The Perilous Times in Which We Live.
By Geo. C. Cochran
A FEW WORDS TO THOSE WHO BEAR THE NAME OF CHRIST.
The following article, to which we call the attention of the reader, was sent us by the author, from Chicago, accompanied with the following note:— “Dear Sir: I inclose you a copy of a little tract, in my judgment applicable to the time we live in, which I have written to call the attention of Christians to a subject almost ignored. I have but few copies printed. If you will use it in your circulation, I shall be much obliged, as it is my earnest wish to do some good. Yours,
GEO. C. COCHRAN. The tract contains a fund of truth which we are happy to be able to assist in spreading before the people.—Ed. According to the latest and most reliable computations, the world contains 1,224,000,000 inhabitants; an aggregate of figures, which, to the most stolid mind, must be startling! A picture not altogether drawn in the flinty, sterile lines of a mathematician; inexorableness, but flinging animatedly to the beholder, stinging suggestions of the needs, the woes, the sufferings, the wrongs, the degradation, the bitterness, the crime and depravity which surge through and through this vast, palpitating aggregate of human beings. * We are growing; but not growing with a strong, upward, vigorous growth to the atmosphere of God, which floats pure, unsullied and sinless above us. The dark and deathful shadow of sin rests its gloomy mantle over the earth. All things which God made once so beautiful are tainted with the pestilential breath of sin. Alas! we are growing, palpably growing in earthiness, in selfishness. Religion itself is made extremely flexible. We mold it to suit each one his fancy; lopping off here and there, with great satisfaction, ancient formulas of life; destroying our childhood’s faith, even, if it be deemed old-fashioned, and not in keeping with the rapid pace of the world. Religion is made to bend to our lives, and not our lives to religion. As an article of fashion, as a stepping-stone to influence, religion must be glorified by art. We build churches of indefinable dimensions, and still more indefinable architecture; upholster them in gorgeous colors, fill them with soft tremulousness of music, and then laud ourselves for the accommodation we afford the Almighty. As in the fourth century the religion of Jesus was wrapped in the imperial purple, so now it rests at ease within the purple robes. We do something, also, for the nine hundred millions or more of wretched pagans. We take up periodical collections for sundry good missionaries, and having done so, give sighs of satisfaction that we have done so much for the advancement of religion. Christians talk with pride of the great efforts of the church at home and abroad. A great system of Sabbath School instruction and missionary effort; lavish contributions to churches and charities of all kinds form an aggressive antipodal to crime, and demonstrate, it is said, the rapid evangelization of the world, and the triumph of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good. Apologists for the world always advance the great superiority of our civilization and the good works which are done (in the shape of humanities and charities), in proof of a rapid amelioration. Now, there are within the pale of Christendom 310,000,000 souls, including the adherents to the Greek and Roman churches, Jews and Protestants; which last number some 80,000,000. According to the most careful review of the communion statistics of the Protestant church throughout the earth, we find scarcely 15,000,000 souls as the real numerical strength of Protestant Christianity. We then are brought to the inevitable conclusion that, with all our machinery of evangelization, two-thirds of the earth’s population are still groping in the night of paganism or Judaic blindness. And considering the vast number of merely nominal or formal Christians in what we term Christendom, we must still further conclude that the earnest, prayerful, self-denying workers for the Lord Jesus Christ, whose citizenship is in Heaven, form a small, very small minority. This, certainly, does not look like a very speedy conversion of the whole world, as many affirm must be the case before the time of the end can come. In fact the Bible nowhere teaches that the whole world must be converted before the times of Gentile domination are fulfilled. The gospel must be preached as a witness throughout the world, and during this dispensation Christ will gather out of the nations of the earth a people for himself. While men flatter themselves with the idea of the moral progression of the world, and its rapid strides in the various fields of knowledge, they forget that the new powers which have been brought to light have, alas! too often been used for the destruction of human life, and that with the “march of ideas,” the onward pace of knowledge, wickedness has doubly increased. No! the end of this dispensation will come upon a world utterly unprepared for such an event. Most men, many Christians, have an idea that they hold the matter in their own hands; that the machinery being set in motion, the control of which is delegated to man, all that remains is for him to keep it in moderate repair for the original purpose of God, some time or