“Me go to church? Why, I think the roof would fall in!” That is what one man said when his wife suggested that he should go with her.

“Church?” said another. “I haven’t got any decent clothes.”

“You won’t find me at church,” said a third. “I don’t hold with all this bowing and scraping.”

“Church? You’re in the pay of capitalists, and your religion is nothing but dope to gull the workers.”

“Church? Well, you see, I’ve got an allotment, and it takes me all my time to do my bit of work there on a Sunday.”

“Church? Not for me, thank you. I prefer to take a walk in the country, and worship God in the open air.”

“Church? No, I don’t go, but I reckon I’m as good as those who do.”

“Church? I know I ought to go, but I can’t make up my mind to break the ice and begin.”

And so it goes on, and what are we to say about it?

Well, to put it on the lowest ground first, you ought to go to church for your own sake. Young [1/2] Jack Bull is a great friend of mine. He is a Rover Scout and a splendid fellow. His hobby is ambulance, and we’ve never yet found a thing in first-aid that he doesn’t know. “I can’t take on anything on Thursdays,” he says, “because that’s the Ambulance Class. I’ve been through the course five winters in succession, but I keep on going, because there’s always something fresh to pick up, and if you don’t go you soon get stale, and forget what you have learnt already. You must have it at your fingers’ ends if you’re to be a good ambulance man.” That is the secret of his efficiency, and of his character . too. Jack knows some of the things that are really fine, and worth while in life—knowledge, and fitness, and power to help others. And what he says about attending Ambulance Class is even truer about attending church. Your moral and spiritual efficiency depends on continual touch with the great truths about God and goodness. They must be at your fingers’ ends. Understand them for the moment as broadly as you like. “Whatsoever things are true, pure, lovely, and of good report” will do for a start. The best possible way of keeping in touch with these things is by regularly attending Public Worship. Noble thoughts of faith and duty, of holiness, reverence and beauty, confront us at every moment of the service; and we gain through worship not only the grace and power of God, but also the strength and encouragement which come to us through fellowship with others who are seeking the same things. “When a man truly walks with God,” said [2/3] Emerson, “his voice will be as the ripple of the stream, or the murmur of the cornfield.” The happiest family life is found where husband, wife,, and children worship together in God’s House Sunday by Sunday. In that home there is temperance, purity, goodwill, cheerfulness, and mutual love. The remembrance of a holy Home of working folk at Nazareth long ago hallows everything that is done there. It keeps the home life sweet, and the fires of home love brightly burning.

Then, to put it on a higher ground, you ought to go to church for your neighbour’s sake also. A Labour leader pointed out recently that every advantage Labour has won, has been won by organised Labour. Probably half the workmen in the country are not members of any Trade Union. They have profited by the general advance, but the work has been done and paid for by the men in the unions. He goes on to say: “It is the same in religion. Every benefit that has come to humanity through religion has come by organised religion—i.e., the Church, Those outside the Churches have shared in the softening of manners, the higher standards of life,, the vision of God; but it is only by the continuous devotion of those who pray and worship that the work is really done.”

It helps us to see how true this is if we look at it from a negative standpoint. Suppose that every Christian church were closed to-morrow, what would be the result? Is there any man, however indifferent to religion himself, who [3/4] would take the responsibility of shutting the churches of our land? Immediately there would be a disastrous lowering of moral ideals, and all over England the closed doors of the churches would be the signal for the opening of a thousand doors of sin and degradation. We all know that this is true, and in the face of it we can understand that a man who habitually. refuses to attend God’s House is injuring the whole community. It does not matter how good a man may be in his own life, or how correct his personal morals may be; his influence in refusing to take part in Public Worship is a direct contribution to the corruption of the nation.

And now we come to the highest ground of all. You ought to go to. church not only for your own sake, and not only for your neighbour’s sake, but, above all, for God’s sake. God claims our worship: Does this mean that we are to think of him as a proud, rather vainglorious king, who demands constant flattery from his cringing subjects? This is the picture of worship which some opponents of Christianity seem to have in their mind. But of course it is not true; you will not find it in the New Testament, or in the teaching of the Church, or in the belief of any well-instructed Catholic. God is our Father, and when we say that he claims our worship, we mean that he wants us to acknowledge him as our Father, the fountain of all goodness and blessing, to whom we owe all that we have and all that we are. In God’s House we meet together in his presence, as members of his family, united to him and to one [4/5] another. Is it not very ungrateful to our heavenly Father to refuse to take part in Public Worship? Can it possibly be right to forget God on the one day on which he asks us to come together to praise him for his glory, and thank him for all his benefits? The great sin of the world to-day is the sin of forgetting God; and forgetfulness of God and neglect of churchgoing always go together.

If then, dear reader, you will think seriously about your own true needs, about the duty you owe to your neighbour and above all, about the claims of God on your love and gratitude, I am sure you will come to the conclusion that you ought to go to church regularly, and that none of the objections with which this Tract started are good and sufficient reasons for staying away. Of course you must not expect to have it all your own way in church. That would be bad for truth and bad for you. No man is always right, and no class of men is always right. In church you must expect to hear the message of God, and sometimes it will rebuke you. Don’t be offended; rather lay the rebuke to heart and it will greatly benefit you. More often, God’s message will encourage and help you.

You won’t have it all your own way in the service, either. If you are expecting this, almost certainly you will be disappointed. Very likely there will be things you don’t understand and don’t like, at first, in the music, or forms, or ceremonies; but when you have learnt their meaning and entered into their spirit, you will find them very helpful. It isn’t always the things we [5/6] like best at first in art or music or religion that we value most in the long run. A number of people talk, for instance, against Anglo-Catholic, or, as they sometimes call them, “High-Church” practices. Yet these practices are becoming more widely adopted year by year, with the result that, in the great majority of cases, the congregations get larger. There is no doubt at all that the number of people who hold the Catholic faith, and love Catholic ways of worship, is increasing very rapidly indeed.

Do I hear you saying now, “I’ll go to church next Sunday night”? Better than nothing, say I, but not good enough. All Sunday is God’s Day, and you ought not to be content with giving him the fag-end of it. Morning church is best of all, because then the great act of Christian Worship takes place. This is called the Holy Communion or Mass, and it is always held in the morning, because the priest who takes the service and the people who receive Holy Communion do so before taking any food or drink. In this great service is set forth; either simply in a Low Mass, or with all the beauty of music and ceremony we can offer, is the chief Mass of Sunday, the glory of the Sacrifice of Jesus. We praise God for his glory, we thank him for all his blessings, we plead for the needs of all men; Christ himself comes in an unseen but most real Presence to dwell among us, and if we are properly prepared and the occasion is suitable, we can receive him into ourselves by making our Communion. You are not, of course, expected to receive Holy Communion every time [6/7] you come to Mass, but you ought to attend this service without fail every Sunday and Greater Holyday unless you are prevented by good and sufficient cause.

The Mass is the one service ordained by Christ; in it

We thank, we plead,
We worship and we feed.

In it, too, we sing the Song of the Redeemed with angels and archangels and with all the saints in glory. All this you will learn to know more and more fully in a joyful and happy experience as you worship God Sunday by Sunday in his House, on his Day, at his own Service. And when anyone asks you the question with which we started, Why do you go to Church? you will be able to answer in the words of the Psalm: “My soul hath a desire and longing to enter into the courts of the Lord.”