THE CHljpMb OF TO-DAY 
 
 Her Self-Complacency; her Indolence 
 
 her Liberalism; her Worldliness. 
 
 
 
 
 A SERMON 
 
 PREACHED IN THE MT. AUBURN BAPTIST CHURCH, CINCINNATI, SUNDAY MORNING, NOV. 25, 1865. 
 
 BY THE PASTOR, 
 
 Rev. W. C. WILKINSON. 
 
 PUBLISHED 13 Y REQUEST. 
 
 CINCINNATI: 
 
 MOORE, WILSTACII & BALDWIN, PRINTERS. 
 
 1865. 
 
EXPLANATORY NOTE. 
 
 The immediate occasion of the following sermon was a request, unanimously voted 
 at a meeting unprecedentedly large of representatives from all the evangelical 
 churches in Cincinnati, that in view of the appalling increase of public immorality 
 and the accompanying comparative decline of numerical Christian strength, the 
 pulpits of the city should, on the Sunday morning ensuing, present in some form the 
 subject here discussed. It was, therefore, not written in a spasm of individual alarm r 
 nor to establish a favorite crotchet of chronic despondency. It was not designed, as 
 the thoughtful reader may see, for an exhaustive and ultimate prognosis of the 
 Church’s condition. It is simply a tentative of speculation adventured in a present 
 most exigent interest of practical reform in morals and in Christian life. It is now 
 printed, because some who heard it preached, believing, in the generous enthusiasm 
 of the moment, that it might be farther useful in a more numerous audience of the 
 press, requested the privilege of submitting it to that test of its real adaptedness to 
 the Church’s need. Already, be it gratefully recorded, the grace of the Holy Spirit 
 is apparently falsifying its surmises by a most spring-like revival of religion in the 
 congregation to whom it was originally preached. That same Spirit speed it on its 
 mission of awakening the dispersion of believing hearts wherever it may come! 
 
 Mount Auburn, December 25, 1865. W. C. W. 
 
3lo 
 
 W (>S 
 
 .. 
 
 
 \ 
 
 SERMON. 
 
 Can ye not discern the signs of the times ?—Matthew XVI, 3. 
 
 TO determine at a given epoch of history, what is, upon 
 the whole, the strongest and most inclusive tendency 
 of the current age, is confessedly ever among the highest 
 efforts of the generalizing and forecasting mind. The 
 movement is so vast and so various; it is disturbed by so 
 many cross-currents and counter-currents; it intermits so 
 often with alternations of ebb and flow; it occupies some¬ 
 times so much historic space to accomplish its cycle; it 
 blends so imperceptibly with the movement which pre¬ 
 cedes and with that which follows; and withal you are 
 yourself so inextricably involved in it, and form so indi¬ 
 visible a part of it,—that it requires no little temerity of 
 speculation to hazard any confident conjecture of the 
 direction in which your own age is drifting, and of the 
 destination to which it tends. 
 
 This problem, proposed in the question of the text: 
 Can ye not discern the signs of the times ? admits of illus¬ 
 tration from a striking astronomical analogy. You know 
 it is a sublime presumption of science, conceived after 
 centuries of patient perusal of the starry scroll of the 
 heavens, that besides the earth’s rotation upon its axis, 
 shared by its continent, its ocean, and its air, and besides 
 its revolution about the sun, shared by its lunar satellite, 
 
 
4 
 
 THE CHURCH OF TO-DAY. 
 
 it has likewise a magnificent motion of translation through 
 space, in common with the entire solar system and the 
 sun itself, toward some point as yet hardly more than 
 conjectured, in a certain region^f the illimitable celestial 
 sphere. It is difficult for us to^Rili^e vividly the earth’s 
 diurnal motion, though that is indirectly made sensible to 
 us by the vicissitude of day and night. It is still more 
 difficult to appreciate the earth’s annual motion in its 
 orbit, though that is illustrated by the quaternion of 
 the seasons. Consider, then, what must be the supreme 
 effort of the imagination to conceive of a movement which 
 sweeps everything visible along with it, except the fixed 
 stars themselves; and what must be the corresponding 
 effort of the intellect to solve the arduous problem of its 
 pathway and its goal! Like is the difficulty of arriving 
 at any trustworthy conclusion as to that all-embracing- 
 historic drift on whose broad and billowy bosom you, with 
 your whole generation, are embarked. 
 
