the church. 
 
 Mr. Henry C. Southworth described the operation of the Offertory 
 Calendar system in the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, of which he 
 is treasurer. 
 
 On motion it was determined that a public utterance should 
 be prepared, and the following were nominated from the floor 
 as a committee for that purpose : C. A. Dickinson, C. L. 
 Thompson, F. M. North, Frank Russell, J. L. Scudder. 
 
 Adjournment was taken at 12.30. 
 
 During the recess a bountiful lunch was served by the ladies 
 of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church. 
 
 Afternoon Session. 
 
 The conference was resumed at 2.15 p.m. 
 
 Rev. S. L. Loomis, of the Belleville Avenue Congregational Church, 
 Newark, N. J., described his plan for interesting the young men of his con- 
 gregation by organizing them into a league and giving them special respon- 
 sibilities in the temporal as well as the spiritual affairs of the church. They 
 have charge of the young men's Bible class, athletics, look after repairs, and 
 raise money for extra expenses. They meet every week for reports, etc. 
 
 Rev. W. C. Stimson, of the Plymouth Congregational Church, of Provi- 
 dence, stated that to reach the men he had established the Plymouth Insti- 
 tute upon the plan of the Berkeley Institute. His aim is to get at the work- 
 ingmen. Uses large posters — thirty or forty — scattered throughout the city, 
 announcing subjects and meetings, and now his church cannot accommodate 
 the congregations. He intends to build a thorough-going institutional 
 church. 
 
 Rev. J. V. B. Holmes, of Westminster Presbyterian Church, Buff alo, spoke 
 confidently of the practicability of the free-pew system. His experience had 
 covered the three classes of churches, — the village, the down-town city, and 
 the rich and fashionable city church. He believes that institutional work is 
 applicable to the church in a village community. He introduced the free- 
 
10 
 
 pew system in the First Presbyterian Church in Washington, and the income 
 was increased one hundred per cent. The same gain obtains in his present 
 church in Buffalo, where the same system is adopted. The plan includes 
 assignment of sittings to regular attendants, but without the idea of rental 
 or distinction based upon a money consideration. The income from pew 
 rents had been $4,500 to $5,000. It is now, by voluntary pledges, nearly 
 $10,000. His people are well satisfied with the plan. 
 
 Rev. Asher Anderson, of the First Congregational Church, Meriden, 
 Conn., expressed strongly his convictions in favor of the free-pew system 
 and of the theory of church work as implied in the institutional methods. 
 
 Rev. C. A. Vincent, of the First Congregational Church, Sandusky, O., 
 briefly described the result of straightforward gospel preaching and careful 
 organization in developing his church from a very inactive condition to 
 vigorous life. The pews are free, all except the rear seats. He lays great 
 stress upon an evangelistic service on Sunday evening. 
 
 Rev. Geo. P. Mains, superintendent of the Methodist Episcopal Church 
 Society of Brooklyn, strongly emphasized the obligation resting upon the 
 church to provide for the religiously neglected population of our large cities. 
 He believed that institutional churches in such cases must be founded upon 
 a broader basis of financial support than is now deemed necessary. He 
 favored large endowments so used as not to pauperize the people. He had 
 hope that Brooklyn might have soon, under Methodist auspices, one of the 
 best-planted and most adequately endowed institutional churches which 
 could be built. 
 
 Rev. J. C. Thorns, of the Mariners' Temple (Baptist), New York, reported 
 great activity in all lines among the foreigners and degraded population who 
 centre about Chatham Square. In his church are coffee places, a cobbler's 
 corner, kitchen and laundry, printing-room, gymnasium, kindergarten, girls' 
 industrial classes, reading-room for men, sewing-rooms, bath-room for 
 women, dispensary. There is some sort of religious service every day in 
 the year. All classes come, Jews, Italians — sometimes seven or eight 
 languages are represented. 
 
 Rev. J. C. Emery, of the Waverly Congregational Church, Jersey City 
 Heights, urged the importance of parish visitation as represented in the 
 results in his own work. At his church he found that it had been for seven 
 years sacrificed to its pulpit. He declared at the outset for free pews, 
 entered at once upon institutional work. Has now a gymnasium, bowling 
 alley, an athletic and literary club, with one condition, that the members 
 
11 
 
 shall form a Bible class, conducted by the pastor, to meet each Sunday. 
 The income was formerly each year $700 or $800 behind. It is now ahead, 
 and a $25,000 mortgage is being paid off. 
 
 Rev. F. M. North stated that in the society he represented the effort was 
 being made to use institutional methods as far as possible. He held that the 
 gospel means ministry. While there is no strictly institutional church 
 among the twenty-four under the society's care, he believed the time for 
 one or perhaps two was near at hand. With but one or two exceptions all 
 these churches have free seats. 
 
 Rev. Ernest L. Fox, of the Eleventh Street Methodist Episcopal Church, 
 New York, spoke of the increasing hold obtained upon a non-church-going 
 community by means of the kindergarten, Boys' Brigade, mothers' meetings, 
 sewing-classes for girls, relief work, etc. In his work the humanitarian side 
 was emphasized, but the real ends were spiritual. 
 
 Rev. J. L. Scudder, of the First Congregational Church of Jersey City, 
 represented the work of the People's Tabernacle. It is almost entirely pre- 
 ventive as distinguished from rescue work. Ninety per cent of the tramps 
 are not convertible. They should in some way pay for what they get. His 
 church is in the midst of very bad surroundings, — saloons, etc. The aim, 
 to provide some substitute for vicious amusements. Started a reading-room, 
 which proved a dead failure. Then he tried the bowling alley. He related 
 how the opposition of his deacons was overcome. The place was crowded 
 in three months. Then were provided billiard and pool tables, and later a 
 first-rate stage. His church is full. There are now a society of Christian 
 Endeavor, two gymnasiums, a skating rink, military drill, a day nursery, kin- 
 dergarten. Articles of clothing are made and sold at low prices to the poor. 
 The church has no endowment, and the great strain is that of raising money 
 to maintain the work. 
 
 Rev. W. M. Paden, of the Holland Memorial Presbyterian Church, Phila- 
 delphia, said that he had found his church already educated in the free 
 system, and it had educated him. It was "free born." It was never in debt. 
 Its present income is $9,000, received from voluntary offerings. 
 
 Rev. Clarence Greeley, secretary of the National Law and Order League, 
 spoke briefly of the relation of the Church to the civic interests of the 
 country. 
 
 Rev. Josiah Strong, secretary of the Evangelical Alliance, expressed his 
 hearty interest in the subject matter of the conference. 
 
12 
 
 On motion the convention proceeded to effect a permanent 
 organization. 
 
 The committee on a public utterance presented through its 
 chairman, Rev. C. A. Dickinson, the platform, which, after 
 one or two slight amendments, was adopted. 
 
 The same committee was appointed to prepare a form of 
 constitution to be presented at a later stage of the meeting. 
 
 A resolution of thanks for the kind hospitality offered to the 
 convention by the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, and 
 especially by the ladies in providing and serving lunch, was 
 unanimously adopted. 
 
 Upon motion Rev. J. L. Scudder addressed the convention 
 at length upon "The Evening Service." 
 
 The Rev. George W. Cooke spoke upon " The Institutional 
 Church in Country Communities," Rev. Howard Bliss upon 
 " The Knights of King Arthur," and Rev. R. B. Tobey upon 
 "Church Ministration." 
 
 The committee on organization presented the following 
 provisional constitution, which was adopted. 
 
 PROVISIONAL CONSTITUTION. 
 
 Article I. — Name. 
 The name of this organization shall be The Open or Institutional Church 
 League. 
 
 Article II. 
 The object of this league shall be to form a bond of union between open 
 or institutional churches, to extend the principles and work for which they 
 stand as expressed in the platform. (See supra). 
 
 Article III. 
 The officers shall be a President, Vice-President, and Secretary (who 
 shall also act as Treasurer). These, with two others, shall constitute an 
 Executive Committee. 
 
13 
 
 Article IV. 
 Any church may be represented by its pastor or pastors, and one or more 
 lay members. Any minister, not a pastor, interested in this work may also 
 become a member of this league. 
 
 Article V. 
 Membership shall consist in the acceptance of this constitution, and the 
 annual payment of one dollar. 
 
 Article VI. 
 The leagues shall meet annually on the last Tuesday of October. 
 
14 
 
 PLATFORM 
 
 Open or Institutional Church League. 
 
15 
 
 ADDRESSES. 
 
 Afternoon Session. 
 
 Address by Rev. J. L. Scudder, D.D. 
 
 Mr. Chairman and Brethren : — 
 
 I could have come here with a written discourse an hour in length, and 
 would have given it to you, but I thought that we had come here to discuss 
 these subjects in an informal way. I will run over the questions I have, and 
 not enlarge upon them — I will leave the audience to do that. I will just 
 run over them, as a water-spider glides over the water; I will just give the 
 points. 
 
 It is increasingly difficult to bring people to church in this age, and it 
 appears to be more and more difficult as the years roll by, both in regard to 
 the evening service and the morning service. I will give you what I believe 
 to be the reasons for this. 
 
