p. 342 | A LOSS TO THE CHURCH by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 9, 1890

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 16, No. 22.

A LOSS TO THE CHURCH.

By Editor

THE editor of the New York Christian Advocate quotes the plaint of the Churchman, that there is "a growing disregard of Lent," and that never before has there been during Lent "so much social gaiety, and so little regard for those forms of abstinence and practices of devotion which Lent especially enjoins;" and also the Tribune's inference that the church has lost by "society's" patronage of Lent, of which so much has been said, and adds the following pertinent comment:—

"Of course it has lost. 'Society' is godless, the consummation of worldliness. When it patronizes the church, the result is pernicious. When evangelical Christianity coquettes with 'society,' it meets the fate of Solomon when he married Pharaoh's daughter; he sank even below her level. Spiritual persons may be surrounded by worldly society, and compelled, to a considerable extent, to mingle in it; but a patronage of the church by 'society' means corruption and death.

"Massillon in one of his sermons said something to this effect: 'It is surprising to see great pleasure-loving Paris weeping under the spiritual truths of the gospel. It is even more surprising that a quarter of an hour after the sermon is over they will turn again to their ungodliness.'

"Lent is an arbitrary invention, used by many as a kind of balancing of accounts. Whatever would be antagonistic to spirituality in Lent must be equally so during the three hundred and twenty-five remaining days of the year. Not infidelity is the pre-eminently dangerous foe of Christianity, but 'a form of godliness' without 'the power.' The 'form' finds its happiness in the creature not in the Creator; loves pleasures more than God. But the power finds happiness in godliness; its relaxations and recreations are simple, wholesome, never morally injurious or distracting, nor do they ever destroy the relish for spiritual things."

Let "the church" take warning by this, and realize the loss that will come to her in still greater measure if she persists in enforcing upon society the observance of Sunday.