OCR Text |
Show ALAS FOR POSITIVE PROTESTANTISM. PROTEST-ANTISM. Tho churches with few exceptions have given up attempting real moral reform. During the year, the Protestant churches have proclaimed that they cannot induce suitable men to enter their ministry in sufficient number to satisfy the needs of their congregations, though with apparent inconsistency they deplore their depleted churches and a general apathy in religious matters among their members. Some have resorted to sensational methods of propaganda, to the bill-poster and johnny-wagon mode of advertisement; others have adopted the trick of Christian Science, and tried faith cure, mind cure, and other psychic devices to bring purblind pur-blind mortals under their influence. Practically all have given up doctrine as a basis of ' morality, even Presbyterian examiners admitting to the ministry candidates who openly deny the fundamental tenets of any form of Christianity. Naturally, with the doctrines the moral obligations or practices based on them are also gradually lost sight of, especially that of conjugal fidelity. No longer now does any Protestant body take a Christian stand against divorce; di-vorce; and gradually the preachers begin to plead for civic more than for moral righteousness. No sooner is some Christian dogma abandoned or moral canon relaxed than some prominent divine hastens to abjure it in public and show how superior is private pri-vate judgment or self-assertion to common Christian Chris-tian teaching or tradition. Very significant of this tendency during the past year is the vogue of many of Chesterton's essays, in which almost as fixed principle he assumes the very adoption of some startling or advanced view by the pulpiteer as ample am-ple reason for saying and believing the contrary ; and that contrary usually makes' him conform to a Catholic point of view. The university which was founded to be the bulwark of Protestantism in this country is now a propaganda of unbelief. America. |