Currently Reading Christianity and Liberalism By J. Gresham Machen see related

Machen on progress or lack there of:

“Scientific investigation, as has already been observed, has certainly accomplished much; it has in many respects produced a new world.  But there is another aspect of the picture which should not be ignored.  The modern world represents in some respects an enormous improvement over the world in which our ancestors lived; but in other respects it exhibits a lamentable decline.  The improvements appear in the physical conditions of life, but in the spiritual realm there is a corresponding loss.  The loss is clearest, perhaps, in the realm of art.  Despite the mighty revolution which has been produced in the external conditions of life, no great poet is now living to celebrate the change; humanity has suddenly become done.  Gone, too, are the great painters and the great musicians and the great sculptors.  The art that still subsists is largely imitative, and were it is not imitative it is usually bizarre.”