LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
YOUTH AND THE CHURCHES SIR,—Surely there is no need for speculating as to the reasons why "Youth" (and not Youth only) deserts the churches, and makes no response to elaborately organised missions and perfervid appeals. The tide of interest has changed its course, and row no longer carries the multitude to the churches. It will change again, possibly for the better.
I have been a fairly close observer of English religion for nearly two generations, and I have noted such changes before. Let any clergyman or minister be known to preach about Sex, Socialism or Spiritualism and he will not fail—if he be sufficiently fluid and florid—to draw large congregations ; and even on a lower intellectual plane the preacher of Faith-healing, Adventism and British Israelitism will attract a crowd of the Corybantic Fundamentalists, who ever form the staple of the smaller sects ; but Christianity, unassisted by such more popular themes, has fo- the nonce lost interest. The war will probably emphasise and extend every form of superstition, and not all the hierarchical planning by multiplied committees and utilising the most cunningly organised adver- tisement will avail to remedy the mischief.
If Christianity be indeed, as it most certainly is, a gospel for Mankind, it will surely vindicate its character effectively in due course, though how, or when, or by whom, we cannot yet perceive. Religious revival has always come as a surprise to the Church. We walk by faith, not by sight. • There will come again " times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord," as often in the past, though always from unlikely quarters and in unsuspected ways. This seems to me the lesson of Christian history, and I hold with Bishop Lightfoot that "History is the best cordial for drooping spirits." We must plod on in the way of immediate and apparent duty, and, for the rest, be contcnt to "wait the Lord's leisure."—I am,
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