American ministers; we have costly music; we have great Sunday-schools; and yet I give you the appalling statistics that in the last twentyfive years, laying aside last year, the statistics of which I have not yet seen-within the last twenty-five years the churches of God in this country have averaged less than two conversions a year each! There has been an average of four or five deaths in the churches. How soon, at that rate, will this world be brought to God? We gain two; we lose four. Eternal God! what will this come to?'

"Bishop Roberts said: "The popular religion of this country is not the religion of the New Testament. It has some of its features but not all. It is lacking in grand fundamental elements. It answers many good purposes-restrains, refines, elevates, and gives to society a high grade of civilization; but fails to secure the great end which Christianity is designed to accomplish-the salvation of the soul. It dazzles but to blind, it promises but to deceive; it allures by worldly considerations to a heaven of purity, which no worldling can enter; it gives to its votaries, who long to eat of forbidden fruit, the assurance of impunity from the threat

ened evils, and leads them on by siren strains from the paradise of purity into the broad road which ends at last in the blackness of the darkness of an eternal night of despair!'

"Says the Golden Rule: "The Protestants are outdoing the popes in splendid, extravagant folly in church-building. Thousands on thousands are expended in gay and costly ornaments to gratify pride and a wicked ambition, that might and should go to redeem the perishing millions! Does the evil, the folly, and the madness of these proud, formal, fashionable worshipers stop here? These splendid monuments of popish pride, upon which millions are squandered in our cities, virtually exclude the poor for whom Christ died, and for whom he came especially to preach.'

"The report of the Michigan Yearly Conference, even as long ago as 1851, published in the True Wesleyan of November 15, says: 'The world, commercial, political, and ecclesiastical, are alike, and are together going in the broad way that leads to death. Politics, commerce, and nominal religion, all connive at sin reciprocally aid each other, and unite to crush the poor. Falsehood is unblushingly uttered in the

forum and in the pulpit; and sins that would shock the moral sensibilities of the heathen, go unrebuked in all the great denominations of our land. These churches are like the Jewish church when the Savior exclaimed, "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites."'

"Robert Atkins, in a sermon preached in London, says: "The truly righteous are diminished from the earth, and no man layeth it to heart. The professors of religion of the present day, in every church, are lovers of the world, conformers to the world. Lovers of creaturecomfort, and aspirers after respectability. They are called to suffer with Christ, but they shrink even from reproach. Apostasy, apostasy, APOSTASY, is engraven on the very front of every church; and did they know it, and did they feel it, there might be hope; but alas! they cry, "We are rich, and increased in goods, and stand in need of nothing."'

"I have by no means exhausted the supply of similar testimonies of Protestants now before me, but for lack of space I must conclude. In the face of these amazing facts can any one deny that Protestantism is a part of great Babylon and is in a fallen condition?

"The merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.' A certain writer on this text has said: 'Who take the lead in all the extravagancies of the age? Church-members. Who load their tables with the richest and choicest viands? Church-members. Who are foremost in extravagance in dress, and all costly attire? Church-members. Who are the very personification of pride and arrogance? Church-members. Where shall we look for the very highest exhibition of the luxury, even show, and pride of life, resulting from the vanity and sin of the race? Answer, To a modern church-assembly on a pleasant Sunday.' Though this writer interpreted the text literally, yet he spoke a vast amount of truth, as every one knows.

"Consider, too, the wickedness carried on everywhere in sect-Babylon unrebuked, with the preachers ofttimes in the lead. Shows, festivals, frolics, grab-bag parties, cake-walk lotteries, kissing-bees, etc. If the apostle [John] were here today and we should inform him of a modern church entertainment where a bared female foot, projecting from beneath a curtain, was sold to the highest gentleman bidder, who

had the privilege of kissing its owner and taking her to supper, he would probably answer, 'Have I not told you, "Babylon is fallen"?' If his attention were called to the fact that the members of a prominent church, in a novel entertainment, displayed the likeness of a donkey, minus the tail, while the members one by one were blindfolded, and, amid the uproarous laughter of the crowd assembled, were given the detached part to see who could place it the nearest where it belonged, he would say with double emphasis, 'Have I not told you, "BABYLON THE GREAT IS FALLEN, IS FALLEN, AND IS BECOME THE HABITATION OF DEVILS, AND THE HOLD OF EVERY FOUL SPIRIT, AND A CAGE OF EVERY UNCLEAN AND HATEFUL BIRD"?' The 'abominations' are by no means confined to the mother in the Revelation, but are also to be found in abundance in connection with her harlot daughters."