Article December 8, 1906 Issue

THE CHURCH AND CHRISTIAN SERVICE

Duluth (Minn.) News-Tribune

A local minister in his sermon yesterday brought out forcefully the fact that ninety per cent of present-day church work is merely preparation for Christian service. He said that the building of church edifices, the payment of the minister's salary, the securing of funds for the various church enterprises, and even the attendance at the church meetings were but the getting ready. These were but collecting the tools and taking the sustenance necessary for real service. He also, but rather incidentally, pointed out the fact that church members do not get, because they do not demand, the results from all this work that they insist upon having from everything else into which they put their time, effort, and money. Right there is much of the reason of the ineffectuality of the Church in reaching those outside the fold.

The non-churchman looks at the lives of those inside the active membership for results. He sees little but this work of preparation for work, which is not especially attractive or convincing. Indeed, he feels it as a something to be avoided rather than sought.

But when the minister referred to the Christian Science Church he might have used it to point the moral and to amplify the very argument he was making. The success of Christian Science comes from the very fact that it does give its people something tangible, someting real, which they have to take into their lives and live in order to be of that faith. It is not a case of choice, but of must. It also avoids what in other churches makes up most of that ninety per cent of the work. There is no canvassing among the general public for funds, no suppers, no bazars, no minister, no stated charities.

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