SPIRITUAL DECLENSION

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · May 21, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 21.

SPIRITUAL DECLENSION.

[We publish the following, from the World's Crisis, not because it specifies the Methodist Church in particular, but because it gives a well-authenticated object-lesson illustrative of conditions existing to a greater or less extent in all the churches.]

Last year the Methodists of this country, under the earnest direction of the bishops, were engaged in a well-organized effort to set in motion a wave of revival effort. Special services were held throughout the body, and extravagant statements were made as to the groundless pessimism of many who were less hopeful. The movement had the full weight of official sanction, and the honest aid of a very large part of clergy and laity of the body.

In spite of all the favoring conditions, and of the great magnitude of the undertaking, which had for its worthy aim the religious awakening of the whole church, and incidentally the disproving of the claims of Pre-millennialists that the “days are evil,” and that “last-day” iniquity is abounding, the movement was practically a failure. The effort to raise $20,000,000 for the institutions of Methodism is easily carried forward into a second and a third year; but the great effort for revival was so manifestly a failure that it has not been projected into a second year, and it is now hardly mentioned in Methodist papers.

It is not in any spirit of exultation that this is here mentioned. It is only because our Methodist friends have been so pronounced against the teaching of Adventists as to conditions in the “last days,” that we note their failure. If the claim that we are in the spiritual declension and religious apostasy of the last times is groundless, and only an unfortunate type of pessimism, why has not the great revival come? The fact that it has not come, has at least proven that even the great Methodist body can not turn back the present current which is setting worldward, and can not take the kingdom “by violence.”

A further and even more painful evidence of the declension in the Methodist fold is manifest in the present agitation going on within the body as to “card-playing and theater-going.” These amusements,

which have long been forbidden in the discipline of the church, seem likely to be eliminated. [That is, the prohibition of these things in the discipline eliminated.] At least there is an organized effort, of increasing influence, which now aims at accomplishing this change.

On April 25, there was held in Chicago a meeting of the Union League Club, at which sixty-five prominent Methodist ministers and laymen were present, among them Bishop Hamilton. The session was given to a discussion of these questions, and the following was a part of the League's declaration:—

If the clergy of the M. E. Church expect to keep their young men and women in the fold, they must do away with old restrictions against card-playing, dancing, and attendance at the theaters. If they are not allowed to follow the dictates of their conscience, they will attend churches where they will be allowed to do so, or they will not attend church at all.

If we do not take active steps toward arousing interest in the church on the part of our young men and women, we shall stand alone in our old age; there will be none to take the burden from our shoulders, when we pass away. If we seek to bind the young people down too closely, or draw too tight a rein, we can not hope to keep them with us.

I recommend that all laymen and clergymen to whom the interests of the Methodist Church are dear, organize around this question, and insist that at the next general conference the present regulations and restrictions be removed.