Article March 13, 1909 Issue

One suggestion for the better observance of the Sabbath...

Detroit (Mich.) News Tribune

One suggestion for the better observance of the Sabbath is that the parsons stick to their texts. The Sunday pulpit is becoming a mere sounding-board for all the turmoil and uncertainty of the outside world. Politics, suicides, exploded reputations, frantic attacks on another's creed, make the church anything but a place where one can go and assure oneself that at least the soul is substantial. In too many of the representative churches the man in the pulpit does not rise above the grade of a Sunday lecturer; he stands on no certainty, proclaims no unshakable faith in things unseen but felt. All of us know the world is ringing with battle-cries between right and wrong. All of us know that the old ideas are being recast and modernized. But when we go to church we want to get rid of the temporary and rest awhile in the permanent, "that those things which cannot be shaken may remain."

Most unprofitable of all the work of these Sunday platforms are the occasional attacks made on the simple but satisfying faith of lowly folk who do not desire a scientific analysis of sin, nor think it meet to use a scalpel on the doctrine of the trinity. They are content to believe that this earth swings in the hands of a power greater than we can think or name, and they have been taught that between themselves and that power there is a warm, personal bond which even gross wickedness cannot forever sever. In their tenderer moments of contrition, grief, or joy they take that power into their confidence in simple, reverent prayer, and in the hour of their emergency they call aloud to it for aid. The faith in itself is most beautiful to the mind, if one could adequately describe it; certainly it peoples the earth with faith and hope and friendliness for those who share it. When, therefore, a public teacher suffers himself to atack this faith, tear it down, almost trample on it, one is inclined to ask what good end is attained.

In every walk of life these simple prayers for health, for home, for wandering sons, for work, are just as real and just as beautiful to the great ear of the universe as those which deal with thankfulness for the power to think and to appreciate the beauties of literature and art. As a man grows, his prayer grows. We can trace the evolution of prayer in the Bible. The first prayers were for cattle and babes and lands and victories in tribal wars; next, as the moral sense awakened, men added to their temporal petitions expressions of remorse for sin and pleadings for strength to resist temptation—that was a higher prayer. Then came the time when man found himself at rare moments in such ecstasy of soul that he neither regretted nor begged in his prayer, but simply let his whole being flow out in wonder, adoration, and love to that something above him which seemed to be so near him—"closer than breathing; nearer than hands and feet." Some men are still at the first stage; a few have reached the latter one.

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

One suggestion for the better observance of the Sabbath...

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access