It is true that the manners of the world have improved wonderfully during the last two or three generations; that there is very much more veneer; that wickedness in many cases is not so open and flaunting; church-members do not openly drink as they used to at the conventional barn-raisings and logging-bees. Yet on the other hand there has come into society in general a sophistry that is doing away with all great moral standards. The world has become enlightened more than it has improved, and it is breaking the mirror rather than correcting the person. Of course the world has always been the world. The heart of the natural man has always been unregenerate, and is still. The sad thing is that the wickedness comes in through those who profess better things. And when the men who profess better things, do the wrong things, they do not confess them. Constant effort is made to prove man better, instead of admitting just what he is, and seeking God for justification; until we have, as set forth by the apostle Paul in 2 Tim. 3:1-5, a great list of sins among those that have the form of godliness but deny the power. The failing, flexible, inconsistent standards of men have in many cases religiously taken the place of the standard of God.