WHO WILL EXPLAIN ?

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 30, 1879

WHO WILL EXPLAIN ?

Chicago, it will be remembered, has enjoyed a large share of the labors of Mr. Moody, and has been the recipient, as much probably as any city, of the benefits to be conferred by the influence of the Y. M. C. A. and the modern revivals. And yet the Chicago Inter-Ocean of Jan. 25, 1879 says :—

“A few months ago the fact was made painfully evident that our city churches are, as a rule, only about one-fourth full during Sunday services. A fact equally painful was disclosed in the tables that were published, giving the list of churches embellished with that unscriptural appendage called a mortgage. The list was startling in its inclusiveness; and since it was printed, a number of the churches mentioned have been surrendered to the mortgage-owner, while others have, by the most strenuous efforts, succeeded in raising the money to pay the debt, or, by paying the interest, to postpone the day of evil. One of our leading Congregational churches lately became so embarrassed that it was obliged to cut heavily into its pastor’s salary, and adopted other heroic measures of retrenchment. Two of our leading Baptist churches have been for some time so involved in debt that their existence as independent organizations was imperiled; and the pastors of both have felt constrained to resign their positions. Last Sunday the rector of one of the most prominent Episcopal churches tendered his resignation, because of the unsatisfactory condition and prospects of his society. Occurrences like these, when they become thus frequent, are almost startling.”

In reference to this matter one of the retiring pastors, Dr. Sullivan, of Trinity P. E. Church, says:—

“Why is this? How comes it to pass that substantially the only benefit reaped from the presence of Christian churches, built and supported at incredible expense, is one service held in each on Sunday morning, attended by its own congregation, at the best, very irregularly, the building being abandoned to dust and silence for the remainder of the week? What theory others have to offer I know not. To my mind it is clear that one cause adequately solves the problem. It is the result of an intense soul-absorbing, all-pervading mammonism, which is honey-combing the religion of this people through and through, and which, while not openly denying God’s existence, or the duty of obeying and worshiping him, reduces that worship to the lowest possible minimum consistent with a maintenance of the tokens of outward decent respect. This is the radical cause of the evil we deplore.”

“The spirit of an intense worldliness has so completely possessed and impregnated the public mind that the man who, if given his choice between the Kingdom of Heaven and a well-secured fortune, should choose the former, would be almost universally regarded as a lunatic. Religion, as compared with the making of money, has well-nigh ceased to have any practical value, and so its duties are by many crowded into a corner—by many more thrust altogether out of sight.”