THE KING’S BUSINESS
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lishing Satan’s throne and consent to the extension of the kingdom of darkness. True, the first city was built by the first mur derer. That gives the devil no inherent right in our cities, and it is the shame of our civilization:4hat it consents to have the center of every municipality fester with vice. . • ■ . / CHURCH’S MISSION . The commission of the Church of God is voiced in twb of Christ’s great commands. One' of them looks to a world-work and reads after this manner : “Go ye, there fore, and make disciples of all nations, bap tizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19); and. the other to a city work, and is expressed in this speech: “Go out quick ly into the streets and lanes of the city and bring in hither the poor and maimed and blind and lame” (Luke 14:21). To fail at the city’s center is to face de feat. If we cannot unseat the adversary; if we cannot reduce his Gibraltar; if we cannot enter his Port Arthur and compel his evacuation, the probability is that we cannot meet him at high sea, or stand be fore him in the fair field, for if he has been able to make choice ,of location, and sweep us from the vantage point, what pros pect is there that we can inflict upon him a defeat by a little firing from the skirm ish line. Dr. Alexander Maclaren, a mar velous preacher, has a sermon on “How to Sweeten the Life of Great Cities,” and his text is taken from Nehemiah 3 :28, “The priests repaired every one over against his house.” His argument is that if the in dividual Christian will fight the evil that stands befpre his door, it will repair the ruin of city life and regenerate its char acter—all of which is a mistake. Too long have we worked on the principle of fight ing the “evils against one’s door” and then escaping the conflict by removing the door to where the evils are less evident. The argument that by moving the Church of Jesus Christ away from Him to the place where it shall be swept about with home makers and property owners insures its
Pergamos had an altar to the devil and | people worshiped there; and by others, that its general evil character was such as to -make this description accurate. In either event, the significance of the passage is the same, and it appeals with peculiar force to the location of the downtown church in the modern metropolis ! Today Satan’s throne is at the city’s cen ter. It is a singular, yet Undisputed fact, that the rheart' of every -considerable city; the World over is increasingly surrendered to vice. What we call the downtown dis trict is everywhere more and njore marked by one general character, and it is not only the commercial mart but the moral sink; not alone the center to which the crowds 1 go, but also the one in which crime flour ishes.- * .1 - Evolutionists contend that as men mul tiply on the face of the earth they rise in morals; history demonstrates that as hu man contact and fellowship increase, cor ruption results. To such an extent has this’ actually taken place, that intelligent men can now be found who defend the proposi tion that immorality must characterize the city’s center; that neither legislation, moral administration nor police regulation can drive the grosser sins from the city’s heart. We have deliberately adopted a red-light district; we have calmly drawn up and signed a contract with the devil, ceding over to him a great section at the heart of every metropolis, and the strange thing about it all is that the average man does not see that we have surrendered thé citadel, and with it thrown in the very bulwarks of municipal life; and, without a protest, per mitted the army of the enemy to occupy the vantage point. People say that the city is to control the nation; and there is every evidence of the truth of it. And yet Shelley said, “Hell is a city much like London.” People ought to know that the heart of the city will de termine its character, for “Out of the heart are the issues of life.” To surrender up. therefore, this section is to aid in estab-
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