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Worldliness in the Church

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Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 8, 1883

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 9, No. 10.

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Worldliness in the Church.

By Brooklyn Correspondent of The Watchman

THE current question of our day is, How shall we stem the tide of worldliness which is setting in upon us? Like a freshet down a valley this potent evil is sweeping everything before its irresistible tread. All other topics at Brooklyn, or elsewhere, are nothing but chips on the surface, sure to be lost to view and overwhelmed in the mad rush of waters. Write to any score of intelligent, watchful pastors in any part of the country, and ask them what the main drift of thought is among their people. They would true answer make as follows:—
"1. Three out of every five persons in any given population do not even attend divine service.
"2. Out of every one thousand church members only one in five ever attends prayer-meeting.
"3. Only one in five of those attending prayer-meeting can be depended upon to take any part in the meeting.
"4. As the result of any year's work of any two thousand Christians, there are only one hundred conversions. In the State of Maine last year there were only three hundred and eleven conversions, with a membership of about twenty thousand.
"5. Two-thirds of our church edifices are not more than one-half filled.
"6. In many churches dancing, card-playing, and theater-going are openly tolerated.
"7. In almost all communities there is a woeful lack of Christly earnestness in doing God's work, notwithstanding the apparent general prosperity of many churches, and the great popularity of many pastors.
"These estimates, which are the result of personal observation in a section of country not notoriously irreligious, are indisputable. They show the direction of the current. . . . There is nothing the Christian church of to-day needs so much as more spiritual power. The discussion of the methods of reaching such power, for the sake of saving men, ought to occupy the attention of the leaders of thought to the exclusion of almost all other themes. To fail here is to fail altogether." —Brooklyn Cor. of The Watchman.