Institute, into which a limited number of the most promising of these young men and women would be received, on condition that they were to work for ten hours during the day and attend school for two hours at night. They were to be paid something above the cost of their board for their work. The greater part of their earnings was to be reserved in the school's treasury as a fund to be drawn on to pay their board when they had become students in the day-school, after they had spent one or two years in the night school. In this way they would obtain a start in their books and a knowledge of some trade or industry, in addition to the other far-reaching benefits of the institution. General Armstrong asked me to take charge of the night-school, and I did so. At the beginning of this school there were about twelve strong, earnest men and women who entered the class. During the day the greater part of the young men worked in the school's sawmill, and the young women worked in the laundry. The work was not easy in either place, but in all my teaching I never taught pupils who gave me such genuine satisfaction as these did. They were good students, and mastered their work thoroughly. They were so much in earnest that only the ringing of the retiringbell would make them stop studying, and W often they would urge me to continue the lessons after the usual hour for going to bed had come. These students showed so much earnestness, both in their hard work during the day, as well as in their application to their studies at night, that I gave them the name of "The Plucky Class❞—a name which soon grew popular and spread throughout the institution. After a student had been in the night-school long enough to prove what was in him, I gave him a printed certificate which read something like this: "This is to certify that James Smith is a member of The Plucky Class of the Hampton Institute, and is in good and regular standing." The students prized these certificates highly, and they added greatly to the popularity of the night-school. Within a few weeks this department had grown to such an extent that there were about twenty-five students in attendance. I have followed the course of many of these twenty-five men and women ever since then, and they are now holding important and useful positions in nearly every part of the South. The night-school at Hampton, which started with only twelve students, now numbers between three and four hundred, and is one of the permanent and most important features of the institution. Higher than Heaven From the Yiddish, by Edward A. Steiner HEN the Fast-days came upon the Jewish community at Woloshitska, there also came dampness, cold, and intense suffering. The wailing for the destruction of Jerusalem was intensified by the present suffering. The community was large, and the hatred toward the Jew was growing stronger; competition was increasing, and the fast days were welcomed, at least by those who had but scant means, and who could feel that their hungering was a Mizbah (a legal virtue) and not just a useless gnawing of the stomach. During the ten days of the fast the beadle would go through the village in the early dawn, knock at the door of the faith ful, and call out, "Selicha! Selicha!"the Hebrew call to fasting and prayer at this season. Once, when he came to the door of the Rabbi, he received no answer, and as his repeated knocking brought no response, he entered the house and found it empty. He rushed back to the synagogue, expecting to find him there, but the place from which he was never missing at the time of worship was vacant. When the congregation had assembled, the news of the Rabbi's disappearance caused no little comment and anxiety. The next morning the same thing happened; but the anxiety of the people gave place to reverent wonder, for the Rabbi had been seen at home during the latter part of the day, had gone to bed, and had disappeared just before the call to prayer. He was known far and wide as a very pious and good man, one who obeyed the laws of Moses, and who lived in stricter conformity to the teachings of the rabbis than the Shulchan Aruch required. Where could the Rabbi be while his people fasted and prayed? Where else could he be than in Heaven? Wasn't the burden of the people growing heavier every day? Not only was the bread growing scarcer, but the wood also; wasn't the winter colder and longer than ever, and who could help but the Almighty One, blessed be his name? and who could intercede for them at the throne of God but their Zodik (righteous man), their beloved Rabbi? In hushed awe the people told one another of the great miracle he was performing; for indeed God was yielding to the plea of the Rabbi, and supplies of food and wood were coming to the poorest in strange and unknown ways. So everybody except one man believed that the Rabbi had gone to Heaven; and that man was the skeptical beadle, Schnule Wasservogel. Does familiarity with sacred things breed skepticism as well as contempt? Anyway, Schnule shook his head and determined to know what became of the Rabbi while his people fasted and prayed. On the last night of the ten fast-days Schnule crept under the bed of the Rabbi; but hardly had an hour passed when he wished that he had not done so, for the floor was