ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. It was already clear that the new century was bringing serious problems for religion in England. Christian parents no longer forbid their children to read novels or to learn dancing; some of them accompany their sons and daughters to the theatre and the concert; in many Christian homes billiards and cards are allowed, and both in occupation and amusement the line that once divided the world from the Church is tending to disappear. The Salvation Army was becoming more and more an agency for social work among the poor and finding that its evangelistic methods were hardly more successful than the parochial missions of the Church. Of the scientific developments of the time, that most hostile to contemporary religion was the theory of evolution put forward by Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.