 Astronomy, however, is emboldened to adventure her 
 audacious guess, as to this secular motion of the planet¬ 
 ary system, by the fact that there are fixed stars, or stars 
 relatively fixed, from which her observations can be reck¬ 
 oned. Steadily pointing her glass toward these, she is 
 able to frame her conjecture, notwithstanding the in¬ 
 equalities, the perturbations, the nutations, the composi¬ 
 tions, with which her problem is perplexed. In like 
 manner, Revelation has furnished us with at least a few 
 fixed points of reference from which we may take our 
 observations and form our conclusions in determining 
 what is the true tendency of our times. I invite you 
 to-day to recur with me to some of these established facts 
 of revelation, with a view to bringing the age in which 
 we live into collation and comparison with them. The 
 text itself furnishes the phrase which shall entitle my 
 theme. My theme is, Signs of the Times. 
 
 In treating this theme I purpose to photograph as well 
 
HER SELF-COMPLACENCY. 
 
 5 
 
 as I may be able, some of the more conspicuous charac¬ 
 teristic features of the present religious aspect of the 
 world; and to set them in their order as they are succes¬ 
 sively represented by the side of those scriptures which 
 interpret their symptomatic significance. 
 
 I. The first feature of the present religious aspect of 
 the world, which I would attempt to fix for your contem¬ 
 plation is, its self-complacency. 
 
 The Church was never better satisfied with herself than 
 she is now. Her aspiration was never less removed 
 above the level of her attainment. She is pretty much 
 what she wishes to be. She is rich, and numerous, and 
 respectable, and well-educated, and powerful. She lives 
 easily, resting under her own vine and fig-tree. There is 
 no one to molest her or make her afraid. She is recog¬ 
 nized wherever she goes—in society, in the markets, in 
 halls of legislature, in the courts of kings, in the fellow¬ 
 ships of literature, and even in the iron encounters of 
 war. Where is the Church a stranger? Where does she 
 fail to receive her bow? She has reasons for self-compla¬ 
 cency, and she is self-complacent. 
 
 The simper of self-complacency on the face of the 
 church is an elusive expression, not easy to seize and to 
 fix. But it is nevertheless a very radiant expression, and 
 it mantles and overspreads the whole cast of the features. 
 The Church wears it and displays it, as the successful self- 
 made man does that characteristic look of his own which 
 to the observant eye reads off the entire history of a 
 career. Indeed, the Church of to-day may be not inaptly 
 compared to the man who from his youth has coped with 
 adverse fortune, single-handed, and at last prevailed. lie 
 has now grown comfortably old and counts his silver 
 hairs. He has retired from active business, and he lives 
 mostly at his country seat. He drives to town, however, 
 almost every day ; for he loves to revive the recollection of 
 the time when he too struggled, like those younger men. 
 
6 
 
 THE CHURCH OP TO-DAY. 
 
 He does not struggle any longer, but he patronizes those 
 who do, and tells them the story of his career to encour¬ 
 age them. As for himself, he lives on his money, and not 
 on his enterprise. He is public-spirited, however, and, 
 with an easy smile, he puts his Band into his pocket, and 
 makes his cash contribution to projects of general utility. 
 He is liberal, and he shall have the reward of his liber¬ 
 ality, which is praise. It would be unjust to defraud him. 
 This hale old gentleman, self-made, fairly beyond the 
 period of self-making, rubs his hands, beams on you,—on 
 himself rather, and the smile you get is the second reflec¬ 
 tion—is wrapt from morning to morning, through waking 
 and through sleeping in one bland, delicious reverie of self- 
 complacency. 
 
