The sun., 1902-03-11
The "Religious Crisis :"


The Rev. DR.. LoRIMER, preaching on
Sunday on Americas Religious Crisis,
expressed the opinion that at the
present rate at which we are living in
fifty years we shall have no Sabbath
Such consequence is not improbable.
The American Sabbath as the method
and theory Of observance of Sunday
handed down from Purtanism are called,
is manifestly passing away, and in fifty
years it may be gone altogether. Great
changes due TO declining religious faith
are taking place and If they continue
at the rate of progress they have reached
during the last generation the religious
situation fifty years hence must be
transformed very radically.
1t may be that during that coming
period there will be a revival Of religious
faith, but If it takes place the new faith
is likely to assume a new form as COM
pared with that which was brought in
by the revivals of the first half OF the last
century. At present strange substitutes
for the lost faith are appealing to the
craving OF many people for belief in the
supernatural and for spiritual food
Christian Science, the New Thought, )"
the Metaphysical Movement and
like attempts to perform the impossi-
BILE feat of reducing to a science the
unknowable and the undemonstrable.
They will have their day as sensations
for the credulous and then will be heard
of no more.
The present religious crisis " has
been brought on, according to DR.. LORI
MER, by the accession TO our popula-
ton of many millions of immigrants
entirely out OF harmony with the re-
lgious institutions and he instanced
especially Magyars, Italians, and those
from southern Europe generally. All
these immigrants, however, are OF the
Christian belief, and generally they are
frmer, more conservative, in that faith
than is our American population of the
older and the oldest settlement here.
The responsibility for tho religious
crisis is rather with the descendants
of the Puritan colonists of New England,
for example.
Speaking of evangelical religion
particularly, DR.. LoRIMER said IT is
to-day of very low vitality; the at
tendance at church service is shamefully
small" but it must be remembered
that the service referred TO by him is of
religious communions with which the
great mass of this later immigration is
/ -, fht-. ~ Chnrahnl iab
have never been able to attract the
attendance Of these people. II it has
become shamefully small the reason
for the falling Of is that those Churches
/ have lost hold on the people of the older
( American stock, whose religious faith
was formerly expressed by attendance
upon their services, and not to any ten
dency TO irrehgion induced by these
newcomers. The churches in whose ten
! cts these later immigrants were reared
/ are crowded at every service.
Nor can the change which has taken
place in the observance of Sunday be
said TO be consequence Of this immigra-
/ ton. The American Sabbath as IL
was in the past is an institution which
| has departed largely from New England
communities, where these foreigners
are unknown and few Of the foreign born
of any nation or any period of immi-
grafton are TO be found. or recent years
church going, once a necessary badge
/ Of respectability, so that those who
neglected il were under social reproach,
has fallen of without the visitation of
any such penalty on those who refrain
from il. Sunday has become more and
more a day OF social festivity, and out
door rccreations once frowned upon as
disreputable are now pursued without
criticism. The prayer meeting, for
merly one of the most important of the
religious institutions OF the America
about which DR.. LoRIMER talked, pre-
serves now only a feeble existence.
We receive in THE Sun great numbers
OF letters expressive of religious criti-
cism and downright intidelity, and they
come from all parts of the Union, but
the names Of their writer's and the cir
cumstanoes and antecedents they de-
scribe indicate usually American birth
and rearing. The preachers and teach
ers Of the criticism of the Bible in nom
inally Christian pulpits and theological
seminaries who are doing so much TO
make church attendance shamefully
small by assailing the supernatural
foundations on which religious faith
rests. were not brought to us by this late