other to be slowly evolved. The truth is, the present condition of the church and the world warrant us in the belief that we are not far off from the most stupendous changes the world has ever undergone. We are told by our Saviour that “as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.” We know that in the days of Noah “God looked upon the earth and behold it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth; and, “Likewise, also, as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; but the same day that Lot went out of Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all.” “In the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemous, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof, from such turn away.” “That there shall come in the last days scoffers walking after their own lusts, and saying, ‘Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.’” It is plain that religion is now secularized to such an extent that the line of demarkation between the church and the world is barely visible. With many thousands it is a picturesque contemplative study, which in times of affliction is a convenient thing to wear. It is so modified from its ancient life that it is no longer a barrier to the world’s fascinating influence and pleasures. Christians step easily and gracefully from the prayer-meeting to the opera-house, and even the theater, while the Sabbath is shorn of its deep solemnity and sanctity to accommodate it to the “progress” of the age. The church of Christ is torn and shaken by fierce political animosities; the most violent and vituperative language is used by Christians of different political faith to each other; and the test of a man’s good standing in his church is not whether he bears the spirit178and image of his Redeemer in his life, but whether he is attached to this or that political party. There is an open indifference to religious integrity; a palpable tendency to avoid religious conversation among Christians, which denotes anything but a close walk with God. The strength of the Christian element is numerically weak; and this numerical weakness is crippled by the contentions, the animosities, the blighting errors of Christians themselves. The growing tendency to glorify human intelligence and to detract from, and endeavor to mutilate, the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, is a terrible sin which is poisoning the church of the Highest. There is a growing dislike to let the Lord have the glory of redeeming his people from their sins. The wondrous advance in knowledge within the last fifty years has intoxicated men to a degree that they resolve themselves independent of their Maker, leading materially to a complete renunciation of the Bible-teaching of the natural depravity of man. “Be ye not conformed to the world” is an unpalatable mandate, and is, as many other injunctions are, explained away by very plausible processes of reasoning. Those who do cling to the “law and the testimony;” who do endeavor, with prayerful hearts to honor the Lord Jesus, whose name they bear upon their foreheads, and whose precious blood has washed their sins away; who look with trembling joy for the coming One, and watch the signs of that coming; who believe that to avoid the avenues to temptation is keeping their faith with their God and their garments white; those who do these things are looked upon with a curious pity, not unmixed with ridicule, silent or expressed. In these days men believe, in their mania for progress, that the religion of Jesus Christ must undergo a transformation very much like old-fashioned agricultural implements, or incipient machinery of any kind, to give it an appropriateness to the age. They imagine that the human heart, far beyond the stigma of depravity and wickedness, needs an improved method in its religious instruction. Hence we find many sedulously avoiding or combating the thoroughly scriptural teaching of the material punishment of the wicked hereafter; denying the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ; denying His divine nature and perfect sacrifice, and exalting man to be his own Saviour. The bitterness of Christians to each other; the terrible political differences which have filled the church of God, its clergy and people, with hatred, malice, distrust and infidelity; all these things prove the gigantic efforts of Satan in these last days of Gentile domination, to sink into the fiery hell of his own tortures, those whom Christ has bought with a price, even His own precious blood. Crime stalks through the world; the wicked, the wanton, the profligate, the murderer, the defamer, the infidel, sneer at the hope of the Christian; but in these days “let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering: for He is faithful who promised.” And we know our dear Lord has promised, “I will come again.” Jesus is the same yesterday, to-day and forever; and His holy religion is the same refuge for the weary and heavy-laden; and we are safe only within the shadow of the Cross. Why should we lose sight of our risen Redeemer because iniquity abounds, and the love of many is waxing cold? Why should we cling to earth when that earth is blighted by the pestilential breath of sin? Beauty fades away; the strong, lithe form of youth is the