 I believe there is a growing spirit of irreverence, inattention to all church 
 work, and a growing spirit of infidelity. Under such circumstances, it 
 becomes more difficult for people to go to church. Let me give you some 
 points. I believe the age of force and threatening has forever passed out 
 of the religious world. Neither do people believe in the authority of the 
 Church as they did. Even Romanists, who have always been most loyal, are 
 beginning to question the authority of their own church, and a great many 
 people today believe that the Church is nothing more than a congregation of 
 individuals, who believe in doing good, and that the cause of the existence 
 of the Church is the affinity which brings these people together. They would 
 join any society, the mission of which is to do good, and hence they unite 
 with the Church. A great many believe in that way. Furthermore, the 
 creeds — the doctrines of our Christianity — are called in question. I do not 
 refer now to the few fundamental doctrines, — the immortal existence of 
 God, and Christ as the atoner, the one that brings men to God. The great 
 mass of Christians you find in churches today, I think, and intelligent men, 
 will not question that statement. People in this age have very little regard 
 for the clergyman's office. If the clergyman, as a man, has the spirit of the 
 
16 
 
 Lord in him, and is filled with love for his fellow-men, he will be respected, 
 never mind his cloth. I believe that is the right basis upon which every 
 man should be respected. I do not think much of the office, as an office, 
 myself. It makes no difference whether a man be a clergyman, or a layman, 
 or a member of the congregation, if he has intelligence, and a love for the 
 Lord Jesus Christ, and for his fellow-men, and is placed within the pulpit 
 to offer the Lord Jesus Christ to his fellow-men. Under such circumstances, 
 the preaching will be powerful, and attract the people, and if it attracts 
 them, will make for the well-being of the community. 
 
 I say we are in a transitional period. This condition of the people affects 
 both morning and evening service, the men and the women, and that condi- 
 tion is affected by the existence of the Sunday newspaper. It has come to 
 stay, we cannot eradicate it, therefore we must look the inevitable in the 
 face. I am glad to see one benefit from the Sunday newspaper. It intro- 
 duces the quality, the element of competition, that we did not have before. 
 Competition is a good thing, even in the Church of God. A man might be a 
 blockhead, a dunce, years ago, and just from the spirit of reverence for his 
 office, he might preach a homily an hour and a half in length, and people 
 would listen to him. The more stupid he was, long years ago, the more the 
 people came to listen to him. Two hundred years ago Scotch people lis- 
 tened to sermons two hours in length. That day is gone ; the average man 
 must believe that the minister has something to say, or he will stay at home 
 and read the Sunday paper, and snap his fingers at the minister's discourse. 
 He would rather stay at home and read the Sunday paper. Under these 
 circumstances, how can we attract the people to the house of God ? 
 
 Many people do not care for two services ; they say, " One service a day 
 is enough. Is there any rule in the Scripture that will compel us to goto the 
 house of God twice a day ? No, if we go to the morning service, and take the 
 children to the Sabbath school, why not have the rest of the day for a social 
 time, for a family time, and read useful books ; what is the use of going to 
 church twice?" A great many cultivated people feel that way. In the 
 up-town churches, where the better classes go, the evening service is a very 
 weak service as a rule. What shall we do with such churches ? 
 
 A good thing would be to shut up those churches, and let those who have 
 superabundant Christianity in them go to make live down-town churches. 
 Labor and capital are drifting further and further away from each other 
 every year. There are two classes of churches, the rich man's church and 
 the poor man's church ; as a rule, the up-town church for the wealthy, the 
 
17 
 
 down-town church for the poor people. The question to discuss now is not 
 how to make the up-town churches a success, it is not a question if they can 
 be made so up town, with the rich people. The poor people will not come 
 up town, where so often they are not wanted. I don't know what to do with 
 such a service. Take the middle-class church, or the lower class of people, — 
 the poor, however, are not necessarily the lower class of people, — how shall 
 we make the evening service interesting to them ? 
 
 In the first place, have a great deal of music, and it must be varied. 
 Variety is not only the spice of life, but of religion. We all like variety, con- 
 sequently we should have as many different kinds of music in the church as 
 possible. Have the solo, the duet, the trio, the quartet, the chorus, and dif- 
 erent instruments of music there, as far as we can. The more of this music 
 we have, the greater variety, the more people do we attract. A great many 
 people go to church to listen to the music. If we can bring them to the 
 church through the music, let us have all the music we can. I believe the 
 greater variety we have in this music, the larger number we shall have at the 
 services. In the meetings of the Salvation Army, they have a great variety. 
 Instead of one man doing all the talking, perhaps, during the evening, thirty 
 or forty will take prominent parts ; not from the congregation, but from 
 the ministering brethren and sisters. There they study the element of 
 variety, and therefore it is that they get the crowds there, competing with 
 the more formal, dignified churches in the down-town districts today. It is a 
 question whether we would better imitate them to a certain extent. 
 
 There is also, competing with the church service in the evening, the Sun- 
 day concert. They have magnificent music at these evening concerts. We 
 cannot stop them ; there is no sin in it. I should like to see this music intro- 
 duced into the Church of God, the gospel of Jesus Christ coupled with it. 
 Can the average church compete with the great concert of the music hall ? 
 It cannot. 
 
 Small competing churches belonging to different denominations must 
 coalesce. They say, " It is ridiculous for us to try to do our work in this 
 small, meagre way." The time will come when they will combine. They 
 will have one man to do the preaching, one to manage the plant, one to 
 secure the funds to operate this church. Everything is done by large cor- 
 porations down town. If you are going to compete with the variety, the 
 excellence of the music at the Sunday concerts, you must have it in your 
 churches, or the people will go the other way. 
 
 In regard to preaching. The minister should be sure not to preach over 
 
18 
 
 half an hour, but a sermon of twenty-five minutes is better. The preaching 
 should be very practical. The preaching should be of such a character 
 that it will take Christianity into every part of human life. If it brings the 
 love of Jesus Christ into every branch of human activity it will be interesting 
 to the people, because they are interested in these various departments of 
 life. I believe the preaching of this age should enter into reform move- 
 ments, political movements. I believe the reason we have secured what we 
 have in New Jersey is because the pulpits there are alive on political ques- 
 tions. Variety is good, and at least we can feel that the pulpit has done its 
 duty. Though I am a clergyman, I am also a citizen ; and as long as I am a 
 citizen, if anything goes wrong I shall strike it from the pulpit ; I have a 
 right to do it ; my people enjoy it. 
 
 Illustrated preaching is good. Do all the illustrated preaching you can. 
 The poorer classes cannot understand the preaching of today. It is not 
 concrete. It is not the method of Jesus Christ, which was very simple; it 
 was conversational preaching. He used illustrations from every branch of 
 life. This illustrative form appears again and again in the New Testament. 
 The illustrations should be progressive. The spirit of God is in us, just as 
 much as it was in the apostles. The spirit of God is in us just as much as in 
 those who wrote the Bible. We have just as much authority, — the Christian 
 Endeavor Society, and the Young Men's Christian Association, — God's 
 spirit is in us, just as much as it was in Peter and Paul. Let the people 
 know that we are progressive, abreast of the age, — that God's spirit is not 
 taken away from the people of this age. Not a bit of it. Progressive, 
 abreast of the age, receptive of all truth, from whatever source that truth 
 comes. But we want open-minded, broad preaching ; in this way the people 
 will listen to us. Many of the people are just as intelligent as the man in the 
 pulpit. 
 
 The preacher should be as original in the pulpit as he can be, and as 
 spicy. There is no reason why the child of God should be stupid. If God 
 has given me wit, let me use it in the pulpit. The revivalists use it. We 
 should be a little more dramatic. We are too dignified in our methods. I 
 am not dramatic in my method, I think a little more of that would be very 
 interesting. I learned a great deal from a man from Boston, a Mr. Roberts, 
 lately, in regard to the presenting of His truth. I believe we shall accom- 
 plish more by being a little dramatic. 
 
 Be free from cant ; people hate it. Let us be perfectly natural, and, 
 lastly, let us be heartily, thoroughly spiritual in all we do, thoroughly evan- 
 
19 
 
 gelistic. As we go more and more into the secular branches of the worki 
 may we feel the necessity of pushing the spiritual to the front, more and 
 more developing practically into the Methodist church. After service, 
 bring the people right up to the front ; bring the people to God. We Con- 
 gregationalists and Presbyterians have forgotten all about that. If God has 
 given you a crowded house, and out of one thousand or fourteen hundred 
 people, half of them are not converted, you are not doing your duty if you 
 don't ask them to come — to come to Christ. I am becoming a revivalist. 
 It is very hard for me. I was brought up in the Congregationalist church- 
 I say, as I have heard my father say, " I was not brought up to revivalists' 
 work, I do not know how to do it." 
 
 Let us be unconventional in our Sunday night meetings; make the people 
 feel as free as they would at a concert. When they come in, before service, 
 why should they not talk in a free, pleasant manner ? Make them feel that 
 the Church is a grand brotherhood. The atmosphere of brotherhood should 
 be in the Church, that has not been there before. We are trying to realize 
 that. I have not time to dwell on that thought now. We should be per- 
 fectly natural, love our fellow-men, and make the people feel that the Church 
 is a home, a grand brotherhood ; that is just what has been said about the 
 Odd Fellow's League. People ought to be linked together in the Church. 
 We must make the people feel that we are in full sympathy with them in 
 every department of life. Make the Church the centre of social life, and it 
 will affect the audiences. 
 
 When I went to Jersey City, there were three hundred and sixty-five mem- 
 bers in the church ; now it is the largest church of our order, but one, and 
 that has eight or ten more members ; however, after our next communion, 
 when we shall receive from one hundred to one hundred and fifty new mem- 
 bers, ours will be the largest church of our order in the city. 
 
