often sneering
skeptics, go through a cold artistic or operatic performance, which is
as much in harmony with spiritual worship as an opera or theater. Under
such worldly performances spirituality is frozen to death.

"Formerly every Methodist attended class and gave testimony of
experimental religion. Now the class-meeting is attended by very few,
and in many churches abandoned. Seldom the stewards, trustees and elders
of the church attend class. Formerly nearly every Methodist prayed,
testified or exhorted in prayer-meeting. Now but very few are heard.
Formerly shouts and praises were heard; now such demostrations of holy
enthusiasm and joy are regarded as fanaticism.

"Worldly socials, and fairs, festivals, concerts and such like have
taken the place of religious gatherings, revival meetings, class and
prayer meetings of earlier days. How true that the Methodist discipline
is a dead letter! Its rules forbid the wearing of gold or pearls or
costly array; yet no one ever thinks of disciplining its members for
violating them. They forbid the reading of such books and the taking of
such diversions as do not minister to godliness, yet the church itself
goes to frolics and festivals and fairs, which destroy the spiritual
life of the young, as well as the old. The extent to which this is now
carried on is appalling. The _spiritual death it carries in its train_
will only be known when _the millions it has swept into hell_ shall
stand before the judgment.

"The early Methodist ministers went forth to sacrifice and to suffer for
Christ. They sought not places of ease and affluence, but of privation
and suffering. They gloried not in their big salaries, fine parsonages,
and refined congregations, but in the souls that had been won for Jesus.
Oh, _how changed!_ A hireling ministry will be a feeble, a timid, a
truckling, a timeserving ministry, without faith, endurance, and holy
power. Methodism formerly dealt in the great central truth. Now the
pulpits deal largely in the generalities and in popular lectures. The
glorious doctrine of entire sanctification is rarely heard and seldom
witnessed in the pulpits."

This lengthy quotation shows clearly the spiritual condition of
Methodism, and certainly she is no worse than the rest. God is calling
his people out of "all the places where they have been scattered in the
cloudy and dark day." Ezek. 34:12. Those who refuse to walk in the light
will go into darkness. God help people t