At a recent convention of a certain religious body, one sister, who gave in her report as to how the Lord had dealt with the children of men in her part of the vineyard, deeply deplored the hardness of the sinners’ hearts, their proneness to err, and the worldliness of even professing Christians, who seemed now to be wholly given over to the love of pleasure.  She told also of the niggardly contributions; the small congregations.  It was, indeed, a sad and discouraging tale that she unfolded.  Only once did she show any enthusiasm, and that was in her closing words:  “But I thank my Lord and Heavenly Master that the other church in our town ain’t done no better!”

The Church is our oldest and best organization.  It has enough energy, enough driving force, to better conditions for all if it could be properly applied; but being an exceedingly respectable institution it has been rather shy of changes, and so has found it hard to adapt itself to new conditions.  It has clung to shadows after the substance has departed; and even holds to the old phraseology which belongs to a day long dead.  Stately and beautiful and meaningful phrases they were, too, in their day, but now their fires are dead, their lights are out, their “punch” has departed.  They are as pale and sickly as the red lanterns set to guard the spots of danger on the street at night and carelessly left burning all the next day.

Every decade sees the people’s problems change, but the Church goes on with Balaam and Balak, with King Ahasuerus, and the two she-bears that came out of the woods.  I shudder when I think of how much time has been spent in showing how Canaan was divided, and how little time is spent on showing how the Dominion of Canada should be divided; of how much time has been given to the man born blind, and how little to a consideration of the causes and prevention of that blindness; of the time spent on our Lord’s miraculous feeding of the five thousand, and how little time is spent on trying to find out his plans for feeding the hungry ones of to-day, who, we are bold to believe, are just as precious in his sight.

The human way is to shelve responsibility.  The disciples came to Christ when the afternoon began to grow into evening, and said, “These people haven’t anything to eat, send them away!” This is the human attitude toward responsibility; that is why many a beggar gets a quarter—­and is told to “beat it”!  In this manner are we able to side-step responsibility.  To-day’s problems are apt to lead to difficulties; it is safer to discuss problems of long ago than of the present; for the present ones concern real people, and they may not like it.  Hush!  Don’t offend Deacon Bones; stick to Balaam—­he’s dead.