 What has produced this? The preaching? No, I don't claim to be 
 much of a preacher. Our work among boys is inducing them to come to 
 Sunday evening service as nothing ever did before. A young man, whose 
 business it is to examine the Sunday schools in the State, came to me while 
 the children were reciting their lesson, and said to me, " It is a very rare 
 occurrence, but I see that there are more boys than women or girls in your 
 Sunday school." I said I had not thought of it before, but on looking 
 around, I saw that it was so. " How do you account for it?" he asked. 
 I said, " After Sunday school, I will take you through the rooms here." At 
 the close of the service, I showed him the gymnasium, the bowling and ten- 
 
20 
 
 pin alleys, the billiard and pool tables, and he said, " I see, you have come 
 in touch with the people." It is an oasis in the desert. They like to 
 come to the oasis, and get away from the desert. The saloon charges 
 forty cents for a game of billiards, we charge twenty ; they charge ten cents 
 for a game of ten pins, we charge five. We took in one hundred and 
 twenty-five members in the last six weeks. They are wearing the steps out 
 — the number that go over them. If God would give us money, we could 
 have an institution there eight stories high, and fill it every night. A young 
 man came to me sometime ago, the first day of the year. He had been in 
 the habit of drinking a good deal. I believe in getting hold of those fellows ; 
 I do it as much as I can, but I have to make my assistant pastor do most 
 of that work. This young man said to me, " I want to see you." " Very 
 well," I said, " I will go with you." He said, " This is the first day of the 
 year. I am so happy I don't know what to do with myself." " Every 
 child of God should be. Are you a child of God ? " He said, " I gave my 
 soul to God yesterday. I am so happy, bowling alleys ain't in it." I prayed 
 with him. From bowling alley to prayer ; the two things go together. I 
 said, " Brother, tell me how this thing came about." He said, " It all came 
 through the bowling alley." That is what some good old saints would like 
 to hear about. He continued, " I was a profligate young fellow, but I knew 
 I could come in here and have fun, and cheaper than the saloon could give. 
 I became acquainted with your young men, touched elbows with them. 
 ' Now, then,' one of them said, 'don't you go to church?' 'No! don't 
 believe in it.' He said, ' Come with me some night.' I drifted into the 
 church through him. I played ten pins with him, was invited to the church. 
 I went, listened to the practical discourse. I went again and again, and the 
 last day of the year I gave my soul to God; through the ten-pin alley, I was 
 brought to Christ." The clerk of my church today is a young man, twenty- 
 six years of age, who, four years ago, scarcely ever went to church. If you 
 came to my church now, you would have to give your letter to him. A large 
 number come from the annex — almost any Sunday night we have from two 
 to three hundred young men. It is a great feeder to the church. It fills up 
 the evening service. It gives good will ; it is doing God's work. The young 
 men say, " We will go to such a church as that." The result is that more 
 than half our audience is composed of young people, Sunday nights. It is 
 not the preaching only, it is not the singing, nor the instrumental music ; it 
 is the touching elbows with them every day in the week, doing anything 
 they want us to do that will lift them up. 
 
21 
 
 We do not insist upon the young men coming into the church or prayer 
 meeting. We say, " You need not be afraid we will run you into the prayer 
 meeting." That goes further than saying, " This must be closed up ; we are 
 going to have prayer meeting, and those who don't want to go to it must go 
 out into the street." We must do things naturally, treat them like men. Lots 
 of them will be converted. This bears on evening service. I have no doubt 
 three or four hundred have been attracted by what we do the other nights 
 of the week. If every church were like this, the churches being scattered all 
 over the city, we would strike the saloon the greatest blow that ever was 
 heard of. When I was in Minneapolis two women from the Women's 
 Christian Temperance Union came to me and said, " Don't you think it 
 would be a good thing to start a prayer meeting in Central Avenue ? " " No, 
 sisters," I said, "that is not the thing for you to do; start an amusement 
 hall, and charge one half what the saloon does." They went out of my 
 house as if they thought I was with the devil. Three years ago Frances 
 Willard wrote me a letter, saying, " I have studied that work ; I believe in it. 
 We all believe in it. We are going to make it a department of the Christian 
 Temperance work." Renounced five years ago, two years later Frances 
 Willard writes, " We adopt this system." The Christian churches will 
 adopt it. I am going to Tarrytown to talk to three or four churches there 
 that will probably adopt it. Smoking, drinking, and dancing are eliminated. 
 
 Address by Rev. Rufus B. Tobey. 
 
 Mr. Chairman and Brethren : — 
 
 I have been asked to speak a few words along the line of church minis- 
 tration. I think it might be a helpful topic here, because by virtue of 
 co-operation we have been able to perfect our work in the city of Boston. 
 
 We saw at the very beginning our difficulty would be that we should not 
 have enough in the way of resources to meet all the demands made upon us, 
 and were at great pains in instituting a series of investigations, to see just 
 where we could place the different cases, which we could not, of ourselves, 
 handle. We felt, at the outset, that we were looked upon with distrust, first by 
 the Associated Charities, and by the regular organizations that dispensed 
 charity and philanthropy in different parts of the city. I found that by 
 working in a quiet way, and by using all the influence we could get from 
 friends in Boston, we were able to touch about every organization in the 
 
22 
 
 city, and today hardly a case can be laid down in our church office that we 
 cannot handle. For instance, if you come tomorrow with the case of a 
 man marked with death from consumption, I can find a Consumptives' 
 Home for him, without money and without price, and he will be received 
 there, and tenderly cared for until he passes away. 
 
 If there is any trouble in a family, through the drinking habits of one or 
 both of the parents, we do not like to break up the family, and separate 
 them entirely, but the man is taken care of in one way, the woman in 
 another, and the children looked out for, until they can be re-united. I have 
 had the pleasure, within two or three days, of bringing together the family 
 of a bright business man who was going down to death from drink, who is 
 now restored to his wife and children, in a happy home. Let me say, in the 
 first place, that we have a set of physicians whose services are always avail- 
 able. If there are cases that cannot go to the hospitals or dispensaries, we 
 can send one of these to the homes. A Roman Catholic lady physician is 
 one of our best workers, standing with us on a broad platform of practical 
 sympathy. 
 
 If a case is peculiar or chronic, or needs hospital treatment, we have no 
 difficulty in getting such into one of the hospitals of the city. 
 
 The idea prevails that in a church like ours we do more in the way of 
 material assistance than in any other way. It is not true. First of all, we 
 secure work whenever we can for those in need. In the second place, there 
 are those who need to be tided over crises, and by watching these people, 
 and finding out when their need is most imminent, we can help them. They 
 come, by and by, to a position of self-support. In scores of instances, there 
 are cases where people have certain rights. A lady living near our church 
 came and confessed that she needed fuel. It was the first time she had 
 needed assistance. She said, " I have a pension claim pending." I said, 
 " Perhaps we can push that." With the assistance at hand we succeeded in 
 getting the pension granted, and not long after I met her as she was 
 about to deposit six or seven hundred dollars in the bank, and she had her 
 pension quarterly, beside. There are many other instances where we have 
 been able to secure rights for people. One young man was being kept out 
 of his portion of his father's estate — $15,000. No lawyer would take the case 
 without a large fee. We found a lawyer whom we interested in the matter, 
 and he succeeded in winning the case and charged the ordinary lawyer's fee. 
 
 A guardian needs to be appointed for a child, or for an insane soldier, 
 who is squandering his money. I am now guardian of two veterans, one old 
 
23 
 
 enough to be my grandfather. I am also the guardian of twelve children. 
 One girl, fifteen years old, is in a house of ill fame. She is under the age of 
 consent in Massachusetts, but her parents have tried in vain to get her out. 
 I am positive that I shall secure her, and take her back to her parents. We 
 took the case once of a soldier's widow and two children on the point of 
 being pauperized. I happened, about the same time, to enter the office of 
 the president of a charitable organization, and on incidentally telling the 
 secretary that I had been compelled to place the family in the hands of the 
 Overseers of the Poor, he said, " Cannot we take hold of this case, and carry 
 it along ? " 
 
 Another thing I want to speak about; viz., that with all this comes the 
 personal touch. Here is an illustration of what I mean. We insisted from 
 the outset that even one who bore on his face the evidence of fraud should 
 be bowed out of the church. We have never had any trouble. Last winter 
 we started a work-room and employed one hundred and fifty women, and 
 when we could take on no more my superintendent told me that the women 
 who came, and were dismissed, thanked her for dismissing them so gra- 
 ciously ; they were grateful for a kind word. We try to keep the perfunctory 
 way of doing things out of sight, and introduce personal sympathy and inter- 
 est as much as we can. Finally, we don't have to stir up the people to enter- 
 the church. The current is started early in the week, and with our attractive 
 Sunday services our congregations fill the church. A good proportion of 
 our church members are people who have been persuaded to unite with us 
 because of what may be termed the unique features of the institutional 
 church. 
 
 Address by Rev. H. S. Bliss. 
 
 After speaking of work among the sailors and the lodging-houses, 
 Rev. H. S. Bliss, of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, referred to the 
 relief work of the winter. He spoke as follows : — 
 
 The past winter has offered a remarkable opportunity to our churches to 
 illustrate the central idea of the institutional church, — the spirit of ministra 
 tion, — in meeting some of the serious and pressing problems arising from 
 the prevailing distress. A few words as to what has been done in Plymouth 
 Church along these lines may be helpful. 
 
 We were early convinced that our efforts must extend far beyond the limits 
 
24 
 
 of our own church membership if we were to reach the pressing needs of our 
 community. A band of Friendly Visitors was organized, who were to care 
 for the cases outside these church limits. A definite geographical territory 
 was marked out, within whose boundaries we proposed to do our work of 
 relief. The Bureau of Charities was asked to send to us all of their cases 
 coming within these boundaries. 
 
