p. 6 | A Present-Day Peril

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 22, 1908

A Present-Day Peril

So apparent has become the trend toward worldliness, and the love of pleasure has come to have such an evident influence over nominal Christians, that some even among those who profess to believe in the continuous progress toward better things are compelled to recognize that the times are perilous. Thus Dr. Alexander Mackay-Smith, bishop coadjutor of Pennsylvania, has been quoted as saying that although there was a general sentiment that the world was improving, a sentiment in which he shared, he thought that the peril of the age was worldliness. There was too much attention to fine raiment, fine houses, and automobiles, not to mention the good things to eat. This worship of the material things has led to the belief in some quarters that the possession of money is everything. “Money,” the bishop said, “can never make character, and prosperity of the kind we have is always dangerous.” This is only a partial recognition of the truthfulness of the prophetic description of these times, concerning which it is declared that “men shall be lovers of self, lovers of money, . . . lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.”