GOING TO CHURCH

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 15, 1881

“I HAVE to go to church every Sabbath to keep my Christian life just passable,” said a very earnest believer. “When I omit public worship I feel that my standard of living is lowered.” We never go beyond our ideals. We need to be kept constantly at our best to maintain a high standard. It is said that the secret of Jenny Lind’s success was that she tried to excel on every occasion. When asked once why she sang her most finished pieces before an audience at the South, mostly of colored people, she replied: “I value my art much too highly to degrade it even occasionally by any willful disregard of what I consider due to it.” Without action we grow stagnant or retrograde in things pertaining to morals, as in mental acquirements. It is easy to say we can worship God by reading a good sermon at home. The cares of the household often crowd out the book we meant to read. The spirit of worship promoted by the sanctuary, the rest that the house of God gives, the taking of the mind from every-day duties and surroundings, the inspiration to better living, the influence upon others in keeping the day sacred, all make regular church-going a necessity to those who would keep their Christian hope and life in a condition that shall be a joy to themselves and an inspiration to others.—Congregationalist.