 Several of our Friendly Visitors were instructed to undertake a systematic 
 visitation from house to house, so that by inquiries at the stores or from the 
 neighbors families in distress, but too proud or despairing or helpless to 
 apply for aid, might be reached. We called these visitors our Pioneer 
 Workers. As these visitors discovered such cases, they reported them to 
 me, and the families were then assigned to our regular visitors. These 
 visitors were instructed to become acquainted with the families, ascertain 
 their needs, and upon the basis of a personal friendship relieve their wants 
 The personal element was emphasized over and over again. For the conven- 
 ience of the visitors, tickets for groceries, coal, meat, and fuel were pro- 
 vided, arrangements for buying these articles at a greatly reduced price 
 having been made with the local dealers. 
 
 At first the work seemed very difficult to our visitors, and the problems 
 presented almost insoluble, but as the idea of ministration through per- 
 sonal friendship took possession of them, their interest and enthusiasm were 
 inspiring. In spite of the fact that great care was exercised in distributing 
 the supplies, there were, of course, several cases of fraud, but the work of 
 the winter has brought a great blessing to those who received and to those 
 who gave. Especial care was taken to avoid duplication of work, and we 
 often consulted with the parish priests, the charitable societies, and the 
 churches in the district. Every week the workers met to discuss these cases 
 and receive and give suggestions. In rare cases rent was paid, never back 
 rent, however ; but it is a pleasure to bear witness to the striking humanity 
 of the landlords in their considerateness for their tenants. Twice during the 
 past season an afternoon tea was given for our newly made friends, and 
 both occasions proved delightful in the extreme. 
 
 Nearly one hundred and fifty families were on our books at different 
 times, although not all were regularly visited. There were about thirty in 
 our band of visitors. The amount of money expended was not above $600 
 or $700, while the stock of love and friendship grew larger and deeper and 
 fuller the more heavily it was drawn upon. 
 
25 
 
 Evening Session. 
 
 Address by Rev. Charles L. Thompson, D.D. 
 
 We are here for a purpose tonight. We are not a large company ; there 
 was, once upon a time, a company of about one hundred and twenty souls, in 
 a room, which was not a large company, but it stood for a large truth, and its 
 influence on the world has been large and cumulative. 
 
 There were thirty or forty ministers met in our chapel today for confer- 
 ence of a very informal sort. It will be right, I think, for me to give, in a 
 few words, the genesis of this movement. 
 
 It occurred to a number of us, apparently simultaneously, in different 
 parts of the country, that it would be a good thing if those of us who are 
 engaged in what is called " Free Church," or " Institutional Church" work 
 might look into each other's faces, might become personally acquainted, 
 might find, under whatever diversities of the work the local conditions might 
 create, what common ground of accepted principle we could stand upon, 
 compare some of our methods and plans, and especially endeavor to form 
 some sort of a simple organization which might bind us together for the 
 future, that my work, your work, might be more effective, more inspiring 
 to others, and might, by the blessing of God, extend principles which we 
 count so important in the future development of the Church . 
 
 Now, let us have a very informal meeting tonight. I believe it is the con- 
 viction of those who were present during the day's congress that work was 
 done for Jesus Christ which will tell on the new century in the adoption of 
 our principles, which will be presented by and by, in the formation of a 
 league, whose incipient meeting we hold tonight, and in such a coming 
 together of our minds and hearts as will send us to our work with new cour- 
 age and new hope. 
 
 I do not believe that it would be easy to exaggerate or explain all the 
 harmony which prevailed in our counsels, from the first coming together 
 from different parts of the country. Working along different lines, repre- 
 senting different methods, but the same ideas, we found it quite easy to 
 come together on a very simple, strong, and, we believe, inspired platform, in 
 an endeavor to re-instate primitive Christianity, as to its simple elements, 
 and the methods by which it might be effected in the work. In the organi- 
 zation of that league this afternoon, it was, of course, the eminently fitting 
 
26 
 
 thing to make the Rev. Charles A. Dickinson, of Berkeley Temple, Boston, 
 the president of the league, of whose work we have heard so much, in whose 
 work we so heartily rejoice. 
 
 I have the pleasure now of presenting to you the first president of the 
 Open or Institutional Church League, the Rev. Dr. Dickinson. 
 
 Address by Rev. Charles A. Dickinson, Boston, Mass. 
 
 My Friends : — 
 
 I feel very grateful for the honor that has been bestowed upon me by my 
 brethren. I do not feel at all worthy of it, and am only willing to accept it 
 because my heart is so thoroughly in this cause that I am ready to do 
 almost anything that will help it on. 
 
 Every great movement has had its day of small things, and every move- 
 ment that has amounted to much of anything, it seems to me, has been at 
 first a movement of slow, yet progressive, advance. There have been in the 
 air, for a great many years, signs of unrest. We have been reminded, in 
 many ways, of the dissatisfaction existing among our laymen and our clergy, 
 concerning the apathy and the apparent inefficiency of the present or old- 
 time church organization. 
 
 A few men have been working along new lines. They have been working 
 as independent experimenters, and I think they have been working under the 
 direction of God. No one man assumes that he has found the whole of the 
 truth, or, in fact, a very large portion of it, but when we meet together, and 
 compare notes, we find that we have all been aiming at one mark, and we 
 have each been able to add something to the knowledge of the others. I do 
 not think that it is my place tonight to take much of your time ; there are 
 so many other good speakers who will interest you that I want to give my 
 time to them. It may possibly be fitting for me to say just a word about the 
 thought that has been deepest in my own mind and heart, and perhaps has 
 been to me the inspiring thought of the work in which I have been personally 
 engaged. 
 
 My conception of the Church of Jesus Christ is based upon my under- 
 standing of the word Emanuel, " God with us." To me, the miracle Emanuel 
 is a continuous miracle, — the miracle around which swing the destinies of 
 the human race. The miracle began with the incarnation, when God took 
 possession of a human form, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. 
 
27 
 
 The second stage of the miracle is now being developed, through what is 
 called the new birth, or regeneration. When God takes possession of your 
 heart, and my heart, and fills us with his spirit, we become, in a sense, a part 
 of the Emanuel. The miracle is going on and will continue to go on, until 
 we shall come, finally, to the third or culminating stage. Some people call 
 it the millennium, some the second coming of Christ; whatever we call it, it 
 is a glorious consummation, which comes when God himself shall have taken 
 possession of all humanity, and shall be incarnate in every human heart. 
 This is a part of my theology, and it is the doctrine upon which I have based 
 my own conception of the Church and its functions. Living, as I believe we 
 are now, in the second stage of this miracle, we turn to the gospels and find 
 many evidences of the truth that we are a part of the body of Jesus Christ. 
 " Know ye not," says Paul, " that ye are the body of the Lord Jesus Christ?" 
 How he enlarges upon this truth that Christians, in the aggregate, are the 
 body of the Lord ! 
 
 Perhaps I understand his words more literally than many people do. 
 The Church, as Christ's body, should furnish the material environment 
 through which his spirit can be expressed to the age in which it exists. Out 
 of this thought grow a great many others ; I will not detain you with them 
 tonight. A single question occurs to me, "What is this spirit of Jesus 
 Christ which is to be expressed through his Church ? " I have studied his life 
 in Paul's writings, and I find that from the beginning to the end of the New 
 Testament it is declared again and again that Jesus Christ went about doing 
 good; that he came, not to be ministered unto, but to minister; that from 
 Bethlehem to Calvary his work was one of continuous, outreaching, self- 
 denying, tireless, patient ministration. Ministration ! A single word that 
 sums up to me the great mission of Jesus of Nazareth. Ministering love, 
 expressing itself in every possible way, — healing the sick, feeding the 
 hungry, comforting the mourner, sympathizing with happy ones at the feast; 
 ministering in every possible way to human hearts and human needs, that he 
 might save man from sin and death. 
 
 His Church then, it seems to me, should be filled with, and characterized 
 by, this same spirit of ministration, and as I understand the institutional 
 churches, which have been represented here today, that single word 
 expresses our mission. 
 
 Ministration through adaptation. Study the life of Christ and you will 
 find that he was constantly adapting himself to his surroundings. With the 
 fisherman he talked about boats, the sea, and the nets ; with the farmer h e 
 
28 
 
 talked about sowing the seed; wherever he went, he adapted his figures, his 
 methods of speech, to the special capacity of the people whom he desired to 
 reach. Adaptation, it seems to me, should be the great principle upon which 
 the modern church should work. For that reason, we have come together, 
 forty or fifty of us, each one representing an institutional church, yet each 
 doing his work a little differently from his neighbor. That, to my mind, is 
 the secret of the power of the modern church. It aims to study the condi- 
 tions of the field in which God has placed it, and the capacities of those to 
 whom it is to minister, and adapts its methods accordingly. 
 
 You have heard of the old minister who was told that he had a very queer 
 kind of a church in the place where he lived. " I know it," he replied, "but 
 if God is going to have any kind of a church there, he has got to make it out 
 of the people that are there." 
 
