Some, and in certain districts
many, even of the poorer members, were utterly indifferent, and in some
cases even opposed, to any religion. In some cases both rich and poor
had become grossly immoral. Their churches had degenerated into eating
and drinking clubs. The endowments were spent in periodical feasts.
There were also cases in which the chapel and school endowments had
fallen into the hands of individuals or families, who looked on them and
used them very much as private property. The schools and congregations
had disappeared, and even the chapels and school-houses were rapidly
hastening to ruin.
And there was everywhere a tendency downward from the Christian to the
infidel level. If churches do not labor for the conversion of the world,
and endeavor to become themselves more Christ-like and godly,
degeneracy, and utter degradation and ruin are inevitable. And the
tendency, at the time to which I refer, throughout the whole little
world of Unitarianism was downwards to utter unbelief. In many minds
there was as much impatience with old-fashioned moderate Unitarianism,
as with old-fashioned Christianity or Methodism. They wanted preachers
who would openly assail the doctrine of the divine or special
inspiration of the Bible, and the supernatural origin of Christianity,
and try to bring people down or up to the pagan or infidel level of mere
sense and reason.
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