Is the Church Losing Its Grip?

"For as the lightning that lighteneth out of the one part under heaven, shineth into the other part under heaven; so shall the Son of man be in His day."-Luke 17: 24.

"If I were a committee of one to report on the condition of the world to-day, I think I should report progress. The world is getting ahead. It may not seem so when we look around, but when we look back and take a historic survey, we can see that we have come a long way, God's world and man's world mix in very wonderful ways, and we are a part of both. We receive the commission to further this world and help it on toward the divine consummation."-Borden P. Bowne.

"Slowly the Bible of the race is writ,

And not on paper leaves or leaves of stone;
Each age, each kindred, adds a verse to it,

Texts of despair or hope, of joy or moan.

While swings the sea, while mists the mountains shroud,
While thunder's surges burst on cliffs of cloud,
Still at the prophets' feet the nations sit."

-Lowell.

"Before the monstrous wrong he sets him down,-
One man against a stone-walled city of sin,
For centuries those walls have been abuilding-
But by and by earth shakes herself impatient,
And down in one great roar of ruin

Crash watchtower and citadel and battlements,
After the red dust has cleared away, the lonely soldier
Stands with strange thoughts beneath the friendly stars.
-The Reformer by Sill.

VII

IS THE CHURCH LOSING ITS GRIP?

WE are incorrigibly optimistic. We trust this does not hinder our seeing things in proper perspective, but are certain it will prevent our losing heart. We shall, however, endeavor to divest ourselves of such prejudices as would pervert our vision, even though the fact that our sympathies lie against the pessimist may not be in slightest doubt.

We find ourselves in a mood of apology for using the interrogatory form for the title of our discussion. It is so readily misunderstood by the shallow and superficial. An affirmative reply is so glibly made by the cynic. Not difficult is it to paint the past in color of rose, because one has forgotten, and the present in lamp-black, because one has lost heart. Every evil tendency observed about him by the melancholic pessimist throws him into a panic, like a cry of "fire." The cheapest sort of superficial logic employed by one who lacks historical perspective or vital faith is the indiscriminate charge that the world is retrograding, that the Church needs but to lift up its eyes to behold the

handwriting of its doom on the walls of time, that the faithful would do well to prepare to lifeboats, as the old hulk is about to break up. We are reminded of that forlorn soul who discovered that

"The sun's heat will give out in ten million years

more,

And he worried about it.

It will surely give out, so the scientists said
In all scientific books he had read,

And the whole boundless universe then will be
dead-

And he worried about it."

But the deeper insight is that our world is rolling more and more into the light. Progress, though slow, is being made. We live in the grandest day yet vouchsafed unto man.

"I find the earth not green, but rosy,
Heaven not gray, but fair of hue,

Do I stoop? I pluck a posy,

Do I stand and stare? All's blue."

Let us look into this a little.

I. CHURCH AND KINGDOM.

The Church as the organized body of Christian believers, regardless of creed or denomination, differs from the invisible Kingdom of God, which includes every soul that trusts Him. "Other sheep I have," said Jesus, "which are not of this fold." Kingdom is a wider word than Church. It is conceivable, therefore, that the Church, as such, might