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Blunted Senses

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 23, 1916

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 93, No. 58.

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Blunted Senses

THE last few years have witnessed a lessening of the sense of sin on the part of many professed Christians. The great flood-tide of evil which has swept in from every side has made many forms of sin so commonplace that we think of them as belonging to the natural order of things rather than as perversions of the great law of right and truth. The Master recognized this danger which would threaten the church in the last days, and sounds the warning:—
“Take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares. For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man.” Luke 21: 34-36.
Never did the remnant church stand in danger of becoming indifferent, or of giving way to spiritual sleep and insensibility, as it does today. There are so many things to charm the senses, to lull hearts into the sleep of carnal security. When the great European war broke out, more than two years ago, the world awoke with a start. It realized that it was in the throes of a terrible catastrophe. But that realization is passing away. The world is becoming inured to disaster, to great suffering, to terrible crimes. Our danger is that in the very commonness of these conditions our sense of sin will become benumbed.
It is only as we preserve unbroken a personal touch with the Lord Jesus Christ that we shall be safeguarded. No theory of truth will save us. No system of doctrine, however fortified by Scriptural truth or logical argument, will hold us steady. Our great need is Christ—Christ within, the hope of glory,—a living, ruling, reigning Saviour. This living, vital connection with God can be secured and maintained only by daily surrender, by daily study of the Word, by daily prayer, by daily unction of the Holy Spirit. But the experience is worth while, and no sacrifice in obtaining it can be compared to its great value.