Two or three practical suggestions may be ventured here to those who have followed this argument.

We have seen that, since religion is a permanent need of human nature, and since the church is indispensable to the maintenance of religion, it becomes the duty of good men and women to ally themselves with the church and help to make it efficient.  But there are churches and churches.  We cannot help noting, as we look over the community, some churches which at least dimly understand their business, and some which obviously do not.

Some of us may be connected by birth or confession with churches that do comprehend their true function.  If so, let us rejoice in that fact, and give our strength to the support of such churches in their work.  It is, far and away, the most important work that is being done in the world at the present day.  If we can have part in it, we ought to rejoice in that privilege.

We may be connected with churches which do not understand their business.  Possibly we may think that the best thing for us to do is to come out of them, and seek fellowship with churches more enlightened.  Let us think two or three times before we decide upon this.  Perhaps the best thing we can do is to stay where we are and use our best endeavors, modestly and patiently, to bring our own church to a realization of its responsibilities.

We may not be identified with any church.  If we are not, then it is clearly the part of wisdom for each one to find the church which seems to him to understand its business best, and to give the strength of his life to making its life vigorous and its work efficient.

V

Is the Church Decadent?

The assertion is often made that the church is an effete institution; that its usefulness is past; that it is sinking into innocuous desuetude.  That assertion has been current for a thousand years—­perhaps longer; there have been many periods in which it was urged much more confidently than it is to-day.  This fact would suggest caution in pressing such a judgment.  Wise physicians do not hastily pronounce the word of doom.  They have seen too many patients return from the gates of death.  Men and women who, in their younger days, appear to have a slender hold on life, often reach a vigorous old age.  The same thing is true of institutions.  It is not prudent to assume that because they are ailing they are moribund.

The Christian church, as we have seen, is far from being in perfect spiritual condition.  Some of her symptoms are disquieting.  But even as we often have good hope for our friends when their health is impaired, and find that there are good reasons for our hope, so we need not despair of the recovery of the church from the morbid conditions which we acknowledge and deplore.  That the patient has a good constitution and surprising vitality is indicated by the experience of nineteen centuries.  More than once, through this long lifetime, she has been in a worse way than she is to-day, but she has rallied, and returned to her work with new vigor.