Most attempted explanations fall into the quite natural error of ascribing the indifference towards the enterprise of the Churches of the English city populations to those particular elements of their teaching or action which they regard as pernicious. In examination of these mysterious multitudes which have collected in the new towns it is always possible to find anything that one desires--drunkenness and temperance, happiness and misery, aspiration and indifference, cowardice and courage. This is specially true when the observer seeks to penetrate beneath the surface and to examine the actual spiritual beliefs and apprehensions accepted by large masses of men whose thoughts on such subjects are never clearly expressed. A few years ago a number of the religious leaders of this country collected in a symposium their explanation of this change.[28] And the replies are very characteristic in their reference of causes to things which are disliked or denied. Dr. Horton, from his study at Hampstead, opines that drink is the chief cause of the indifference to Christianity of the working classes. He would add also absence of good preaching. He judges from the crowds which come to hear the good preacher, that preachers of similar power would draw similar crowds beneath every pulpit. But it is just as possible, and perhaps more demonstrable by experience, that the good preacher only attracts the preacher-loving class from the bad preachers, without substantially recruiting the class from the indifferent outside. The water is decanted from bottle to bottle without increasing its bulk. And drink certainly does not separate from religion the Scotch or Irish in their own land, or the Irish in the great cities of England and America. Nor is there any particular reason why drunkenness should exercise a more general estrangement than the other, more respectable of the deadly sins. Mr. Silas Hocking, again, dislikes war and sacerdotalism. He therefore announces that the Church’s alliance with war and sacerdotalism are the cause of the modern falling away from religion. But the Church and war have lived in some condition of mutual tolerance for nineteen centuries. And as in his vision Christianity practically ceased to exist, “since in the early centuries it became corrupted by paganism,” we may assume that here also some friendly agreement had been possible beforetime, which might not be impossible to-day.