A Sick Child, an Empty Cupboard, and $22 in the Collection Plate

On the subject of the most needed practical service the church can render society today, Rev. Napoleon Hoagland said yesterday, at the Unitarian services in Tacoma hall, that the church more than ever before is coming to recognize that it has duties to society apart from saving souls from a future hell. The fact that a church for the teaching of sociology has recently been founded in a theological seminary, and that the most popular professorship in the institution was referred to, was offered by way of illustration of this tendency. Among multitudes of the younger clergy, questions of social science take precedence over dogmatic theology and the teachings of the church fathers.

Almsgiving is coming to be looked upon as a mere palliative, if not a positive injury, by those who make charitable work a careful study. The motto of some of the societies is "Not alms, but a friend." But when there is NO BREAD AND MEAT in the house, friendship worthy the name must express itself in terms that will be honored at the grocers and the bakers.

The speaker confessed he did not have much sympathy for a street-corner beggar — even to the extent of a nickel — for every contribution made appears only to confirm the habit. The most practical charity is that which is extended in time to save those who have not yet sunk to the lowest depths. As a rule the cases which do the most permanent good toward lifting a person to a better condition are the ones where the persons in need of help do not stand on the street corners with a tin cup in their hands. But such people are all the more worth saving for that.

Just such a case is that which came to my notice yesterday: that of a man with four small children, the oldest, a girl, delirious with the fever, and the father and mother worn out with watching — the mother down sick so as to be helpless, and the husband scarcely able to get around. I knew him three years ago in an Eastern city. He was making a comfortable living as a carriage painter, but he was induced to come to Washington, and though industrious, intelligent and temperate, hard luck has followed him month after month.

He brought his family here four or five months ago and was willing to do any housework he could do. He got a few jobs as a house painter, but these were irregular and hard to get and the pay very small. It was thought the little girl would not live through the night. When the father heard that he was liable to lose her, the life almost went from him, for she was the pet of his heart. An appeal was made to the congregation to do something for that family, and to do it at once. And it responded generously. A purse of $22 cash was the result, and more promised.

Helping people who are worth saving and who can be saved by prompt and energetic action is certainly one of the needed practical services which the church can render to society today. But a higher service than that is to make it impossible for an intelligent, honest, industrious man of good habits to fail in obtaining a decent and adequate support for himself and family by honest labor.

Just how this may be accomplished it would be hard to say. Let the church then be a school for the study of this problem. One thing the church can do by way of preparation is to enlarge the sentiment of justice in the hearts of all people. By justice is meant the sentiment of right and equity as interpreted by intelligent minds and kind hearts. Justice writ large is kindness too. If we are equally careful to be just to others as we are that they should be just to us, we would then be prepared not only to study the social problem but to apply the principles of its solution.