“The call for reformation today, then, is to the doing of things left undone, the search for and recovery of almost lost spiritual powers that alone lastingly can achieve for God and hasten man’s salvation.  And this requires the venture and daring that breaks from the world, withdraws from compromise, and that, rightly estimating the character and attitude of God, refuses longer to believe Him the author of evils we resignedly accept today by calling them good; and instead, claims the powers of the Divine promises for the utter destruction of the world’s ills by a strict dependence upon spiritual forces and weapons for the accomplishment of results.  Above all, this means a change and reform in corporate conduct as the end of repentance, for the present almost total disregard of the laws and principles of Christian living as given in the Sermon on the Mount.”

These are hard sayings and strong doctrine, but will any one say they are not true?  The weakening of religion, with the consequent decline of civilization, is ultimately to be traced back to organized religion, not to religion itself, and still less to any inherent defects in Christianity.  Where organized religion has failed it deserved to fail, because it countenanced disunion, forsook the saving sacraments, and finally compromised with worldliness and materialism.  With each one of these false ventures faith began to weaken amongst the mass of people until at last this, which can always save, and alone can save, ceased to have either the power or the will to force the organism to conform to the spirit.  If we have indeed accomplished the depth of our fall, then the time is at hand when we may hope and pray for a new outpouring of divine grace that will bring recovery.

There are wide evidences that men earnestly desire this.  I have already spoken of the great corporate movements towards unity, and these mean much even though they may at present take on something of the quality of mechanism instead of depending on the individual and the grace of God working in him.  The “World Conference on Faith and Order,” the just effected federation of the Presbyterians, Methodists and Congregationalists in Canada, above all the eirenic manifesto of the Bishops at the last Lambeth Conference, all indicate a new spirit working potently in the souls of men.  Concrete results are not as yet conspicuous, but the spirit is there and a beginning has been made.  Even more significant is the wide testimony to the need for definite, concrete and pervasive religion that is daily given by men whose names have hitherto been quite dissociated from matters of this kind; scientists, educators, men of business and men of public life.  It may be testimony in favour of some new invention, some synthetic product of curious and abnormal ingredients; as a matter of fact it frequently is, and we confront such remarkable products as Mr. Wells has given us, for example.  The significant thing,