century nation begins to raise the ancient cry, "Come now
and let us kill this dreamer and we shall see what will become of his
dreams," that nation is declining to the naturalistic level. For
this clearly indicates that the humane and religious resources of
civilization, of which the church is among the chief confessed and
appointed guardians, are utterly inadequate to the strain imposed
upon them. Hence force, not justice, though they may sometimes have
happened to coincide, and power, not reason or faith, are becoming the
embodiment of the state today.

We come now to the final question of our chapter. How has this renewal
of naturalism affected the church and Christian preaching? On the
whole today, the Protestant church is accepting this naturalistic
attitude. In a signed editorial in the _New Republic_ for the last
week of December, 1919, Herbert Croly said, under the significant
title of "Disordered Christianity": "Both politicians and property
owners consider themselves entitled to ignore Christian guidance in
exercising political and economic power, to expect or to compel the
clergy to agree with them and if necessary to treat disagreement as
negligible. The Christian church, as a whole, or in part, does not
protest against the practically complete secularization of political,
economic and social life."

You may say such extra-ecclesiastical strictures are unsympathetic and
ill informed. But here is what Washington Gladden wrote in January,
1918: "If after the war the church keeps on with the same old
religion, there will be the same old hell on earth that religious
leaders have been preparing for centuries, the full fruit of which we
are gathering now. The church must cease to sanction those principles
of militaristic and atheistic nationalism by which the rulers of the
earth have so long kept the earth at war."[20] Thus from within the
sanctuary is the same indictment of our naturalism.

[Footnote 20: The _Pacific_, January 17, 1918.]

But you may say Dr. Gladden was an old man and a little extreme in
some of his positions and he belonged to a past generation. But there
are many signs at the present moment of the increasing secularizing
of our churches. The individualism of our services, their casual
character, their romantic and sentimental music, their minimizing of
the offices of prayer and devotion, their increasing turning of the
pulpit into a forum for political discussion and a place of common
ent