"This sort of infidelity, that of Materialism, has its students in the laboratory and in the library. It includes men of moral lives, of earnest purposes, * * * men who uphold morality, chastity, self-denial, perseverance with as clear a voice as Christians do, but on different grounds."
Years ago the N. Y. _Independent_, a religious paper, made the following ingenuous admission:
"To the shame of the Church it must be confessed that the foremost in all our philanthropic movements, in the interpretation of the spirit of the age, in the practical application of genuine Christianity, in the reformation of abuses in high and low places, in the vindication of the rights of man, and in practically redressing his wrongs, in the intellectual and moral regeneration of the race, are the so-called infidels in our land. The Church has pusillanimously left, not only the working oar, but the very reins of salutary reform in the hands of men she denounces as inimical to Christianity, and who are practically doing, with all their might, for humanity's sake, what the Church ought to be doing for Christ's sake; and if they succeed, as succeed they will, in abolishing slavery, banishing rum, restraining licentiousness, reforming abuses and elevating the masses, then must the recoil on Christianity be disastrous. Woe, woe, woe, to Christianity when Infidels by the force of nature, or the tendency of the age, get ahead of the Church in morals, and in the practical work of Christianity. In some instances they are already far in advance. In the vindication of Truth, Righteousness, and Liberty, _they are the pioneers_, beckoning to a sluggish Church to follow in the rear."
The _Evangelist_ also, made the following admission of the same facts: "Among all the earnest minded young men, who are at this moment leading in thought and action in America, we venture to say that four-fifths are skeptical of the great historical facts of Christianity. What is held as Christian doctrine by the churches claims none of their consideration, and there is among them a general distrust of the clergy, as a class, and an utter disgust with the very aspect of modern Christianity and of church worship. This scepticism is not flippant; little is said about it. It is not a peculiarity alone of radicals and fanatics; most of them are men of calm and even balance of mind, and belong to no class of ultraists. It is not worldly and selfish. Nay, the doubters lead in the bravest and most self-denying enterprises of the day."