Social Service Series 
 
 The Churches Outside 
 
 The Church Cpleman 
 
 The Interest of Each 
 Is the Concern of AH 
 
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The Churches Outside 
 The Church 
 
 George W. Coleman 
 
 Chairman Committee of Christian Work 
 Boston Baptist Social Union 
 
 Published for the Social Service Commission of the 
 Northern Baptist Convention 
 
 SHAILER MATHEWS 
 
 Dean of the Divinity School, University of Chicago 
 Chairman of the Editorial Committee 
 
 American Baptist Publication Society 
 
 Philadelphia 
 
 Boston 
 
 St. Louis 
 
 Chicago 
 
Copyright 1910 by 
 A. J. ROWLAND, Secretary 
 
 Published March, 1910 
 
THE CHURCHES OUTSIDE THE 
 
 CHURCH 
 
 Though unconventional, deeply religious. 
 
 Accurately speaking, I suppose there is no such 
 thing as a church outside the churches—the phrase 
 is anomalous. The moment you form a new group 
 exercising functions more or less churchly, you 
 simply have another church. 
 
 It is true, nevertheless, that there has developed 
 in this country recently a variety of Sunday after¬ 
 noon and evening meetings, which, while entirely 
 outside the churches, are characterized by a deeply, 
 though not conventionally, religious spirit. 
 
 It is quite obvious to any fair-minded man who 
 looks upon the restless life of our cities that there 
 are a great many people whom one might naturally 
 expect to find identified with some church interest 
 who are entirely estranged from, or indifferent to, 
 any church. And yet they are men and women of 
 character and intelligence, doing their work in the 
 world, frequently ardent laborers for a better day 
 of one sort or another, and ready to respond to an 
 appeal to their moral and spiritual natures when 
 
 3 
 
4 
 
 Social Service Series 
 
 that appeal is stripped of the forms and usages 
 upon which they have turned their backs. 
 
 Widespread spiritual and social unrest. 
 
 It is equally plain that there is a great spiritual 
 and social unrest among the masses, a thirsting and 
 a hungering after that which satisfies, together with 
 a confirmed unwillingness to seek that satisfaction 
 in the regular places of worship. At the same 
 time, in many of our churches, interest in the 
 Sunday evening service has been steadily declin¬ 
 ing, a fact which would seem to indicate that the 
 source of supply is not being brought into a suffi¬ 
 ciently vital contact with the great need of the 
 community. 
 
 The purpose of this pamphlet is to tell of some of 
 the successful attempts that have been made in this 
 country, outside of the regular channels of church 
 organization, to bring social, moral, and spiritual 
 uplift to those who find it inconvenient or difficult, 
 or who are unwilling, to attend the stated services 
 of the church or synagogue. I say synagogue as 
 well as church, for it has been claimed that eighty 
 per cent, of the young Jews coming to this country 
 very soon cast ofif all allegiance to the synagogue. 
 And it is asserted that the Catholic Church also is 
 distressed over the problem of how to hold the 
 allegiance and active interest of the men of its par¬ 
 ishes. Some of these interesting Sunday audiences 
 outside of the direct life of the churches, and yet 
 
The Churches Outside the Church 
 
 5 
 
 growing more or less directly out of them, appeal 
 alike, and with the same success, to Protestant, 
 Catholic, and Jew. 
 
 Some extra-church gatherings. 
 
 The widespread character of this spiritual dis¬ 
 content, together with the general insufficiency of 
 the regularly established means to reach it, is to¬ 
 kened by the fact that these extra-church, or uncon¬ 
 ventional religious gatherings have sprung up spon¬ 
 taneously, many of them within two or three years, 
 in various parts of the country as widely separated 
 from each other as Portland, Ore., Seattle, Wash., 
 and New York and Boston, with Cincinnati, Ohio, 
 Rochester, New York, and other cities coming in 
 between. 
 
 In many particulars no two of these rather un¬ 
 usual gatherings are alike, though they are all set 
 to minister to the people who do not customarily go 
 to church. Almost without exception they have 
 been markedly successful from the start in attract¬ 
 ing the very people for whom they were intended 
 —crowded houses, and with hundreds turned away, 
 being the normal experience. They have also been 
 successful in avoiding competition with any exist¬ 
 ing church services, and in more than one com¬ 
 munity they have opened the eyes of church people 
 to better ways of conducting an evening service. 
 And, inasmuch as the social gospel is a prominent 
 feature in all of these people’s gatherings, the 
 
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 Social Service Series 
 
 church itself has felt the quickening of the reaction 
 in a very definite way. 
 
