Isabella wrote a popular advice column for a Christian magazine. Some topics she addressed may sound very familiar to today’s readers, like this one from 1897:
“What can be said to someone who says he can get as much good from reading sermons at home, or communing with nature, as in going to church to hear, perhaps, a poor sermon?”
Here is Isabella’s answer:
I infer from your letter that the person who takes this position is a professing Christian. To that person should come, first, a reminder of this direct command: The church we believe to be a divine institution, and careful study of the Bible shows that the Lord has promised to be in a special sense “in the midst” with those who gather in His name. To argue, then, that as much good can be secured in other ways is to set one’s self in opposition to the Lord’s wisdom, and to thwart His plans of grace for us.
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Moreover, the first object in attending church is not to hear a sermon—good or poor—but to worship God in united prayer and song. He has planned that we shall gather in companies to do this, in order to be helpful to one another, as well as to ourselves. There is always that question of influence over others to be remembered. The habit of church-going is an unquestioned safeguard to thousands of people who have no deep-seated Christian principle in regard to it; and whatever I can do to confirm and increase this habit I am bound—by the rules that govern good society—to do. So that (leaving myself out of consideration altogether) for the sake of others I should be regular at church; but God has planned so wisely for us that in helping others we are, as it were, compelled to help ourselves.
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These are some of the reasons for habitual church-going that appear on the surface. But the best remedy for one not inclined to regularity in this matter is to ask the Master who “went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day,” “as his custom was,” what He thinks.
Isabella Alden 