January
8
2017

Advise About Going to Church

Advice About Going to Church

Here’s some advice about going to church given in Ladies’ Home Journal way back in 1917.

  • In this actual world a churchless community, a community where men have abandoned and scoffed at or ignored their religious needs, is a community on the rapid downgrade…
  • Yes, I know all the excuses.  I know that one can worship the Creator and dedicated oneself to good living in a grove of trees, or by a running brook, or in one’s house, just as well as in church.  But I also know as a matter of cold fact the average man does not thus worship or thus dedicate himself.  If he stays away from church he does not spend his time in good works or in lofty meditation.  He looks over the colored supplement of the newspaper…
  • He will listen to and take part in reading some beautiful passages from the Bible. And if he is not familiar with the Bible, he has suffered a loss…
  • The man who does not in some way, active or not, connect himself with some active, working church misses many opportunities for helping his neighbors, and therefore, incidentally, for helping himself.

That advice came from Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States.

Taken from William J. Bennet, The Book of Virtues (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), 798-799.

 

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