CHRIST'S APPEAL TO MEN.

BY REV. CHARLES E. BRONSON, D. D.,*

*

Pastor First Presbyterian Church, Saginaw, w. s.

Text: "And Jesus said unto them, come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men." Mark 1:17.

I speak to men of the claims of Christ upon them. Our Lord came to save the world. If the world be saved the men in it must be reached. Christ's first disciples were business men. From their work he called them. A few days after the ascension we are told five thousand men believed. Then it was not an unusual thing for men to be converted.

Why is the church to-day everywhere more feminine than masculine? There are various reasons. In Europe the political complications arising from a union of church and state have alienated patriotic men who have been compelled to choose between church and country. Superstitious mummeries stamped with the name of religion have repelled thoughtful men. these means, in Italy and France the church has largely lost her hold on the men. Everywhere the confessed moral superiority of women gives them more generally

By

* Dr. Bronson was born of New England ancestry in Geneva, New York. Graduated from Amherst College, 1880, and from Union Seminary, 1884. Pastor at Marlborough-on-the-Hudson, 1884-1892, and at Saginaw 1892–. Received D. D. from Alma College, 1895.

the necessary qualifications for consistent church membership. Their lives are more sheltered; they have not the temptations; their moral and spiritual elevation is higher. But in America there is quite another cause, incident to our unprecedented industrial development. Not only the church, but the State has suffered from the engrossing of the best manhood of the country in purely business pursuits. The curse of our politics has been that the best men have been unwilling to give time from all-absorbing business to public affairs. So, too, they have had too little time for religion. In these last fifty years in America there has been an unequal development between the religious and the material forces of society. In the unparalleled expansion of our railroads and manufactures, in the sudden peopling of this vast Western Empire business has simply outpaced religion and patriotism alike. This is a commercial age. If Christ were to come once more in the flesh I wonder if again from the holy temple of American men's souls he would not drive out the tables and the money-changers, saying, "My house shall be called a house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves?" I offer these circumstances as explanation, not exFor God will not accept any such answer when a man brings his empty, wasted life to the judgment seat. I mention them singly and show that men have no less respect for religion than of old, nor less conviction that it is their duty to serve Christ. They are absorbed, pre-occupied. It has been the woman's era in reading clubs, art culture, in high schools and churches. It has been in religious work the day of the woman's missionary societies, aid societies, temperance unions, king's daughters and so on. But the church of Christ is awakening. It is the era of men's clubs, boys' brigades, young men's christian associations, brotherhood

cuse.

of Andrew and Philip. It is the dawn of a new day. Men can no longer claim that they are a neglected class. It is of this present demand of Christ for the lives of men that I speak to-day.

First, men, religion is adapted to you. God made you for himself and himself for you. Original Christianity was masculine. It is a significant fact that the men who through ancient ages stood for religion were not priests or ecclesiastics. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were husbandmen and stock raisers, Moses and David statesmen, Joshua a warrior, Joseph and Daniel great business men and politicians. These without exception were men of affairs, men of the world, dealing with its temptations, binding religion and business together. Neither religion nor humanity has changed; what men once could do, we can do. It is a libel both on religion and humanity to say that business men can not be Christians. Whoso says it, misunderstands both re

ligion and himself.

Original, New Testament, Christ-like Christianity is adapted to men. It will convert men, and do it today. And if we are not reaching men it behooves us to ask if it be the true gospel which we preach. The two needs of the day are, first, more business in religion; more of the directness, energy, adaptation of means to definite ends, concentration of purpose in the Lord's business which we see in secular affairs. And second, more religion in business. More of that righteousness, truth and love one for another which our Lord meant should govern the transactions between man and man. We want the Cross in the market place. No earnest man can walk the crowded wharves of our seaport cities, view the many-windowed factories whose roar drowns the peal of the church bells, or see those tremendous sky-scraping business blocks which make