 This is, feature for feature, the portrait of the Church 
 of to-day. Who does not recognize it? Who will not 
 vouch for its likeness to life? The Church has out-grown 
 her heroic age. Her period of attempt and aggression is 
 over. She is resting on her oars. She reckons up her 
 achievements. She is Narcissus. She beholds her own 
 image and is enamored of it. Oblivious with self-love, 
 she is pining away. She listens with Sybaritic delight to 
 the sermons that recount the struggles of her beginning, 
 and point the contrast between her condition as it was 
 then and her condition as it is now. She loves to remem¬ 
 ber that then not many wise, not many noble were called; 
 and to be reminded that now she enrolls the mightiest of 
 earthly names among the muster of her membership. 
 She multiplies her own image under the form of innu¬ 
 merable societies. Then she holds anniversaries and 
 jubilees, and sits her down to hearken while reports of 
 presidents and of secretaries, and speeches of eloquent 
 orators celebrate her prowess. She marvels herself each 
 time afresh at the reach of her power, and thanks God 
 that so much can be done with money—and on the whole 
 witlrso little money. 
 
HER INDOLENCE. 
 
 7 
 
 Such is the result of one sitting of the Church for her 
 portrait. She shall sit again under another point of 
 view before we have done; hut first let us bring the 
 picture already obtained under the interpreting lens of 
 revelation, and read its meaning. I find in the third 
 chapter of the book of the Revelation a passage exactly 
 in point. It reads as follows: Thou sayest I am rich, and 
 increased ivith goods, and have need of nothing: and Jcnowest 
 not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and 'poor, and blind, 
 and naked. This is addressed to the church in Laodicea, 
 a church long since extinct. When the warning was 
 addressed to her, she was in her era of self-complacency. 
 Self-complacency therefore indicates a stage of decline. 
 
 I need not have resorted to scripture for proof, for 
 experience and observation conspire to inculcate the 
 same lesson. When a man begins to congratulate him¬ 
 self, he has already ceased to push his triumphs. The 
 earnest spirit forgets the things which are behind. And 
 Christianity is an earnest spirit. Sir Charles Napier, 
 that stern hero of the Peninsular wars, was once told by 
 a subordinate officer, “ Sir, we have captured a standard.” 
 His general did not seem to hear him. The news was 
 repeated, and then Sir Charles turned fiercely on the 
 seeker after praise, and said, in a voice like thunder, 
 “ Then take another /” That is what our captain says to 
 us, when we are enumerating our captured standards. 
 The word is always, “ Take another.” Self-complacency 
 is the mark of a degenerate church. And self-compla¬ 
 cency is one of the pregnant signs of the times. 
 
 II. The second salient feature of the present religious 
 aspect of the world which I shall sketch, is closely asso¬ 
 ciated with the one already given. It consists in a very 
 prevalent and noteworthy withdrawal , on the part of Chris¬ 
 tians, from personal activity in the work of Christ. 
 
 This is the age of organization, and of labor-saving 
 machiens. The spirit of organization pervades < very- 
 
8 
 
 THE CHURCH OF TO-DAY. 
 
 thing. It is rife in the world, and it has penetrated the 
 church. We have come to believe in the omnipotence of 
 methods. If anything is to be done, we must have a 
 society for doing it. A constitution, in due form, with 
 by-laws, a president, a secretary, a treasurer, a corps of 
 agents, with circulars, reports, pamphlets, anniversaries, 
 and the rest—you have all been brought up to acquaint¬ 
 ance with the machinery, and you know the latest pat¬ 
 ents—you could, any one of you, be engineer yourself, at 
 a moment’s notice—these contrivances of men have as¬ 
 sumed a consequence, in our eyes, that well nigh super¬ 
 sedes reliance on God. We pay decorous compliment to 
 God, it is true, in customary phrases, as etiquette re¬ 
 quires; but we tell each other, and we make ourselves 
 believe, that God always works by means. This is our favor¬ 
 ite formula for the exorcism of God from His kingdom. 
 It is the baptized infidelity of modern enlightenment— 
 the orthodox blasphemy of self-sufficiency—the Protestant 
 apotheosis of method—the Christian atheism of organiza¬ 
 tion. 
 
