Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-01-26
ABOUT CHURCHGOING
With Many Good People 1t is Merely
Conventional Matter.
FAMILIARITY ACCOUNTS FOR IT.
The Object Of Prayer, of Song and the
Words Of the Preacher.
WORSHIP AT HOME Is A FAILURE
WRITTEN FOR THE DIspArcH.l

WRITTEN FOR THE DIEPATCH.1
The word of God came to a Hebrew
prophet once, as he was hiding in a cave
among the cliffs of Sinai. God had ques.
ton for that prophet. "what doest thou
here?" He said. "What doest tnou here,
Elijah?"
Very like to this was the question which
the good monk wrote in great letters on his
wall: "What are you here for. Bernardo
The question is of universal application.
In the store, or the street, or the mill, or the
Office, or the kitchen, or the parlor, and in
the midst of any occupation whatsoever.
"What doest thou here?" 1t is like COM
pass. We consult it to see in what direction
we are going. 1t tells us toward what sort
of ideal we have our faces turned.
The question is most useful, perhaps, in
the commonest and most conventional acts
of our lives. Because it is just here that
we are apt to do the least thinking and see
ing. and so are apt to miss the m ost. The
greatest discoveries in science have been
made, in recent times at least, by
simply studying the commonplace. There
was a secret whispered by the steam
of the humblest kitchen which was only
waiting for some diligent listener to learn
it; and when it was learned a new era began
in the history of the race. There was the Sc
cret, told openly every DAY, but nobody
needed it. The wise men were trying to turn
iron into gold. or do some other extr.or-
dinary thing. The commonplace was over
looked. The chances are that the Pan
American delegates saw more in the COM
mon streets of Pittsburg than most of us see,
because Pittsburg was strange to them, and
they really looked at it while we 60 along
about our business, and see nothing. All is
familiar to us. We heed nothing. And so
a question which will make us think about
the commonplace, which will make us look
about with interested eyes among familiar
scenes and along well-worn paths, which
will compel us to consider the conventional,
is a useful question. "What doest thou
here?" is just that sort of useful question.
CONVENTIONAL CHURCH GOING.
The question has so many revelations to
award to honest askers, and opens up so
much that is attractive and helpful in so
many different paths of our daily life, that
1 am tempted to dwell still longer upon it.
But this, I am afraid, would be only to
prove fact which scarcely needs any prov
ing, namely that it is possible from the
same text to preach hundred different ser
mons. And SO l pass on to the particular
department of the commonplace, the famil-
lar, the conventional, about which wish to
speak. l want to speak about the meaning
OF church-going. 1 think that it will be
readily admitted that if any act can be
called conventional-thati is, performed by a
great many people as a custom to which
they have long been used, done out of habit
and without very much particular in
tention-if there is such a thing as the
conventional performance of duty, church
going is an illustration of it. A good many
people am sure, go to church on Sunday
because the bells ring and the clock strikes
10, and it is the right thing according to the
customs of most respectable people to spend
an hour upon this day in the week under a
consecrated roof and within hearing of the
word of God. They 60 to church as some
children go to school, not with any great
desire to learn anything, but because going
to church, like going to school, is somehow
set down and assigned to Sunday in the list
of things to do.
This is the natural result of familiarity.
And some time, when you have been sick
good while and get back to church after
many Sundays absence, you know how
strangely everything impresses you; the
words of the familiar service, the sound of
singing. the voice of prayer, the message
of the preacher. even she sight of the
aisles and arches-somehow these things
touch your heart as they did not
before. And then after a little you get
back into the old place again. For sea-
son, however, all things have become new,
and the glimpse is a sight of an ideal.
That is how all things ought to be for us all
the time.
IN LETTERS OF GOLD.
Sometimes an experience of sorrow, or of
or of sin, or of unusual joy
flashes out a strong light upon some SEN
tence in confession or absolution, in psalm
or prayer, until it seems written, as in St.
Francisco's vision, in letters OF bright gold.
We somehow missed seeing that before.
And so we learn that we are all the time
missing the sight of something in the Service
which we would do we'll to see. That is
why 1 speak OF the conventionality of
And 1 commend the asking
of this question as a remedy against the
of familiarity "What
doest thou here 2" Suppose we all asked
that as we waited for the service to begin
Why have I come to church What is
the church under whose roof sit ? What
am here for?
purpose, then, to speak this morning of
the meaning of church-going. And 1 want
to say in the first place that church attend
ance is one of the lesser duties OF the Chris
tian life. The mere act of going to church |
has no merit in it. People thought once
that it had. Whoever went to church,
journeying thither with his feet-no matter
where his thoughts went no matter how far
away his heart might be-got his sins for |
given. And, because errors die very hard |
and sometimes discover themselves where it |
was thought they had been pulled up by |
the roots and weeded out-for this reason it |
Is we'll to have it understood that church |
going in itself profits nothing. 1t is no.
where commanded, 1 believe, in the New |
unless we read something about |
It when st. Paul wrote: Neglect not the |
of yourselves together;" and |
hat may have nothing to do with church |
going whatever. 1t is for the most part |
aiken for granted then, I suppose. But it |
IS certain that no particular emphasis is laid |
upon it. Indeed the men who followed |
Christ most Loyalty, the largest part of the |
company of His disciples. were in all prob |
lbility non-church goers. The people who |
never missed service, and who sat in the |
thief seats of the synagogues, were the peo-
ole who rejected Christ, and prosecuted Him |
md had Him crucifed.
FoRMALITIEs DO NOT COUNT.
No, the emphasis in the Christian life is |
lightly put upon no externality whatever,
,ut upon genuinely loving God and our
leighbors. To speak the truth, to live an |
lonest upright life, to be fair and pure in
peech, to belong to the noble array of help |
'rs, is better than to go to church seven times |
very week and three times every Sunday. !
That is why conventional church-going |
counts for nothing in the sight of God. That |
S why we need so imperatively to know |
What we are about, and to think what we |
re about when we go to church.
But what, then, are we about? What do
Te go to church for?
The first reason, and the chief reason, for |
IL al Ia h. ~