1917_The_Finished_Mystery_Text

that three out of four of our Baptist populationhave fallen away from us. The decline ofChristianity is universal."In England, in France, in Spain, Italy andGermany we hear the same cry. Only lately I wastalking to an English clergyman. He told me thatnot merely is there a great falling off in churchgoersin England, but that the class of peoplewho frequent churches are becoming inferior."The church is out of touch with the masses.Everything has progressed except Christianity.The pulpit has too many bigots, too many bores,too many hell-fire screechers for the enlightenedthought of the day. The church is obliged toaccept any applicant for the ministry who isrespectable. Even with this latitude. Baptist,Presbyterian and Methodist vocations show aremarkable falling off in twenty-five years.' "(Z.'08-324.)"Rev. Charles A. Eaton at the Euclid AvenueBaptist Church, Cleveland, spoke as follows: ‘InItaly one-third of the people at the very outside,are more or less nominal followers of the Churchof Rome; another third, possibly, are more orless sympathetic toward the Church; whileanother third are out and out continually andcompletely antagonistic, apparently, not only tothe Church of Rome, but to all forms ofChristianity. You enter France—the same storyis true, only aggravated and multiplied athousand fold. You enter Great Britain, which Iconsider to be the last citadel of Christianity inthe world, with a people more robust and sane intheir religious interests and sympathies than anyother people. And what is the condition there?The non-FM246conformist churches of Great Britain last yearnot only made no progress, but met, according totheir statistics, with an absolute loss of 18,000;the Baptist Church of Great Britain last year lost5,000 people. In the year 1905 there were nearly7,000 Presbyterian, Congregationalist andMethodist churches that had not one single