 Their springs in the church, nevertheless. 
 
 Notwithstanding the fact that this new movement 
 seems to have planted itself entirely outside of 
 church walls, it is most interesting and inspiring to 
 note that in each case, in so far as I have been able 
 to trace it, all of the four principal gatherings 
 which I shall attempt to describe very briefly owe 
 their inception, their continued direction, and a 
 large part of their support to men who are either 
 active church-workers to-day, or who received their 
 training in religious homes and learned the lesson 
 of serving their fellow-men from godly parents. 
 Of the four men chiefly responsible for the meet¬ 
 ings herein described, one is the son of a minister, 
 one a ministerial educator now having large busi¬ 
 ness interests, one an active Presbyterian pastor, 
 and one a Baptist deacon. 
 
 Let us turn first to that one of our group of 
 meetings which most closely resembles the usual 
 evening church service with just enough difference 
 to make it an entirely new thing in its appeal to the 
 floating population in the downtown district of one 
 of our great cosmopolitan centers. 
 
 I. The way Chicago does it. 
 
 Chicago’s Sunday Evening Club is the way they 
 style it in the breezy city by the great lake. Or- 
 
The Churches Outside the Church 7 
 
 chestra Hall will seat two thousand five hundred, 
 and the Sunday Evening Club fills it, often to over¬ 
 flowing, from October to July. The appeal is to 
 hordes of traveling salesmen and other floating 
 hotel guests, and to large numbers of clerks and 
 stenographers in near-by boarding-houses, and the 
 plan is to give them the best that money can buy in 
 attractive accommodations, inspiring music, and 
 powerful addresses by men of national reputation, 
 without prejudice to creed, and with high recogni¬ 
 tion of the message of a man who has done some¬ 
 thing for the welfare of his fellow-men. 
 
 A needy district. 
 
 Here is what is familiarly known as “ the loop,” a 
 large district including the greatest area for mam¬ 
 moth retail business in this country, a territory 
 crowded with big hotels and great business struc¬ 
 tures, with a large population in its immediate 
 vicinity of people away from their homes—here in 
 this mammonized center the regular church evening 
 service had been practically crowded to the wall, 
 leaving a great company of floaters with little to 
 choose between a Sunday theater, a hotel lobby, 
 or a stuffy six-by-ten boarding-house room. 
 
 The brilliantly lighted auditorium, with its 
 comfortable seats, uplifting music in which all may 
 have a share, and a thrilling message from some 
 great captain of men pointing to the better things 
 of life and setting forth with broad sympathy and 
 
8 
 
 Social Service Series 
 
 wise understanding the fundamentals of religion, 
 could hardly fail to satisfy hungry and ofttimes 
 lonely souls. The character of the service too, 
 consisting of Scripture, prayer, and congregational 
 singing, in every way distinctly Christian, is doubt¬ 
 less what the majority of these people have been 
 used to in their own home surroundings. Moreover, 
 they find the atmosphere of the great gathering 
 not only friendly and homelike, but stimulative of 
 their best selves and a source of inner strength for 
 the week’s tasks that lie ahead of them. This work 
 has been of such power and magnitude as to 
 command the service as speakers of many dis¬ 
 tinguished men. Such men as the following have 
 spoken from the platform: Governor Hughes, of 
 New York; Governor Marshall, of Indiana; Sen¬ 
 ator Beveridge, of Indiana; Senator Gore, of Okla¬ 
 homa; Presidents Schurman, of Cornell University 5 
 Jordan, of Leland Stanford University; Wheeler, 
 of the University of California; Bryan, Franklin 
 College, Indiana (now of Colgate) ; Andrews, of 
 the University of Nebraska; Dr. Newell Dwight 
 Hillis, Sir Wilfred T. Grenfell, Dr. Francis G. Pea¬ 
 body, and John Temple Graves. 
 
 Backed by big business. 
 
 But here, perhaps, is the most uniquely interest¬ 
 ing feature of this most helpful institution. The 
 burden of expense, about fifteen thousand dollars 
 a year, and the responsibility for its management. 
 
The Churches Outside the Church 
 
 9 
 
 lie in the hands of some of the greatest business men 
 of Chicago, many of whom are not specifically con¬ 
 nected with any particular form of church work. 
 They are men who are used to doing business on a 
 vast scale, and so, when they give themselves, as 
 they have done, wholeheartedly to this movement, 
 they insist on the best of everything for the service 
 they are trying to render. 
 
