" But
again explanations were offered and in at least half the instances the
sum of most of the answers was that Christ was the most perfect man
that the world had seen and humanity's greatest moral teacher.
"Third, Do you believe that when you die you will live again as a
conscious intelligence, knowing who you are and who other people are?"
Again, not one answer was unconditionally affirmative. "Of course they
were not sure as a matter of knowledge." "Of course that could not be
_known_ positively." "On the whole, they were inclined to think so,
but there were very stubborn, objections," and so forth and so on.
The men to whom these questions were put were particularly high-grade
ministers. One of them had already won a distinguished reputation in
New York and the New England states for his eloquence and piety. Every
one of them had had unusual successes with fashionable congregations.
But every one of them had noted an absence of real influence upon the
_hearts_ of their hearers and all thought that this same condition is
spreading throughout the modern pulpit.
Yet not one of them suspected that the profound cause of what they
called "the decay of faith" was, not in the world of men and women,
but in themselves.
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