cold and draughty and his position was far from comfortable; and when the Rabbi came in from his study, where he had been poring over Zemorha until midnight, he looked as pale as a ghost; and when he had blown out the tallow candle, the beadle could hear him groaning while he tossed restlessly upon his hard bed of straw. The beadle was numb from cold and sore from his uncomfortable position when, after a few hours, the Rabbi arose and, without praying with his phylacteries. began to dress himself. But what a strange garb he was putting on! Heavy peasant boots, coarse linen trousers, and a woolly (koshuch) sheepskin coat; but, stranger still, he drew a rope from the corner and stepped out into the foggy, damp, and dark morning. After him went the skeptical beadle, who was tossed between doubt and belief, for the rope, of course, was to enable him to reach unto Heaven; but why in peasant's clothes? Perhaps because it was so cold; but would the angels introduce to God a man who wore an ill-smelling koshuch? But, instead of throwing his rope toward the sky and climbing into the gray heavens, the Rabbi marched over the rough, frozen mud roads, coughing while he went, for his health was far from good. Through the village he wandered, crossed the frozen creek, and entered the forest, into which the beadle did not have the courage to follow him. All at once Schnule heard the breaking of twigs, and, lo! the noise of an ax: no doubt the Rabbi was making a ladder to reach up to Heaven. Didn't he re Was the Rabbi crazy? member the building of the tower of Babel? He waited He waited shiveringly and looked into the gray above the dark treetops, every moment expecting to see the Rabbi rise above the sky. Again he heard the crackling of twigs, and the Rabbi, bent nearly double by a heavy load, stepped out of the forest, and, groaning and coughing at every step, walked back toward the village while the cocks were crowing and tallow candles were beginning to glimmer in the poor huts of the faithful who waited in vain for the familiar knock and the sonorous call of the beadle. Confused and shivering in every limb, the beadle followed the Rabbi. He stopped before a widow's house and deposited a bundle of wood. In another place, where there was typhoid fever and much poverty, he left beside the wood a loaf of bread which he drew out of his pocket. So, silently he walked, like an angel, from house to house, as long as the wood lasted, and silently he departed again toward the forest. Now the beadle knew enough. Rapidly he made his belated rounds, and when the people who gathered in the synagogue asked him, "Now, Schnule, has the Rabbi gone to Heaven again?" he said, with great faith and reverence, "He has gone higher than to Heaven. I Church or Sect?1 By William De Witt Hyde President of Bowdoin College N Europe the State defines by law the difference between Church and sect. In America any body of Christians which can maintain its claim to the title may call itself the Church. Hence there is no more vital question for Congregationalists to consider than this: Shall Congregationalism be the Church which ministers to all classes and conditions of men? or shall it be one of a host of petty sects, ministering to a little group within a single social circle, who are held together by some peculiarity of intellectual opinion or emotional experience? What is the difference between the Church and a sect? The Church is the organized body of persons who worship God, who follow Christ as the supreme revelation of God's good will concerning man, and who, in repentance for sin and endeavor after righteousness, seek to reproduce Christ's spirit in their lives and extend his kingdom in the world. Inas much as all the religious bodies represented among us, Catholic and Episcopalian. Baptist and Methodist, Universalist and Unitarian, Presbyterian and Congregational, worship God, follow Christ, and cultivate the Christian spirit, they are all branches of the Christian Church. Yet they all tend to narrow themselves into sects. For a branch of the Church becomes a sect whenever it adds to its conditions of fellowship any assent to opinions or conformity to practices, expressed or implied, in which all honest and earnest members of the universal Church, when properly instructed as to their meaning and significance, cannot heartily unite. Thus the Roman Catholic branch of the Church, in so far as it requires assent to views of nature and interpretations of history which the competent scientist and the candid historian cannot accept, becomes thereby a sect. To a less degree, but on similar grounds, the Episcopal Church, though extremely wise and An address at the Annual Conference of Congrega tional Churches in Maine, at Augusta, Me., September 25, 1900. broad in the spirit of its administration, yet by insisting on an incredible creed as a part of its worship, becomes to that extent exclusive and sectarian-though perhaps the broader wing of that Church comes as near as any ecclesiastical institution that we have to being practically unsectarian; and all save those who insist on literal truthfulness in the formulas by which they express their worship and their faith can manage to find peace and comfort in this ancient fold. In its dealing with laymen the