“This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.” Is THERE an apostasy? To this question all who see the situation and understand the signs of the predicted falling away, must answer, “Yes.” Many who recognize that the difference between much of the teaching of the modern churches and that of those who founded them is so radical as to amount to the entire abandonment of their old positions, consider it the evolution of a pure faith. Others see that at last the teachings of Thomas Paine and other infidels who denied the truthfulness and infallibility of the Bible, have come to be accepted in most of the seminaries for the preparation of ministers of the Gospel. . . . There are many, however, who perceive that the movement has gone much farther than to attack the Bible on which the faith rests, and has assailed the fundamental doctrine of the Christian religion. That which distinguishes the Gospel from Pagan and apostate religions is the fact that it is not a system of morals, but glad tidings of redemption, expiation, and forgiveness of sins. It is now common to encounter preachers and teachers who reject the doctrine of the blood of Jesus, and many of those who accept it intellectually never preach anything but salvation by character. The result is that a large portion of the Christian churches are led back to the same place in which the Gospel found our Pagan ancestors,—condemned by their consciences, but without a Saviour. One who recently visited on successive Sunday evenings, the principal churches of one of our large cities, testifies that he did not hear one preacher emphasize the finished work of Christ, or say one word that would have given light to a sinner seeking the way of salvation. With the abandonment of the doctrine which marks the fundamental contention of Christianity with heathenism, it is not surprising that belief in the salvation of the heathen is gaining ground. Plain as are the evidences of the departure of the professing people of God from the truth, it is even more evident that holy standards of life are being set aside. No one believes that Wesley would tolerate the worldliness of the institution founded by him. Who of the Puritans would recognize the churches which proudly claim a Puritan ancestry? They9would turn in disgust from the Unitarian doctrines which are now preached, the silly papal holidays, and the vanities of the modern church. It is our growing conviction, however, that the apostasy is deeper than all these things. Sin, unbridled, save by the demands of respectability and fear of publicity, unreproved by pulpit or pew, is in the religious life of this land an incurable sore that is surely and rapidly bringing the professing church to utter ruin. The most open and unblushing sin of the churches is the love of gold. Even preachers in their home missionary sermons might be accused of obtaining money under false pretenses, when they ask the poor to contribute to the work of sending the Gospel to the abandoned people of the frontier, and then apply it to their own allowance from the society, or when it is spent to make a $600 salary mount up to $800 or more. Covetousness, the idolatry of our day, is hardly dealt with at all. But perhaps no sin is so universal as lasciviousness in its various forms, thriving as it does on secrecy. Every physician knows some chapters of the disgusting story, and the crimes connected therewith. Most preachers know little about it, because they deal scarcely at all with sinners. Wicked customs of society are winked at, and parents allow their sons and daughters to drift into solitary vice unwarned, and to be exposed to temptations in the midnight ride and the pleasure party, as well as in their own homes behind closed and often locked doors, which are a peril to the strongest and most virtuous character. Any preacher of the Gospel who deals faithfully with sin in the lives of even the better class of people in his congregation finds it difficult to believe the revelations which come to his view. Without question the time has come when men “will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.” Then for the sake of God’s true children who have not had their eyes opened to the perils of our times, we will not cease to sound the alarm.—The Gospel Message.