ibles, or Hymn books, the odes, etc., were printed on
double sheets, after the fashion of theatre programmes, and, like them,
contained numerous advertisements of the Sunday matinees and evening
performances at the theatres, music-halls, etc.

All this had been brought about much more easily than would at first
appear, until we remember one or two factors that had long been working
silently, subtly among the attendants--mere church professors--of the
various places of worship, such as, the insistance on shorter services,
and fewer--for long, before the Rapture, the unspiritual had clamoured
for a _single_ service of the week, that of a late Sunday morning one.
Then for years, religious services (those of the Sunday) had grown more
and more sensuous, unspiritual. Every real _spiritual_ doctrine had
first been denied, then expunged from the _essay_ that had largely
taken the place of the old-time sermon. Again, all spiritual
restraints had now been taken away--the true believers, the Holy
Spirit, every spiritually-minded, born-again pastor and clergyman.

The new Religion (it could not be called a Faith) was a universal one.
The powers of the Priest-craft had invented a religion of the Flesh,
fleshy to a degree. Every type of indulgence was permissible, so that
men everywhere gloried in their religion, "having a form--but denying
God."

The performances at all theatres, music-halls, etc., had grown rapidly
worse and worse, in character,--licentiousness, animalism,
voluptuousness, debauchery, these were the main features of the newer
type of performances. Salome dances, and even the wildest, obscenest
type of the "_can-can_" of the French, in its most promiscuous
lascivious forms, were common fare on the varied English stages.

But if the stage was filthy and indecent, what could be said of the
books! There was not a foulness or obscenity and indecency that was
not openly, shamelessly treated in the bluntest of phraseology.
Thousands of penny, two-penny, and three-penny editions of utter
obscenity were issued daily. And the vitiated taste of the great mass
of the people grew voraciously by feeding upon them.

Marriage was a thing of the dead past. There had been a growth of
foul, subtle, hideous teaching _before_ the translation of the church.
Marriage had been taught (in many circles) to be "an unnecessary
restraint upon human liberty." "Women"--it had been written, _absolved
from shame_, shall be _owners_ of