these we sent to a neighbouring minister, who has examined them, and sent us the following statement:: "John Buckley, of Measham, near Ashby, aged twelve years, had the best collection of passages on the Fall of Man, and arranged them in the best maner, in the order of Scripture: he is, therefore, entitled to the prize, having collected upwards of two hundred and fifty texts. "Martha Leadbeater, of Birmingham, John Garland, of Barlestone, Thomas Cook,* of Melbourne, and Joseph Wheatcroft, of Derby, were the next in order.' "JOHN BUCKLEY appears, therefore, to be the successful candidate, and he will be presented with a copy of Mr. Pike's Persuasives to Early Piety;' and as the above named have exerted themselves so laudably, they shall not go unrewarded, but each of them will receive a copy of Mr. S. Deacon's 'Prudens and Evangelicus.' Martha Leadbeater (though under another name), continued Mr. Pike, is here to-night; and had Dr. Buckley been present we should have had the takers of the first and second prizes; which would have been a remarkable circumstance considering it is more than fifty years since the prizes were awarded. Addresses were then delivered by Messrs. J. Shillito (Independent), W. Hill, H. Wood, and W. Oates. Mr. Wood commenced by saying that he had been reminded of the text, "Cast thy bread upon the waters," etc., for, as he came 'down from the pulpit on the previous evening he was spoken to by a friend whom he had lost sight of for many years, but who proved to be his old Sunday school teacher. He was pleased to find his teacher now the leader of the choir; and after so many years he was sure the teacher would rejoice that one of his scholars was about to go forth as a missionary to the heathen. The accounts were read by the respective secretaries of the juvenile departments, also for the Parent Society. Including a legacy of £19 19s. by the late Mr. G. Atkin, the total contributions amounted to £106 1s. for Lombard Street-a larger sum than in any preceding year. The amount from Longmore Street is not known to the writer. W. HILL. *Now our well known friend the Excursionist. FOREIGN LETTERS RECEIVED. CUTTACK-W. Miller, Feb. 15. PIPLEE-T. Bailey, Feb. 14. CONTRIBUTIONS Received on account of the General Baptist Missionary Society from February 18th, to March 18th, 1876. Subscriptions and Donations in aid of the General Baptist Missionary Society will be thankfully received by T. HILL, Esq., Baker Street, Nottingham, Treasurer; and by the Rev. J. C. PIKE, Secretary, Leicester, from whom also Missionary Boxes, Collecting Books and Cards may be obtained. THE GENERAL BAPTIST MAGAZINE. MAY, 1876. WHERE ARE THE MEN? In response to the appeal recently made for information concerning the proportion of male to female members in our churches we have received statistics from every part of the country, east and west, north and south; and suggestions as to the cause of the admitted deficiency in the number of men in our communions that would half fill this Magazine; and also descriptions of the best means of remedying this evil, embracing methods as diverse as the opening of the pulpit door to women; the establishment of "British Workmen" Public Houses without "the drink;" the adoption of the "Free-Seat" system; and the introduction of more manhood into the men who at present have the preaching monopoly. One writer commends the courage which handles a theme of such difficulty and peril, as though we were dealing with a torpedo. A second thinks ministers have shown a cowardly fear of the topic, and is glad the silence is at length broken. A third, who enjoys the rare privilege of ministering to a church containing as many males as females, within a fraction, regards the discussion as derogatory to the dignity of the fair sex, and vehemently maintains that woman is as good as man ; and in effect, adds, in genuine Hibernian style, "and a good deal better too." To which enlightened creed, concerning the relative excellence of the sexes, we are Irish enough to subscribe with all our heart and soul and strength. But to the FACTS. In only one village are the proportions at the normal rate of one to one: others come near that mark; but in most of the village churches there are about two males to three females. The towns, and some "overgrown" villages, are easily divisible into two classes. Where manufacturers do not abound, and men do not work together in large numbers for productive purposes, but are engaged in shopkeeping, and other operations connected with the distribution of produce, the proportions average one to two: but in towns such as Nottingham and Leicester, mainly devoted to manufacturing industry, they run much nearer, though only in one or two cases do they actually reach the rate of one man to three women. This statement is generally confirmed by information obtained from churches outside of our connexion, of the Baptist and Independent order, so that whilst allowing due weight to solitary, exceptional, and explicable instances, we feel perfectly warranted in concluding that our churches are failing, in a deplorable degree, to bring the men of our large cities and towns into open VOL. LXXVIII.