THE RELIGIOUS WORLD

Evening Star, Issue 9688, 4 May 1895, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE RELIGIOUS WORLD

RELIGIOUS HABITS. [By the Rev. George H. Hubbard.] Habit ia case or skill acquired by frequent repetition. It ia the power to do a thing grooving out of the repeated doing of it—the momentum accumulated by continued movement in the same direction. It is a new power evolved from those God has given us by intelligent use. It is a sixth sense, a fourth element in complete manhood. Habit is a valuable servant, if It be a servant, but a tyrant if it be a master. Other powers God has given us ; this power we must gain for ourselves. Now, the value and power of habit are no less marked in spiritual things than in temporal. Says Dr Bushnell: “Wc need to keep fixed times, or appointed rounds of observance, as truly as to be in holy impulse ; to have prescribed periods in duty as truly as to have a spirit of duty ; to be in the drill of observance as well as in the liberty of faith.”

Because the enlightened Christian of the nineteenth century knows that attendance upon the sanctuary is no sure teat of piety, nor a passport to Heaven, he imagines that it makes no difference whether he goes to church regularly or irregularly. Because he knows that God is as near one place as another he often stays at home and prays, instead of coming to the prayer meeting every week. Because he knows that spirit is more essential than form, he has no set time for prayer or the study of God’s Word, but waits for each till he feels in the spirit for it, and perhaps entirely abandons the outward form.

It is doubtless true that mere forms and ceremonies, the outward manifestations of religion, have in themselves no value; they contain nothing of the essence of religion. But it is equally true that they have a measureless value, when used intelligently, as a means of cultivating the spiritual life. True, prayer is equally potent in all places, but the effort required’ by regular attendance at the weekly prayer meeting is an index of the earnestness which goes far toward securing the answer to our prayer. No doubt the spirit is of more value than the outward form of service ; but it docs not follow that we are therefore to wait, doing nothing until we arc in just the mood for worship or service of any sort. Waiting for inclination and impulse, we find them ever becoming less frequent, till at length they disappear. Nothing is weaker, nothing more illogical, nothing more certain to end in the collapse of all spiritual life than this tendency to surrender everything in life to inclination. No period in the history of the Christian Church has been more favorable to the development of the highest type of spiritual life, or to the accomplishment of the noblest Christian work, than that in which we live. But present-day religion has its weaknesses, and by no means least among them is this tendency to neglect the stated forms of service, this failure to cultivate religious habits. Going to church may bo a small matter in itself; but the uegleet of the church-going habit by so large a part of our population is a serious matter, and bodes no good for the moral strength of generations yet to come. >So, too, of the practice of family prayer and the weekly prayer meeting. They are in themselves insignificant matters, bub the neglect of them is significant cf a waning spiritual life.

# The times are rich in helps to spiritual living. Never was the goal of saintly character so easily to be reached. Never were the conditions so favorable for Christian progress and achievement. But if we are to make the most of our opportunities we must wed them to the old-time grace of regularity ; we must have some religious habits to which we adhere strictly. We must not be ashamed to say that wc go to church every Sunday, or that we attend the weekly prayer meeting, nob merely when we feel like it, or when the meeting promises to be of unusual interest, but every week. In short, we must live our religious life as systematically as we live our every-day life. Then we may hope that it will be as manly and as fruitful.