Fearfully secularized

(J. A. James, "Earnestness in Personal Religion" 1847)

If asked to point out the specific and prevailing sin of the
church in the present day, I cannot hesitate to reply--a
prevailing worldliness of mind, heart, and conduct. The
church is fearfully secularized in the spirit and temper
of her members. The love of the world has become the
master-passion, before which other and holier affections
have grown dim and weak.

The determination, as well as the concern, to be rich, has
crept into the church! Those who profess to have overcome
the world by faith, appear almost as eager as others, in all
schemes for getting wealth, and by almost any means. 

This worldly spirit is also seen in the general
habits and tastes of professing Christians!

Their style of living,
their entertainments,
their associations,
their amusements,
their conversation--evince . . .
  a conformity to the world,
  a minding of earthly things,
  a disposition to adapt themselves to the world around,
  a desire to seek their happiness from objects of sense,
rather than from those of faith--which prove the extent
to which a secular worldly spirit is dominating the spirit
of piety in the church.