ened to these readings at home, and full as my
heart was of love to Christ, I suffered intensely when I was taken to
church as a young boy. It was a very large church, and in winter
bitterly cold. Even though I liked the singing, the long sermon was
real torture to me. I could not understand a word of it, and being
thinly clad my teeth would have chattered if I had not been told that
it was wrong "to make a noise in church." Oh! what misery is inflicted
on childhood by this enforced attendance at church. When a church can
be warmed the suffering is less intense, but a huge whitewashed church
that feels like an ice-cellar is about the worst torture that human
ingenuity could have invented to make children hate the very name of
church. These early impressions often remain for life, and the worst
of it is that the idea remains in the minds of children, and of
grown-up people too, that by going to church and repeating the same
prayers over and over again, and listening to long and often dreary
sermons, they are actually doing a service to God (_Gottesdienst_).
Why does no new prophet arise and say in the name of God, as David did
in the name of Jehovah, "Sermons and long prayers 'thou didst not
desire'"?

Many years later I had to discuss the same question with Keshub
Chunder Sen, the Indian Reformer. He wanted to know what kind of
service should be adopted by his new church, the Brahmo Somaj; his
friends thought of sermons, singing, and processions with flags and
flowers through the streets. "No," I said to him, "service of God
should be service of men; if you want divine service, let it be a real
service, such as God would approve of. Let other people go to church,
to their mosques or their temples, but take you your own friends on
certain days of the week to whatever you like to call your
meeting-place, and after a short prayer or a few words of advice send
some of them to the poorest streets in the city, others to the
prisons, others to the hospitals. Let them pray with all who wish to
pray, but let them speak words of true love and comfort also, and when
they can, let them help them with their alms. That would be a real
Divine Service and a divine Sunday for you, and you would all come
home, it may be sadder, but certainly wiser and better men."

I am afraid he did not agree with me. He did not think that true
religion was to visit the poor and the afflicted. That might do for a
practical people like the English, but