Presbyterian branch of the Church comes very close to being truly Catholic; but the repressive and dogmatic theological education it imposes on its clergy dwarfs and stunts the great majority of them into the most divisive of sectarians. The Baptists, by insistence on the value of the literal observance of certain symbolic rites; the Methodists, by their emphasis on a peculiar phase of emotional experience; the Universalists, by harping on a single issue, and by their underestimate of the weight of moral responsibility; the Unitarians, by the narrow range of their emotional sympathies and their inability to appreciate the worth of points of view other than their own-all practically, if not explicitly, exclude some true Christians from their fellowship, and hence, while each contributes elements of great value to our common Christian faith and life, they are yet all more or less sectarian. Our Congregational sectarianism is not of a single type, but is a combination of many elements. We still have in some of our churches the sectarianism of an incredible creed, which we share with the Catholics, the Episcopalians, and the Presbyterian clergy. Again, in some of our older communities there is a social sectarianism which does not care to associate with newcomers of different ways and interests. Sometimes, too, there is a coldness or stiffness which repels the people of warmer emotions. Of late, chiefly through the influence of societies made up mainly of young people, we have been unconsciously captured by the Methodist sectarianism. We have come to place a premium on emotional experience and the ability to take part in meeting. Our young people have come to identify these things with Christianity. The Endeavor movement has remedied some of the other forms of sectarianism into which we had fallen, and, by bringing a spiritual purpose rather than a creed, a cordial invitation to all classes of young people, by the enthusiasm of numbers and the warmth of personal testimony and experience, has been an inestimable blessing to many of our churches. Yet it has not accomplished what it promised. Many pastors complain that it is a halting-place rather than a recruiting-station for the church. In remedying the other tendencies toward sectarianism, it has brought a more serious and fatal sectarianism than all of them. For there are a great many men-merchants, bankers, lawyers, manufacturers, mechanics-who will join heartily in dignified public worship, and will give time, money, and strength to whatever works of righteousness and charity the Church may reasonably lay upon them, who simply cannot, and will not, wear their hearts upon their sleeves, or give expression to their inmost personal experience in a social meeting. By making such social expression of personal religious experience practically synonymous with the religious life, you are excluding this type of men from the fellowship of the spiritual life as effectively as if you stationed a regiment of soldiers with fixed bayonets around the church edifice. If If Congregationalism ever permits the Christian Endeavor standards to represent Church life to the young men of the community, and allows the expression of emotional experience to become synonymous with the spiritual life, it will fall into the narrowest form of sectarianism; it will be simply a feeble imitation of the sectarianism of the Methodists; it will compel a large proportion of its practical, forceful, influential men either to remain in the congregation without joining the Church, or else to go over to the Episcopalians, where this particular standard of religious life is not imposed upon them. If an increasing number choose the latter course, we shall have only ourselves to blame. If there is not just as cordial a For welcome and just as honorable a place for the young man who cannot and will not take part in meeting as for the man who can and will, in the Congregational fold, then we may expect to see increas ing numbers of our strongest and sanest men either staying out of the Church altogether or entering it through some door other than the Congregational. it is a relatively small proportion of young men who are gifted in this line, and find the exercise of these gifts natural and enjoyable. The young men who have these gifts, and can exercise them to edification, are most desirable members of the Church. We should hardly know how to get along without them. All honor to them and the excellent work which they are doing. All honor to the Christian Endeavor Societies for bringing them forward and de veloping their gifts. But let us never forget that these form only a single type of the young manhood of the community. While we welcome and honor them, let us never forget that they are in a minority, and that there are multitudes of young men whom Christ also loves and the Church also needs no less. Let us remember that an ecclesiastical body which has no hearty welcome and no honorable service for the other sheep which are not of this particular type is the straitest and narrowest of pharisaic sects, foredoomed to merited extinction. What, then, must Congregationalism do to be saved? Five things. It must have a simple and searching confession and covenant; systematic instruction in what the Church stands