How to Break Down a Church.
I. Discourage the Pastor.—(1) By attending only one Sabbath service. (2) By neglecting prayer (and other) meetings. (3) Criticise your minister freely, praise him sparingly, censure him plentifully, pray for him little or none. (4) Withhold your co-operation generally. II. Discourage your Fellow-members. (1) By observing the foregoing directions. (2) Complain about every thing they do or leave undone. (3) Place yourself at the head of a clique, and by their aid keep the church constantly in hot water. (4) Meanwhile complain of the bad treatment you are receiving. (5) Be as much like Diotrephes, and as little like Paul as you can. (6) Encourage suspicion, and study the whole art of scheming. III. Destroy the confidence of the community. (1) Observe the foregoing directions, and (2) Tell people you are in the church by force of circumstances, and have no respect for the way in which business is conducted. (3) Publish the faults of your brethren, taking care to magnify them. (4) Make no effort to induce people to attend the church. (5) Take no part in any Christian work. Publish your want of faith in the church; and prophesy that it will fail, go down, blow up, never can succeed. By observing these directions faithfully, you may have the satisfaction, if the church is not unusually vigorous, of witnessing the fulfillment of your predictions.