 The leader is Mr. Clifford W. Barnes, formerly 
 president of Illinois College, and now engaged in 
 managing large business interests in Chicago. With 
 his training in the ministry on the one side, and his 
 contact with the leading business men of Chicago 
 on the other, he was just the man both to conceive 
 this novel gathering and to put it through to a suc¬ 
 cessful issue. 
 
 In these few paragraphs it has not been the in¬ 
 tention to give a rounded picture of the Chicago 
 Sunday Evening Club, but just to whet one’s appe¬ 
 tite and to send him to headquarters for a full 
 account of the movement. 
 
 II. Rochester’s experiment; led hy three ministers. 
 
 Next in geographical order, as we turn eastward, 
 as well as next in the natural order of development, 
 let us make a careful scrutiny of the “ People’s Sun¬ 
 day Evening,” an audience which meets every week 
 in the National Theater, Rochester’s largest play¬ 
 house, with seating accommodations for two thou¬ 
 sand. Here we find an active pastor of a rich, up- 
 
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 Social Service Series 
 
 town, aristocratic church in charge, with a sem¬ 
 inary professor a close second, and a minister at 
 large in the city backing up the other two. 
 
 But Rev. Paul Moore Strayer is not only the suc¬ 
 cessful pastor of the splendid Third Presbyterian 
 Church, he is also the regularly appointed delegate 
 of the Ministerial Association to the central council 
 of the trades unions of Rochester, and is generally 
 regarded throughout the city as a warm friend of 
 the working man. Prof. Walter Rauschenbusch is 
 not only a much-beloved professor in the Baptist 
 theological seminary of the city, but also the widely 
 known author of “ Christianity and the Social 
 Crisis,” a book that is very much read to-day by 
 all sorts and conditions of serious-minded men. 
 Rev. Dr. Henry H. Stebbins, a man of great dili¬ 
 gence in all manner of good works, is the third 
 in this group of ministers who are trying to 
 meet the needs of the time with methods adapted 
 thereto. 
 
 Leading citizens co-operating. 
 
 Associated with these leaders on the board of 
 management are a number of the representative 
 men of the city, including a successful manufac¬ 
 turer, the business agent of a labor union, the gen¬ 
 eral manager of one of the leading industries of 
 the city, the editor of a labor journal, two well- 
 known physicians, leading officers in the Chamber 
 of Commerce, the president of the Central Labor 
 
The Churches Outside the Church / / 
 
 Union, the editor of one of the daily newspapers, 
 and others of like standing. 
 
 Mr. Strayer’s church co-operates heartily. Not 
 only does it release its pastor for this series of 
 twenty consecutive Sunday evening meetings, but 
 it also gives the use of its quartette, and through 
 the contributions of its members, provides about 
 one-third of the expenses. The meeting itself, 
 through voluntary collections, raises an average of 
 forty dollars a meeting, the total expense being 
 about one hundred and seventy-five dollars a night. 
 The only salary is for a secretary, who is paid 
 for half of her time, but gives it all. 
 
 Theatrical accompaniments. 
 
 Although prayer and Scripture and hymn-sing¬ 
 ing characterize the service, it has also many of 
 the accompaniments of the theater. The orchestra 
 plays for half an hour, the curtain rises, and there 
 is a constant element of surprise as to what is going 
 to be done next, and how it will be done. Applause 
 is always in order. 
 
 Union labor, both individually and officially, has 
 taken a lively interest in these meetings from their 
 inception, and in some cases trade unions have 
 voted from their treasuries sums of money to 
 assist in carrying on the work. 
 
 The topics discussed by a widely varying list of 
 speakers, including both laymen and clergymen, 
 deal with matters civic and social, as well as 
 
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 Social Service Series 
 
 religious. Such subjects as Socialism, Organized 
 Labor, The Health of the City, Prayer, Education, 
 Playgrounds, indicate the range of interest covered. 
 
 It is to be noticed that this movement in Roches¬ 
 ter, led by three evangelical ministers, is entirely 
 outside of the church in its habitation, its style, 
 and largely such in its membership; yet it never 
 would have existed nor could continue without the 
 aid of those who draw their strength from the 
 church and from that for which the church stands. 
 
 A pronounced success. 
 
 What was begun as an experiment by a few bold 
 spirits who had seen the vision, is now so signally 
 successful that the ministers of the city, the mem¬ 
 bers of the advisory committee, and the people 
 themselves are unanimous in their decision to con¬ 
 tinue and enlarge the work. 
 
