The Augmenting Degeneracy of our Times.
By C. COLGROVE
We can hardly avoid uttering an emphatic protest, and a solemn admonition to those of our brethren among the different denominations, who persistently assert the moral improvement of mankind in this epoch. In contravention of this error, we beg to submit a few considerations, which, though possibly disregarded, will serve for testimony in the sight of God for the truth. I will ask attention, first, to the manifest and alarmingly increasing corruption in the literature of the times. I apprehend there are few who appreciate the tremendous preponderance of evil in the issues of the press of the present day. Among the pernicious activities of our times, is the prolific production of poisonous romances. These are of every grade of mischief in their composition, but they have to a large extent a property in common, viz., the policy of artful disguise. The debasing tendency is not only veiled, but many times greatly enhanced by the arts of rhetoric, and an elaborate and polished diction. Allow me to quote from a recent article in a secular journal of high reputation, on this subject, which ought to arouse our religious instructors from an incredulity strangely inharmonious with the teaching of Revelation itself. “Almost every novel that is published now-a-days is based upon some form of criminal intercourse between the sexes. The authoress of Adam Bede has followed the general example. Miss Braddon never departs from it, and books of the degrading tendency of Strathmore and Chandos, are in the hands of every girl. Our literature threatens to become worse than the literature of the Restoration. Charles Reade writes a novel which in former days would have been burnt by the common hangman as a public nuisance. The last English papers tell us of a play written by Tom Taylor, which was so atrocious in sentiment that even an Adelphi audience hissed and hooted at it. Such is the moral progress on which we are always priding ourselves. In spite of our schools and churches, the world goes on in its old ways, and accumulates dust and dirt with age. The most sanguine believer in the theory of the ‘perfectibility of the human race,’ might well despond of his faith when he sees the universal tendency to move backward rather than forward. One by one the cherished theories of philosophers crumble to pieces. The world, they told us, had grown too wise to permit wars; yet there has never been peace the last ten years. We are no wiser than those who have gone before us; with nations, as with individuals, the experience of the past teaches nothing.”
Such is the testimony of an impartial witness, and it bears with just and powerful effect in contradiction to the popular sentiment of Christendom, that the world is destined to a speedy rectification through the vaunted agencies of free speech, and even under a governmental system of so-called democratic equality. Free speech indeed! Free to manifold excess and wickedness. Free to the ingenuities of calumny, and free to serve Satan with industrious and vicious variety and perversity of labor. Who should not see and understand that the world requires a King, even the Son of God from Heaven, who has both incomparable excellence of character and irresistible energy in execution; who combines the most enchanting personal loveliness and exalted dignity with unerring wisdom in administration. The virus and vigor of iniquity, so far from being chiefly overcome in this apostate world, is manifesting itself in new and startling forms of seductive efficiency. Wickedness is taking more determined and cunning advantage of the unwary. Satan is crowding his energies and resources into grand preparation for final and desperate action. Thank God! The result is forecast from eternity, and the head of infernal princes will be broken, and the pestilent dynasty of the powers of darkness be overthrown. Lord Jesus, come quickly, and be glorified in thy kingdom! Another matter should be perhaps mentioned in this connection, as an index of a lamentable tendency. I refer to the disgraceful fashions of female apparel. I confess that I have seen parents conforming to these immodesties in the attire of their children (which, I suppose, like the foolish extravagances that are reputed to have emanated from the Empress Eugenie for many years past, have a Parisian origin), that struck me with amazement. And I wonder that the wise dictate of parental affection does not instantly and utterly refuse conformity to such a despotism. And only a week or two since, I read an elaborate article upon the subject of tilting skirts, written in a style of mingled satire and admiration, expressing by turns, if I remember rightly, the varied sentiments of astonishment, gratification and derision.—C. COLGROVE,—in World’s Crisis.