Omaha daily bee., 1883-09-17
COUNCIL BLUFFS,
THE LOST CHURCH,
Rev. MIR. Mackay Gives His People
some Plain Talk About u.
ADDITIONAL LOCAL NEWS

Yesterday morning the usually large
gathering at st. Paul's Episcopal church,
listened attentively to a very interesting
and strong sermon, by the rector, Rev.
Mr.. Mackay, whose topic was ''the Lost
Church." He deplored the lack of en-
thusiasm in the churches, and gave clear
ly the reasons for this lack, as no under.
stood them, and suggested the remedy.
He claimed that the freezing and crystal
izing into mere forms of ecclcsiasticism,
the various sects fighting, not for God,
but for their own peculiar forms and
errors, caused many outsiders to stand
aloof from the church. Many preferred
to stay out altogether than to
get into the church and become
involved in more UNCONVENTIONAL con.
tests. And of the greatest troubles was
that n line had been drawn, a barrier
built between the secular and religious
world. Men had built u strong wall and
placed the church on one side, and shut
it off. This was not the true principle.
No ono should set aside one duty and
say this is strictly religious, and another
part of his life as strictly secular. In
nature the flowers and weeds grow to-
gether. He dcplored the establishing of
so. called religious schools. Many of them
had been started on the claim that re-
ligion was not taught in tho public
schools. He did not believe this. He
thought there was religion taught in the
public schools, and pure, broad religion,
not UNCONVENTIONAL but religion. This
claim for religious schools established by
churches was n desperate attempt of dy-
ing ecclcsiasticism. In England the
schools established by tho State were
fast causing the schools established by
the Church of England to die out.
Out of this seeming indifference in the
church, and of outsiders to the church,
he believed God would bring about good
in the end. The time would come when
religion, instead of being made n depart
ment of life, would become the ruling
principle of all life. The church life
would become tho life of the nation. He
found encouragement in the fact that
while all in tho church were not honest,
all were not better that some men outside
of the church. Yet the standard of the
world was coming up to that of the
church more than that of the church was
falling below the standard Of the cross.
The church should get back to the old
idea from which it had wandered and be-
come lost. This idea was that the church
was not a particular form of worship, but
a life of individual conservation. They
should get back to the name EMANUEL"
which meant not "God with our church,"
but "God with u.s." God in the home,
in the heart, in the business of the indi.
vidual in daily life, not merely in the
church on Sunday.
The church should be the moral sup
port of the life, not the life itself. The
old injunction should be needed, LET
every nan among you depart from
iniquity." Righteousness alone could
save a nation, righteousness, that is right
dealing, alone could save the individual.
When that time came that religion be-
came a part of the individual life and
not merely a part of church life, when il
was made the ruling principle of life and
the barriers between the religious and
secular broken down, then would every
true heart be a temple of the living God,
and wherever human foot might tread or
weary head be laid would become q
Bethel.