Three Ideals. 109 



Moreover, one important effect of the great modern 

 movement will be to let in upon the Christian Church the 

 full action of the destructive agencies of nature, com- 

 monly termed collectively " natural selection." 



During the period in which the Church had full 

 temporal support and sheltered within its fold whole 

 nations, with hardly an avowed dissentient, the following 

 merely natural effects must have inclined to mar its 

 efficiency : 



1. Want of the stimulus of opposition, tending to 

 diminish the vigour of efforts for its support and ex- 

 tension. 



2. A similarly diminished need for the diffusion of a 

 keen, intelligent, and reasoned apprehension of its doc- 

 trines and teachings. 



3. A lowered moral tone from the influence of the 

 indifferent majority resulting in diminished efforts after 

 a life in accordance with Christian precepts and counsels. 

 This is owing to a diffusion over the whole body of the 

 spirit governing the majority, which spirit in almost every 

 large community is otiose and indifferent. In the days 

 of the Church's temporal prosperity the indifferent were 

 included within the Church, instead of being visibly 

 external to it, and so tended to lower the tone of the 

 whole. 



Thus an unenergetic, tepid, unintelligently apprehensive, 

 and morally inconsistent spirit, may but too naturally tend 



