The Waxahachie Daily Light

A FALLING OFF IN CHURCH ATTENDANCE.

New York papers and preachers are putting forth most doleful and discouraging accounts of the decline in number of those attending church in New York, and if their statistics be accepted, and their deductions be admitted to be correct, there will be very little use for churches in that city before many years.

It is doubtful whether New York can fairly be taken as a test of the matter, for that city is in a class to itself. The commercial spirit is there essentially dominant; the struggle for money is constant and intense, in great part from sheer necessity to meet the demands of daily life: the concerns of this life are there instant always and uppermost in every mind. The poor from necessity are bound to consider them, while the idle rich, dwelling in luxury, manifest that indifference to everything which lies beyond the passing hour—a condition of mind which great riches and sybarite luxury seem to have unfailingly produced in every age of the world.

Then, to judge by the sermons one reads, the preaching in New York seems to have but little relation to human needs. Religion is not a matter of metaphysical abstraction, or severe intellectual investigation. People do not go to church—at least those who are troubled by the concerns of daily life—to hear a lot of glittering generalities or a semi-political discourse or a lot of moralizing.

The Divine Teacher, the world's greatest preacher, taught and enforced immortal and saving truths by the simplest illustrations, drawn from birds and seeds and sheep and pieces of money, and he spoke of trust and faith and of comfort for the sorrowing, and of love for your neighbor, and he had a healing balm for every wounded and sorrowing heart. People do not want to hear advice about politics, or business, or social duties, from the pulpit. Those are matters which they can decide for themselves.

What is needed to bring people to church is the old, simple, enduring religion of faith and hope and trust and love, that makes better men and women here and gives assurance of happiness hereafter. The world is full of sorrow, full of people, who need cheer and comfort and helpful preaching. The number of such in New York is myriad and when they can hear from New York pulpits the saving, comforting, consoling, assuring truths taught by the Nazarene they will come to church in New York and anywhere else.—Houston Chronicle.