iting for the new gods to arise. The aftermath of the war
is a spiritual cataclysm such as civilized mankind has never before
known. The old religions and moralities are shattered and men are
waiting and striving for new ones. It is a time suggestive of the birth
of new religions. Man cannot live as yet without faith, without some
sort of religion. The heart of the world today is strained with yearning
for new and living faiths to replace the old faiths which are dead. Were
some persuasive fanatic to arise proclaiming himself to be a new
Messiah, and preaching the religion of action, the creation of a new
society, he would find an eager, soul-hungry world already predisposed
to believe.

4. Mass Movements and Institutions: Methodism[312]

The corruption of manners which has been general since the restoration
was combated by societies for "the reformation of manners," which in the
last years of the seventeenth century acquired extraordinary dimensions.
They began in certain private societies which arose in the reign of
James II, chiefly under the auspices of Beveridge and Bishop Horneck.
These societies were at first purely devotional, and they appear to have
been almost identical in character with those of the early Methodists.
They held prayer meetings, weekly communions, and Bible-readings; they
sustained charities and distributed religious books, and they cultivated
a warmer and more ascetic type of devotion than was common in the
Church. Societies of this description sprang up in almost every
considerable city in England and even in several of those in Ireland. In
the last years of the seventeenth century we find no less than ten of
them in Dublin. Without, however, altogether discarding their first
character, they assumed, about 1695, new and very important functions.
They divided themselves into several distinct groups, undertaking the
discovery and suppression of houses of ill fame, and the prosecution of
swearers, drunkards, and Sabbath-breakers. They became a kind of
voluntary police, acting largely as spies, and enforcing the laws
against religious offenses. The energy with which this scheme was
carried out is very remarkable. As many as seventy or eighty persons
were often prosecuted in London and Westminster for cursing and
swearing, in a single week. Sunday markets, which had hitherto been not
uncommon, were effectually suppressed. Hundreds of disorderly houses
were closed. Forty or fifty night-walkers w