 We do not like to criticise old organizations ; we have come together in a 
 constructive spirit; but one of the chief troubles of the old-time organization 
 has been its apparent rigidity — its inflexibility. It has not been willing or 
 able to adapt itself to the change of environment which is constantly going 
 on in a great metropolis like New York. When a church becomes a family 
 church, and the families move away, the church leaders say, "Hadn't we 
 better move, too? " As you enter a certain New England city, you will find, 
 on the hill, in one of the most thickly populated wards, a church standing 
 empty, with locked doors, and yet, I am told by one of the former deacons 
 of that church that there are more people living in the immediate vicinity of 
 that building than ever lived there before, and that some of the houses 
 which, twenty-five years ago, sheltered only five or six people are now afford- 
 ing lodgings for twenty-five or thirty. Why did that church close its doors ? 
 Because it was unable to adapt itself to its new environment. We believe 
 that the church, in order to do its work, and carry out its great mission of 
 ministration, must adjust its methods to meet the new people who have come 
 into such a region as that. That is what we are trying to do in Berkeley 
 Temple, which was once a family church. It dwindled to a small member- 
 ship and they were facing the question, which comes to so many churches , 
 of selling the building, and moving away. Six years ago I went there. We 
 introduced new methods, studied the population in the vicinity, took a can- 
 vass of the district, tried to get at the people along the lines in which we 
 knew they would be interested, and the result is, the building is not large 
 enough now to hold the people who come. Eight to twelve thousand people, 
 each week, pass through our open doors. 
 
29 
 
 Now, you may hear something tonight — I hope you will — about free pews, 
 open doors every day and all day, possibly something about a plurality of 
 Christian workers, a good deal about individual help from every member of 
 the church, but these are merely extraneous conditions of what we believe 
 to be the institutional or open church. One church may use one method, and 
 another, another; the thing which we wish to emphasize here tonight, the 
 thing we desire to impress upon the public, is that we stand upon the basal 
 principle of ministration, in the name of, and for the sake of, Jesus Christ ; 
 that, as churches, we do re-present him to this world in this age, and that 
 whatever our methods or appliances may be, they are but the natural out- 
 growth of the conditions in which we may be placed as individual churches. 
 
 When Christian people get rid of the exclusive idea, — ?ny pew, for my 
 family to sit in ; my preacher, to preach for me and mine; when they get rid 
 of the idea of closed doors six days out of the seven, and twenty hours out of 
 the twenty-four on the seventh day ; when they get rid of the idea that the 
 minister can do all the work, and feel that they must provide him with help, 
 and that the individual members must carry on their shoulders some of his 
 burdens ; when they become inspired with the idea that they are a part of 
 Christ's body, — that they are to look through his eyes, love with his heart, 
 and speak with his lips, — then we shall be on the verge, at least, of the 
 millennium. 
 
 Address by Rev. Dr. Day, of Calvary M. E. Church, New York. 
 
 The hour is so late that I must not attempt a discussion of this question, 
 and yet I cannot resist the impulse to commit myself to the cause. I 
 suppose that, really, the whole matter resolves itself into this : an attempt to 
 get the Christian Church back to Christ, and to have it stand for Christ 
 among men. We often wonder how it wandered so far away from Christ, 
 and how it happens that in so much it stands for so little of Christ. But 
 we are commanded to go back to Christ, not simply by our Lord, but by the 
 multitudes who are about us, crying for our Lord, crying in this wilder- 
 ness of time. We must go to them, because they do not know how to come 
 to us. And, indeed, we have very little for them to come for, and when they 
 come, they are not contented among us. We must do just exactly what our 
 Lord did — go where they are. Go into their neighborhood, and make the 
 
30 
 
 church of such a character that they shall not only find it possible to come 
 into its precincts, but more delighted than to go anywhere else. There is 
 that in the gospel of Jesus Christ that is especially attractive to the heavy- 
 laden of this world. If we can bring that simple gospel to them, they will 
 hear, they will respond, they will be blessed ; but if we bring to them simply 
 our doctrines, our distinctions, our services, our church architecture, so out 
 of all keeping and sympathy with that to which they aspire, and that to which 
 they are accustomed ; if we bring to them intellect simply, discussion, argu- 
 ment, they will not hear us ; they do not want it. But if we bring to them 
 help for heavy-laden hearts ; if we can enter into their human nature with 
 remedies, and if we can give a shoulder under their burdens to lift, and shed 
 a light on their paths to guide, and bring sympathy into their hearts in time 
 of trouble, they will want us, and they will gladly receive us. And this is not 
 peculiar simply to what may be called the masses, but it is true of mankind 
 in every walk of life. Your rich man, your professional man, your busy bus- 
 iness man — they all want a gospel to help. their hearts and to bless their daily 
 lives ; to guide them in practical ethics ; to show them how to fulfil the 
 mission of today J to shed some light upon the profound mystery of this 
 present being, and make interpretations of duty to man. 
 
 There was a time when the discussion of doctrine seemed to entertain the 
 people ; they would go to hear the theological discussion ; they will not do 
 that now. If a man wants a patent, if he wants to know exactly how to 
 empty a church, if he wants to have a reputation for that sort of thing, let 
 him go to work to discuss mere doctrine, and discuss it doctrinally. The 
 people care precious little as to whether the Baptist or the Methodist is 
 right on the question of fore-ordination, or immersion, or close communion. 
 They care very little about the settlement of the question in the Presbyterian 
 church that has been agitating you. They care very little about the distinc- 
 tive doctrines and usages of any church, but, " What have you that will 
 help us, in this age, to bear our burden and meet our obligations; to 
 discharge our office as man to man ; to make our way through this world 
 with some hope of coming to another one that is better by and by?" And 
 the church that preaches that the most, and that preaching in the pulpit that 
 goes closest into that poor, burdened human nature, that sinning human 
 heart, that blind human eye, and gives salvation and gives light, is the 
 church that is going to have power. 
 
 I think the day has past, and will never be recovered, when that old-time 
 church will have any power over the multitudes of men and women of this 
 
31 
 
 world. There will be a certain few, who can pay for it, and can accommo- 
 date themselves in it, who will have their church, with its architecture to 
 their taste, a minister whose oratory is to their taste, a choir with music to 
 their taste, the congregation socially to their liking. There will always 
 be, probably, such people in the world, who will claim to be known and 
 recognized as a church. There will doubtless be this form of Sunday 
 club as long as the world stands, but such people make up a very small 
 proportion of this world ; a very small proportion of this world. The multi- 
 tudes, the thousands, ay, the millions, are of an entirely different character, 
 and they are looking for something entirely different. They want something 
 beside a mere religious society. They want something to enter into their 
 lives, down on to their plane, to lift and help them, and bless them, and they 
 want it done in a natural kind of way, too. They want it in a manly sort of 
 way, but in a natural kind of way. They don't want a minister to stand on 
 stilts. They can never be managed in that way. 
 
 Of course, we have to recognize certain forms of church organization, 
 church service. The minister must be educated, thoughtful, cultivated ; but of 
 all things he must know human nature, and sympathize with human nature, 
 and have the tact of preaching human nature, — talking men's thoughts out 
 loud to themselves and helping them to understand the way, because the 
 preacher himself has gone over the way before ; and then he must associate 
 with men and women of like experiences, and in company with them, by 
 mingling with them in the meeting, hearing them in conversation, listening 
 to them in the prayer and conference rooms, having association with them 
 in a broad, helpful, generous way, much may be done that can never be 
 accomplished in the old way. It can be accomplished upon some higher 
 and broader plane, and I believe that to be the plane of the Berkeley 
 Temple in Boston, the plane of our free churches, the few we have, in this 
 city, the plane that we are seeking to guide people to here tonight in this 
 platform which has been read to you, and by these utterances which have 
 come to us. 
 
 I would not attempt to describe to you the institutional church in all its 
 features ; I think those are things that are going to develop by and by. The 
 thought on my heart is to just make it possible to have the people who 
 come up in the streets and avenues — the thousands and tens of thousands in 
 this great metropolis — to get them to look up to the church as they pass and 
 say, " There, that is my shelter ; that is friendly to me ; that stands for me. 
 It does not simply stand for the man who can ride there in his carriage on 
 
32 
 
 Sunday, and leave a servant to care for it while he walks up the steps 
 and down the aisle to the pew he pays for, to hear a gospel he pays for, but 
 that institution is open to me, it is open to my wife, it is open to my 
 children, and it is open to their children, and we are expected there next 
 Sunday." When every church in this city and every city stands for that, so 
 that the man who goes by on Monday or Tuesday glances in and sees a 
 friend in it, a friendly face looking out of every stone in the wall; sees a 
 kindly hand pointing to heaven in the spire, in the door a real welcome in 
 every panel, and says to himself, " That is for me ; I belong there, I want to 
 go there ! " I tell you the gospel of Jesus Christ will be doing things of 
 which it is barely hinting in these days. That is the thought that must 
 come to the people. It is wonderful how it works where it is attempted. 
 People fear it is not practical; that we cannot make it work; that the rich 
 and poor will not sit down together. That is not true ; it is disputed in dif- 
 ferent parts of this land. My eye looks out every Sabbath where it is 
 disproved ; where the rich and poor meet together, and rejoice together, not 
 on a plane of absolutely free pews. I don't know what is the best method. 
 We use the assignment of pews method. We say, " Give what you can, if 
 only ten cents, nobody will ever question ; if five hundred dollars, give it; it 
 is only what you ought to do, if the Lord has blessed you, or more as the 
 case may be. If you have determined to give it, we will assign you a pew 
 without regard to whether you have given ten cents or ten dollars, or 
 more; we will give you the best seat that is left in the house, and it may be 
 yours every Sabbath, if you will get there in season." It works admirably. 
 The man who drives a baggage wagon on one seat, the wealthy capitalist 
 on the other. It works admirably. Where there is real Christianity in the 
 people, real Christianity in the institution, the people, we feel, will be friendly 
 to it, and will say, " After all, this looks like Jesus of Nazareth." He went 
 where he could get all the people to hear him. They wanted to hear him. 
 Everywhere, upon the mountain, bythe sea, wherever he could go, so that all 
 the people who wanted to hear him might do so, he went. 
 
