The Decline of Protestant Christianity
According to the Rev. Dr. Crosby of New York, Protestant Christianity is in a bad way. He says, in a recently published lecture, that "the great bulk of the Protestant Church is identified with the world. It has a name to live while it is dead. It has turned its doctrine into naturalism or rationalism, and its life into selfishness. The old land-marks are gone. Family prayer is given up. Sunday newspapers are read, prayer-meetings are ignored, worldly partnerships are formed, social sins are connived at, even excused, the pulpit is made a stage on which to strut and pose before a gaping world, and religion is made one of the instruments of fashion. We may not cure this dreadful evil, but we may ourselves avoid it and its doom. We may look to ourselves and to our own families, that we go not with the multitude of Christians to evil and to perish in the hour when Christ shall come as a thief to their dismay."