Pastoral Claims Stated 3

III. Your minister has a claim upon you for your regular, punctual, and serious ATTENDANCE upon his ministry. Preaching, united public prayer, and sacramental services, to be conducted by duly appointed ministers—are ordinances instituted by Christ, for the building up of his church, upon which all people are under a solemn obligation to attend. The ends of ministerial labors are two—instruction and impression.

It is surely not claiming too much for men, who set apart their whole time to the study of God's Word, and of whatever else may help them to understand the Scriptures, to suppose that they have more enlarged views of divine truth, than most of their hearers; but were not this granted, yet as it is recollected that impression is another end of our labors, our people are still bound to attend upon our ministry; for who, however small their knowledge, act up to what they know? Who, if they are real Christians, and possess accurate though inadequate ideas, do not need more to be quickened and warned than to be informed? And, for such ends as these, how wisely adapted are the preaching of the gospel, "and the breaking of bread, and fellowship, and prayers." The very choice of a minister is an implied promise given on the part of the people, that they will attend statedly upon his public ministrations.

But I said, that this attendance should be REGULAR. There are some people, in perhaps all congregations, of whom it is difficult to conceive by what principle their attendance on public ordinances is regulated. We can no more depend upon their presence than we can upon the wind's blowing from a certain point in the heavens. Sometimes they are with us for several sabbaths successively, and then we miss them for a still longer time. There are others, who, though not so extremely irregular, are far more so than they should be.

Conceive how disheartening it must be to a minister, when he has selected a subject with special reference to some individual case, when he has studied it with much concern and prayer, when he has designed that it shall in every part be adapted, without being in the offensive sense of the term personal, then to find, on his coming to the pulpit, that the person for whom all this solicitude was cherished, was not in his place. His minister came with a message from God to him—but he was not there to receive it; a blessing was brought for him—but he, impelled to some other place of worship by idle curiosity, was not in the way to be blessed.

Well, painful and vexatious as it is for ministers thus to lose the object of their particular studies, the blessing itself is not lost, for there are always some present to whom it is as suitable as to the individual for whom it was designed, and by whom it will be more valued and improved. We are sometimes reproached by hearers for not visiting them in sickness, and on replying that we were not informed of their illness, are told that we might have missed them from public worship; to whom we are able to answer, that while some of the congregation are so regular in their attendance, that their absence from a single sermon would excite concern and lead enquiry into the cause; as for them, they are so often away, without adequate cause, that their absence for almost any length of time, never leads to any apprehension concerning their health.

It may not be amiss here to glance at some of the causes of irregular attendance on public worship. Distance from the place may be mentioned as keeping many away. It is now become a pretty general custom, and it is by no means a censurable one, for people to live as near the country as possible; for who would not rather reside amidst green fields, and inhale pure air, than be shut up in narrow streets, and breathe a smoky atmosphere; and if health does not require a rural retreat, yet it is so agreeable that everyone may well covet such a pleasant and innocent gratification. But then it is likely to become a snare in keeping us away from the house of God, and is in fact too often made an excuse for such a neglect of religious duty. Many modern Christians have quite reconciled themselves to one service on the sabbath, and to none all the week besides; and even this one visit to the house of prayer is sometimes withheld when the weather is not perfectly to their mind.

Is it any wonder that the religion of the present day falls so far short of the depth, earnestness, and fervor of that of our forefathers, if we thus forsake the assembling of ourselves together? Is it any wonder if spirituality decline, if lukewarmness spread through the soul, when the ordinances of public worship are thus neglected? No people should, unless at the dictate of absolute necessity, allow themselves to go so far from their accustomed place of worship, as to be prevented from attending the public means of grace twice on the sabbath. Nor should the week day services be neglected by those who can conveniently attend them.

I am aware that, in the present age, the claims of business are such, that a man cannot always command his time—but I have remarked that many of those whom I knew to be most deeply involved in the cares of life, and to be the most diligent tradesmen, were the most regular attendants on our meetings for social prayer and our week-day sermons. By system, by early rising, by diligence through the day, and by abstaining from voluntary engagements, most men may contrive, in the ordinary state of things, to get their worldly business finished time enough in the evening to devote an hour once or twice a week to the house of prayer.

Mothers of large families, with a heavy burden of domestic care and responsibility, cannot be expected to neglect their household in an evening, even to hear a sermon; but yet of these, I have known some of the most fond and careful mothers, some of the most attentive and judicious mistresses, in whose domestic economy nothing was lacking and nothing disorderly, who were among the most regular attendants on the services of the week. Method, diligence, and punctuality, will do wonders in providing opportunities, where there is a desire to possess them, and an inclination to embrace them. But still, I again admit, that to neglect household affairs, to leave home uncomfortable, and children unprovided for, in order to be present at a prayer meeting or a sermon, if such must unavoidably be the result, cannot be the duty of the female head of a family.

Another cause of irregular attendance is the too prevailing practice of Sunday feasting. In the poor man's cottage the wife, and in the rich man's house the servants, are often detained from public worship in the morning, to provide for the gratifications of the palate. But is this the purpose for which the sabbath is given to man? Is this the remembering it to keep it holy? The case of servants, in such instances, is peculiarly hard.

After they have been working all the week for our comfort and ease, we might surely lighten their labors on the day of rest; and passing by the hardship to their bodies of keeping them at labor on the sabbath morning, in what state are their minds for receiving religious instruction in the afternoon? There is, indeed, a great deal of sabbath breaking in the world; and I am afraid there is not a little in the church—there is much in the streets that meets the eye and the ear; and I fear there is not a little within doors, concealed from general observation. Could not the wives and children of some professing Christians tell strange tales of sabbaths at home?

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