(Transcribed from Choctaw Advocate, Butler, Alabama, June 11, 1890)
Plenty of them everywhere, little and big, old and young. Here are some of their reasons:
“I don’t like the preacher.” Well my friend, if you were a preacher somebody wouldn’t like you. Strange to say, some don’t like Christ. Read 2 Thess, iii, 1, and Tim., v. 17
“So and so is a hypocrite; I won’t go where he goes.” Then you should by all means prove that you are not “Judge not, that ye be not judged.”
“Wife won’t go; husband won’t go; don’t like to leave wife or husband home alone.” No husband or wife has the right to be a bad example to the other. Marriage is “in the Lord.” God never meant marriage to justify a bad example.
“I’ve been snubbed.” They, why not quit all business? If being snubbed is a valid reason for quitting the Lord’s business, it is an equally valid reason for quitting your own. Why don’t you close your shops and stores, and leave your offices, and throw down your tools? The world is full of snubbers and the snubbed. Christ endured the contradiction of sinners; so must you and I. Kindle anew hot fires of love to God and men.
“The church isn’t sociable; they are all icebergs. Be sociable yourself, then. Their sin is no excuse for yours. Don’t run like a coward to another church because the battle is hared in your own.
“Don’t like rented pews; don’t like free pews.” Perhaps the real difficulty is that you don’t like to support any system. You are always welcome at the house of God, free pews or rented pews. And you will be there if your heart cries out for God.
“The sad truth is that the church itself is often to blame – too aristocratic, ill-mannered, totally indifferent, worldly. The ignorant and godless conscience takes advantage of these sins of God’s people, and argues with some show of reason that because some professing Christians are not better than open sinners they must be worse. — Selected.
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