When Uriah Smith penned down this article in 1893, he most probably was not sure it would mean so much to me today. Times change but the old paths of Christianity remain. This is an age of brilliant pretensions, but sad realities. Its professions and practices, its facts and theories, present a climax of contradictions. There never was so much of the form of godliness, and never so little of the power. Never were there so many professors of religion, and never so little of religion itself. Never so many assurances of peace, and never so extensive and urgent preparations for war. Never so many tokens of coming danger and calamity, and never such a feeling of security, expressed and implied, on the part of the people. There never was a time when the doctrine of the immediate opening of the temporal millennium was more universally cherished and talked of, and never a time when every feature of society, social, moral, and pol