 I think our churches ought to be on the plan of out-of-doors — as free, as 
 spacious, as great, as though people were under a canopy out-of-doors. I 
 think they ought to have that sense of freedom ; they ought to be large 
 — they ought to be a great deal larger than they are ; this ought to be con- 
 idered a small church ; it is now considered one of the largest in New, 
 York City. Multitudes ought to be hurrying, crowding through the doors, 
 hurrying down the aisles, eager to get a place to hear the gospel of Jesus 
 
33 
 
 Christ, certain that they are not to be trifled with, certain not to have served 
 up to them pieces of mediaevalism, certain not to be treated to rambling 
 speculation on matters inconsequent and useless ; where they are certain 
 that they will be told of the character and love, and the salvation brought by 
 the blessed Lord Jesus Christ ; where they will be shown how to be men 
 and women, shown how to act as men and women, shown how to die, 
 shown how to be pleasant and helpful, how to please one another, how to 
 please the Lord; shown how to take poverty and make it helpful; how to 
 have riches and use them as a true steward should ; how to take disease and 
 bear it in the sight of God ; how even to take death and let it speak volumes 
 to the heart about the Creator. All these great things will come out of the 
 heart that knows them and will come out of the church that is seeking to 
 bless and save mankind. 
 
 Precisely the same thing is true of our preaching. We dislike to sacrifice 
 our reputation of scholarship, exceedingly. We will not give people what 
 they want, but we show them how great is our eloquence, how rich is our 
 culture, how grand is our oratory. We allow ourselves, in this way, to 
 preach right over their heads, and we fail to help them. 
 
 Lyman Beecher, when he spoke in Berkeley Temple, in that Athens of 
 Dr. Dickinson, said that he gave them quotations of Greek and Latin, and 
 discussed science, to let the people know that he understood such things, 
 and then gave them religion red hot. We can imitate Lyman Beecher the 
 first few Sundays, and then give them the gospel to the end, and always. 
 
 This is the direction in which these brethren are seeking to point us to 
 God, — the Church to be the home of the multitude, rich and poor; the 
 preaching within the church to be preaching that will reach heavy-laden 
 hearts, that men and women may be blessed by it, and sent strengthened on 
 their way, the simple preaching of Jesus Christ. We are going to change. 
 We want to be like him. He talked those beatitudes on the Mount. Let us 
 bring the beatitudes into our churches today. 
 
 I would not call them the " People's Churches." I like the idea of calling 
 the church the " Temple." It is grand, and at the same time, according to 
 the modern notion, simple. I never liked the terms " Tabernacle," and 
 " People's Church." If you told me I was one of the " People," I might not 
 feel inclined to go there. The Church should not be simply for the poor 
 man ; I would have something that stands for Jesus Christ, for all men, both 
 rich and poor, and say to the proudest and the richest, " It is for you, as 
 
34 
 
 well as for the man who carries a hod, or works for wage." Let it be the 
 Christ idea. Let him stand forth from it. 
 
 I dare not go further, the hour is so late. I believe these brethren to be 
 on the right lines. May God bless the movement. 
 
 Address by Rev. W. M. Paden, of the Holland Memorial Church, Phila. 
 
 My good friend, Dr. Cattell, who has really a most paternal way about 
 him, used to say, " Brethren, I am splendid on the benediction, just let me off 
 with the benediction." 
 
 If I had a word, it would be that we try to make our church seem very 
 like the Father's house, and we give the prodigal the first place, and we are 
 not hard on the elder brother, and then if he pouts because the prodigal 
 gets the good seat and the coat thrown in, we go out, as the Master did, and 
 say, "Come in! Come in! All these years thou hast been with me, 
 come in!" We try to give both the prodigal and the elder brother 
 the choice. Sometimes the elder brother won't come in, and we try 
 to get the prodigal, then, after the prodigal, we try to get the poor. If a 
 man is poor and has not a cushioned seat during the week, there is the more 
 reason why he should have it on Sunday. The salesgirl who stands up all 
 day during the week should have a fine seat on Sunday, one that is just as 
 good for a dime as the one you pay ten dollars for. If the poor look out 
 through factory windows — dusty and grimy — all the week, they should 
 have stained glass, and see Christ smiling on them on Sunday. If they 
 cannot have a good seat in the Academy of Music to hear the superb music 
 that is given there, we should give them as good music as they would get 
 there. If they cannot meet together in their Father's house, with the 
 prodigal and the elder brother, if the poor man and the landed proprietor, 
 the people with taste and the people without taste, cannot meet together in 
 the Father's house, and throw in together for carrying on the work — this is 
 a matter of conscience entirely — we have not gone back to Go'd. That is 
 where we must all go. If we can get back there, we are going to have a 
 church that is not a mere organization, but an organism, whose head is 
 Christ, whose heart is the Holy Ghost, and all the members of it are tingling 
 with that light, ever-blessed feeling, the touch of the Lord. 
 
35 
 
 Address by Rev. Edward Anderson, D.D. 
 
 In this day, when the speculative is being supplanted by the demonstrative 
 in theology, and people are asking for character rather than belief as a test 
 to church membership, no one is surprised that efforts are being made all 
 along many lines to secure a radical reform among the masses of the people 
 by methods of very practical work. Books almost without number have 
 been written upon ways of carrying moral reform to the "unchurched 
 masses," and of these even novels, from Dr. Holland's " Nicholas Minturn " 
 to Walter Besant's " All Sorts and Conditions of Men." 
 
 Careful investigation has been made of plans adopted by various organ- 
 izations in England, from Toynbee Hall, the Oxford House, and the Teeto- 
 tums, to the Salvation Army, with a view to getting together people of all 
 creeds and of no creed, under some declaration of principles on which all 
 could unite for the uplifting of the people who will not go to church ; so 
 that, if they could not be made Christians, they could at least be brought 
 up toward that high grade of character. In order to do this the preaching 
 of dogma has given way to a plain and simple gospel of ethics; and, with 
 this, instruction in practical handiwork, a careful attention to gymnastics 
 and amusements, — so that the saloon might be eclipsed in all that it 
 offers, — libraries, and reading-rooms have been provided, and all at a 
 moderate rate of cost that would prevent their being looked upon as char- 
 ities. Various methods besides are being adopted for making church 
 services entertaining and attractive to the masses, such as stereopticon 
 lectures and the like. 
 
 And this is being done by an increasingly large number of our Christian 
 churches. The argument for this is in the fact that, however lamentable 
 may be the truth, a very large portion of our people do not go to church or 
 come under religious instruction, and that, so far, all efforts to bring them 
 there have failed. It is hoped that in these ways a bridge may be thrown 
 across the chasm that yawns between our churches and the great " unreached 
 masses," a*nd that, especially, working men and women, homeless and church- 
 less, may be won to Christian men and women who may secure an influence 
 over them for good by private if not by public speech. It is carrying into a 
 practical working the process of " hand-picking," of which so much was said 
 at the Montreal Christian Endeavor Convention, and it is really a resuming 
 of methods introduced by our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 Charles Booth (in his " Life and Labor of the People in London," Vol. I., 
 
36 
 
 Table 19) shows that in East London and Hackney, as estimated by two 
 days taken at random, the church attendance was only about twenty-three 
 per cent of the population, and of London as a whole only twenty-nine per 
 cent. He says (p. 119), " It is difficult to say what part religion takes in the 
 lives of the mass of the people ; it is not easy to define religion for this pur- 
 pose. Comparatively few go to church, but they strike me as very earnest- 
 minded, and not without a religious feeling, even when they say, as I have 
 heard a man say, thinking of the evils which surround him, " If there is a 
 God, he must be a bad one." 
 
 This idea is not confined to the poor and the bad of our cities, but it is 
 gaining in our intelligent communities and among our best-educated and 
 most moral people. I know of men, thoroughly scientific, who say that if 
 the churches will preach Christ and not creeds, and a character in place of 
 a dogma, — much of it long since discarded by the intelligent masses, — and 
 will open the churches to practical work in place of a bare theory, we will 
 find our churches crowded and our membership doubled. 
 
 Where people are taught by the Christian church to be better, and are 
 helped to be better, they are won to that church. It may be through such a 
 work as Booth gives in the book from which I have already quoted, in his 
 "Bill of Fare at Toynbee Hall for a single week, taken haphazard" (pp. 
 122-124), or it may be in free lunches, or cheap lunches for teamsters, and 
 where, of each person who partakes of them, it may be said, as one of my 
 friends jokingly said of a certain clergyman, " We set meat before him, and 
 he did eat ;" but it is the heart shown in the real Christliness ; it is the mak- 
 ing Christ and Christianity the same in a simple humanity. 
 
 This Christliness in humanity is a very practical Christianity that people 
 are demanding in this day, when they are realizing that religion is for this 
 life, while the doctrines of the Church have been teaching that it was always 
 for another and a future life. They see the demand of religion for character 
 now, and remind you that even the Christ never tore apart the veil that shuts 
 out our view of what is to come after death. They realize that back of all 
 Christianity is Christ on earth, and that all he taught was of a character for 
 the day-by-day life, and a complete trust for all that is to be beyond, and 
 which will take shape according to what that character has been. 
 