 Professor Rauschenbusch says that it was 
 thought at the beginning that the audiences would 
 want attractions,” features in which pleasant en¬ 
 tertainment would be furnished, but they found, on 
 the contrary, that the people were most profoundly 
 interested in strong, vital, earnest discussions that 
 got at the marrow of the solid questions of life. 
 He further says: 
 
 ‘‘ Fully half of our meetings were devoted to 
 discussions of social questions, but in discussing 
 these, we did not feel in the least that we were 
 leaving religion and turning to secular things. 
 
The. Churches Outside the Church 
 
 13 
 
 “ Great moral perspectives were opened by them, 
 and deep religious emotions were stirred by them. 
 To discuss such questions from the point of view 
 of religion, to deal with them as part of the king¬ 
 dom of God on earth, is part and parcel of the 
 religion for which the ‘ People’s Sunday Evening ’ 
 has stood in all that it has done.” 
 
 III. In New York, a church with many unbelievers. 
 
 Continuing on our eastward path, we come to 
 New York City, where we find the oldest and most 
 ultra of the four institutions that have engaged our 
 attention. Here, indeed, is an affair that might, 
 with a considerable degree of accuracy, be char¬ 
 acterized as “ a church outside of the churches,” 
 though this would be quickly challenged by those 
 who could not conceive of anything being religious 
 that was entirely without any form of service, save 
 that of music, and which included among its de¬ 
 votees many so-called agnostics, and even would-be 
 atheists. I use the qualification “ would-be ” not 
 in derision, but because in the last analysis I can¬ 
 not believe that any man in the depths of his heart 
 actually casts out all hope of a God. He may not 
 be able to figure it out intellectually, he may indeed 
 argue against it intellectually, and for the time 
 being he may be in bitter rebellion, but in the long 
 run, under normal conditions, and in the last an¬ 
 alysis it is, as the Bible says, only “ the fool who 
 saith in his heart there is no God,” and I know 
 
14 
 
 Social Service Series 
 
 many a person, willing to be called an atheist by 
 those who are not their betters, who is neither a 
 fool nor an infidel. 
 
 A great spiritual melting-pot. 
 
 But because there are unbelievers devoted to 
 this “ Sunday Evening Meeting at Cooper Union,” 
 let none think that all who attend there are in that 
 class. Every Sunday night, from October to May, 
 the famous auditorium in Cooper Union, which will 
 seat one thousand six hundred, is filled, and often 
 overflowing, with a motley crowd, to which this 
 meeting is as much of a blessing and uplift as a 
 . church service would be to us. Among the com¬ 
 pany will be found almost every variety of type 
 from the East Side, with a sprinkling of those from 
 the middle and upper classes. They represent every 
 degree in the social scale, from the well-to-do, who 
 are interested in people's .movements, to the pros¬ 
 perous, self-respecting clerk, or mechanic, and on 
 down to the ‘‘ hard-up,” out of a job and pretty 
 much out of clothing as well. The men outnumber 
 the women, perhaps ten to one, and appearance 
 would lead one to judge that the Jewish element 
 preponderated over any other. The audience too 
 is manifestly of the younger generation. 
 
 Sunday after Sunday, no matter what the 
 weather, regardless almost of the topic or the 
 speaker, for more than twelve years now, this sig¬ 
 nificant gathering of the plain people for a meeting 
 
The Churches Outside the Church / 5 
 
 of their own has continued with undiminished 
 success. 
 
 Only a part of the whole. 
 
 But it should be said at once that this Sunday 
 evening meeting is but a small part (the church 
 part, as they like to regard it themselves), of a 
 great work carried on all through the week by 
 The People’s Institute, of which Prof. Charles 
 Sprague Smith is the directing head. The Institute 
 takes a direct and influential part in the political and 
 economic affairs of the city and State, always turn¬ 
 ing its strength to the side of justice and decent 
 administration. Its influence has been of no un¬ 
 certain value in supporting Governor Hughes in 
 several of his hard-fought campaigns. 
 
 Its character and scope. 
 
 This Sunday evening meeting is opened with a 
 half-hour of music, instrumental and vocal, with 
 specially selected hymns sung by the entire congre¬ 
 gation. Sometimes one of the up-town churches 
 lends its quartette, and it is greatly appreciated. 
 After a lecture, lasting about an hour, the great 
 audience is given an opportunity to ask the speaker 
 questions. And they never fail to avail themselves 
 of the opportunity. 
 
 Here, again, the subjects considered are all of the 
 most serious character. You would search far and 
 wide among the churches of a Sunday evening to 
 
16 
 
 Social Service Series 
 
 find any more dead-in-earnest set of people than 
 these you find gathered at Cooper Union. There is 
 absolutely nothing planned simply to entertain, ex¬ 
 cept as the miusic delights and charms. 
 
