by John F. MacArthur, Jr.
[At the end of the Puritan age] by some means or other, first the
ministers, then the Churches, got on “the down grade,” and in some
cases, the descent was rapid, and in all, very disastrous. In proportion
as the ministers seceded from the old Puritan godliness of life, and
the old Calvinistic form of doctrine, they commonly became less earnest
and less simple in their preaching, more speculative and less spiritual
in the matter of their discourses, and dwelt more on the moral teachings
of the New Testament, than on the great central truths of revelation.
Natural theology frequently took the place which the great truths of the
gospel ought to have held, and the sermons became more and more
Christless. Corresponding results in the character and life, first of
the preachers and then of the people, were only too plainly apparent.
In March 1887, Charles Spurgeon published the first of two articles
entitled “The Down Grade” in his monthly magazine, The Sword and the
Trowel. The articles were published anonymously, but the author was
Robert Shindler, Spurgeon’s close friend and fellow Baptist pastor.
Shindler wrote the articles with input from Spurgeon, who footnoted the
first article with a personal endorsement: “Earnest attention is
requested for this paper. We are going down hill at breakneck speed.”
Tracing the state of evangelicalism from the Puritan age to his own
era, Shindler noted that every revival of true evangelical faith had
been followed within a generation or two by a drift away from sound
doctrine, ultimately leading to wholesale apostasy. He likened this
drifting from truth to a downhill slope, and thus labeled it “the
down-grade.” Continue at Mike Ratliff
