The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1895-06-01
CHURCH PROSPERITY = WHAT 1T
SIGNIFIES.
BY REV. J. CLARENCE LEE.
(Lombard University


There can be no doubt that in their
inmost hearts all people are agreed
that prosperity is a condition to be
desired. When we pray, fervently
and sincerely, we pray for prosperity.
OF course, we know that the expert
ence of hardship and privation is
sometimes good for us. "Sweet are
the uses of adversely" We can bear
adversely with patience, even with
cheerfulness, in the high faith that
strength and purity of soul are
thereby to be gained.
But out of the depths of adversely
we look up to the heights OF more
prosperous days to come. We are
saved by hope. What we truly long
for is the time of greater thrift. 1t is
SO in business, it is SO in the home, it
is so in all the ways of individual
life. 1t is equally true in regard to
the church. 1t has borne it's days of
hardship, of persecution, and priva-
ton with the martyrs courage and
the saints grace. 1t has endured
sacrifice as good soldier of Jesus
Christ. But out of its poverty and
distress, out of it's barrenness and
sorrow, it has looked up with desper-
ate eagerness and has exclaimed:
Dear Lord, and shall we ever live.
At this poor dying rate?
And it's only consolation has been
the consolation of faith,-strong be-
lief in it's holy mission,-the I'M
ouenchable conviction that better
times would surely come.
Eyes, we trust the day is breaking
joyful times are near at hand"
has been the hymn of eternal hope
by which the church has sustained
its courage.
Now, then, since church prosperity
is something so desired, since the
good and sanity, as well as those
less pious ones who profess only a
remote and brotherly interest, sim
cerely wish the church to be pros
porous, let us consider what such
prosperity signifies. At the very be-
ginning we might confess that it sig
mites great deal. 1.-THE meek shall
inherit the earth" Well, the church
is meek, but it has its eye on its
promised inheritance.
1t is good deal like John Quincy
Adams, when in response to the
lines,
Man wants but little here below.
Nor wants that little long,"
He declared
"'Tis not with me exactly SO,
Tho tits so iD the song
My wants are many, and If told
Would muster many score,
And were each wish mint of gold,
still should want for more"
So it is with the church. Church
prosperity signifies the satisfying of
a great many wants.
We might, it is true, express the
whole matter in simple way. We
might say that church is prosper
GUS when it is saving souls, when it
is making men and women Christ
like, when it is building character.
But to say merely that is to go
from A to z at a bound, without
touching the letters between. There
are other steps to be taken. There
are other elements first to be con-
sidered. Some of these are inner and
spiritual; others are external, visible
or EMBELLISHMENTS that can be
weighed or counted, or estimated in
concrete terms. For example, there
is the matter of numbers. A church
is prosperous, in certain sense, when
it draws under its influence large
number of people. Veal like tosee
great congregation. People love
each other, and they enjoy seeing
multitude in their church. All of our
emotions are intensified by contact
with our fellows. Our devotional
feeling is enkindled by the presence
of other worshipers. We raise our
voices in song with thousand times
more zeal, when the notes of the |
hymn are borne aloft on wave of |
harmony from mighty chorus.
Numbers are positively necessary
to the prosperity of the church. If
it is good to save one soul, it is better
to save many. All souls are equally
worth saving, and each soul saved
as one unit in the glorious
kingdom of God. 1t is the business
OF the church to add unit to unit, to
reach mind after mind, to touch life
after life. The preacher should
never be content to deliver his dis
course to "a beggarly array of empty
benches" If necessary, he should go
out into the highways and hedges