1885 Watch Tower - A2Z.org

...and have need of nothing" (i.e., Ihave all the truth--I am Orthodox--Evangelical--I need nothing more), andknowest not, etc. is not aware of hertrue condition (Rev. 3:17).We quote below some very startlingstatements made at a recent meeting ofthe Evangelical Alliance, held at Copenhagen,published in the ClevelandLeader September 30:"Professor Christlieb, of Bonn, Germany,read a paper before the recentmeeting of the Evangelical Alliance atCopenhagen which contained some verystartling statements. According to thestatistics of the last twenty years, he said,there has been a large falling off inattendance upon religious servicesthroughout Europe, and this has beenfollowed by an increase of crime. Parishas more atheists to-day than ever beforeexisted in any great city. In noChristian country, however, were thingsso bad as in Germany. In many districtsof Berlin there was only onechurch to every 59,000 of the population.In New York there were 200places of public worship; in Berlin only50. Besides this, out of the whole populationof Berlin, nearly 1,000,000, only20,000, or 2 per cent., attend divine service.Hamburg was even worse, for,out of a population of 400,000, publicworship on Sundays was attended only by5,000. In certain provinces of Germanythere are suicides at the rate of forty aweek. The ordinary religious teachingof the country is quite dead, and Christianityresolved into mere education.Skeptical works are popular with theworking classes, and in the middle andupper classes hundreds are led away bythe influence of scientific discovery andinvention."These calculations embrace a periodof twenty years, and show that the greatriver Euphrates (people), on which