dencies of the past twenty years.

We hear rather frantic demands for a return to the old methods of
evangelism, but that is a foolish cry:--

"The mill will never grind
With the water that is past."

The old appeal, which fixed attention upon the interest of the
individual, has lost its power. It is not possible to stir the average
human being of this generation, as the average human being of fifty
years ago was stirred, by pictures of the terrors of hell and the
felicities of heaven. These conceptions have far less influence over
human lives than once they had,--less, doubtless, than they ought to
have; for there are realities under these symbols which we cannot afford
to ignore. But the fundamental defect of that old appeal was the
emphasis which it placed upon self-interest. "Look out for yourself!"
was its constant admonition. "Think of the perils that threaten, of the
blisses that invite! Do not risk the pain; do not miss the blessedness!"
To-day this does not seem a wholly worthy motive. At any rate, it is
below the highest. Men feel that the religion of Christ has a larger
meaning than this. A presentation of the gospel which makes the welfare
of the individual central does not grip the conscience and arouse the
emotions as once it did. For the conception of human welfare as social
rather than individual has become common; that "great fund of altruistic
feeling," which, as Mr. Benjamin Kidd tells us, is the motive power of
all our social reforms, is constantly stirring in human hearts; and
although there are few whose lives are wholly ruled by this motive,
there are fewer still who do not recognize it as the commanding motive;
and a religious appeal which is based upon considerations essentially
egoistic does not, therefore, awaken any large response in human hearts.

If the church wishes to regain her hold upon the people, she must learn
to speak to the highest that is in them. A man's religion must
consecrate his ideals. A religion which invites him to live on a lower
plane than the highest on which his thought travels cannot win his
respect. And therefore the new evangelism must learn to find its motive
not in self-love, no matter how refined, but in the love that identifies
the self with the neighbor. It must bring home to the individual the
truth which he already dimly knows, that his personal redemption is
bound up with the redemption of the society to which he belongs; that he
cannot be saved