There has been a revival of paganism. Our Lord has been denied as “the ideal man” as he had been rejected as “the mighty God.” Formerly Christians were charged with hypocrisy, because though professing to follow Christ, they were not Christlike. Now they are maligned because they would be Christlike. The accusation is not that we do not come up to our ideal, but that we have an ideal so unworthy. Our Lord himself is scorned, not because he is the revealer of love, but because he is.

“THE PRESENT CRISIS IN ETHICS” BY WILLIAM BRENTON GREENE, JR. IN THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW (JANUARY, 1919), 2.