I began to think of the many vessels, great and small, which through the long years, had entered the port. Merchantmen and men-of-war, freighters and pleasure-boats, yachts and schooners and excursion steamers, ships of adventure and of exploration, rakish blockaders, boats stript to their decks, grim and threatening, with all the paraphernalia and munitions of war; and ships gay, with bunting flying, with music and laughter resounding, and with decks crowded with merry throngs of pleasure-seekers. For all, the light in the church spire shone to show them a safe port and to guide the ship to its desired haven.
It seemed to me to tell the story of what the Church is for, to answer, in part at least, the question why Christ wanted a church. The light shining over Charleston harbor from St Philip's spire, and far out to sea, is a picture of the mission of every church in the world.
The mission of the Church is to shine the harbor-light. It is to illuminate the darkness and, through the gathering gloom, to point the true way. It is to show voyagers on the sea of life how to reach the true haven. It is to tell wanderers how to find their Father's house. It is to guide the soul to God. It is to shine out the harbor-light, so that souls in the offing may reach, in safety, life's true destination. (Text.)
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CHURCH, NEED OF THE
A message in the form of a letter from Monsignor Bonomelli was read to the delegates attending the World Missionary Conference, held in Edinburgh, June, 1910, part of which reads:
All of you feel the need of a church,
which may be the outward manifestation of
your faith and religious feeling, the vigilant
custodian now and here of Christian doctrine
and tradition. It sustains and keeps alive
religion and individual activity, in virtue of
that strong power of suggestion, which collectively
always exercises on the individual.
"Sir," exclaims Johnson, "it is a very dangerous thing for a man not to belong to any church!"
And this is true. How many of us would fall a thousand times were it not for this support!
From the various churches and religious denominations, into which you Christians are divided, there arises a new unifying element, a noble aspiration, restraining too great impulsiveness, leveling dividing barriers, and working for the realization of the one holy church through all the children of redemption.
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Church, Obligations to the—See Obligations to the Church.
CHURCH ONLY A MEANS
A church is like the steps leading in to a
beautiful mansion, but you do not sit down
on the steps, you do not set up a tent on the
steps, you do not live on the steps—the steps
lift you to the level of the warm room, the
blazing winter's fire, the bower of home that
receives you out of the driving rain or pelting
snow. All the ordinances of the Church are
steps that lead to the house of character,
adorned with all those rich treasures, named
truth, gentleness, meekness and justice and
sympathy. The Church is a hostelry in
which man stops for a night on his journey
home. The end of the Church is character.—N.
D. Hillis.
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CHURCH SERVICES
Dr. Donald Sage Mackay remarks on the effects on communities of neglect of church attendance:
One of the papers in New York has
been making a personal examination into
the political morals of a certain New England
State. It has been alleged that
politically that State is rotten, that its voters
are regularly bought and sold at every election.
A detailed description of each of
the most corrupt towns in that State was
given, and this was the appalling fact brought
out: The worst towns (some of them with
a few hundred inhabitants), where bribery
was most persistent, where illegal liquor-*selling
was most rampant, where immorality
was most flagrant, were those towns in
which there was no resident minister and
where no Christian service was regularly
held. For instance, in one town known as
"darkest Exeter," there were twenty years
ago six churches; four of them are in ruins
to-day, two are occasionally used, but there is
no resident minister. The result is "darkest
Exeter"—a New England farming town,
once peopled by the sturdy sons of the
Pilgrim, heir to all the noble qualities
of a sturdy race.—"The Religion of the
Threshold."
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