ay, hoping to make up for our deep inward bankruptcy by
attending another gospel meeting or listening to another thrilling story
told by a religious adventurer lately returned from afar.

The tragic results of this spirit are all about us. Shallow lives,
hollow religious philosophies, the preponderance of the element of fun
in gospel meetings, the glorification of men, trust in religious
externalities, quasi-religious fellowships, salesmanship methods, the
mistaking of dynamic personality for the power of the Spirit: these and
such as these are the symptoms of an evil disease, a deep and serious
malady of the soul.

For this great sickness that is upon us no one person is responsible,
and no Christian is wholly free from blame. We have all contributed,
directly or indirectly, to this sad state of affairs. We have been too
blind to see, or too timid to speak out, or too self-satisfied to desire
anything better than the poor average diet with which others appear
satisfied. To put it differently, we have accepted one another's
notions, copied one another's lives and made one another's experiences
the model for our own. And for a generation the trend has been downward.
Now we have reached a low place of sand and burnt wire grass and, worst
of all, we have made the Word of Truth conform to our experience and
accepted this low plane as the very pasture of the blessed.

It will require a determined heart and more than a little courage to
wrench ourselves loose from the grip of our times and return to Biblical
ways. But it can be done. Every now and then in the past Christians have
had to do it. History has recorded several large-scale returns led by
such men as St. Francis, Martin Luther and George Fox. Unfortunately
there seems to be no Luther or Fox on the horizon at present. Whether or
not another such return may be expected before the coming of Christ is a
question upon which Christians are not fully agreed, but that is not of
too great importance to us now.

What God in His sovereignty may yet do on a world-scale I do not claim
to know: but what He will do for the plain man or woman who seeks His
face I believe I do know and can tell others. Let any man turn to God in
earnest, let him begin to exercise himself unto godliness, let him seek
to develop his powers of spiritual receptivity by trust and obedience
and humility, and the results will exceed anything he may have hoped in
his leaner and weaker days.

Any man wh