 The great masses outside the Church ask, "What is the Christ?" That 
 question was asked of Jesus himself by the disciples of John, and the picture 
 he gave was a heart-painting, — "Go tell John the things which ye do see 
 and hear ; the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, 
 
87 
 
 and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have good tidings 
 preached to them." This was echoed in the act at the close of his ministry, 
 when he washed his disciples' feet, and said to them, " I have given you an 
 example, that ye should do as I have done to you." Here, then, is the ulti- 
 mate of the Christ teaching, and so of his gospel, — humanity. 
 
 "Every tree," Christ said, "which bringeth not forth good fruit is cut 
 down and cast into the fire." " Many shall say to me in that day, Lord, 
 Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name, and in thy name have cast out 
 devils, and in thy name done many wonderful works ? And then I will pro- 
 fess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity." 
 " Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom 
 of heaven; but he that doeth the will of tny Father." Plain words, those; 
 and the people whom we want to reach have heard them, and are waiting 
 for the Church to make a creed of them. 
 
 But what is this required work, and what is the will of God that Jesus 
 demonstrated and taught ? The great intelligent unchurched masses have 
 caught the idea from him ; it is the establishing of what he constantly called 
 " the kingdom of heaven." And what is that kingdom? He lays down but 
 one law for it, — a law for this world, but which he said would hold to the 
 next, — and that law is brotherhood. " One is your Father," he said, " and all 
 ye are brethren." Everything which he taught was bound up in this. From 
 the story of the prodigal, who cast aside his home duties, to the picture of the 
 judgment, where all turned on brotherly acts of feeding the hungry and 
 clothing the naked and other adaptation of helps to needs, he reiterates this 
 law to the exclusion of all besides. "A new commandment I give unto 
 you," he says, "that ye love one another." " By this shall all men know that 
 ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another." And even Paul said, 
 " Love is the fulfilling of the law." People are beginning to demand of the 
 Church a recognition of this fact, as the statement of all the evidence that 
 the Christ proclaimed as essential. 
 
 Our Christian duty to the masses is the showing out this Christ. It is 
 more than of prayer or exhortation, of doctrine and dogma and historic 
 succession. It is more than the solemn face and measured words and repel- 
 lant demeanor. It is the represented Christ as he is. It is to go and tell 
 Johns who preach asceticism the sweet, helpful story of Christian humani- 
 ties. It is the " going home to our friends and telling them how great things 
 the Lord has done for us, and has had compassion on us." 
 
 In Spain and Italy and France and Germany the unbelief that is so 
 
38 
 
 nearly universal is a recoil from the inquisition on the one hand, and from 
 the rigidity of a dogmatic Protestantism on the other. Mr. Robertson says : 
 " If infidelity be rife in this country, we who are servants of God have much 
 to answer for." 
 
 Closing Remarks by Rev. Charles L. Thompson, D.D. 
 
 Let us go back to our work — the ways will be various, but we are united 
 in our aims. Take Christ's words, " The son of man came not to be minis- 
 tered unto, but to minister." In whatever ways we serve, whatever our 
 plans and arrangements, let us try to bring into our own hearts and the 
 hearts of other people the spirit of personal consecration to the work of 
 saving souls and building up the kingdom of Jesus. Let us make that the 
 spirit of our purpose — make everything else subservient to the spirit of 
 personal devotion to the Master. 
 
 We, this afternoon, organized a league for the promulgation of these 
 principles, the carrying out of these ideas, binding our churches together in 
 common association. This league will hold its annual meeting the last 
 Tuesday of October, at place, and according to programs, to be arranged 
 by the executive committee. 
 
 Thank you very kindly for your patience, and I trust that this conference, 
 crowned by this meeting tonight, will bear fruit to the glory of God, and 
 for the prosperity of his kingdom. 
 
39 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Professor Momerie says (" Preaching and Hearing," p. 302) : — " Christ 
 has been but little injured by open,honest opposition. But those who think 
 they are Christians when they are nothing of the kind — the false professors 
 of Christianity — have very nearly been its ruin. Their whole lives are in 
 flagrant contradiction to the fundamental principles of Christianity ; but 
 having chosen to call themselves by his name, they have made his religion 
 appear contemptible and vile. They have crucified the Son of God afresh, 
 and put him to an open shame. 
 
 " ' Face loved of little children long ago, 
 
 Head hated of the priests and rulers then, 
 Say, was not this thy passion, to foreknow 
 In thy death's hour the deeds of Christian men?' " 
 
 It has often been remarked that both counterfeit and genuine nickels go 
 under the same motto, " In God is our trust." So, too, it is with Christians : 
 the good and the bad, the real and the spurious, hold to the same words 
 expressive of love and trust ; but the spurious are even more demonstrative 
 than the real. 
 
 Ah, we need to bear it in mind that what we, the intimates, say and show 
 that Christ is, the people will learn to say that he is, be it truth or lie, and 
 they will be thereby drawn to him or repelled from him. We who call our- 
 selves the Church of Christ need to be sure that we are showing the real 
 Christ in fact, and that we are not thoughtlessly, remorselessly showing for 
 him some man-conceived dogma, or some Satan-contrived abortion, which 
 will hurt lives and hurt the Christ-work as it drives men from him and his 
 Church. 
 
 The Open or Institutional Church. 
 
 From "Christian World." 
 
 Last week we printed the declaration of principles put forth by the 
 Open or Institutional Church League. Briefly, the movement involves a 
 
40 
 
 radical departure from existing methods : it stands for the popularizing 
 of religion with the masses, the keeping the churches open all the time, 
 and the extinction of the unlovely pew-rent system. Churches of this order 
 have already been established, — one in Boston, the Berkeley Temple, of 
 which Rev. Dr. C. A. Dickinson is pastor; one in Jersey City, of which Rev. 
 J. L. Scudder is pastor; and two in this city: the Memorial Church, of 
 which Rev. Dr. Edward Judson is pastor, and the Madison Avenue Presby- 
 terian Church, Rev. C. L. Thompson, D.D., minister, — but not until now 
 has the movement dropped its sporadic character and assumed definite 
 organization, or rather an organism evolved from a germinal principle. 
 
 We have presented two or three salient points of the new movement, 
 but more remains to be said. While most of our churches are devoted to 
 ministering to the spiritual nature exclusively, and that twice on a Sunday 
 plus a mid-week service, the institutional church seeks to reach not only 
 the spiritual, but the physical, intellectual, and social nature of man. It 
 therefore "seeks to become the centre and source of all beneficent and 
 philanthropic effort, and to take the leading part in every movement which 
 has for its end the alleviation of human suffering, the elevation of man, and 
 the betterment of the world." It would sanctify all means for improving 
 man's condition, for bringing him to Christ and keeping him there, and so 
 far as possible would abolish the distinction between the religious and 
 the secular. 
 
 Concretely this means not Sunday churches only, but churches open 
 every day in the week; free seats — no classified pew rents; provision for 
 healthful amusement and recreation which will remove any temptation on 
 the part of the young to find their way to the bowling alley or to a game of 
 billiards through the liquor saloon; cleanliness; reading-rooms, libraries 
 and means for social intercourse. The institutional church takes not one 
 side of a man, but all sides; it takes man as God created him, with " body, 
 soul, and spirit," and seeks to bring them all under subjection to the divine 
 will while yet aiming to secure for them that training which shall bring each 
 as near as may be to its ideal perfection. 
 
 As we have said, the institutional church seeks to become the source and 
 centre of all beneficent and philanthropic effort ; but this means a very 
 great deal. It means, so far as possible, the alleviation of all suffering. It 
 means that men and women and children are not to starve, not to be without 
 suitable clothing, are not to live in uncleanliness, are not to want fuel or 
 light, are not to be sick unattended, without the physician's help and needful 
 
41 
 
 medicines. In short, it means that there is not a necessity — we do not say 
 a luxury — which is not to be supplied. Where one cannot supply it for 
 himself the church supplies it for him. Hence in the city it means kindergar- 
 tens for the children of the poor ; it means Christian education with the home 
 atmosphere for children of the poor up to ten years of age ; it means day 
 nurseries, — the creche, — where mothers who go out to work may leave their 
 children, knowing their education and care and amusement as well will be 
 provided for. 
 
 From the nature of the case this movement cannot take the form of an 
 arbitrarily governing organization where the churches are directed along 
 certain rigid lines. That is not attempted. What is endeavored to be 
 accomplished is the grafting of these features upon churches now without 
 them, and that can utilize them wholly or in part, that the work of the church 
 may be given its fullest efficiency, its deepest significance. Who will not 
 bid God-speed to such a work ? There is no question that thousands of our 
 churches are suffering from dry-rot. There are Sunday churches devoted 
 to the sermon, earnest and polished it may be, to artistic singing and the 
 proprieties three hours a week — that is all there is to it; during the remain 
 ing one hundred and sixty-five hours the members come and go as they 
 please, but they never disturb the church and the church never disturbs 
 them. We do not say this of all or of a majority of the churches, but we do 
 affirm it to be true of thousands of them ; they are cold, costly religious 
 parlors or club-houses which serve no earthly or heavenly purpose save for 
 three hours on one day in the week. 
 
