The following is an extract from an article by Rev. Washington Gladden, D.D., on "Congregationalism and the Unchurched Classes," recently published in The Congregationalist.

What are the unchurched classes? Are there any classes in American society which are deprived of the privilege of churchgoing? Have the churches erected barriers by which certain classes are excluded? Such a suggestion lurks in the phrase, "the unchurched classes," and we sometimes hear complaints of which this appears to be the gravamen. All such implications need to be carefully scrutinized. We shall find no churches which will admit that they have issued any such edict of exclusion, or that they cherish the purpose of making any class unwelcome. Mr. Wyckoff's luminous experience, as narrated in "The Workers," shows what is the conscious and intentional attitude of the churches in this matter. He testifies that for months he went constantly to church—and generally to the most fashionable churches—in the garb of a very poor working man, and that he was never received in any other manner than that of the utmost cordiality and friendliness, that he was always offered a good seat, that he was never patronized, or condescended to, or treated as if he were a person of different order, but always as if he were a brother man. Such testimony may suffice to offset the sneers of whole regiments of scoffers who never go to church. It is not to be doubted that there are snobs in many of our churches to whom the advent of poorly clad people would not be welcome, but it is probable that there are few churches whose administration is in such hands.

The working people of our cities are not unchurched by the action of the churches. There is plenty of room for all who desire to go to church in churches where they would be heartily welcome and where their associations would be largely with people of their own social class.

The unchurched classes are not, therefore, out of church because the churches have, intentionally or unintentionally, shut them out; they are out of church because, as things now are, they choose to stay away. Nor are these all wageworkers. A pretty large sprinkling of the "unchurched" will be found among the business and professional people, on the uptown streets and avenues, in the best residence quarters. The problem of the unchurched will not be solved without diligent attention to these.

And now what have Congregationalists to do with the people who are outside of the churches? We have the same responsibility for them, I answer, that the Methodists and the Baptists and the Roman Catholics and the Episcopalians have. We are put in trust with the Gospel as all our fellow Christians are; if we have any truth or any faith or any hope which they need, our business as good stewards of the manifold grace of Christ is to share it with all who can receive it. It is to be preached in all the world, to every creature; the only expectation we are allowed to entertain is that every knee at length shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Permanent unchurched classes there are to be none; the existence of such classes at this time is evidence of the incompleteness or partial failure of the work of the churches—defects which it is our business to remedy as speedily as we can. It is probably safe for us Congregationalists to admit that we have our share of blame for this failure, and that we cannot too soon clear our skirts of this responsibility.

What about the unchurched upper classes? Can their estrangement from the church be explained? We hear many explanations, and it is evident that there are many reasons. It is a busy age, and men and women are absorbed with bread-winning and fortune-building. Social demands are not less exacting. For people who are much "in society" any useful connection with church life is physically impossible. Then the newspaper and the magazine and the novel, the popular lecture and the free library, furnish so much of occupation and diversion and distraction for the mind that the pulpit competes with them at some disadvantage. Amusement, in its various forms, has become indeed a large element in modern life; the church can do but little to supply this demand.

Still it remains true that religion is, as Mr. Fiske insists, an "everlasting reality," and that it is "the largest and most ubiquitous fact connected with the existence of mankind upon the earth." The need of religion is the deepest need of man, and it is a perennial need. The men and women, the young men and maidens of this busy, eager, inquisitive, pleasure-loving generation need it as much as any people in the world ever needed it. They need it and they want it. It will not do to say that the total depravity of the outsiders explains their absence from the churches. That explanation is too easy. If the living word were spoken they would come to hear it. They do not want the stuffed effigy of truth that was alive three hundred years ago, they want truth that is alive to-day. Nor is it needful that this truth should be diluted and sweetened; that is a fatal error. Clerical flunkies will not long command the attention of thoughtful men. This generation, like every other, needs to be told a great many austere truths. Savonarola and John Knox did not lack for hearers, nor will any man in this generation who is equally courageous. The trouble is that so many are delivering the messages of Savonarola and John Knox instead of delivering their own.

Nor is it "sociology" that is wanted, whatever that may be. Neither that nor any other ology. It is the application of the truth of God and the law of love to the whole life of man. What is lacking is the note of reality, of vitality. We have, on the one hand, an orthodoxy that is shut up to the repetition of sayings that were true once and are true no longer, and, on the other hand, a liberalism that exhausts its energies in criticising orthodoxy. The one is as dead as the other. Neither has anything to say that living men want to hear. So there arises the cry that the church and religion are obsolescent. It is a shallow judgment. Living truth will command the attention of living men, and the truth that is vital and fundamental is religious truth. To none is this more clear than to those who are grappling most closely with the great social problems.

No, we are not going to get rid of our religion; agnosticism is a poor salve for suffering humanity. The heart of the old religion is true, and we must get it out of its spectral forms and its "fantastic settings," and bring it home to men's hearts.

If we ministers could only get the dead wood and the worms' nests out of our creeds and out of our brains, if we could get hold of the things that are vital and essential—things that we can preach with the energy of conviction—the unchurched classes would rapidly decrease. Of course this change cannot be wrought by a small minority of us, whether we are called by the Congregational name or any other name. So long as ninety-five out of a hundred pulpits in a city are either keeping up the old traditional patter of a dead orthodoxy or pounding away with the critical hammer of a lifeless liberalism—both joining to denounce and discredit any positive and earnest message—no strong impression is likely to be made by a few voices upon the great mass of outsiders. The churches must speak the message of the hour with a united voice. Whether Congregationalists are more or less guilty than others with respect to this failure to find and utter the message of the hour—to preach the "Christ of To-day"—I will not try to say; blame enough belongs to us, I know, and it is for us to repent of our sins and forsake them without waiting for any. The one fact for us to face is that the neglect of our churches on the part of the intelligent classes is largely due to the lack of vitality in the gospel we preach.

There is no need of any different method in dealing with the unchurched poor from that which we employ in dealing with the unchurched rich. All we have to do is to get hold of the vital and essential truth—the truth as it is in Jesus—and believe it with all our hearts and preach it with all our powers. Set the truth of Christ blazing in all our pulpits, make the law of Christ the rule of all our conduct, and we shall soon have no unchurched classes. The multitudes will come flying as a cloud and as doves to our windows.