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And as the season progresses encomia will accrue to the Club's directors, but especially to Clifford Webster Barnes, founder of the club, onetime (1900-1905) Illinois College president, onetime (1918) Red Cross worker, capitalist, altruist, di vine. At Yale, Student Barnes, secretary of the Y. M. C. A., made his first efforts to bring sectarians together. Later, in Paris, Student Barnes assembled a small interdenominational group. Luncheon friends among Chicago business men he persuaded to become trustees of the original Chicago Sunday Evening Club and the beginning and continued existence of the club have been due to his efforts. Looked upon as experimental, the club found instant favor, had an average at tendance its first year of 800 persons. In 19 years it has grown to an average at tendance of 2,500 persons. A vested choir of 100 voices sings at the hebdomadal gatherings.
Founder Barnes has preserved the col egiate informality of his early meetings. At bon mots the Evening Club audiences laugh as they dare not in formal church. Points well-given and taken are applauded not by silent acquiescent nods but by vigorous beating of palm on palm. When the meeting closes, people go out on Michigan Avenue. Some look up at the Chevrolet sign that gives the time every 60 seconds, and set their watches with nobler intentions.
In Washington
Under virile oaks, in a natural amphitheatre in the close of the growing Cathedral of St. Peter & St. Paul on Mount St. Alban's, D.C., 20,000 churchmen gathered last week. It was the opening of the two-week General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church.
In a fortnight much can be done; there was much to do. There was the question of remarriage of divorced persons; the place & work of women in the Church; a $4,000,000 budget; there was an impending controversy over a joint commission's recommendation that healing by faith be commended.; the election of a President of the House of Deputies* but principally there was the Prayer Book. More than 30,000 churchmen had signed a memorial protesting against the proposed exclusion of the 39 articles of religion, heritage of the English Church. The 39 articles, said the protestants, give to the Church an identity apart from the Roman Catholic Church. Should the articles be excluded, they argue, a not-to-be-desired tendency toward Romanism will be followed. Neither the "high" nor the "low" churchmen have taken either side. It was probable that the matter might be referred to a joint commission of bishops & deputies, which would report in 1931, lest an embarrassing controversy arise at the convention. Against the inclusion of the articles is Manhattan Bishop William Thomas Manning; a leading signer of the memorial is Dr. Alexander Griswold Cummins, secretary-treasurer of the National Church League, which sponsored the petition.
Atonement