-NEW SERIES, No. 77. sympathy with the gospel of Christ, and practical adhesion to the institutions of Christianity. Now as to the larger success of the village churches amongst men this is obvious. Life in the village is more open to general inspection than in the large and crowded town. The social conscience, which is in favour of a profession of religion, operates with untramelled power in scant populations, and though it often works mischief and misery, yet it also produces good, in that it brings most villagers within hearing of the teaching of Christ, and into contact with His "living epistles." The man cannot hide himself. He lives out in the open-air. Everybody knows him. His pedigree is public property. "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us?" His deeds are trumpeted by many tongues almost before they are finished. And now everybody says the Lord's House, and the Lord's-day, should be respected, and visits with censure those who oppose the popular demands. In the town all that is changed. Nobody knows his neighbour. Strangers live on the next "flat." And the law of "do as you like" becomes supreme. The stream of social conscience is lost in the sand-filled desert; and the impulse that was all potent at Whitwick and Isleham is not felt at all in Birmingham and London. Moreover the dissipations of village life lack variety, and its scepticism wants energy. The chief competitor with chapel and church for the company of men is the public house, and that is the rendezvous of known sots, and of men whose character is out at the elbows. In the towns every hoarding is brilliant with advertisements of captivating music halls, of gay and demoralizing theatres, of crowded gambling saloons and casinos, all baited to the doors to catch men, and in eager and incessant competition with the preachers of righteousness. Perhaps a solitary Alton Locke may preach his scepticism from the village bench: but in the towns the scepticism that flatters men is an agitation, and the dissemination of doubt a prosperous trade. Many a believing village youth has lost his purity in the city music halls, and then framed his creed on the pattern of city infidelity. These temptations of town and city life have the more force with men because of the exhaustive character of town business, the confining character of much town work, and the opportunities that work affords of a certain amount of fellowship. Men out in the field all the week, working alone, enjoy the gentle, quiet, and stimulating rest and society of the village sanctuary on the Sabbath: but men who have been at work in a close and heated factory for six days, not unnaturally welcome the opportunity of a stroll into "the Park," or across "the Forest," or out into the country, on a summer's Sunday morning. They like "to take it easy," some of them say; and others assert that they can worship God as well in "the temple of Nature" as in a badly ventilated chapel. Whereas women, who have been "keepers at home" all the week, and shut off from society, experience an exhilarating change in the fellowship of the faithful, and are more prepared for the public worship of the Sabbath by the very secluded character of their every day life. Nor should it be forgotten that the village pastor has many more advantages of direct intercourse with the men about him than is the case in towns. He can chat with them in the fields and along the lanes. VILLAGES V. TOWNS. 163 He knows their domestic life, their children and relatives, their sorrows, their cares and hopes, and doubtless has many an opportunity of face to face dealing that rarely comes to the pastor of a church in a large town. One of our brethren, accounting for his notable success with men, says, "I go among the men whenever I can find them, in the fields, lanes, farm-yards, and anywhere where they can be met with; and without any starchy officialism, I warmly invite them to the week-evening services first." I have italicised the words "starchy officialism," for no doubt the absence of that element is as necessary as the presence of the pastor. But the point to be made is this: the town pastor cannot get these opportunities of conversing with men. His evenings are all occupied, or nearly so, with public work. He must visit in the afternoon, and then only women are at home. Hence, in towns, pastoral visitation becomes one-sided, and accounts in some measure for the much larger excess of women over men in our town churches. But still the inquiry remains, What is it that gives the differences in the two classes of towns? Why should there be such a discrepancy between Peterborough and Halifax-the two cases that set this ball rolling? It is not, be it remembered, merely a difference between the churches at North Parade, Halifax, and Queen Street, Peterborough; but between the two towns. We are certain this is the case. Already we gather that other churches in Halifax give a lower percentage of males than North Parade. It is a difference, speaking broadly, due to the general conditions of