 We think we can convert the world with money. We 
 have declined, we have slidden sheer away, no one knows 
 how far, from the simplicity, the individualism of the 
 New Testament times. We have grown wiser than God. 
 We have found out a way of effecting things on a grander 
 scale than His. God’s method was by contact of individ¬ 
 ual heart with individual heart. This was Christ’s plan 
 of life for Himself and for His followers. He would 
 multiply individual radiant centres of vivifying power, 
 such as He was Himself, and send them forth to enkindle 
 the world of men, soul by soul. The apostles were thus 
 themselves enkindled by contact with His life, and they 
 became torch-bearers in their turn to others. The fire 
 they set well nigh ran round the world. And we hear of 
 no Missionary Societies, no Bible Societies, no Christian 
 Commission, nothing but churches anywhere. But these 
 
HER INDOLENCE. 
 
 9 
 
 churches were fasces of fire-brands, each several brand 
 burning unquenchably. Wherever one went, there 
 sprang up a conflagration. It was a universal incendia¬ 
 rism of the Gospel. And the whole secret is laid bare in 
 one line of Scripture, They went everywhere preaching the 
 Word . 
 
 Worldly wisdom has made us ashamed of working in 
 this antiquated way. It is too slow. It involves too 
 much individual labor. It does not take advantage of 
 organization. In short, it is a kind of retail business. 
 And we have got beyond that. We have acquired capital 
 and experience, and we can operate at wholesale. And 
 so we follow the world, early and late, we are merchants, 
 and mechanics, and lawyers, and physicians, and manu¬ 
 facturers—-all which is right enough, and accordant with 
 scriptural sanction; but then, whereas merchant and me¬ 
 chanic and lawyer and physician and manufacturer 
 should be evangelist too, and fulfil a personal apostlesliip, 
 instead of that, each plies his several craft, and at last all 
 club together to employ a substitute, who is pastor, col¬ 
 porteur, missionary, as the case may be. This is division 
 of labor—that famous invention of modern times, which 
 puts to the blush the clumsy method of the Saviour and 
 His apostles. Once in a while, a living soul is found in 
 the church, whose piety can survive this petrifying insu¬ 
 lation from the vitalizing contacts of personal work. 
 Once in a while, a substitute is jirocured, who can main¬ 
 tain his consecration and his zeal, at the level of useful 
 activity, amid the universal subsidence of the Christian 
 spirit around him. But these are the exceptions. The 
 rule is, that employers and employed, in this miserable 
 traffic of substitution, go plumb down to the spiritual zero 
 together. 
 
 The fact is, that it happens to the kingdom of God, as 
 it happened to this republic during one of the conscrip¬ 
 tions of the recent war. A draft was ordered, with a 
 
10 
 
 THE CHURCH OF TO-DAY. 
 
 clause allowing of commutation at a certain fixed sum of 
 money. Those who preferred, for any reason, might re¬ 
 spond by substitute. The state wanted an army of citi¬ 
 zens. It got a regiment or two of substitutes, and a few 
 millions of money. The kingdom of God orders a per¬ 
 petual conscription of all its subjects, without distinction 
 of age, sex, or condition. This kingdom is always at 
 war, and it lives by conquest. Its need of recruits is 
 therefore incessant, it is pressing and imperious. But, 
 behold, the church has made the pregnant discovery that 
 we can respond otherwise than personally. VVe can 
 appear by substitute, or we can pay our commutation. 
 The result is—just what we see, an army of mercenaries, 
 some of them as faithful, God bless them! as the famous 
 Swiss Guard, and a river, running fitfully, sometimes a 
 freshet, often very low, an Ohio river—of revenue! Christ 
 wants men, and we give Him money. 
 
 How is it, brethren, that we make this mistake? Where 
 did we obtain the idea that we could satisfy the terms of 
 the conscription, which run, Let him that heareth say Come , 
 without responding in person? Has wealth acquired 
 some magic power, that it did not possess when Christ 
 came down Himself to save us? He owned the wealth 
 of the universe, and yet He came Himself. Nay, so little 
 did He think of wealth, as a means of redemption, that 
 He even laid all His wealth aside, when He came, and 
 made Himself poor. He chose His apostles of the poor. 
 Surely Christ—or we—have mistaken grievously. Alas, 
 alas, my brethren! 
 
