“It is not surprising that out of such conditions should grow false values, and that spirituality should be measured by the world’s standard.  Thus we have fallen into the vicious habit of adjudging qualifications for spiritual leadership among the clergy by the amount of their stipends, and measuring their potentialities for usefulness in the Kingdom of God by the amount of their yearly incomes; among the laity, the men of power are ever the men of material means, whom we permit to play the part of Providence in feeding and sustaining the Church from large purses, the filling of which will not always bear close investigation, and the really successful parish is always the one that, no matter what its spiritual condition, rejoices in abundant material means.  So evident is it that the means of spiritual life have been so confused with the purely material, that it occasions no surprise when a neighbourhood having changed from the residence district of the comparatively well-to-do to the very poor, the vestry feels bound to consider the moving of the church to a more ‘desirable’ quarter.

“These, of course, are hard facts to face, and it is not strange that we should seek to evade them by a false optimism that thinks evil is eliminated by merely contemplating good.  The point is, they must be faced, and at a time when there is some evidence of a little awakening, it must more and more force itself into the consciousness of the thoughtful that the dead spiritual conditions of today are due to the shifting of faith from God to material things as the means of achieving.  The only hope lies in the apparent unconsciousness of the error.  This is invariably the atmosphere that prevails when ecclesiastical history repeats itself in corruption; it had been true of more than two or three generations, though obviously unseen save by a few of those contemporary with the times, that in Jerusalem, ’the heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money; yet will they lean upon the Lord, and say:  Is not the Lord among us?  None evil can come upon us.’  Corporate unconsciousness, in greater or less measure, of these conditions, may influence the degree of guilt, but never can acquit of the sin.  And the cold, naked truth is that today we stand almost helpless before a world of peculiar problems.

“What is there here to reflect the power and might of Christianity, such as the early Church, especially, possessed, and subsequent generations, in times of great faith, really knew so much of—­the power to heal the sick, to cast out devils, to achieve wonders out of Christ’s poverty, to experience the thrilling joy of religion in the ever-abiding Divine Presence, and witness the marvels of faith in the conquering of the world?  How is it we are no longer able to communicate the secrets to the suffering world which are able to transmute the people’s want into God’s plenty, and attract and hold