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Show j ' Church Attendance. The Chicago Record-Herald some time ago undertook to count the attendants at-tendants at church on an average Sunday. Sun-day. The count was made on the 24th j of August, with th result that 68,189 people were found attending 125 places of worship. This seemed to be a very small attendance in a city of the magnitude mag-nitude of Chicago, and it was said that the count was made at a time when so ' many churchgoers were still in the country. The Herald last Sunday made another count and found 257.431 people attending 233 churches. The figures given show that the largest larg-est church attendance is found among the Catholics. There were no less than 207,765 numbers of this denomination m attendance, while the next largest only footed up to 7.322. This number was reached by the Lutherans. Meth-odiests. Meth-odiests. Presbyterians. Baptists, Con-gregationalists Con-gregationalists and others fell below even this number. The only conclusion possible from the figures given is, that church attendance is becoming obsolete among the inhabitants of Chicago, except ex-cept as far as the influence of the Catholic church reaches. This is passing strange. Protestant speakers used to criticize the Catholic , services as containing too many cere- ; monies, and giving loo little time to the intellectual pabulum furnished by the pu'.pit. Protestantism undertook to remedy this defect, by making the sermon the center of attraction of the ; services, and all else incidental to it. ' Protestantism made little of music and ; ritual and more of the reading and x- ! pounding of the scriptures. Is it pos sible that after so long a test, the churchgoers turn away weary from t the platitudes cf the Protestant pulpit to the more imposing ceremonies of the Catholic sanctuaries? What other conclusion must be drawn from the fact that of a total of churchgoers counted on one Sunday, 207,765 "were found in Catholic churches, fiftv-six in all, while all the other places of worship, wor-ship, 177 in all. furnished only 49 666' The figures may not be quite infallible The census may have been taken upon a day when the attendance was below the average, but even if they are onlv i i".: j x.v,i,v.,t, niy indicate a condition which Protestantism ought to consider seriously. Where is the sense in raising millions of dollars for the conversion of pagans, while the churches at home are standing empty' Deseret News (Mormon). |
