Some men doubtless go to church from traditional habit only, but such
a motive obviously is not adequate to explain why the recurrent tides
of humanity, even after an ebb in interest, sweep back to the Church
again. In the eighteenth century, for example, Butler reports the
common opinion that all that remained for Christianity was decent
obsequies. But in a few years the Wesleys began a movement that
changed the spiritual complexion of the English-speaking world, and
swept multitudes into Christian fellowship. One reason for this
repeated fact is clear. Mankind cannot and will not consent to live
without faith in God, and faith in God in its genesis and its
sustenance is largely a matter of contagion. We are not so much taught
it; we catch it. It is vitally imparted in the family circle, and
wherever kindred and believing spirits gather. No man is so
independent as to escape the vital fact that his noblest emotions,
attitudes, ideals, and faiths are socially engendered and socially
sustained; he never would have had them in a solitary life and a
solitary life would soon spoil those which he has now. A man may
believe in his country and love her; but let him join in a patriotic
movement or even attend a high-spirited patriotic meeting, and he will
believe in her and love her more ardently. Man's religious life is not
lawless; it is regulated by the same necessities of fellowship. The
Church has made many mistakes, but on her altar the fire has never
utterly gone out, and in her fellowship the faith of multitudes has
been kindled.
=Let us hold fast the confession of our hope that it waver not; for
he is faithful that promised: and let us consider one another to
provoke unto love and good works; not forsaking our own assembling
together, as the custom of some is, but exhorting one another; and so
much the more, as ye see the day drawing nigh.--Heb. 10:23-25.=
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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