Article May 2, 1903 Issue

Religious Items

with contributions from Horace Bushnell, H. V. Hilprecht, Channing, C. A. Barbour, Longfellow

To-day the power of a Church in any community will be closely proportioned to its manifestation of brotherhood within the circle of its own membership. We make a capital mistake when we think that the preaching of the Word is the only power to win men to Christ. In a beautiful passage Peter exhorts wives to be in subjection to their own husbands, "that, even if they obey not the word, they may, without the word, be gained by the behavior of the wives." That is to say, Do not think that the Scriptures are the only means of winning men to a Christian life. They may be won "without the word." The silent, impressive influence of a Christian life may be the most effective preaching of the Gospel. And that applies to Churches as well as to individuals. A Church by its brotherliness, by its harmony, co-operation, and love, may accomplish in a community what no preaching of words can do. As a matter of fact, next to the winking at gross and palpable sin within its membership, there is nothing that will so mar the influence of a Church as a bickering, quarrelsome, unloving spirit. The community cannot hear what such a Church says, because what it does speaks so loudly. The Churches that are doing the very most to win men to Christ are just those that in a cold, selfish, and loveless world are doing something to realize the Christian ideal of fraternity, co-operation, and sympathy.

The Watchman.

Rev. W. H. Gould says in The Universalist Leader:—

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