Sampling Religion

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 23, 1874

Sampling Religion.

The Rev. J. J. Lewis, of South Boston, preached a sermon on Sunday evening in the Young Men's Christian Union Hall to a large audience on “Sampling Religion.” He referred in the first place to the well-nigh universal practice among the ladies of sampling dry goods, oftentimes without any special or important purpose in so doing, the great cost to the firm, the great trouble to salesmen and the uselessness to the samplers themselves of the practice. Studying the subject, we see that the practice is by no means confined to the dry goods line. It is everywhere, and nowhere more prominent than in religions. Three classes of religious samplers are noted:—

First, Those who, having no stated place of attending church, are at Music Hall to-day, at Park street on next Sunday, at the Rev. Mr. Hale's the following Sunday, and so on.

Secondly, Those who have a regular place of worship, yet go semi-occasionally, i. e., when it is not too stormy to go out, or too fair to stay in-doors—when it is neither too hot nor too cold; those who go when they have got new, nice clothes, or to see the new and nice clothes of others.

Thirdly, Those who go perhaps constantly, but who do nothing more than sample the sermon, take no part in the church work, no interest in the benevolent, fraternal, Christian matters of the community. These are all samplers and need not expect to work up out of the samples they get a fitting, comely, serviceable robe of life any more than those who sample dry goods out of the little bits the clerks cut for them can make a suitable drawing-dress. All should not sample, but purchase, what they want and what they must have or go naked. The full pattern of life's robe wrought up out of prayer and practice, hearing and doing, must be bought by love and sacrifice and made up in the work-rooms of daily life.