 Meanwhile, incredible as it ought to be, we are obliged 
 to confess that it is true—our age is marked by the gen¬ 
 eral withdrawal of Christians from personal activity in 
 the work of Christ. 
 
 That nation does not long survive, whose citizens com¬ 
 mit her safety to the keeping of mercenary soldiers. An 
 age of Christianity, that supinely abandons the kingdom 
 
HER LIBERALISM. 
 
 11 
 
 of God to the zeal of hirelings, has abdicated the right to 
 continued existence. Withdrawal from personal service 
 in the kingdom of God, remember, is the second feature 
 which I name as belonging to the current age of the 
 church. It is a tit companion-feature for the first one 
 mentioned, self-complacency. Self-complacency and indolence , 
 simpering sisters in the family of effeminacy! How a new 
 Pentecostal effusion of the Holy Ghost, poured out, as in 
 the beginning, until it made a baptism and buried us all— 
 how such a flood of fire would consume our vanity and 
 our sloth! How we should rise regenerate from it, clad 
 with zeal as with a cloak of flame ! Then the now exult¬ 
 ant host of Satan should behold the Church once more in 
 her battle-array, fair as the moon , clear as the sun , and terri¬ 
 ble as an army with banners ! 
 
 III. The third feature of the present religious aspect 
 of the world, to which I draw your attention, as full of 
 suggestive significance, is the tendency everywhere ob¬ 
 servable among Christians towards what I may term the 
 sentimentalism of unity. 
 
 This tendency is so popular and so powerful, that it 
 requires some courage to breast it. But in the name of 
 truth, and in the strength of Christ, who is the Truth, I 
 stand in mid-current and breast it. I frankly avow my 
 belief that the sentiment of which I speak is morbid, and 
 not healthy. I believe it to be a symptom, not of vigor, 
 but of decay. I know the aspiration of my Lord for the 
 union of His followers, and reverently I claim that I 
 share it. I remember how he prayed as our High Priest 
 that we all might be one. The union that He prayed 
 for was the culmination and the climax of His desire in 
 our behalf. It gathered into one all-inclusive request, 
 the sum of petitions without number. It was, then, no 
 light, no superficial, no transient, no illusory union that 
 He craved. It was not the mechanic external coition of 
 heterogeneous elements—precarious, capricious—the crea- 
 
12 
 
 THE CHURCH OF TO-DAY, 
 
 ture of compromise, the sportive offspring of a chance 
 reciprocal gush of human good-fellowship. It was a 
 high, a heavenly, a real, a mystic union of beings inter¬ 
 fused by the mediation of the Holy Ghost, m the element 
 
 of the Divine Nature itself. We were to be one with 
 
 ! 
 
 each other, by being all one in God. So Jesus expressly 
 prays to His Father. That they may he one in us , are His 
 words. 
 
 Evidently, therefore, the union of believers, which was 
 the object of our Saviour’s desire, is not a sentiment, but a 
 fact—not a semblance, but, again, a fact. We are to 
 realize it as a fact, not for ourselves, but for God. We 
 need not even be conscious of it, being absorbed rather 
 in the far transcending consciousness of union with God, 
 Much less need we seek to symbolize our union outwardly 
 to the world. If we really are one, the seeming may 
 safely be trusted to God. Being, not seeming, is for us. 
 And we shall he one with each other, exactly in degree as 
 we are one in God. No other mutual union is possible, 
 and no other were desirable. Struggle towards God, 
 therefore, should be our work, and not struggle towards 
 each other. The radii of a circle all diverge along their 
 lengths, but they meet in the centre. And God is our 
 centre. Upward, then, towards God, along the glittering: 
 paths that lead to Him! No cross-paths to get together 
 before we get to Him! We shall only lose time and per¬ 
 haps may lose our way. Upward, ever, one and all !— 
 singing each, 
 
 Nearer, my God, to Thee I' 
 
 The way to mutual union, therefore, is the common love 
 of truth. Intense love of truth, by which I mean intense 
 love of Christ, proving itself in His own chosen way by 
 loyally keeping His commandments—this is the sign of 
 a strenuous, an advancing, a victorious church. Christ’s 
 commandments are the symbols of our flag. We dare 
 
HER LIBERALISM. 
 