 A mere list of speakers and topics, drawn at 
 random from a few programmes that lie at hand, 
 will suffice to give a fairly accurate idea of the 
 trend and scope of these meetings : 
 
 “ The People’s Church,” Rev. Thomas R. Sheer. 
 
 “ Religion and Conduct,” Rev. Thomas C. Hall, 
 D. D. 
 
 “ The Wages Question,” Hon. Carroll D. Wright. 
 
 “The True Elements of National Greatness,” 
 Pres. J. G. Schurman. 
 
 “ The Religion of an Educated Man,” Dr. 
 Maurice H. Harris. 
 
 “ The Relation of Machinery to Modern Life,” 
 Mr. Gerald Stanley Lee. 
 
 “ How We Should Think of God,” Rev. Lyman 
 Abbott, D. D. 
 
 “ Moral Perplexities of a Transitional Age,” 
 Dean Shailer Mathews. 
 
 “ Justice,” Prof. Charles Zueblin. 
 
 “ Social Service,” Rev. Josiah Strong, D. D. 
 
 “ The Sunny and Seamy Side of Salvation Army 
 Work,” Com. Erederick Booth Tucker. 
 
 “ The Attitude of Judaism Toward Other Re¬ 
 ligions,” Dr. Rudolph Grossman. 
 
 “ Moral Responsibility for One’s Opinions and 
 Their Expression,” Mr. Mornay Williams. 
 
The Churches Outside the Church 
 
 17 
 
 Appeals to all hearts. 
 
 Such is the moral and spiritual appeal these 
 meetings make to all classes irrespective of creed 
 that I have found myself, a dyed-in-the-wool ortho¬ 
 dox man of the church, sitting alongside of Jews 
 and unbelievers, all of us alike thrilled and uplifted 
 by the appeal that was being made to our higher 
 and better selves. Although I am a lover of great 
 preaching, and know where I can get it in New 
 York, I, nevertheless, for my own spiritual ad¬ 
 vantage prefer invariably to go of a Sunday eve¬ 
 ning to this meeting of the plain people in Cooper 
 Union. 
 
 The leader and his supporters. 
 
 But this great work is too well known, and has 
 been too long established, for me to dwell further 
 upon the details. My brief account will suffice to 
 give a suggestion of its character and a hint as to 
 its power. Prof. Charles Sprague Smith, formerly 
 of the faculty of Columbia University, originated 
 it, and has carried it on through all these years. 
 Although the son of a Congregational minister, I 
 do not think he is now active in distinctive church 
 circles, though he enjoys the confidence of all classes 
 of men and women throughout the city. 
 
 Some of the foremost contributors supporting 
 the work of the People’s Institute—the budget, in¬ 
 cluding all the varied departments, requiring about 
 
18 
 
 Social Service Series 
 
 twenty thousand dollars a year—have been, and still 
 are, the strong men of the churches. In some cases 
 they have been unwilling to allow the use of their 
 names, and even after a contributor’s death the 
 family has not cared to let the connection be known. 
 But one multimillionaire, who is frequently bitterly 
 criticized in their open forums, continues his large 
 contributions from year to year, being afraid 
 neither of being misunderstood by his friends in the 
 church, nor by his enemies outside. 
 
 Thus we see that even this institution, so com¬ 
 pletely outside of the church, is led by a Christian 
 man, the son of a minister, and is supported to a 
 large degree by Christian people. 
 
 IV. Boston’s method still different. 
 
 And now, having traveled about as far east as 
 we can in this country, we stop at Boston to learn 
 something of the fourth enterprise in our series, 
 which is perhaps the most interesting of all, inas¬ 
 much as it might be loosely styled, a church outside 
 the churches supported and run by the church. 
 This work in Boston is more like that at the Cooper 
 Union than either the meeting in Chicago or the 
 one in Rochester, and yet it is the farthest re¬ 
 moved, not only from the New York work, but also 
 from the other two, because it is in its inception, 
 its management, and its support, wholly a denom¬ 
 inational affair. Whereas, in Chicago and Roches¬ 
 ter, men of various churches and of no particular 
 
The Churches Outside the Church / 9 
 
 church, are the mainspring in the work, and in New 
 York the whole movement is quite sharply disas¬ 
 sociated from any church, here, in Boston, the 
 Baptist church is literally the whole thing, so far 
 as the management, the support, and the place of 
 meeting are concerned. 
 
 A Baptist affair. 
 
