Article September 19, 1936 Issue

Signs of the Times

Topic: The Function of the Church

with contributions from Leslie Werner, R. Shepherd, G. G. Webber

[From the Christian Leader, Boston, Massachusetts]

The feeling that the church does little or nothing for us lies back of much of the modern indifference to the church. As one of our own leading laymen has said lately, "The people who crowd into Christian Science churches believe that the church does something for them." It would not be a slight service, would it, if any agency helped us to discharge every duty that life lays on us willingly, cheerfully, effectively? Nor would it be a slight service if it helped us to trust in the eternal goodness and happy outcome, no matter how black the circumstances surrounding us. Nor if it enabled us to handle every question, economic or porlitical or personal, with a dominating desire to do the best possible for everybody. Nor if it made us conscious every day that we do not walk alone. Such feelings, thoughts, attitudes, would mark the spiritually-minded man. Our churches are for that. We as individuals can co-operate with others through the churches in the blessed, satisfying work of bringing spiritual help to other people and of getting spiritual help ourselves.

Much more basic than questions as to how we can get people to attend church or support churches are the questions which concern making our churches centers of spiritual light and life. We can never do it by being foolishly optimistic about the spiritual weariness and indifference which we have absorbed from the times. And certainly we can never do it by yielding to pessimism. We can do it, though, by facing with calm, cool intelligence all the circumstances of the age in which we have been put to work, and by resolving that, so far as our own lives are concerned, they shall stand on the rock of the patient, persistent, determined love of God.

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