Behaviour in Church

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 17, 1884

Behaviour in Church.

A WRITER in the Sunday-School Times gives some excellent hints regarding the attitude of the pew to the pulpit which are worth preserving:—

“If any one of us is entertaining the minister in the home drawing-room, the minister may be sure of being treated with courtesy. We shall not, though we find his call fatiguing, glance furtively at the clock on the mantel, fidget in our chairs, nor, drawing forth our watches, snap their cases in his face. Yet well-bred people, with barbaric rudeness, constantly consult time-pieces, and move uneasily in their seats in church, if the sermon be overlong, or it does not interest them, or they dislike the ministerial manner.

“You, sir or madam, who are grown up, do not, of course, need such a reminder; but children ought not to pitch their hymn-books into the rack when a tune is concluded, so that, simultaneously with the last notes, there ensues a sharp rat-tat-tat all over the auditorium.

“Clothing, overcoats, mufflers, wraps of all sorts, should not be assumed during the doxology, or the final prayer. It is a manifest impoliteness to other worshipers, and a slight to the occasion, to be struggling into coats and cloaks, and adjusting reluctant fastenings, while the service is in progress. Good taste awaits the close, after the benediction.

“And why the frantic haste with which so many flee the sacred edifice, when the blessing has been pronounced? Why not a slight and reverent tarrying, a waiting till the echoes of prayer have died into silence?”