for; an open door: broad and reasonable requirements of its members; something definite and practical to do, and personal help in doing it. First: A simple and searching confession and covenant. There must be nothing in it to which the enlightened mind of every man who has the Christian spirit cannot heartily assent. Reduced to its simplest terms, this confession and covenant would run something like this: I believe in the God who has made the natural world beautiful and good, and who is working to make the life of man holy and happy. I believe in Jesus Christ as the supreme Revelation of that life of love which is the will of God and the salvation of man. I believe in the Spirit of Christ in the hearts of his followers, as the present, divine power for the redemption of the world from sin and the establishment of the kingdom of God. For the worship of God, for instruction in the teachings of Christ, for fellowship in the spirit of service, I unite with all who share this faith, and, renouncing all that is contrary thereto, I devote myself to the upbuilding of God's kingdom in my own heart and home and life, in the hearts and lives of others, and in the conduct of all affairs in which I have a part. Now, anybody who could honestly and earnestly unite in such a covenant and confession would be a Christian. No one who was not a Christian could unite in it. Why, then, is it not all the confession and covenant we need? It is clear and simple; so that a child, if properly trained in Christian principles, can understand it. Yet it is so searching and severe that the maturest saint can aspire to nothing holier or higher. It requires absolute surrender of heart and life to God; complete devotion to Christ as Lord and Master; self-sacrificing loyalty to whatever the Spirit, working through the Christian community, may prompt the individual to do. But it does not prescribe the forms, either of self-denial or of service, which this Spirit shall assume. It recognizes wide diversity of gifts, and has a place and work for every Christian, whether his gifts be those of speech or silence, contribution or administration, private integrity or public service. It is a life in which one who is not a Christian can have no part or lot. It includes all who are Christians, and excludes all who Hence to require less than this would be a betrayal of the faith, and empty Christianity of its meaning and worth; to require more is to be schismatic and sectarian. are not. Second: Systematic instruction. Having agreed upon the essential principles of the Christian faith and life, every child should be trained to appreciate and understand them. This is the pastor's great privilege and opportunity, one which he cannot safely delegate exclusively to lay teachers in the Sunday-school, still less to the young people themselves in their social services. It is also the parents' most sacred prerogative. This systematic training in a clear, simple, practical appreciation of the principles of the Christian faith and life must be our main reliance in bringing young people into the Church and the Christian life. Our inquiry into the way in which those who are members of our churches were led into membership shows that out of the 307 young men who are church members 93 came in chiefly through evangelistic or revival methods, 198 through the regular services of the church and home training, and 26 through a pastor's, class, or special instruction preparatory to church membership. In the above figures some are reported twice as influenced about equally by two methods. While there are only five churches where the pastor gives such special instruction, it is significant that seventy-two, or nearly one-fourth of all our young men who are church members, are found in those five churches. It indicates that every pastor who finds a large proportion of his young people outside of the church would do well to institute, at Lent. or at some other convenient season, a pastor's class for such systematic instruction in the principles of the Christian faith. Such a class need not interfere with the study of Christian literature and history in the Sunday-school. It presupposes the work of the Sunday-school, and brings it to a focus, at a stated time, with the expectation of reaping the fruit of home training and Sunday-school instruction. This is especially necessary inasmuch as the vast majority of our young people have no such clear and simple conception of what church membership means as our confession and covenant set forth; they either have no idea whatever, or else they think of it as an awful and solemn affair, involving experiences which they have not had and attainments they cannot reach. No pastor has done his whole duty by the young people of his congregation until he has not merely proclaimed from the pulpit, but actually instilled into each individual mind, the idea that being a Christian and a member of Christ's Church simply means that one is grateful for all the good he has received from God through the bounty of the world he lives in, through the kindness of the home in which he has been reared, and through the efforts and sacrifices of Christ and of all good men since the world began; that he enlists in the great work of helping God to make the world better |