Article October 31, 1908 Issue

There is no way to demonstrate in figures the influence...

Pasadena (Cal.) News

There is no way to demonstrate in figures the influence of the churches—divided as it is—on the individual life, the home life, and the civic life of a city. If these churches were removed and their aggregate influence were to cease, the demonstration would be plain enough. A man's most faulty or ignorant groping after spiritual truth makes him a better man, a better father, a better citizen. The defects of a church do not constitute a valid indictment against its existence in a community, any more than a weak or even a counterfeit Christian constitutes a valid indictment against the genuine man or woman who sincerely follows a high ideal.

The educational, ethical, and spiritual influence of the pulpits of this city cannot be estimated. Whether the attraction be the high-class music and pulpit eloquence characteristic of most orthodox Protestant churches, the beautiful symbolisms through which the devout Catholic approaches and worships God, or through the simple study and interpretation of the spiritual truth of the Bible according to the method of the Christian Scientist—spiritual hunger is there, men and women go there for the "bread of life," and each, according to his own choice or his own hunger, finds it in some profitable measure. A city's churches do not include all of its spiritual life and ethical ideals, but without them this life and these ideals would have a hard time in the selfish every-day grind and competition of modern society, mercenary and merciless as it is. Better have ethical culture one day in the week than none. The religion that is lived every day in the week must be the one to survive the rest.

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