s followed the decrease
of the influence of the Churches. Another group, considering the
remarkable spread of idealism in our generation, the growing demand for
peace, justice, and sobriety, claim that this moral progress, which they
cannot deny, is due to some tardy recognition of the spirit of Christ:
a strange contention, seeing that our age is less and less willing to
hear the words of Christ and ascribes its sentiments to entirely
different inspiration. Hence there are a few who frankly admit that the
idealism of modern times is to them a rebuke and a mystery. One of these
more sensitive religious writers once confessed to me that the fact that
the times became better while the influence of Christianity grew less
was to him a perplexing truth.

The really honest social student, who does not measure his age by his
prejudices, but fashions his theories according to the carefully
ascertained facts, will try to discover the causes of this phenomenon.
In those wide and varied areas where it is observed, we cannot say that
anything has taken the place of Christianity. The Press sometimes
flatters itself that it has taken the place of the pulpit, but opinions
will differ in regard to its efficacy as a moral agency. On the whole,
it is too apt to reflect the moral sentiments of the more reactionary,
who are generally the most self-assertive, and it has no moral, as
distinct from political, leadership. Then there are Ethical and kindred
societies which hold "services" of a humanitarian character, and are to
many people a substitute for the Christian Churches. Their influence is,
however, restricted to a few thousand people in the whole country, and
signs are not wanting that their usefulness will be only transitory. The
experience of any careful observer is that the mass of people who cease
to attend church desire and need no substitute whatever for
Christianity. The Rationalist literature which many of them read is, as
a rule, of a high idealist character; but here again the influence is
very restricted. No organised influence is at work to any great extent
as a successor to Christianity, yet it is indubitable that, as Christian
influence wanes, the temper of the age improves.

This improvement must have an adequate cause, and it would be merely
another form of crude social reasoning and of sectarian prejudice to
say, in the rich language of the older anti-clericals, that breaking
"the fetters of superstition and priestcr