Christianity Made Acceptable to the World
CARDINAL NEWMAN is credited with saying that “much of the fault found with the gospel comes from a wish to make religion acceptable to the world in general, and more free from objections than any moral system can be made, and more immediately and visibly beneficial to temporal interests of the community than God's comprehensive appointments condescend to be.” This is certainly true, and the fact is to be deplored, but in catering to the demand for a gospel shorn of its “objectionable” features, the ministers of the present day are only following the example of the bishops, especially in the third and fourth centuries, when to make Christianity acceptable to the heathen they incorporated with Christian rites the many pagan forms and ceremonies still observed by the Roman Catholic Church. The children are only following the example of the mother, for the time has come when people will not endure sound doctrine. And as in the fourth century, as related by Gibbon, the most respectable bishops persuaded themselves that the heathen “would the more readily renounce the superstitions of paganism, if they found some resemblance, some compensation, in the bosom of Christianity,” so the popular ministry to-day console themselves with the thought that lowering the standard, and throwing over the follies of the world the garb of religion, will make Christianity so attractive that all will embrace it. But alas! when thus emasculated it is no longer the Christianity of Christ, and is little better than the baptized paganism, which is now known as Roman Catholicism.