How to Fill the Churches

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 22, 1910

How to Fill the Churches

COMMENTING upon the growing tendency of professed Christians to absent themselves from the house of God, Robert Wilson Yourd, in the United Presbyterian of Nov. 1, 1910, says:—

It is a serious problem confronting every minister to-day. But neither moving-picture show nor the sensational methods advocated by many will meet the need of the hour. That need is for the old, pure gospel of two thousand years ago, preached in the spirit and in power. Give me the cross, and you may take the rest. The cross is the center of it all. Take away the atonement, and sinful men have no interest beyond the day in the preaching of the gospel.

Among some of the reasons for this spirit of worldliness the writer enumerates the following:—

An increased substitution of form for worship. The movement in many of our churches to-day toward ritualism in aping the Episcopalians, should be condemned. What we want is not “a more impressive service,” but more of the spirit of true devotion and worship in our hearts. The “rags of popery,” as the gown has been called, lends nothing to the worship of God. The warbling spirit of singers with no heart in their words can not minister to his praise.

Another writer in the same number, J. M. Aikin, M. D., says:—

In all too many instances our church services are made to conform to the present day “intellectual” and “esthetic” tastes of man. “Culture so refined as to eliminate a “sanguinary theology” from the pulpit, and the deliverance of lectures on social, political, or business problems, drives men from our church pews. Men are surfeited with these during six week days, and desire spiritual food on the Sabbath.

These statements, as do many others, only emphasize the need of a revival of plain, simple, gospel preaching. While the professed gospel ministry may be largely at fault for the decline in spiritual life so manifest throughout the world, the causes are deeper rooted and more far-reaching than this. The professed church of Christ to-day is now in the grasp of a great spiritual declension. Sin in its myriad forms, with consequent departure from God, has made fearful inroads even among professed Christians. It is in the condition which the Scriptures of truth declare will exist just before the coming of the Lord. It is the time when men are lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God, having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof. By these conditions we are to be admonished to greater earnestness in the things of God; and while others around us are losing their connection with divine power, we are to put forth the more earnest effort to maintain our Christian integrity.