happy, to learn how to keep young
and prosperous; it is good business; it pays. We have a new and most
detestable cant; someone has justly said that the natural man in us
has been masquerading as the spiritual man by endlessly prating
of "courage," "patriotism"--what crimes have been committed in
its name!--"development of backward people," "brotherhood of man,"
"service of those less fortunate than ourselves," "natural ethical
idealism," "the common destinies of nations"--and now he rises up and
glares at us with stained fingers and bloodshot eyes![21] In so far
as we have succumbed to naturalism, we have become cold and shrewd and
flexible; shallow and noisy and effusive; have been rather proud to
believe anything in general and almost nothing in particular; become
a sort of religious jelly fish, bumping blindly about in seas of
sentiment and labeling that peace and brotherhood and religion!

[Footnote 21: _Rousseau and Romanticism_, p. 376.]

Here, then, is the state of organized religion today in our churches.
They are voluntary groups of men and women, long since emancipated
from the control of the church as such, or of the minister as an
official, set free also from allegiance to historic statements,
traditional, intellectual sanctions of our faith; moulded by the
time spirit which enfolds them to a half-unconscious ignoring or
depreciation of what must always be the fundamental problem of
religion--the relationship of the soul, not to its neighbor, but to
God. Hence the almost total absence of doctrinal preaching--indeed,
how dare we preach Christian doctrine to the industry and politics and
conduct of this age? Hence the humiliating striving to keep up
with popular movements, to conform to the moment. Hence the placid
acceptance of military propaganda and even of vindictive exhortation.

Is it any wonder then that we cannot compete with the state or the
world for the loyalty of men and women? We have no substitute to
offer. Who need be surprised at the restlessness, the fluidity, the
elusiveness of the Protestant laity? And who need wonder that at this
moment we are depending upon the externals of machinery, publicity and
money to reinstate ourselves as a spiritual society in the community?
A well-known official of our communion, speaking before a meeting of
ministers in New York City on Tuesday, March 23, was quoted in the
_Springfield Republican_ of the next day as saying: "The church holds
the only cure f