MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 13r, 



usually has a mucli larger constitut-ncy. It formerly raised a consider- 

 able surplus over the required expenditures ; and has not as yet been 

 reduced to the vicinity of the danger line. What, then, must be the 

 inevitable result of failing support? It must affect the country churches 

 first; and this accounts for the thousands of them that have dissolved 

 during the last generation. 



The decline of the country church being paralleled by that of the 

 city church, we can scarcely speak of the former as presenting a distinct 

 and separate })roblem. It is rather the rural phase of a problem that 

 is threatening the existence of the institution taken in its broadest 

 aspects. And the fortunes of the individual members will dep nd upon 

 the wellbeing of the whole. All attempts, therefore, to diagnose the 

 failure of the country church must begin with the institution as an organic 

 whole. 



What in general is the outlook for the future Christian church? May 

 we prescribe it as a decadent social structure, that has served a period of 

 usefulness, and is doomed to extinction? Is it in a temporary period of 

 depression, from which it may hz expected eventually to recover? The 

 answer would appear to be that it is in a state of transition, undergoing 

 a metamorphosis that will readapt it to its environment. The old pass- 

 ing structure, whether or not adequate to supply past needs, has become 

 unsuited to modern conditions, and a readaptation is now demanded. 

 The consequence must inevitably be a new organization, imbu:d with a 

 new purpose. 



The dominant feature of past ecclesiastical history has been the 

 tendency to overemphasize a so-called dualism in man's nature. This 

 has come largely from the theology of Paul, upon which the church has 

 based too much of its doctrine. Tlie Pauline theology is a form of dualism 

 in its clear-cut separation of the spiritual man from the natural man. 

 And from this the church has derived its conception of the spiritual life 

 and the natural life as two distinct entities. Moreover, there was held 

 to be an irreconcilable antagonism between "things carnal and things 

 spiritual." To preserve the spiritual life undefiled it was necessary to 

 keep it, as far as possible, from contact with a contaminating world. 

 Thus the separation of the church from secular life. 



This doctrine of "otherworldliness" is now doomed, if we may judge 

 by present day criticism. The world is beginning to question the value, 

 and even the existence, of a spiritual life separated from the natural 

 order. The growing demand is for a theology that will unite the spiritual 

 with the natural, the one being but a higher interpretation of the other. 

 Religion, to be worthy of the name, should permeate the social order in 

 which men move. Its object is not to introduce a new essence into man's 



