Or, indeed, he _might_ found a church or endow a minister. For are we
to suppose that church and minister are to disappear when God the
Perfect Person no longer lives to hear the old supplications? But it
will be a very different church from the churches with which we are
familiar. The church of to-day still lingers in its animistic and
magical memories. The church services are supposed to have vital
efficacy for the saving of men’s souls, not simply in the ordinary way
of stimulating them by precept and example to better living, but by
performing for them and with them certain rites pleasing to God. There
is still in the minds of most churchmen something efficacious about
the very attendance upon divine worship. It is an act which God
enjoins and which he rewards when it is faithfully performed. It is
like the pagan custom of bringing gifts to the altar: the god demands
the gifts and rewards the bringer of gifts for his lowly obedience. It
is true that the more enlightened churches are rapidly outgrowing this
belief in the ceremonial efficacy of church service; but it would not
be difficult to show that it still persists in so great measure as
very definitely to color the word “religious” with the meaning “that
which pertains to divine ceremonial.” The sharp line of demarcation
between “religious” and “secular” is but the expression of this
animistic and supernatural survival in religion.
But even churches that have largely outgrown belief in the saving
efficacy of supernatural ceremonial, who believe that attendance upon
church service is wholly for the sake of inspiration to better living,
seek to secure that inspiration by pointing the worshipper to the
perfect God, or to his beloved Son. One may doubtless get inspiration
from the tireless work of a Burbank, or a Curie, or a Florence
Nightingale. If the church, however, uses such sources of inspiration,
it is only by the way. Its fundamental source is the Perfect Person,
the Eternal God. The church has the special function of calling men
from their secular activities, of pointing upward to that great Guide
and Friend and Provider in whose name and through whose power they are
to live.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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