 13 
 
 not add, dare not tear out one. The different denomina- 
 tions of Christians are sometimes compared to the regi¬ 
 ments which compose one army. They each are mar¬ 
 shalled, they march and they fight, under their respective 
 regimental standards. If any of our regimental organ¬ 
 izations carry standards emblazoned with symbols not to 
 be found among the commandments of Christ, it is for 
 such to blot those symbols out. They have no business 
 there. The true flag is one; it is inscribed with the com¬ 
 mandments of Christ, onlv these and all these. We 
 ought, each regiment of us, to assure ourselves as well as 
 we can, that we carry the whole flag, and nothing but the 
 flag. Then, if we are loyal and true, we shall fight for that, 
 every yard of it, every foot of it, every inch of it, every 
 shred of it! Not one thread, of warp or woof, that is not 
 dyed red with precious blood. Our weapons will be tem¬ 
 pered true, and sharpened shrewd, with heavenly love. 
 The wounds we make will then heal themselves, and heal 
 the wounded too. This is the loyal soldier’s duty, and 
 the loyal soldier’s joy. A few campaigns of fighting to¬ 
 gether, in this spirit, would be sure to break down our 
 denominational organizations without our effort; and we 
 should find the one army of our Lord Jesus Christ reduced 
 to its true, its scriptural organization, in which denomina¬ 
 tions should be unknown, and there should be no regiments 
 but—churches. 
 
 But the present sentimental sigh, with which the 
 Church is all agape, for outward uuity, betokens any¬ 
 thing rather than the vigor and the struggle of life. It 
 is a feeling begotten, not of increasing love to God, but of 
 slackening loyalty to truth. Liberalism is the disease of 
 the Church. It is a dropsy that waters all her joints—it 
 is a palsy that withers all her sinews. 
 
 I remember an instructive historic parallel. At the 
 moment of supreme decrepitude with the Eastern Empire, 
 holding her capital at Constantinople under the imminent 
 
14 
 
 THE CHURCH OF TO-DAY. 
 
 menace of the Turks, there was an unseasonable effort at 
 compromise and union between the Greek and the Latin 
 Church. It was the ineffectual endeavor of imbecility, 
 the sick man straining after a false phantom of hope—it 
 was a sigh for the consolation of mutual sympathy in 
 weakness, where neither part had any strength to be rein¬ 
 forced or to share. Soldiers in actual warfare, campaign¬ 
 ing side by side, feel their oneness in a common cause 
 without talking about it. It is only after the war is over 
 that they need revive their languid sentiment of oneness 
 by recounting the ties which unite them, and by mutual 
 declarations of love. Self-complacency — indolence — liberal¬ 
 ism —these compose a triad of features which bespeak the 
 decadence of a Christian age that possesses them. 
 
 IV. It would b*e impossible, within the limits of a sin¬ 
 gle discourse of such length as the uneasy ears of this 
 generation are willing to hear, to enumerate all the char¬ 
 acteristics which give its physiognomy to the present age 
 of the Church. But there is a fourth feature, belonging 
 to its aspect, too important to be overlooked. Not even 
 the recollection of last Sunday’s allusion to it will excuse 
 the omission of a glance at it now. I refer to the spirit 
 of worldliness that has taken possession of the Church. 
 In one word, then, ivorldliness is the fourth and last fea¬ 
 ture of the Church’s present aspect, that I shall detain 
 you to notice. 
 
 This feature, though apparently different, is in reality 
 the same with the one last spoken of. Liberalism and 
 ivorldliness are twin offshoots from a single root. That root 
 is laxness of loyalty to Christ. The slack hold we have 
 of earnest convictions allows us to lay them easily by, 
 whether it is some sister denomination of Christians, or 
 the world outside, with whom, for the sake of politeness 
 and general good feeling, we would seem to be one. The 
 maxim of our Saviour has. its apjdication here : He that 
 is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much. If 
 
HER WORLDLINESS. 
 