 These Sunday evening gatherings in Boston 
 have come to be known throughout the city as the 
 Ford Hall Meetings. Three times now in succes¬ 
 sive years the Committee on Christian Work and 
 the Board of Trustees of the Boston Baptist 
 Social Union have voted to provide the management 
 and the funds, and have given the use of their 
 beautiful hall for this series of popular Sunday 
 evening meetings, running, as they do now, from 
 the first of November to the first of April. 
 
 It all came about in this way. Mr. Daniel Sharp 
 Ford, late owner of “ The Youth’s Companion ” and 
 first Chairman of the Committee on Christian Work 
 of the Boston Baptist Social Union, at his death 
 (Dec. 24, 1899) bequeathed to the Social Union 
 about a million dollars for use in erecting a beauti¬ 
 ful club-house for their monthly meetings, and as 
 an endowment fund for the temporal, moral, and 
 spiritual welfare of the working men and women 
 of Boston. 
 
 The beautiful auditorium, named Ford Hall, in 
 this new home of the Social Union, situated on the 
 
20 
 
 Social Service Series 
 
 crown of Beacon Hill, on whose northward and 
 westward down-slopes live myriads of the working 
 people of Boston, not being in use at any time on 
 Sunday, seemed to offer a natural opportunity for 
 an experiment in the direction of Mr. Ford’s special 
 wishes. 
 
 Based on Cooper Union’s idea. 
 
 At the time this move was being contemplated, a 
 great inspiration had been received from a number 
 of visits to Cooper Union, Sunday evenings. The 
 movements in Chicago and Rochester had not yet 
 been born. Naturally the all-inclusive standards of 
 Cooper Union were set up for the meetings at Ford 
 Hall, and pledges were given that there would 
 nothing go forth from our platform intentionally 
 offensive to race, class, or creed, and that every one 
 was welcome except church folks. 
 
 With Tremont Temple, and its great evangelical 
 evening service, only two or three blocks away, and 
 numerous other churches of various denominations 
 all around us, we naturally could not, in Christian 
 fairness, set up a rival meeting nor, indeed, under¬ 
 take at all any usual form of church work. 
 
 Natural outgrowth of circumstances. 
 
 Here was an inspiration to do a work quite dif¬ 
 ferent from that undertaken by the churches, and 
 therefore not at all competing with them. Here was 
 a beautiful hall quite unused, and here were great 
 
The Churches Outside the Church 21 
 
 crowds outside of the churches. All these consider¬ 
 ations provided the very unusual circumstances out 
 of which has sprung a very unique and most hope¬ 
 ful experiment. 
 
 It has been the aim from the beginning to pro¬ 
 vide a service that would uplift the souls of every¬ 
 day men and women through means that would not 
 introduce divisive questions. Many kinds of ques¬ 
 tions on which men may disagree are frankly dis¬ 
 cussed from this platform, but nothing sectarian in 
 politics, religion, or economics is set forth as the 
 prepossession of the platform. Whereas no topic 
 is taken up simply as a bread and butter question, 
 or merely for instruction or entertainment, any topic 
 that has a moral and spiritual side to it and that 
 can be discussed before a heterogeneous crowd 
 without engendering personal feeling is most wel¬ 
 come. 
 
 Entertainment not necessary. 
 
 Never once as yet has even a stereopticon been 
 used, nor is any other like means resorted to for 
 the purpose of making the address more enter¬ 
 taining and attractive. It seems to be entirely un¬ 
 necessary. These people will sit through an hour’s 
 lecture requiring the utmost attention, and will 
 then stay on eagerly for another half-hour or an 
 hour while the speaker undergoes a sharp but per¬ 
 fectly respectful and good-natured cross-exami¬ 
 nation. 
 
22 
 
 Social Service Series 
 
 In the half-hour’s concert which precedes the ad¬ 
 dress an attempt is made to give the people really 
 good music, and it is no easy task with an extremely 
 limited appropriation, for many of these people are 
 from music-loving countries and they know the best 
 by very instinct. 
 
 Topics and speakers. 
 
 Except in details, the topics and speakers vary 
 little in scope and character from those that are 
 used in the meetings at Cooper Union and in 
 Rochester. The following partial list will give a 
 very good general idea of the programmes: 
 
 “ The Brotherhood of Man,” Prof. Charles 
 Sprague Smith. 
 
 ‘‘ What the Jew has done for the World and 
 What the World Has Done to the Jew,” Rabbi 
 Samuel Schulman, D. D. 
 
 “ The Democratic Gospel,” Rev. Leighton Wil¬ 
 liams, D. D. 
 
