quotations about church
Every one went to church -- every one with the exception of two or three families whom I looked upon with a kind of mysterious awe, as I might have looked upon a family without visible means of support and popularly suspected of earning a livelihood by counterfeiting or some similar lawless practice. The church itself was an old-fashioned brick Puritan meeting-house, equally free from architectural ornament without and from decoration within. The pews had been painted white; for some reason the paint had not dried, and the congregation, to protect their garments, had spread down upon the seats and backs of the pews newspapers, generally religious. When the paint at length dried the newspapers were pulled off, leaving the impression of their type reversed, and I used to interest myself during the long sermon in trying to decipher the hieroglyphic impressions. There was neither Sunday-School room nor prayer-meeting room. The Sunday-School was held in the church, and the parson at prayer-meeting took a seat in a pew about the center of the building, put a board across the back of the pews to hold his Bible and his lamp, and sat, except when speaking, with his back to the congregation. A great wood stove at the rear, with a smoke-pipe extending the whole length of the room to the flue in front, furnished the heat -- none too much of it on cold winter days. Plain and even homely as was this meeting-house, associations have given to it a sacredness in my eyes which neither Gothic arch nor pictured window could have given to it. My grandfather was largely instrumental in constructing it. In its pulpit each of his five sons preached on occasions. One of them acted as its pastor for a year or more. A grandson and a great-grandson of his were here baptized. My earliest recollections of public worship and of Sunday-School teaching are associated with it. We four brothers have each at times played the organ in connection with its service of sacred song. My brother Edward and myself were both ordained to the Gospel ministry within its walls, and in its pulpit preached some of our first sermons. The church still exists, a flourishing organization, but the meeting-house was destroyed by fire in 1886, and its place has been taken by a more modern structure.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Reminiscences
There ought to be such an atmosphere in every Christian church, that a man going there and sitting two hours should take the contagion of heaven, and carry home a fire to kindle the altar whence he came.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
The Head and the body are Christ wholly and entirely. The Head is the only begotten Son of God, the body is His Church; the bridegroom and the bride, two in one flesh. All who dissent from the Scriptures concerning Christ, although they may be found in all places in which the Church is found, are not in the Church; and again all those who agree with the Scriptures concerning the Head, and do not communicate in the unity of the Church, are not in the Church.
ST. AUGUSTINE
De Unitate Ecclesiae
Surely as a man may say of a rock--nothing more quiet, because it is never stirred; and yet nothing more unquiet, because it is ever assaulted--so we may say of the church--nothing more peaceable, because it is established upon a rock; and yet nothing more unpeaceable, because that rock is in the midst of seas, winds, enemies, and persecutions.
EDWARD REYNOLDS
Explication of the Hundred and Tenth Psalm
See the Gospel Church secure,
And founded on a Rock!
All her promises are sure;
Her bulwarks who can shock?
Count her every precious shrine;
Tell, to after-ages tell,
Fortified by power divine,
The Church can never fail.
CHARLES WESLEY
Scriptural
People go to church for the same reasons they go to a tavern: to stupefy themselves, to forget their misery, to imagine themselves, for a few minutes anyway, free and happy.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
Circular Letter to My Friends in Italy
Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.
EMILE ZOLA
attributed, What Great Men Think of Religion
Church was never meant to be a place for gods to gather, but for devils wanting to shed their horns for halos.
RICHELLE E. GOODRICH
Being Bold
Damn the Church. Damn it for imposing impossible celibacy on its people. Damn it for hypocrisy--Christendom was littered with priests wallowing in varieties of sin. How many of them were condemned? And damn it for its hatred of women--an abuse of half the world's inhabitants, so that those who refused to be penned into its sheepfold were condemned as harlots and heretics and witches.
ARIANA FRANKLIN
The Serpent's Tale
Over the road there was a church: a modern gray building, which constantly played a recording of church bells. Strange it was. Why no proper bells? I never went in but I bet it was a robot church for androids, where the Bible was in binary and their Jesus had laser eyes and metal claws.
RUSSELL BRAND
My Booky Wook
It belongs to the church to suffer blows, not to strike them.
BEZA
attributed, Day's Collacon
The day we find the perfect church, it becomes imperfect the moment we join it.
CHARLES H. SPURGEON
attributed, Deciduous Belief
Take me to church
I'll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
I'll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife
Offer me that deathless death
Good God, let me give you my life
HOZIER
"Take Me to Church"
Every day, people are straying away from the church and going back to God.
LENNY BRUCE
The Essential Lenny Bruce
The Church is a conspiracy to corrupt men's morals.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
Why did men worship in churches, locking themselves away in the dark, when the world lay beyond its doors in all its real glory?
CHARLES DE LINT
The Little Country
A glorious Church is like a magnificent feast; there is all the variety that may be, but every one chooses out a dish or two that he likes, and lets the rest alone: how glorious soever the Church is, every one chooses out of it his own religion, by which he governs himself, and lets the rest alone.
JOHN SELDEN
Table Talk, 1686
The church is important only as it ministers to purity of heart and life; and every church which so ministers is a good one; no matter how, when, or where it grew up; no matter whether it worship on its knees, or on its feet, or whether its ministers are ordained by pope, bishop, presbyter, or people; these are secondary things, and of no comparative moment. The church which opens on heaven is that, and that only, in which the spirit of heaven dwells. The church where worship rises to God's ear is that, and that only, where the soul ascends. No matter whether it be gathered in cathedral or barn; whether it sit in silence or send up a hymn; whether the minister speak from carefully prepared notes, or from immediate, fervent, irrepressible suggestion. If God be loved, and Jesus Christ be welcomed to the soul, and his instructions be meekly and wisely heard, and the solemn purpose grow up to do all duty amidst all conflict, sacrifice, and temptation, then the true end of the church is answered.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts
That a mouse of scandal whisks its foolish tail across the church's floor is not sufficient cause for clamorous leaping out of its windows.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
The church alone beyond all question
Has for ill-gotten goods the right digestion.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
Faust