The church is not a dormitory for sleepers, it is an institution for workers; it is not a rest camp, it is a front line trench.
Interpretation
The church should be an active place for people to work and serve, rather than a passive space for rest and complacency.
This quote by Billy Sunday emphasizes the idea that the church's primary role is to engage and mobilize people in service and action. Rather than being a comfortable place for individuals to simply rest or hide from the challenges of life, the church is portrayed as a battleground where believers should actively participate in their faith and contribute to meaningful work in the community.
In practice
In a sermon about community service, one might use this quote to highlight the importance of active faith.
Whenever a day comes when I can stand and preach God's Word without an agony of anxiety lest the people will not accept Christ; whenever a day comes when I can see men and women coming down the aisles without joy in my heart, I'll quit preaching.
Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile.
The saloon is a liar. It promises good cheer and sends sorrow.
I don't believe there are devils enough in hell to pull a boy out of the arms of a godly mother.
The trouble with many men is that they have got just enough religion to make them miserable. If there is not joy in religion, you have got a leak in your religion.
The backslider likes the preaching that wouldn't hit the side of a house, while the real disciple is delighted when the truth brings him to his knees.
Where two principles really do meet which cannot be reconciled with one another, then each man declares the other a fool and a heretic
We have bodies. We have personalities. We have histories, stories and experiences. But we are not those things - we are Spirit.
Variant: When it is not in our power to follow what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable.
I look back upon my Liberal political beliefs with a sort of wonder - as another exercise in self-involvement - rewarding myself for some superiority I could not logically describe.
When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process.
Religion is everywhere. There are no human societies without it, whether they acknowledge it as a religion or not.
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