victim of death; corruption sits enthroned; death holds high carnival; the world is enshrouded with sin; the great tidal wave of worldliness is surging over the church of God; yet we may be firm and hold God’s faith in our hands; we may keep our lamps trimmed and burning, ready for the coming of our Lord, for He will strengthen his own. If, then, as the condition of the world apparently indicates, we are drawing to the close of the great period of Gentile domination, what an utter insensibility must it be which leads us to sit with folded hands and cold freezing hearts while the fields are white unto the harvest, and men are dying with blasphemy upon their lips, or in utter carelessness are going out into what will be to them a night of woe unutterable! The world is chasing novelties. Old land-marks, old anchorage-grounds are deserted. The ministers of God, the shepherds of the flocks, faint and fall before the tide, and falsely turn to gratify the modern Athenians, who seek “to hear some new thing.” The taste of the day is for mere intellectual, political or cold and lifeless preaching. Men do not want to be made uncomfortable by the preaching of death and the judgment. They do not love to think of these things. They crave any attempt to modify, curtail and divest of its serious solemnity, the religion of the Bible. They prefer to believe that all will somehow or other reach Heaven at last, and complain loudly of the injustice of Bible doctrines. And the shepherds of the flocks, do they stand up for Jesus, and warn the world to be in readiness for the coming of Christ and for those things which may soon come upon the earth? Do they strive to keep the followers of Jesus from the ways of the world? Alas! it is the almost prevalent custom to gratify the world by yielding to its aversion to Scripture doctrines. The soul-ruining and unscriptural teaching of Unitarianism, Universalism and Spiritualism is becoming the snare of many, while thousands are becoming callous, and indifferent to any creed, through the prevailing inconsistencies and follies of professing Christians. Is there no voice sounding through the ages to the shepherds who lead the sheep astray? “Woe to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves; should not the shepherds feed the flock? Ye eat the fat and ye clothe you with the wool; ye kill them that are fed, but ye feed not the flock. The diseased have ye not strengthened, neither have ye healed that which was sick, neither have ye bound up that which was broken; neither have ye brought again that which was driven away; neither have ye sought that which was lost, * “And they were scattered because there is no shepherd.” “As I live, saith the Lord God; surely because my flock became a prey; because there was no shepherd, neither did my shepherd search for my flock; but the shepherds fed themselves and fed not my flock; therefore, O ye shepherds, hear ye the word of the Lord. ‘Behold I am against the shepherds, and I will require my flock at their hands and cause them to cease from feeding my flock.’” And to the people, “Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Wash you, make you clean, and put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment; relieve the oppressed; judge the fatherless; plead for the widow.” “Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” Thus God speaks to those whom He would save. For eighteen hundred years Jesus Christ has tenderly besought the people, without any unjust exclusion, to enter the door which He opened on Calvary. The wonderful, full, free and gracious invitation has sounded above the turmoil of the world these long, lingering years. It will not forever be offered. The Holy Spirit is waiting to enter and re-create the hearts of men. Jesus knocks yet at the door. He is patient with us. He sees the icy coldness of his church. He sees that, with rare exceptions, His people, steeped in earthliness, go through a languid form of worship, but are growing cold, cold, ever colder in their heart-worship. Should the fires of persecution blaze and consume again; should a mighty angel’s voice in thunder tones, shout through the earth, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand;” should the startling events that close the great drama of the world’s history suddenly burst upon us, where would we be found? Where would we like to be found? If persecution be the crisis, are we strong to stand up for Jesus? Are we brave and courageous enough to boldly confess our unfaltering dependence on Jesus? Let us remember that we must not, we cannot, avoid the answer to these queries. Let us discover immediately whether we are ashamed of Jesus or not; whether we have put on religion as a mere recommendation to assist our worldly aspirations, or whether we fill our daily life with its beauty and make it a part of that life. Are we trusting only to the precious blood of Christ, or are we trusting to something we have done or thought for acceptance with God? God help us, Jesus help us, the Holy Spirit help us, in this most momentous and solemn investigation; and may He so prepare us that when He comes, be it sooner or later than we think, we may not be found sleeping, but ready for the glorious appearing of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.