at power of the
forces of darkness were brought to bear unsuccessfully upon the snapping
of His faith in His Father--from the time He was tempted to believe
Himself forgotten, when hungering and physically reduced in the
wilderness after His long fast, until the dreadful cry of dereliction
from the Cross at the very end.

"The call for reformation today, then, is to the doing of things left
undone, the search for and recovery of almost lost spiritual powers that
alone lastingly can achieve for God and hasten man's salvation. And this
requires the venture and daring that breaks from the world, withdraws
from compromise, and that, rightly estimating the character and attitude
of God, refuses longer to believe Him the author of evils we resignedly
accept today by calling them good; and instead, claims the powers of the
Divine promises for the utter destruction of the world's ills by a
strict dependence upon spiritual forces and weapons for the
accomplishment of results. Above all, this means a change and reform in
corporate conduct as the end of repentance, for the present almost total
disregard of the laws and principles of Christian living as given in the
Sermon on the Mount."

These are hard sayings and strong doctrine, but will any one say they
are not true? The weakening of religion, with the consequent decline of
civilization, is ultimately to be traced back to _organized_ religion,
not to religion itself, and still less to any inherent defects in
Christianity. Where organized religion has failed it deserved to fail,
because it countenanced disunion, forsook the saving sacraments, and
finally compromised with worldliness and materialism. With each one of
these false ventures faith began to weaken amongst the mass of people
until at last this, which can always save, and alone can save, ceased to
have either the power or the will to force the organism to conform to
the spirit. If we have indeed accomplished the depth of our fall, then
the time is at hand when we may hope and pray for a new outpouring of
divine grace that will bring recovery.

There are wide evidences that men earnestly desire this. I have already
spoken of the great corporate movements towards unity, and these mean
much even though they may at present take on something of the quality of
mechanism instead of depending on the individual and the grace of God
working in him. The "World Conference on Faith and Order," the just
effected federation of th