A regenerate church, accordingly, is non-existent. This means, not that unregenerate individuals slip into membership; not that a united church is still merely hoped for; not that there is no insurance against corruption in any ecclesiastical body, local or general. It means, rather, that no church is definitely committed institutionally to the extirpation of the causes that degrade man in his own eyes. What is the motivation of the churches as such? What is the official motivation of the select number of their members to whom is committed the spiritual oversight of the flock? What does the word “ecclesiasticism” mean? When is a church successful, or healthily growing? In terms of motives operating from within the churches upon the causes of our disillusionment, what is the real meaning of church statistics? Compare what the churches do to able ministers who preach the Rotarian type of idealism with what they do to equally able or more able ministers who preach unequivocally that we cannot serve both God and Mammon. Ask leaders of industry who hold that its principles are inviolable whether the churches are allies of the system or makers of trouble for it. The answer that you will receive is that, though individual ministers are breeders of discontent, the churches as a whole are an asset to the system. No; there is no regenerate church. We now have the groundwork for an explanation of the decay of belief in depravity even among those who have regarded themselves as faithful to the traditions of the elders. The doctrine, taken by itself, unrelieved by a counterbalancing doctrine of regeneration through the intervention of a merciful God, is too dreadful, too accusing of the Creator, to be endured. Therefore, when the doctrine of regeneration fails to be convincing in practice, the conviction grows that men are not so bad, after all. Natural amiability becomes more impressive, more suggestive of the hand of God in the creation of man, and natural unamiability actually gets overlooked or slurred over! The preaching of repentance loses its bite, too. An odd swing of the pendulum, this. For, whereas the thunders of the law broke forth against the natural depravity of man, which he couldn’t help, the bad conduct of naturally good men is not found particularly exciting!