The European Union in Prophecy
a talented minister to entertain and attract the people. His sermons must not touch popular sins, but be made smooth and pleasing for fashionable ears. Thus fashionable sinners are enrolled on the church records, and fashionable sins are concealed under a pretense of godliness.
Commenting on the present attitude of professed Christians toward the world, a leading secular journal says: " Insensibly the church has yielded to the spirit of the age, and adapted its forms of worship to modern wants." " All things, indeed, that help to make religion attractive, the church now employs as its instruments." And a writer in the New York Independent speaks thus concerning Methodism as it is: " The line of separation between the godly and the irreligious fades out into a kind of penumbra, and zealous men on both sides are toiling to obliterate all difference between their modes of action and enjoyment." " The popularity of religion tends vastly to increase the number of those who would secure its benefits without squarely meeting its duties."
Says Howard Crosby: " It is a matter of deep concern that we find Christ ' s church so little fulfilling the designs of its Lord. Just as the ancient Jews let a familiar intercourse with the idolatrous nations steal away their hearts from God,... so the church of Jesus now is, by its false partnerships with an unbelieving world, giving up the divine methods of its true life, and yielding itself to the pernicious, though often plausible, habits of a Christless society, using the arguments and reaching the conclusions which are foreign to the revelation of God, and directly antagonistic to all growth in grace."-- The Healthy Christian: An Appeal to the Church, pages 141, 142.
In this tide of worldliness and pleasure seeking, self-denial and self-sacrifice for Christ ' s sake are almost wholly lost. " Some of the men and women now in active life in our churches were educated, when children, to make sacrifices in order to be able to give or do something for Christ." But " if funds are wanted now,... nobody must be called on to give. Oh, no! have a fair, tableau, mock trial, antiquarian supper, or something to eat--anything to amuse the people." Governor Washburn of Wisconsin in his annual message, January 9, 1873, declared: " Some law seems to be required to break up the schools where gamblers are made. These are everywhere. Even the church( unwittingly, no doubt) is sometimes found doing the work of the devil. Gift concerts, gift enterprises and raffles, sometimes in aid of religious or charitable
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