Your ShelfYour Projects

Editorial

20%

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 12, 1914

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 91, No. 11.

Read the full edition

Editorial

By Editor

“Go to Church Sunday”

THIS has been the watchword which many church communities have been endeavoring to sound during the last few months. The movement has become quite widespread throughout the country. The need of increasing church attendance has been very evident. From every section has come up the cry of a growing indifference in religious things on the part of a great majority of people. “It has not been uncommon,” says a writer in the North American, “for an edifice capable of seating ten hundred or fifteen hundred persons, to have less than one hundred worshipers at a regular Sunday service.” No doubt this effort to rally the indifferent to the importance of attendance in religious service has accomplished some good.
Surely this is a consistent way to secure better Sunday observance on the part of those who regard the first day of the week as the Lord’s day. We can never object to any effort based on moral suasion. We accord to our Sunday-keeping friends the same right to proclaim their views and to persuade men and women of the justice of their claims with respect to the first day of the week that we claim for ourselves regarding the seventh day. But there are those who will not be persuaded. Some will persist still in remaining away from church on Sunday, following the bent of their own minds in work or play. As long as they do not do on Sunday what would be uncivil to do on any other day of the week, it is not the province of their fellows to abridge in any manner their rights and liberties. And under no circumstances would it be right to require of them attendance at religious service.
The minister of Christ should do his duty, proclaiming to the best of his knowledge the word and counsel of God, but to every one of his fellows should be accorded the right to think and do as he pleases, as long as the course chosen does not abridge the rights or liberties of others. The province of the church is to persuade, to beseech, to exhort, but when it has recourse to legal enactment and human force, it transcends its prerogatives and undertakes a work never assigned it by its rightful Lord.