The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 378

business, and the brightening prospects of commerce and manufacture,
there is an increase of worldly-mindedness. Thus it is with all the
denominations.”—Congregational Journal, May 23, 1844.
In the month of February of the same year, Professor Finney of
Oberlin College said: “We have had the fact before our minds, that,
in general, the Protestant churches of our country, as such, were either
apathetic or hostile to nearly all the moral reforms of the age. There
are partial exceptions, yet not enough to render the fact otherwise than
general. We have also another corroborated fact: the almost universal
absence of revival influence in the churches. The spiritual apathy is
almost all-pervading, and is fearfully deep; so the religious press of the
whole land testifies.... Very extensively, church members are becoming
devotees of fashion,—join hands with the ungodly in parties of pleasure,
in dancing, in festivities, etc.... But we need not expand this painful
subject. Suffice it that the evidence thickens and rolls heavily upon us, to
show that the churches generally are becoming sadly degenerate. They
have gone very far from the Lord, and He has withdrawn Himself from
them.”
And a writer in the Religious Telescope testified: “We have never
witnessed such a general declension of religion as at the present. Truly,
the church should awake, and