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Theodore
Roosevelt's
Nine Reasons Why a Man Should Go to Church
1In
this actual world, a churchless community, a community where men have
abandoned and scoffed at or ignored their religious needs, is a community
on the rapid down grade.
2 Church
work and church attendance mean the cultivation of the habit of feeling
responsibility for others.
3 There
are enough holidays for most of us. Sundays differ from other holidays
in the fact that there are fifty-two of them every year. Therefore,
on Sundays go to church.
4 Yes,
I know all the excuses. I know that one can worship the Creator in a
grove of trees, or by a running brook, or in a man's own house as well
as in church. But I also know, as a matter of cold fact, that the average
man does not thus worship.
5 He
may not hear a good sermon at church. He will hear a sermon by a good
man who, whith his wife, is engaged all of the week in making hard lives
a little easier.
6 He
will listen to and take part in reading some beautiful passages from
the Bible. And if he is not familiar with the Bible he has suffered
a loss.
7 He
will take part in the singing of some good hymns.
8 He
will meet and nod or speak to good, quiet neighbors. He will come away
feeling a little more charitable toward all the world, even toward those
excessively foolish young men who regard churchgoing as a soft performance.
9 I
advocate a man's joining in church work for the sake of showing his
faith by his works.
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