heaven. Now it is concerned, for most part, with living pure, true lives
right here on the earth. And that change is surely a good one. But it is
also the common thing to be told that the world is not nearly so bad as we
have been led to believe.



Some Bad Drifts.


It is striking that with that has come a change of talk about sin, the
thing that was supposed to be responsible for making the world so bad. Sin
is not such a damnable thing now, apparently. It is largely
constitutional weakness, or prenatal predilection, or the idiosyncrasy of
individuality. (Big words are in favor here. They always make such talk
seem wise and plausible.) Heaven has slipped largely out of view;
and--hell, too, even more. Churchmen in the flush of phenomenal material
prosperity, with full stomachs and luxurious homes and pews, are well
content with things as they are in this present world, and don't propose
to move.

And with that it is easy to believe what we are freely told, that there is
really no need of giving our Christian religion to the heathen world.
Those peoples have religions of their own that are remarkably good. At
least they are satisfactory to them. Why disturb them? They are doing very
well. This talk about their being lost, and needing a Savior, is reckoned
out of date. The old common statements about so many thousands dying
daily, and going out into a lost eternity, are not liked. They are called
lurid. And, indeed, they are not used nearly so much now as once.