The church as refuge

In listening to a lecture by D.G. Hart on J. Gresham Machen's critique of liberalism, Hart ends with the last paragraphs of Christianity and Liberalism that openly displays Machen's love for the church and what it should be.

It should be an oasis from the strife that constantly bombards us.   And it is not necessarily evil strife, but the kind of stife that is constantly clanging on about national unity, or this or that cause, positive things that actually can suffocate the message of the cross.

So here is one of the great ways to end a book from Dr. Fundamentalis:

Is there no refuge from strife? Is there no place of refreshing where a man can prepare for the battle of life?  Is there no place where two or three can gather in Jesus’ name, to forget for the moment all those things that divide nation from nation and race from race, to forget human pride, to forget the passions of war, to forget the puzzling problems of industrial strife, and to unite in overflowing gratitude at the foot of the Cross?  If there be such a place, then that is the house of God and that the gate of heaven.  And from under the threshold of that house will go forth a river that will revive the weary world. (pp. 180-81)