The Plague of Our Age

“One plague of our age is the widespread dislike of what men are pleased to call dogmatic theology. In the place of it, the idol of the day is a kind of jellyfish Christianity without bone, or muscle, or sinew, without any distinct teaching about the atonement or the work of the Spirit, or justification, or the way of peace with God, a vague, foggy, misty Christianity, of which the only watchwords seem to be, ‘You must be earnest, and real, and true, and brave, and zealous, and liberal, and kind. You must condemn no man’s doctrinal views. You must consider everybody is right, and nobody is wrong.’ And this creedless kind of religion, we are actually told, is to give us peace of conscience! And not to be satisfied with it in a sorrowful, dying world, is a proof that you are very narrow-minded!

Satisfied, indeed! Such a religion might possibly do for unfallen angels. But to tell sinful, dying men and women, with the blood of our father Adam in their veins, to be satisfied with it, is an insult to common sense, and a mockery of our distress. We need something far better than this. We need the blood of Christ.”

-–J.C. Ryle