 We heartily rejoice to record this latter-day movement of the always-open 
 institutional church, with its concern for the whole man, with its practical 
 application of Christianity to every phase of human life. We believe the 
 theory and underlying principles of this organism to be right and in accord 
 with the mind of Christ. Varying its features according to local needs we 
 do not see why this institutional organism is not adapted to churches in the 
 country and town as well as in the city ; but its especial, its fullest applica- 
 tion is undoubtedly to be found in the more densely populated cities and 
 towns. This movement begun and well under way may well awaken the 
 attention of thoughtful men of the ministry and laity throughout the country. 
 It cannot be that the present status of our churches is all that is to be 
 desired or that is possible. Nor can it be successfully maintained that our 
 churches, conducted in the main as they were a hundred years ago, do not 
 need a closer adjustment to the times and methods of today, to the changed 
 
42 
 
 conditions of our latter-day civilization. Why should there not be advance 
 in the right direction ? With all the promising activities seen in our 
 churches today it is to be feared too many of them do not rise to their 
 opportunities, while vast numbers fail to meet the demands which society 
 today, with all its turbulence, its wild unrest, its temptations, makes upon 
 them. Why not reach forth to something better ? 
 
 Spirituality and the Institutional Church. 
 
 BY THE REV. WILLIAM CROSS MERRILL. 
 From " The Outlook." 
 
 At the close of a sermon on applied Christianity the writer was met by a 
 distinguished divine of the congregation with words of generous approval, 
 yet with the mild demurrer: "Is there not danger that this institutional 
 work will weaken the spiritual life of the Church ? " In editing, for a Cali- 
 fornia paper, an article touching " The Church and the Kingdom of God," 
 by Dr. Goodwin, of Chicago, another clergyman "full of years and honors" 
 arrives at a like conclusion. In expressing his fears, he alludes to the last 
 report of Berkeley Temple, to which the name " institutional " was first 
 given, and says : " This church, with over nine hundred members, has added 
 only fifty-six to its membership on confession of faith during the year." 
 These are but two of the many voices raised in warning or protest in view of 
 the growing demand for a more practical application of the Gospel of Christ. 
 Has the solicitude a basis in reason ? 
 
 In the very nature of the case, from the tremendous difficulties to be over- 
 come by Berkeley Temple, the special pleader would hesitate to take it as an 
 average test of the institutional idea. This, however, is not an attempt to 
 " make out a case," but to communicate information ; and as few churches 
 are likely to meet graver difficulties along this line, it may be well to let this 
 stand as a type. 
 
 The Berkeley Street Church furnishes the history of a long and arduous 
 struggle for survival in a rapidly changing environment. Meanwhile it 
 enjoyed pastoral leadership of exceptional ability, and yet, some eight years 
 ago, it became the deliberate conviction of the ablest judges that the field 
 must be abandoned. To some church about to surrender its field of labor, 
 it may be of interest to compare the last six years of the " Berkeley Street 
 
43 
 
 Church " with the first six years of its institutional work as " Berkeley 
 Temple." The table gives the year, membership, additions by conversion, 
 percentage of gain by conversion, and gain over all losses by letter and con- 
 version : — 
 
 BERKELEY STREET CHURCH, 1882-1887. 
 
 Percentage of 
 Percentage net gain by 
 
 Received on of gain on letter and 
 
 Year. Members. confession. confession. confession. 
 
 1882 604 16 2.65 2.45 
 
 1883 598 2 .33 (I.OO)IOSS. 
 
 1884 595 15 2.52 I.51 
 
 1885 597 7 1. 17 .33 
 
 1886 597 17 2.88 .83 
 
 1887 605 12 1.98 .50 
 
 Totals n-49 4-^5 
 
 BERKELEY TEMPLE, 1888-1893. 
 
 188S 590 26 4.41 14.40 
 
 1889 597 31 5.19 12.56 
 
 1890 711 66 9.28 13.22 
 
 1891 812 62 776 12.32 
 
 1892 894 52 5.82 9.39 
 
 1893 957 5* 5-39 6.45 
 
 Totals 37.85 68.34 
 
 This is the comparison of a church with itself under old and new methods of 
 activity. As Berkeley Temple, working under the divine injunction, " Go ye 
 out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my 
 house may be full," its accessions on confession are more than threefold, 
 and its total net gain is almost fifteen-fold. Compare, now, this institution 
 with four prominent Boston churches during the same period. The statistics 
 for 1893 are not yet at hand; but let the five years 1888-1892 suffice. Let 
 the Old South and Park Street represent the ordinary line of work, and 
 Union and Phillips the expressly evangelistic methods. How have these 
 four churches prospered during this period of Berkeley Temple's probation ? 
 For economy of space we will give only the total percentages of gain for the 
 five years on confession, and total percentages of net gain by confession and 
 letter : — 
 
 Percentage of Percentage of total 
 
 gain on net gain by 
 
 confession. confession and letter. 
 
 1888-1892 — Berkeley Temple 32.46 61.89 
 
 Phillips 21.47 40 
 
 " " Union 20.95 22 -57 
 
 " " Old South 9.63 21.17 
 
 " " Park Street 9.34 (3-14) loss- 
 
44 
 
 That we may not seem to confine the comparison to individual churches, 
 let us compare Berkeley Temple with the combined Congregational 
 churches of three cities widely separated, — Boston, Chicago, and San Fran- 
 cisco, — taking as the working church the total membership less absentees. 
 The average percentage of yearly gain on confession during the years 1888- 
 1802 is as follows : — 
 
 Berkeley Temple 8.55 I Chicago . 
 
 San Francisco 8.31 | Boston . 
 
 7.68 
 4.98 
 
 Berkeley Temple has had unusual difficulties to encounter, and yet the test 
 is most favorable to the modern methods of work. Let us take four other 
 institutional churches, widely separated, under more favorable conditions, 
 figuring, as before, the percentage of gain by confession on the basis of 
 membership less absentees. We take the years i887-i892,and the churches: 
 Pilgrim, Worcester; Fourth, Hartford; Tabernacle, Jersey City; Plymouth, 
 Milwaukee, and the combined Congregational churches of the United 
 States, of course not deducting the absentees from the latter. Should that 
 seem just, however, a little less than one per cent would be added (about .93). 
 
 Pilgrim, 
 Worcester. 
 
 1887 
 1888 
 1889 
 1890 
 1891 
 
 1802 
 
 18.54 
 7.86 
 3-83 
 
 5-i5 
 12.38 
 
 375 
 
 Fourth, 
 Hartford. 
 
 2O.83 
 4.87 
 
 IO-75 
 II.56 
 
 9-34 
 947 
 
 Tabernacle, 
 Jersey City. 
 
 l6.8l 
 
 9- 2 3 
 9.19 
 22.01 
 3-84 
 5-71 
 
 Plymouth, United States 
 Milwaukee. combined. 
 
 14.79 
 IO.94 
 
 573 
 5-57 
 8.44 
 1.05 
 
 8.99 
 5-47 
 5-95 
 5-44 
 5-83 
 5.82 
 
 Totals 51.51 66.82 66.79 46.52 37-5° 
 
 Annual average . . 8.58 11. 14 11.13 775 6.25 
 
 Had all the Congregational churches of the United States attained the 
 same average of gain on confession during these six years, with the 
 institutional churches, it would have increased their total by a hundred 
 thousand converts. 
 
 In certain quarters of every city the institutional church has its place. It 
 will not soon, possibly may never, become universal. Dives, in church as 
 elsewhere, will fare sumptuously, and from his own hired pew will nod 
 conscious or unconscious approval to conventional discourse. 
 
 It would seem, however, from the above statistics, that there is large room 
 for work along this line; and when we consider the sad fact that the Congre- 
 gational churches of America, by present methods, add, on the average 
 only about six per cent yearly to their numbers by conversion, it is not diffi- 
 
45 
 
 cult to see where the real danger of spiritual decadence lies. Already, for 
 some years, the cry of young Germany has been, " Away from the Church ! 
 It will do nothing for us." It may be a selfish judgment ; unjust, entirely, 
 it is not. It is sympathy in the concrete that men need, and from the hand 
 that gives they very quickly penetrate to the motive that inspires. 
 
 It is very much to be desired that Christians who look kindly upon this 
 work shall not permit themselves to be prejudiced by the intense utterances 
 of a few men who feel called to be agitators, and perhaps prophets of a 
 revolution speedily to come. As a rule, these churches are showing much 
 good sense in moving along lines of evolution and not revolution. We are 
 bound, in all Christian charity, to accept as the true genius, spiritually, of 
 this forward movement the aim enunciated by one of its most busy pastors : 
 " Every one of these multiple agencies for helping men is held absolutely as 
 a means to a spiritual end." 
 
 It is useless for churches in close contact with the masses to seek to salve 
 their wrongs with the Christian's panacea that the evils of this world will be 
 set right in the world to come. The unregenerate will tell us that, since the 
 same God rules in either world, the certain misery of this casts a shadow on 
 the possible happiness of that, and that, at any rate, they do not propose to 
 wait for it. 
 
46 
 
 MEMBERSHIP. 
 
 Any person can become a member of the Institutional Church 
 League by paying the sum of $1.00 a year. Those desiring to join 
 the league can send their names with the money to Rev. F. M. 
 North, 150 Fifth Ave., New York. Room 16. 
 
i 
 
 w 
 | 
 
This system has been in use four years at 
 Berkeley Temple (Boston), in which the "Insti- 
 tutional Church " movement originated, and is 
 in use in the Madison Avenue Presbyterian 
 Church (New York), in which the first confer- 
 ence of the " Institutional Church League " 
 was held. 
 
 The Offertory Calendar 
 Increases Weekly Offerings 
 From 50% to 100%. { 
 
 The Offertory Calendar is rapidly becoming 
 known as the " ideal system for church collec- 
 tions." It is only a question of a short time 
 when it will be in general use throughout the 
 churches of the country. 
 
 Circular containing full OFFERTORY CALENDAR Co., 
 
 information, free. 47 Franklin Street, 
 
 Sample Calendar, 15c. BOSTON.