 15 
 
 we can keep the less commandments of our Lord, against 
 the temptation to display our liberality at His expense, 
 we shall find it comparatively easy to be obedient in the 
 greater commandments. On the other hand, if we yield 
 a little, we shall find it hard not to yield more. A small 
 leak will let out much water and—mark one thing —leaks 
 grow. Accordingly, it is not strange to discover that the 
 liberalistic church is also the worldly church. 
 
 Time was when it sped otherwise. Time was, for at 
 least one happy moment of Christian history, in the un¬ 
 corrupted virtue of the beginning, when, against the 
 vain, the frivolous, the hurtful, the immoral amuse¬ 
 ments of the world—its circus, its theatre, its dance, 
 its gladiatorial shows; as also against its extravagancies 
 and indecencies of personal decoration, and its besotted 
 devotion to gain—the little church, of not many wise, not 
 many noble, preached and practised a brave protest. And 
 the little one prevailed. The fashion of the world passed 
 utterly away. But the world did not. The world linger¬ 
 ed yet, and, quick to fence for life, took on another fashion. 
 How look.around you and answer me these questions: 
 Where is the Church that has the courage to stand straight 
 up before the world, and not crook the pregnant hinges of 
 the knees that thrift may follow fawning? Where is the 
 Church that will not lift the yoke of the Christian profes¬ 
 sion so that the world can come under it without bending 
 the neck ? Where is the Church to enter which the con¬ 
 vert is obliged to give up anything—that is tolerated in 
 polite society? Where is the Church whose members do 
 not, many of them at least, do everything by way of in¬ 
 dulging themselves that would be deemed respectable by 
 people of the world ? Where is the Church that dares 
 unflinchingly testify against horse-racing, theatre-going, 
 opera-attending, dancing, Sunday evening Sacred Con¬ 
 certs, Sunday morning newspapers, wine-drinking, dress¬ 
 ing like the citizens of Vanity Fair, and bedizening the 
 
16 
 
 THE CHURCH OF TO-DAY. 
 
 person with plaitings of the hair, and with bands and 
 ornaments of gold and tinselry, like the inhabitants of 
 the South Sea Islands ? 
 
 The Church has tied her own hands, and she is helpless 
 against all these things. The world has pressed in and 
 swamped us. We are out-numbered and out-voted. The 
 lobby controls the house. The modern fashion of the 
 world, alas, confronts a silent church. No challenge, no 
 protest, along the battle-line of her dumb-smitten hosts. 
 Where is thy voice, oh church—where is thy voice for 
 Glod ? Speak! speak ! and break this dreadful spell! 
 In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth , Thou dumb and deaf 
 spirit, 1 charge thee, come out of her ! 
 
 With these four features of the Church’s present aspect, 
 depicted with such fidelity as I have been able—her 
 self complacency, her indolence, her liberalism, and her world - 
 liness, I draw the day’s discussion to its close. 
 
 What, you will ask, is my practical conclusion ? Do I 
 counsel despair ? In time of extremity, when hope is 
 loyalty, despair is treason—no ! I counsel work—man¬ 
 ful work. To your oars, brethren, every one, and pull 
 each a lusty stroke. The current is strong—we are near¬ 
 ing the rapids—and the leap of Niagara is death. But 
 the drift that hurries us on is not irresistible yet. There 
 is a victory that overcometh the world. Christ with us, 
 and good rowing shall save us after all. But w r e must 
 stop drifting, and take to our oars in earnest. I seem now 
 to feel the boat leap, as the choral stroke of all your arms 
 together, brethren, sends it bounding upward against the 
 mighty tide. You have been toying with your oars, hith¬ 
 erto. Only your little fingers have rested on them, while 
 the strength of your girded loins has been given to the . 
 world. Come, brethren, now, young and old, both hands 
 and bended backs; let us try for the rest of our lives, if 
 that be not true, greater is He that is in its than he that is in 
 the world. 
 
 
 ■5