When they hear any one maintaining that he believes in the principles of Christianity but not in the social organizations which embody these principles, they may well reply that the principles of Christianity naturally and inevitably embody themselves in forms of social organization; that you could no more prevent it than you could prevent light from breaking into color or spring from coming in May; that, as a matter of history, the growth of Christianity has been signalized by a marvelous development of the social sentiments and habitudes which must find expression in some kind of social cooeperation; and that, as a matter of fact, after all necessary deductions have been made, the church has been a powerful agency in developing that temper of likemindedness which makes civilized society possible.

There is still another cavil to which it may be needful to refer.  It is based on the notion that religion, after all, is a purely individual affair; that it concerns only the relations between the soul and its God; that therefore public worship is not only needless but unseemly.  Prayer is sometimes described as “the flight of one alone to the only One;” and it is sometimes contended that any other than private prayer is a violation of all the higher sanctities.  If this were true, of course the church would be an anomaly or an imposition.  And while there are not many who would urge this argument unfalteringly, some such notion as this may be found lying at the bottom of a good many minds.

The words of Jesus, in the sixth chapter of Matthew, are sometimes quoted in support of this criticism upon public worship:  “And when ye pray, ye shall not be as the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men.  Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.  But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thine inner chamber, and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret shall recompense thee."[15]

But we must learn to interpret the words of Jesus as meeting the occasion on which they were spoken; and before we base any generalizations or rules of conduct upon them, we must bring together all that he said and did which bears upon the case in hand, and try to arrive at some meaning which shall include and explain it all.  When we treat the utterances and acts of Jesus after this manner, we shall find that no such deduction as that which we are considering can be drawn from them.

We discover, in the first place, that he himself did not always pray in secret; for several of his prayers made in public places are reported for us.  Moreover, he told his disciples that when even two or three of them were gathered together in his name, he would be in the midst of them.  The implication is that they would be in the habit of gathering together in his name, and that there would generally be many more than two or three of them.