What the Church Needs-A Secular Suggestion

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 10, 1907

What the Church Needs—A Secular Suggestion

THE Lincoln Magazine quotes from Leslie’s Weekly the following, under the heading, “What the Church Needs—A Secular Suggestion:” “1. A genuine spiritual revival, a righteous reformation in all the churches. 2. A united, organized, and determined movement for the enforcement of the laws protecting the sanctity of the sabbath, and restraining liquor selling, gambling, and vice, and an equally united and militant effort to secure such additional legislation on moral issues as is needed.” The waning of real spiritual life in the church has always gone hand in hand with the demand for laws to compel a man to follow the dictates of another’s conscience. Our hand must let go the hand of Christ before we can grasp a whip with it to force another into the attitude of prayer or praise or worship. How fitting that the suggestion above quoted should come from a worldly source! How eminently fitting that it should label itself a “secular suggestion”! The harmony of the plan with the source from which it springs is seen also in the mingling of that “suggestion” with things good in themselves—the restraining of the liquor traffic, gambling, and vice. There is no doubt also that the church needs a genuine spiritual reviving; but the prefacing of that “secular suggestion” by a call for such a revival should not be allowed to blind the eyes of the people to the iniquity of the proposed movement for the enforcement of Sunday laws. That is the hub around which this wheel is built and is to revolve. That is the edifice for which this foundation is laid. The lack of divine sanction and sanctity for the Sunday institution makes necessary this “secular suggestion” for its protection.