WHAT IS THE USE OF GOING TO CHURCH?

"Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is."- HEBREWS X. 25.

NO ONE who is acquainted with me will for an instant suppose that I have in mind the suggesting, either directly or indirectly, to any person that it is his duty to come to this church. I am glad that I never have felt any necessity for such a suggestion. Indeed, if I did need to ask people to come and hear me, I should at least question my fitness for the position which I occupy. Yet I would not have you understand for one moment that it is the fault of the preacher always, or even generally, if people do not go to church. Some of the mightiest preachers of the world have had at the time only a slender following. One of the greatest of our Unitarians, Dr. James Martineau, preached his whole life long to a little handful of two or three hundred people, drawn out from the great thronging multitudes of a London containing five millions of population. But this meant only that he addressed himself alone, fitted as he was for that by his peculiar nature and training, to a selected few, to those who should themselves be leaders, be centres of influence. He was a preacher's preacher in the same sense in which it is sometimes said of Spenser or of Shelley, "He is a poet's poet." He did not have the faculty, perhaps he did not make the attempt, to speak to the great crowds of the world in language to which they could readily respond. Many a time it is true, as Jesus said of the people of his age, that, though he piped to them, they did not dance; though he mourned to them, they did not lament. It was

* Stenographically reported.

not his fault, for there is needed preparation for hearing as well as for speaking. If a man do not find anything in the great thinkers, the great teachers, the great leaders, of the world, it is not their fault. It only means that he has not as yet cultivated in himself anything to which they can address themselves. All day long yesterday, from my study, I heard men here in the church at work tuning our organ. What did it mean? It meant that, however skilful or artistic the performer may be, the instrument must be capable of responding to his touch. So it is not the preacher's fault always when people do not go to church, or when they get no good by going.

I have alluded to this phase of the subject only that I may make it clear to you that the purpose I have in view this morning is something deeper than the mere matter of the drawing capacity of the preacher or the entertainment which people may find by hearing this man or that. Let us, then, address ourselves to this great question: What is the use of going to church? Not much, perhaps, in attending some churches; not much, perhaps, for some people, for people in some moods; for there have been times in the experience of all of us when we have felt that we were in such a condition that we got very little good out of a service that in another mood might have been inspiring and helpful. Then there are men, there are women, whose thoughts, whose feelings, whose consciences, whose spiritual natures, are so overlaid, so hidden, that perhaps there is very little use in their going to church.

There is very little use in going to some churches. I am not one of those who believe that it is a man's or a woman's duty to go to some church, to any church, rather than to none at all. A church may sustain such an attitude that it persistently misrepresents God, teaches that which is false about humanity, inculcates wrong conceptions of duty, is not clear as to the great lines of human conduct. For a person to go to and help support a church that he verily believes is doing these things may be to cast his influence on the wrong

side instead of on the side of God. It is not a man's duty always to go to church and under all circumstances and conditions. He may, indeed, attend any church if he only let it be understood what he believes, where he stands, and that he attends for the sake of getting all the good he can, and does not indorse everything that is said and everything that is done there. If he make his life a gentle and yet earnest protest against error and evil, and in favor of right and good, then, indeed, he may not only get good, but give good by attending almost any church in the world.

What is the use of going to church? The first point I wish to make depends upon the definition of a church. If you can comprehend clearly what an ideal, what a true church means, then I would as soon ask you whether you mean to be serious, whether you mean to be earnest, whether you mean to be true men and women, as to ask you whether you go to church; for if you comprehend what a true church means, and are connected with one that is trying to be true, the attending of such a church is a part of being serious, of being earnest, of being devoted to God and man, of being true and high and noble.

Now, consider with me a moment what a true church means. I wish to indicate to you roughly and briefly, but as clearly as I may, its rank among the great concerns of the world. Let us take first the lowest. I do not mean the lowest morally, but those which have to do with the lowest side of human nature, the primary concerns. Take the work of the great explorers, the discoverers, men like Stanley, men who by the possession and the manifestation of the noblest qualities on the part of themselves have done something to open up the world to the knowledge of man; take the men who are engaged in the world's commerce, the building of its ships, the carrying of its productions from one port to another around the globe; all that which concerns itself with the knowledge of the surface of the earth, dealing with its material forces and powers. These things are necessary, but, as you will notice, they primarily concern them

selves with the body, with furnishing comforts, better houses, better food, better clothing, with those things which conduce to what we call our material civilization. But these, however grandly they be attended to, I need not say to you, are not the highest things. They are grand as foundations, but useless unless they be built on. All these things can be done, and yet men remain something less than our highest ideal of man.

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Come up higher. Take that which is more particularly the intellectual range of human life. Take the men who write the poems, the historians, the scientific men who discover the laws of nature, those who create the literatures of the world, those who write its plays, those who compose its music. Take all this intellectual range of human life. deed, we are here very far above the animal; but we have not of necessity yet climbed up into that which has become distinctly human, in the finer sense of the word. Come higher yet. Take the range of the heart, the affectional nature of man, the loves that bind people together in families, the loves that bind them together in communities, in friendships, that love which is the inspiration of the great philanthropists, which is touched by the tale of the world's Let us try, if you will, to make the world one wide scene of comfort. Let us abolish all its pain; do away with all its disease; make vice and crime things forgotten. Now we have, indeed, come very close to the border of that which is highest and best in us.

sorrows.

But there is a spiritual nature in us that links us with the divine, that gives purpose and motive power to all that which is lower, which is more common. It is this which makes us feel that we are parts of an eternal destiny, this which links us with the finest and highest things in our fellow-men, this which makes us feel that we are children of God, one great family in this world and in all worlds. It is this which is peculiarly human, which makes us man, spiritual kings of the earth. When we reach this point, this and the one I have just referred to,- the range of the heart, we are in the region of church life and church work.

What is a true church? It is simply a voluntary organization of men and women to find out what it means to live a true life, and to help each other do it. That is all,—to find the laws of God, and help each other obey them. And how much does that mean? It means nothing more nor less than that there is no other organization on the face of the earth that for grandeur, dignity, beauty, glory, manliness, womanliness, can for one instant approach the true, the ideal church. This work of the church includes, indeed, all the rest; and it cannot be impressed upon the thought and the conscience of the world too deeply that, while people are seeking for temporary and local reforms, reorganizations of society, readjustments of labor and capital, political purity and political freedom, while they are seeking the ideal conditions of society, the only pathway by which these can ever be attained is the pathway along which a true church is trying to proceed.

You are familiar with the fact - for I have pointed it out to you over and over again— that, on the face of it, it is an absurdity to suppose that you can have perfect justice in the world, that you can have perfect relations between capital and labor, that you can have the ideal condition of things between competing merchants in different parts of the world, that you can have the perfect order of society, that you can have the ideal family, that you can have purity in politics, that you can have justice in the administration of all affairs, -it is, I say, the very height of absurdity to suppose that any of these things can be attained by rearranging the units of human society while those units themselves are imperfect, corrupt, selfish, unjust, unkind. Take five people that compose a family. They are now in certain physical relations to each other. The family is full of jar and discontent and unhappiness. Can you make that family ideal, perfect, by improving the house they live in, by rearranging those five people in some way, putting them into different relations to each other, putting them into different kinds of clothing, giving them a different kind of furniture, by establishing a