life in these two classes of towns. In the shop-keeping towns the forces of village life are still at work, though in diminished amount. Social conscience is still uncomfortably strong, as witness the intolerable" gossip" of a town of ten or fifteen thousand inhabitants; but as in the village, so here, it works beneficently, to some extent, in bringing men under the influence of the gospel. There is also the same absence of feverish excitement, of red-hot scepticism, though in a less marked degree. The crowding of men together in their occupations in huge mills and factories, has not yet occurred; and there are fainter lines of separation between the bulk of the men of the town and those who are their superiors in education, in culture, and station. The tocsin has only just sounded in the agricultural centres for war between capital and labour; the war has been raging for years at the head-quarters of manufacturing industry. Political life, too, is less free, vehement, energetic, and active in the shop-keeping than in the manufacturing mind. Hence it comes to pass that whilst we get the manufacturers we lose the mechanics; we have the masters, but not his "hands;" and as the "hands" are a hundred to one of the masters, we find the disproportion of men in our churches over which we mourn. Nevertheless we have something else to do than explain these facts. Christianity is not a system of specific conditions. It is universal; suited to all states of society-to the million-peopled city as well as to the hamlet; and if the church of the Lord Jesus only knew what to do, and how to do it, it is morally certain that she would have as many sons in towns as villages, and as many artizans as masters," and as many men as women. 66 Anxious for all the guidance possible, we put the question at the head of this paper a short time ago to a leading minister of another denomination. He despatched the problem by saying, "The men are in excess at the racecourse, the gambling table, the drinking saloon, and wherever there is anything low, gross, and corrupt; but wherever there is anything that is pure and good and beneficent, there you have the predominance of women." Admitted; but why? Is there some radical difference of nature, of faith-faculty, of conscience, of will? Are men and women alike human, actuated by the same motives, roused by the same appeals, governed by the same moral laws, made peaceful and strong by the same agencies? or do they differ fundamentally in mental and moral structure, and in such a degree as to account for the broad distinction above stated? It is allowed that there are differences between men and womendifferences of avocation, of training, and of social surrounding: but, for reasons too numerous to mention here, it is maintained that no such thoroughgoing difference of moral nature exists as to account for the facts before us. Christianity appeals to human nature in its radical elements. Its message is to the race: and it is no more and no better fitted for receptive, loving, and sympathetic woman, than it is for inquiring, reasoning, and energetic man. It is as perfectly adapted for the hearts and heads of both as the air for the lungs, and corn for muscle and bone. We resent with indignation the idea that the religion of the One Perfect Man is ill adapted for His brothers; that He who embodied the noblest manhood in His life and character is unable to satisfy the loftiest aspirations and largest demands of our fellow-countrymen. The current notion of the superior religious sensibility of woman, as a fundamental characteristic of their nature, has no more right to a place in this discussion than the hoary supposition that man has a rib less than woman has a true place in scientific anatomy. Nor need it be said, save in the briefest way, that the deficiency of the masculine element is not explained by any reference to the stock of the human race as set on these isles. The census returns will not diminish the pressure of this difficulty to any considerable degree. There is an excess in the number of women, but it is slight compared with that we are dealing with; and so slight that our calculations need not be altered to meet it. The figures of the census are no answer at all to the question, "Why we get three women to one man on our church rolls?" But are the men in the congregations kept out of the church by some folly of theirs or ours? Certainly not to any serious extent in the villages; nor even in the towns universally so much as we had thought. In some cases, but rather amongst other churches than our own, there is a considerable proportion of Christians in the chapel who are not in the church; but speaking broadly, it seems that the evil is that we have not got the men at all; they do not worship God with us; they do not hear us preach Christ's gospel; they do not come within the influence of our manifold operations. They pass us by with unconcern, as though our work was not theirs, and our sorrow and joy, our weakness and strength, did not spring from common sources. There is the evil; what shall we do with it? JOHN CLIFFORD. |