 “ The Relation of Modern Christian Life to the 
 Social Problem,” Rev. Thos. C. Hall, D. D. 
 
 ‘‘ Tolstoy’s Story of a Soul’s Resurrection,” Prof. 
 William Salter. 
 
 Socialism As I See It,” Rev. O. P. Gifford, 
 D. D. (Baptist), Rev. George Willis Cooke (Uni¬ 
 tarian), Rev. Philo W. Sprague (Episcopalian), 
 Rev. Daniel Evans, D. D. (Congregationalist). 
 
 “Are Our National Standards Ethical?” Prof. 
 Walter Rauschenbusch, D. D. 
 
The Churches Outside the Church 
 
 23 
 
 “ The Tyranny of Majorities,” Rabbi Stephen S. 
 Wise, Ph. D. 
 
 “ Christmas as a Social Institution,” Rev. Albert 
 Parker Fitch, D. D. 
 
 “ Other People’s Graft,” Mr. Lincoln Steffens. 
 
 “ Why the Church Cannot Accept Socialism,” 
 Rev. Charles Stelzle. 
 
 “ The State and Morality,” Prof. Charles Zueblin. 
 
 “ Religion and Business,” Dr. Frederick van 
 Eeden. 
 
 “ The Church and the Working Man,” Rev. Alex¬ 
 ander Irvine. 
 
 “ Has the Church Failed? ” Right Reverend Wil¬ 
 liam Lawrence, D. D., Episcopal Bishop of Massa¬ 
 chusetts. 
 
 ‘‘ Education Without Schools,” Pres. W. H. P. 
 Faunce, D. D. 
 
 Suspicion and prejudice to overcome. 
 
 At the very first the meetings were thinly at¬ 
 tended, notwithstanding widely distributed adverti¬ 
 sing in various forms. Only one hundred and fifty 
 came to the first meeting. In fact, the average at¬ 
 tendance for the first series of six meetings was only 
 three hundred and twenty-five. It seemed difficult 
 to dispel a suspicion that some ulterior motive lay 
 in the background. 
 
 With the beginning of the second series the next 
 winter, the attendance rose rapidly from the very 
 start until at the fourth meeting every one of the 
 
24 
 
 Social Service Series 
 
 twelve hundred seats was occupied, two hundred 
 stood throughout nearly three hours, and five hun¬ 
 dred were turned away. Since then the difficulty 
 has been to find room for those who want to come. 
 One night, when the city was literally encased in a 
 storm of frozen sleet, the hall was packed five 
 minutes after the doors were opened, and fourteen 
 hundred people were turned away. 
 
 Now, every Sunday night the people begin to 
 gather outside the doors at six o’clock, and, forming 
 two great lines two abreast, extend up and down 
 the sidewalk for a long distance in both directions, 
 waiting in patient and orderly fashion for the doors 
 to open at seven o’clock, when they have a still 
 further wait of half an hour before the meeting 
 begins. 
 
 All kinds unite in the Lord’s Prayer. 
 
 At first there was no devotional service at all, 
 but during the latter part of last year’s series 
 prayer was ofifered at the opening of the meeting, 
 and on Easter Sunday night, preceding an address 
 on The Religion of the Crowd,” the whole com¬ 
 pany was asked to join in repeating together the 
 Lord’s Prayer. 
 
 People who owe an obligation to any other Sun¬ 
 day evening service are warned to keep away from 
 Ford Hall, with the result that the congregation is 
 made up almost exclusively of people who do not, as 
 a rule, go to church. Among them is a very con- 
 
The Churches Outside the Church 25 
 
 siderable proportion of young Jewish men and 
 women who have largely broken away from the 
 synagogue and many of whom are agnostics. 
 
 Hits high and low. 
 
 It has been most remarkable to note how a meet¬ 
 ing that was planned particularly for the working 
 class appeals alike to men and women of all classes, 
 from the unskilled laborer, the clerk, and the me¬ 
 chanic to the prosperous business man, the woman 
 of leisure, and the teacher and professor. A recent 
 questionaire brought forth the fact that forty per 
 cent, of the company are trade workers, mostly 
 members of trade unions, thirty per cent, are clerks 
 and salespeople, and nearly fifteen per cent, are pro¬ 
 fessional folk and students. 
 
 Spiritual results. 
 
