October 1928
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The Cook Stove Apostasy T HE early church prayed in the upper room. The Twentieth Century church cooks in the supper room. Today the supper room has taken the place o f the upper room. Play has taken the place o f prayer, and feasting the place o f fasting. There are more full stomachs in the church than bended knees and broken hearts. There is more fire in the kitchen range than there is in the church pulpit. Ice cream chills the fervor o f spiritual life. The early Christians were not cooking in the supper room the day the Holy Ghost came, but they were praying in the upper room. They were not waiting on tables ; they were waiting on God. They were not waiting for fire from the stove, but for the fire from above. They were detained by the command o f God, and not enter tained by the cunning of men. They were filled with the Holy Ghost, not stuffed with stew or roast. Oh, I should like to sëe the cooking squad put out, and the praying band put in. Less ham and sham and more heaven. Less pie and more piety. Less use for the cook and more itse for the old Book. Put out the fire in the church kitchen and build' it on the church altar. More love and more life. Fewer dinners and get a f ter more sinners. Let us have a church full o f waiters, waiting on God; a church full o f servers, serving God and waiting for His dear Son from heaven.^(Se lected. Inserted by request). The Meaning of Pain Said an eloquent preacher: “A man can no more become a man till life has dealt with him than a daffodil can burst its sheath till it is put into the grip o f the earth. A part o f that experience is the experience of pain.” Willingly would all o f us be spared pain, but there are some o f the deepest elements of character that seem to come only through suffering. One look at the face o f the Christ, lit up amid the shadows o f Gethsemane by the passion which burns His heart, will give you more insight into the meaning o f pain than all the volumes that were ever written. Bible in a Nutshell Martin Luther said that if anyone has mastered the book of Romans, he has mastered the Bible as a whole, and it is true, for in this book we have the deepest truths in the Word o f God.
“ O-o, looky what we found!” W e stick him up in a niche; do a grand war dance around him; and then find somebody else. * * * The Chicago ministers were circular ized with a questionnaire containing forty-seven questions, prepared and sent out by Professor George K. Betts of the religious education department o f North western University. The only thing these 436 ministers agree upon, so far as belief is concerned, is that God exists. “Twenty per cent doubt or deny that God exists in three distinct persons; thirteen per cent, that He is omnipotent; thirty per cent doubt whether the inspiration of the Bible is different from that o f other great religious literature; sixty-six per cent doubt or deny the equal authority o f all parts o f the Bible, and only 38 per cent are sure that it is free from myth or legend; twenty-nine per cent doubt the Virgin Birth of Jesus; eight per cent His sinlessness; sixteen per cent His bodily resurrection ; only three per cent doubt the continuance o f life after death, but thirty-eight per cent the bodily resurrec tion ; rather surprisingly, sixty per cent say that they believe in a personal devil, fifty-three per cent in hell as an actual place and fifty-seven per cent in heaven as having a definite location somewhere in the universe.” These Out-of-Door Worshipers Dr. L. S. Bauman, of Long Beach, re cently used the illustration that Roosevelt was a church-goer. It is said that on one gloomy Sunday morning during the world war, he walked three miles in order to at tend worship. One of his neighbors, no ticing this, said to him : “I can worship in the fields or anywhere else.” “ Yes,” replied Mr. Roosevelt, “but no one will ever suspect you o f it!” As with most great statesmen, church going was a regular habit with Roose velt. He set a good example. Your regu lar attendance at all the regular services of the Church is a duty you owe to God, and not to man. It is a shame that so many are so ready to neglect this sacred duty they owe to God, and blame the preacher, or the baby, o f the “ Sunday vis itors,” or “the rheumatiz’,” or any other thing on which they can hang an excuse for their neglect of that which they owe to God alone. In that day, when even Christians must stand at the judgment seat o f Christ, are you going to tell the Lord that the reason you stayed away from the services o f the Church, or at most could only attend one o f the regular Sunday services, was because the preacher “preached too long” ? Or, are you going to get downright honest before the great Searcher o f hearts, and admit that the real reason for your slack attendance was because you had vpry little interest in the Church and the-; things that concerned HIM, and the salvation o f souls for whom He died?
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Dean In g e : “ The history o f a church ought to be a biography of ideals. It is actually a history o f controversy and creeds.” * * * Richard H. Edmons, editor, Baltimore: “ Above all else this country needs a nation-wide revival o f the old fashioned Christian religion.” * * * Henry Watterson: “The paramount question un derlying Democracy is the re ligion of Jesus Christ. Elimi nate Christ, and you leave the world to eternal war.” * * * Roger Babson: “ The need o f the hour is more religion everywhere, from the halls o f Congress to the fac tories, mines and forests. It is one thing to talk about plans and policies of reformation, but without a religious motive they are like a watch without a mainspring or a body with out the breath o f life.” * * * John E. Edgerton, at annual convention National Association o f Manufacturers: (A fter speaking o f the legal profession) “ The other par ticular profession that is be coming more closely identi fied with our industrial and economic life is the ministe rial, which I acknowledge as the most essential o f all fac tors in the world’s harmo nious progress. As religion is the most vital and necessary force in the affairs o f men, it is the more important that the ministry hold itself above re proach.” * * ♦ Dr. G. E. Shipler, editor ‘‘The Churchman "1: “ There is something out of adjustment in the universe when people will give millions for building cathedrals and scorn appeals for a few thou sand dollars for maintaining an instrument for promoting that enlightenment without which cathedrals are but un meaning gestures. I have hope that there will be a better conception o f values in the future. Sooner or later church people who have money to give for the promotion o f the religion o f Jesus will see the inescapable value of the en lightened, free, and forward- looking religious journal.”
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