Each generation and each century seems to have its own peculiar danger and its own peculiar genius. The Christian church, for example, was confronted in the early centuries with the dangerous and subtle opposition of Greek thought; and the genius of the church victoriously faced this opposition with that spiritual interpretation of the life and teachings of Jesus which we find in the Fourth Gospel. Later, in the sixteenth century, the danger appeared in a materialistic church, and the genius of the Reformation was unmistakably present in the religion of the spirit and the liberty of the individual. In the eighteenth century the peril was seen in dogma, or irreligion, or a tepid morality; and the opposition developed Pietism in Germany, Methodism in England, and the Great Awakening in New England. Every century appears to be led into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil in some new guise, and is compelled to find the apt, victorious text in Scripture.

And yet, whatever be the temptation and whatever be the triumphant reply, the issues are always the same,—sin and salvation. In the Greek myth of Proteus, when that old man of the sea was grappled with, he assumed most horrible and terrifying forms. Now he was a fire, now a wild stag, now a screaming seabird, now a three-headed dog, now a serpent. Sin is always protean, and presents to the wrestling centuries new and terrible aspects. What, then, we ask, seem to be the principalities and protean powers against which we are compelled to wrestle? I venture to think they may be suggested in one word, Materialism.