Article February 15, 1900 Issue

Is Christianity Declining?

New York Herald

The peculiarity of the age is that everything we know and everything we think we know is being put to the severest test. Our theories of physics, of metaphysics, of economics, and even of religion are in the crucible, and the ultimate purpose is honestly to discover the truth. The end sought is not destruction, but reconstruction on a more solid basis.

These matters are being discussed in the pulpit, on the lecture platform, and in the magazines and the daily papers—proof positive that all classes are interested in them.

It is evident that the world is becoming thoughtful, but also evident that profound thinking will not endanger the cause of truth. Faith in its larger sense seems to be on the increase, while faith in certain dogmas heretofore accepted is decreasing. The Christianity of Christ, in all its simplicity and beauty, and with all its ideals, is not only undisturbed by criticism, but brought out into stronger relief by it. The desire to believe both in the duties of this world and the hopes of the next was never more eager than now. It is not an agnostic age, but an intellectually and spiritually hungry age. The appetite for real facts, fundamental facts, facts about which there can be no reasonable doubt, was never keener, and it grows by what it feeds on. Men must have religion of some kind, and if what is offered is not acceptable it does not show the absence of faith, but rather its presence, when they reject it and search for something which they have not received.

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