An article appears in the Atlantic Monthly for October, by a writer whose name is not given, which, under the heading, “Certain Dangerous Tendencies in American Life,” gives a very dark picture of American society. It is very evident that, while the author takes an unprophetic view, and hence an erroneous one, of the ultimate destiny of America, and gives his recipe for the regeneration of our country, he is not one of those unthinking men who, despite stubborn facts, are prating of our constant progress in righteousness, and telling us that the millennium is at hand. He speaks of the “new elements and conditions” introduced into our national life by our civil war, and says we are “confronted by problems and dangers which we had thought could never arise in the path of a nation with institutions like our own.” He freely admits that the golden prophecies made by American statesmen before the war are not in a fair way of immediate fulfillment. In speaking of the extravagance engendered by the plentifulness of money and the apparent business prosperity of war times, he says: “A passionate greed for riches was developed among our people. Man had no longer any vision for realities, but built upon illusions and impossibilities as if they were the solid facts and laws of nature.” Hence all kinds of speculation were resorted to, ventures made on borrowed capital, and men ran wild in their haste to become suddenly rich. The result has been seen during the past few years in the great financial depression and wholesale bankruptcy. Not only the nation, but almost every State, city, town, and we may almost say individual, is in debt. The writer next proceeds to show how this extravagance affected the morals of the people, being “encouraged and defended,” as it was, “by the leading clergymen and writers of the nation.” The church partook more and more of the spirit of worldliness, and is now, he says, “for the most part a depository of social rather than of religious influences. Its chief force or vitality is no longer religious. There are still, of course, many truly religious people in the churches; . . . but these are everywhere a small minority, and they are mournfully conscious that the old religious life and power have departed from the church. They distrust the methods of the modern revivalism, and do not feel at home among the younger members of the church, with their advanced views of fashionable, thorough-going worldliness. They are alarmed to find the atmosphere and tone of the church more and more secular and business-like.” The writer continues: “For a very large class of which we may next speak the church furnishes opportunity for a pleasant social life which is in no way different from the social life of amiable, intelligent people out of the church; that is, there is nothing distinctively religious about it. For this class all the barriers and distinctions between the church and the world have been removed. Church work is, for them, in all its forms, a kind of sacred amusement. Public worship, with its pulpit oratory and modern church music, is an æsthetic entertainment. They have developed a religion which is not religious. They have learned how to be Christians, according to their meaning, without self-denial or any abridgment of the pleasures, pursuits, or ambitions of people who acknowledge no religious obligations. They do not believe the creeds to which they subscribe when they join the church, and generally make no secret afterward of their doubt or disbelief respecting various fundamental doctrines of Christianity. But they have a horror of all dissent which takes a man out of the popular church, and show no respect for the plea of conscience in such cases. . . . Their ministers are men of intelligence and of considerable culture. They believe even less than their people of the doctrines of their creeds. They generally avoid doctrinal subjects in preaching, and have for some years based their teaching mostly upon utilitarian grounds. They have for themselves accepted rationalistic beliefs far in advance of what they teach, and consider themselves171engaged in a most necessary and useful work—that of leading the people gradually onward in thought and knowledge by carefully giving them the truth as they are able to bear it. Their caution is extreme, and they thus sacrifice whatever strength may belong to courage and outspoken sincerity.”