 Abundant evidence of a most direct nature is at 
 hand, testifying to transformed lives, uplifted 
 hearts, and renewed hopes as the result of these 
 meetings. Scores of letters have been received 
 testifying to that effect. The public press and the 
 religious papers have been of the utmost assistance 
 in drawing in the people and in explaining the 
 movement to church folks. Boston already feels 
 that the meetings have become one of the institu¬ 
 tions of the city. A group of public-spirited citi¬ 
 zens, representing leading interests in the city, have 
 from the beginning allowed the use of their names 
 
26 
 
 Social Service Series 
 
 and been generous with their counsel as members 
 of a general citizens’ committee. 
 
 Such a deep-seated want has been satisfied by 
 these meetings that it is felt in many quarters that 
 they would have to go on—in fact, that they could 
 not now be stopped, even if a change of base for 
 any reason should become necessary. 
 
 Winning friends for the Baptists. 
 
 Although the Ford Hall Meetings have been well 
 worth while in the happiness and profit they have 
 brought to thousands who had no other place save 
 a theater to go of a Sunday evening; and although 
 they have already done much in softening the atti¬ 
 tude of hundreds who have been ill disposed toward 
 the church; and although they have done a great 
 work in giving the community at large a fresh con¬ 
 ception of the liberty and toleration for which Bap¬ 
 tists have always stood; nevertheless, not the least 
 service they have rendered by any means has been 
 to bring to church people a realizing sense of the 
 great need there is to-day of preaching a whole gos¬ 
 pel, including the gospel that aims to save society 
 as well as the gospel that aims to save the individual. 
 
 It is a fair question whether the reflex action of 
 these meetings will not mean as much in the stirring 
 of a new life within the church as the meetings 
 themselves have in giving spiritual refreshment 
 and strength to a great body of sheep without a 
 shepherd. 
 
The Churches Outside the Church 
 
 27 
 
 What Saith the Church? 
 
 Although I have singled out for special mention 
 the four Sunday evening gatherings of the com¬ 
 mon people outside of the churches with which I 
 am most familiar, it should be understood that these 
 are only examples of many similar gatherings 
 springing up here and there all over the country. 
 And while there seem to be no two alike, which is 
 significant of their spontaneity, they all show forth 
 most clearly a great need and the feasibility of satis¬ 
 fying it. 
 
 The question that concerns the church at this 
 juncture is this: Will she let still another of her 
 functions slip into other and less well qualified 
 hands ? 
 
 The church has largely lost to the public school 
 her functions as instructor of youth. She has given 
 over to numerous organizations her natural lead¬ 
 ership in temperance reform. She has relegated to 
 the Y. M. C. A. and the Y. W. C. A. the care of 
 the homeless youths in our great urban centers. 
 She has yielded to various charity organizations 
 very much of the care of the poor and needy. She 
 has left to the labor organizations the fight for 
 just wages, fair hours, and against child labor; she 
 is leaving to the radicals in economic reforms the 
 dream of bringing in the kingdom of heaven on 
 earth. 
 
 Will she now turn to the sheep without the fold 
 
28 
 
 Social Service Series 
 
 and give them a whole gospel, or leave them in the 
 hands of the stranger to get a halfdoaf or none at 
 all, according as chance may determine? Has she 
 herself been using the whole gospel or just resting 
 satisfied with the so-called simple gospel? Nothing 
 less than the whole gospel is big enough for this 
 great age in which we live. 
 
 A too narrow interpretation of the simple gospel 
 to the neglect of a more ample unfolding of the 
 whole gospel may be responsible in large part for 
 the increase of the flock that is outside of the fold. 
 It is certainly emphatically true that thousands who 
 are unwilling to listen to a gospel of the future life 
 embedded in terms of sectarianism, are hungering 
 and thirsting mightily for a gospel of righteousness 
 for this present life. They will respond magnifi¬ 
 cently to a gospel of justice, truth, mercy, and love 
 that is applied without respect of persons and yet 
 remain not only uninterested, but impatient with 
 what we call the simple gospel. 
 
 Here, undoubtedly, is a great new avenue of serv¬ 
 ice opening up before this generation. We have 
 seen that the need has been promptly felt and man¬ 
 fully met by men who represent the church or have 
 been trained in the church, just as was the case 
 in all these other movements that have so depleted 
 the serviceability of the church as an organization; 
 but in only one instance out of the four that we 
 have considered has the work been projected and 
 entirely supported from a distinctively church base. 
 
The Churches Outside the Church 
 
 29 
 
 Having made a start, shall we go on and encour¬ 
 age others to follow in our footsteps? Or shall we 
 shirk the difficulties and dangers that are certainly 
 involved and cuddle down in our church nests to 
 look after our own birdlings as best we may while 
 waiting to see what will happen to “ that wicked 
 world without, which is so bent on hurling itself 
 to destruction ? ” 
 

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