nient and pleasant thing to have our modern railway accommodations, to enjoy the warmth of grates and furnaces in winter, the light of gas and electricity, the daily newspaper, and the comfortable furniture and adornments of our modern homes. It is very agreeable to receive messages from distant friends and correspondents in a moment of time, or to converse with them through wire cables over miles and continents. It is well that our wives and daughters are saved the ancient drudgeries of the loom and the needle, that so much of our work is done by hands without nerves, and that there are competent physicians whom we can call in when we are in pain or sick. Everything which can thus curtail our toils and sufferings, or add to our powers, comforts, and pleasures, is to be valued and approved.

But there is danger of super-exalting these physical interests to worse damage than can be compensated for by all the good. The achievements in these lines have been so dazzling that the world is becoming intoxicated by them and rapidly losing its balance. People begin to feel and act as if material advancement comprehended all that we need look after, and are predisposed to treat what goes beyond the body and this world as of very minor worth. They have drunk so deep of the spirit of earthly progress as to think what used to be considered the

most important things to occupy human attention as now comparatively indifferent. What formerly was rated as the higher science there is a tendency to discard as scarcely any science at all. Geometry is of but little account, except as it may help to measure, weigh, and pack goods. Astronomy is hardly a valuable thing any more, except perhaps as it may enable men to verify degrees of latitude at sea, make almanacs, and regulate clocks. And colleges are deemed hardly deserving of support except as they may turn out experts in technics and practical utilities. As to the study of Greek, Latin, higher metaphysics, spiritual contemplations, inquiries into the mysteries and wants of the soul, and the burdening of time with the problems of faith and theology, people cannot see the good of. Many begin to question what this grand world has to do with doctrines about a heaven and a hell, or what is the use of a God anyhow. These things are treated as abstractions about which nobody knows anything or is ever likely to know. Some are asking with a sort of sneer, What is faith? What is truth? What is eternal right? What is anything that does not add to the sum of man's material comfort, wealth, prosperity, or glory as a dweller upon earth?

So the mental temper is, tending directly to an

outright Epicureanism of thought and life, putting the soul and God and futurity and heavenly accountability out of all consideration, while the prevailing sentiment is, "Let us eat, drink, and be merry; for to-morrow we die."

Our educational systems are also very defective in counteracting this materialistic and ultra-utilitarian spirit.

Natural science is mostly in the lead, and natural science is occupied with material things and interests, while many of its teachers are the propagandists of unproved theories which shut out the idea of a personal and overruling God, or confound Him with His works, consigning everything of miracle, mystery, or that goes beyond their observation, to the realm of the unknowable and the doubtful. With a large number of our most prominent scientists, the most accepted doctrine is that there may be a God and another life, or there may not be, the question being considered beyond solution in the present condition of human knowledge, and so is ignored.*

*If we permit such men as R. A. Proctor to speak for them, "It is impossible to obtain from science any clear ideas respecting the ways or nature of the Deity, or even respecting the reality of an almighty personal God. . . . To speak in plain terms: so far as science is concerned, the idea of a personal God is inconceivable, as are all the attributes which religion recognizes in such a being." In other words, natural science is non-theistic and antiChristian, while many of its professors hold all idea of God, revela

The general press, the influence of which has grown so powerful in our day, proceeds on the same assumption.

Our public schools, from the nature of the case, are professedly neutral, and teach almost nothing of religious truth. As the state protects and sanctions all sects alike, it cannot allow any one of them to monopolize religious instruction in its schools, and so all are excluded. There must be nothing taught which is offensive to any class of believers or unbelievers; and by the time everything is eliminated to which any one objects there is nothing left but a few precepts of morality, with no adequate sanctions for their enforcement. Other means of religious culture in families and the churches exist, but so far as respects the public schools our educated young people come out of them wholly untaught in the elements of piety and revealed religion, crude in all their conceptions about it, not half informed about its great facts and evidences, and rather prepossessed against it, particularly against all positive creeds as mere bones of contention for foolish people to squabble over, with no good to any one. Hence they are the fit subjects for the propagandists of error and infidelity, or else, to satisfy religious

tion, miracle, and eternal life to be absurd, and so put forth in their books and publications.

feelings, they betake themselves to all sorts of goodish societies, which reject a distinctive faith, usurp Christian claims and credit, and set up a miserable nothingarianism, without discipline, oversight, responsibility, instruction, sacraments, orderly worship, or anything of definite shape, as if it were the religion of Christ, or even something better than the Church which Christ has instituted.

The result is that the proper churches are at a discount in the estimation of a large portion of the community, the great cause of human salvation is at a disadvantage, and people think themselves all right while they are very wrong.

It is not that human nature is changed. It is not that people are not at all sincere and honest in their views and opinions. It is not that the world has outgrown the revelations and institutes of God. It is not that the way of truth and right life is not ascertainable. It is not that what swayed and controlled the minds and hearts of the best and greatest men of other times has become superannuated or powerless to make its way to the human conscience. It is not that adequate evidences are wanting on which to build a true and sure faith. It is not that religion is unreasonable or superstitious. But the spirit of the times is so adverse, the readiness to take up with glittering novelties and revolutionary